Pivo's signature

Rather than signing my work lately, I've developed a signature stencil to put up in the general vicinity of it. The one on the left was pasted up along the Cornish coastal path west of St Ives where I put this. The one on the right is in Edinburgh near where I put this and this.

Pivo & Flax: I never will marry

Needlework, like samplers have traditionally provided girls and women with a wholesome activity (preventing the devil from influencing their idle hands) and often included bible verses or quotes about morality. A quality sampler was also seen as an indication of how marriageable the girl who stitched it was and how ordered a house she would keep.

Pivo's neice in Edinburgh

Pivo's neice, featured earlier here, took a trip last summer to Scotland. On the day she visited Edinburgh (while a heatwave hit the rest of the UK) it rained and it rained and it was cold and it was miserable.

Caged Bird Club in Edinburgh

The Caged Bird Club put up our third exhibition this weekend in Edinburgh, Scotland featuring incredible artist Rudy, aged only five. A major focus of Rudy's work is creatures of the sea, which can now be seen swimming around the streets of Leith.

Voltairine de Cleyre

Voltairine de Cleyre was an anarchist, feminist writer and speaker who grew up in grinding poverty in rural Michigan. Among other things, she spoke out against marriage and criticised the way religion was used to suppress women's sexuality and limit their rights.

Forward

On any given day in London, I see several small grumpy children being dragged along while their parents run errands. I always try to give the little ones empathetic smiles. When they are actually crying, I stick my bottom lip out at them (in an I-can-feel-your-pain solidarity kind of way). If they are not confused as hell, they sometimes smile.

What's not to love?

I originally made this with the haters in mind. An open question about why graffiti in London gets taken down or painted over so quickly (unless you are one of a handful of mostly white male street artists who are asked to put your stuff up repeatedly in Shoreditch). 

(Patricia) Lam Fung

Lam Fung was a wildly successful 1960s actress known as the Jade Girl in Hong Kong cinema. Although her career only lasted 11 short years, she appeared in over 100 films and started her own film and fashion companies (plus she could spin plates!).

Despite her success, she retired to become a wife and mother at the height of her career. She died of an overdose 10 years later at age 37. There is speculation about her death being intentional, induced by botched plastic surgery or unintentional, from mixing sleeping pills, diet medication and the painkillers given after plastic surgery, both of which are horribly sad endings. 

She is honoured on the Avenue of Stars in Tsim Sha Tsui for her contributions to cinema in Hong Kong. Although she doesn't have a wikipedia page, you can read and see more about her here

prepare

When I first learned to use Illustrator, I thought I would never do anything by hand again. Now that I've started doing everything by hand again (especially fonts), I'm wondering why I ever stopped in the first place. Painting with a good brush is so damn satisfying!

This week, I decided to break the word 'prepare' down to one small phonetic part and see where it visually and logically went, sort of like six degrees of separation. An example sentence to clarify my logic: I used my entire Sunday to prepare a piece for Illustration Friday, which meant I had to ignore the fact that my taxes are due in less than two weeks. 

BTW - 'knor' is an old English word for a bump or growth on a tree and is most likely where words like knot and knobbly come from. 

grounded

I saw this fellow on the train a few weeks back. He was holding his bible, looking quite fretful about what he was reading. I'm guessing he was wrestling with some seriously big questions. 

Over the past week, I've spent many hours on trains and been subjected to so many hideously boring conversations about shopping. I wanted to give some recognition to this guy for publicly thinking about something bigger than himself and his stuff.