marilyn manson's watercolours

the idea of marilyn manson doing watercolours is a bit contradictive to me. maybe because of the associations i get when i think about watercolours. i imagine a watercolour artist to be a jolly pensioner with a lot of time on her or his hands, who likes to do landscape paintings of sea shores and the like.

i'm happy to see this cliché being put to shame - it's also well cool to see what a skilled artist marilyn manson really is. you can hate or love his style, but the man has skills.






ooh this made me want to get my watercolours out!!!

all makt åt tengil!

"all makt åt tengil - vår befriare" translates to "all power to tengil - our liberator".

this is tengil:



he is the evil dictator who wants to enslave and rule all the people in the swedish film "bröderna lejonhjärta" - a film that all scandinavians are more than familiar with after seeing it countless times at school.

if tengil had motivational posters at his desk, i bet they would go something like this "arbeit macht frei"..

here are the main characthers, the two brothers skorpan and jonathan who have to fight against tengil. jeezus don't they look swedish, or what??:


in hindsight i can see why they made us see it so many times. even though it's a film for kids, it covers a lot of grown up themes like illness, death, tyranny, rebellion - and love, loyalty, hope, courage and pacifism. yet i didn't really care so much for that, and i still don't. my favourite part of the film is the same as it was when i was 10. the reason for why i'm writing this blog post is to share this scene:


ahh fantastic. you just witnessed tengil's dragon katla coming into battle. katla is shocking.
it's so great that they didn't care about their limitations in budget or special effect abilities, but went along and gave the dragon a major apperance anyway. and in my opinion, everything that makes this dragon crude, amateurish etc, makes it better, scarier - and more entertaining than polished hollywood effects could ever accomplish.

some stuff i knitted last night

yes, i knitted these simple little numbers while watching x-files.



ok, it's maybe not entirely true, but i wish it was. i get really stressed out by watching television/dvd's without knitting/drawing/doing some sort of extra project on the side. last night i knitted an ipod cozy for my boyfriend. it was nearly as amazing as these dresses though, i swear..

taxidermy art by polly morgan

polly morgan's work is the super-coolest. she works with taxidermy, but not in the traditional way where the taxidermist tries to re-create nature/reality. polly morgan creates a fantasy, brought to life with the bodies of real animals. and i find it completely beautiful, serene and melancholic.

"Morgan won't call herself a taxidermist. 'I'm nowhere near as competent as the taxidermists I've learnt from,' she says insistently. Plus her ambitions are quite different. 'What [taxidermists] are trying to do is to recreate a wildlife image in 3D, a classic pose, something you'd see in the countryside. I am more interested in the moment between something dying and decaying - anything between a few hours and a week. There's something beautiful about that. The wings aren't used for flying, the eyes aren't used for seeing, the beak isn't used for pecking… it just becomes an ornament. When it's taken out of context, people can see that it's beautiful. They can appreciate it for what it is.'" link

i love animals. and death fascinates me. as i've said before, i'm not fascinated by violent death, by gore, i'm fascinated by peaceful death - the mysery that is important to understanding life. i've always wanted a taxidermy animal (i've got one now, from etsy of all things, but more on that later), i can see how it might be deemed a tasteless wish by some. i'm not a hunter, i don't want to show off my "prey" as a proof of my hunting skills- but doing so is maybe more acceptable than wanting a taxidermy animal because of a fascination of death.

i think taxidermy can be dignified as much as it can be tasteless, and in polly morgans case i find that it's totally dignified. she doesn't kill any animals for her work, it is all road kill and such. she doesn't portray them in a humiliating way. her work is all about the beauty - and melancholy - of mortality.