touring and detouring via the blogosphere...

A recent visit from J at the enlightening Sydney-City blog prompted a wander to the world of daily photo blogs based in various locations around the globe. So...for a little touristic journey I hopped on board and soon ended up in the Greek Islands, Spain .... and then Beirut... where I chose to stop for a bit and look around. Blogger Mary Ann I discovered living in Beirut fed my curiosity about this city I would love to travel to......also Damascus and various other parts of that region.

I will come back to Mary Ann... but first a detour inspired by her blog to one of the well-loved books on my bookshelf  which is called Saha - a chef's journey through Lebanon and Syria by Greg and Lucy Malouf.  This book is the reason for my increasing desire to travel to that region - and I cant resist sharing these recipes below which are to be found on the chef's website - the book itself is such a treasure - evocative photography and tales told through close exchanges with people in all the places they ventured...including family connections.

Grilled flat chicken with broad bean crush

This flattened chicken dish is cooked under the grill and served smeared with the earthy and spicy broad bean crush. The crush is also delicious on toasted bread, served as a canape with drinks before dinner.
Ingredients
2 x 500g free-range chickens or poussins
salt and pepper
Broad bean crush
1 clove garlic
1/2 teaspoon salt
125g broad beans, podded, blanched and peeled
1 shallot, very finely diced
1/4 cup coriander leaves, finely chopped
50ml extra virgin olive oil
pinch of cayenne pepper
freshly ground black pepper
juice of 1 lemon
Method
Preheat your grill to its highest temperatuire and line the tray of the grill with foil to make cleaning up easier.
To prepare the chickens, cut them down the back and splay them open. Season them with salt and pepper and place them under the grill, skin side down, making sure they are about 3cm from the heat source. Cook for 5 minutes, then turn and cook for a further 5 minutes, or until the skin starts to blister.
While the chickens are grilling, prepare the broad bean crush. First, pound the garlic and salt to a smooth paste. Next add the remaining ingredients to the mortar and pound them one by one or tip everything into a food processor. Either way, what you are aiming for is a sludgy, rough texture.
When the chickens are cooked, smear on the broad bean crush and cook for a few more minutes. Serve with Arabic bread, lemon wedges and a soft leaf salad.
Serves 4

Loved this one too:

Dukkah eggs

3 tablespoons Malouf’s Classic Egyptian Dukkah spice mix
4 eggs
Plain flour for dusting
Vegetable oil for deep-frying

Soft boil the eggs for 3 minutes. Cool down under running water and peel carefully. Dust them in plain flour and then deep fry, or shallow-fry the eggs in vegetable oil for one minute, or until golden brown. Remove from the oil and immediately roll them in Dukkah. Serve on buttered toast with sea salt.

And Labneh (pictured below) is something I've enjoyed making also after reading this book... Click here and take a look - this link is a serious treat!!

The chef's website linked to a story written about the influence on Melbourne's lively food culture from the Middle East -  and is seems Morrocco across to Persian cuisine in Iran. ...read here at The National - Malouf is quoted as suggesting:


 Melbourne has embraced Middle Eastern food more than any other city globally, outside the Middle East and north Africa. “Melburnians like exotic things and they like to travel and they are not afraid to experiment at home or go out and try new flavours and dishes. We have a strong Middle Eastern community here and that’s evident in a lot of the restaurants,” he says.
In 2007, a restaurant reviewer for the city’s The Age newspaper noted that “for a time, it seemed just about every new restaurant in Melbourne had some kind of culinary umbilical to chef Greg Malouf”


I spent a month in Melbourne early last year and was surprised to see this very noticeable change from when living in Melbourne. Many years before when resident there I was lucky to have a house guest from interstate who was Lebanese and  a very good cook. So good in fact that he was welcomed back by the household when he needed a home away from home. The  Arabic parts of the city were soon demystified and my cooking repertoire was never the same. I still cook dishes Samir showed us and remember the stories about hospitality and cuisine.


Well ...  I did get way off track... my original intention was to tell you why I liked visiting Mary Ann's blog Beirut Pursuit

Reading her post on 17.6.10 called Plan prompted a flash back. Her post describes how as a young person floor plans had fascinated her... and why. This took me back to my own craze for drawing house plans when I was 13 & 14... dreaming of studying architecture, imagining living spaces ... however that emerged. Here Mary Ann photographs floor plans for residential developments in a city where new constructions abound.




The curios thing is this revealed quite a lot about the lifestyles of the well-to-do in this city and led to a very lively discussion in the comments which revealed so much more than a typical travelogue and the usual photographs of a city under focus. Click above on 'post on 17.6.10' to read more.

Images above and below Mary Ann describes as so evocative of the city - telling as they do of times past....and present.




PS I was delighted to hear from Mary Ann who I emailed about her blog.... revisiting a day after posting this I am very pleased to have included her story and images and you may wish to pop over and see what is happening there too! It was for me almost like wandering the streets with her discovering interesting details in the everyday! Thank you Mary Ann!!

Dont know whether the funds will materialise to travel there in person... but going via the blogosphere is a treat never-the-less!!!
As for those house plans/designs ... recent geometric paintings seem to refer to those I found myself thinking.... Maybe yearning for a home to call my own.

clearing one's head...

Yesterday it was great to get out for a walk after some rainy grey old days. A friend and I met at Brisbane Powerhouse for the walk along the riverside pathway. Once the supplier of power to the tramway network of the city as well as suburban power it has been converted more recently and opened 10 years ago as Arts precinct.... hence the sign below which is one of 4 by artist Richard Tipping (see at end of post).

Great walking around this area....love how the Brisbane river curves around....snake-like for miles!

The Powerhouse building is well worth a visit... Saturdays twice a month it hosts a growers market on the grounds.

Today was just as sunny and on route to the studio I stopped for coffee not far from the studio... love the city views in this area. Whoever lives in this house has a great view.

Across the road from the house above is the surprisingly ramshackle one below which incidently is one of the grooviest cafes in Brisbane. I used to stop there last year on route to the Botanic Gardens for a coffee and chat... but this year have been so busy that today was the fist visit in a long time. There's no signage out the front. I once asked what it was called and have completely forgotten because I named it 'the cafe with no name' and like to keep it as a secret destination.
Inside the walls are painted black and the seating is very relaxed ...plenty of good magazines to read and THE best coffee. There is about 3 things on the menu...all of them toast... but the best - I like the  excellent sourdough rubbed with garlic and smooshed with ripe tomato and and a splash of olive oil!
And when this town turns on the heat I can tell you sitting in this dark cave of a place is perfection...
It is seriously the most refreshing place to visit ...it rewrites all the rules...but gets the most important things really right.(and its not far from my new studio.)

OK... so what have I been painting for the last 3 days? last week I added more pages to my 'homage to the seed' journal and revisited work from a few years ago... then worked with ink on paper and reworked some older work. Basically just feeling my way into the work after a break and the relocation.

Then 3 days ago I picked up a 60 x 90 cm painting on canvas I decided I was unhappy with and completely went off in a different direction. If change is as good as a holiday... then this is the holiday I meant to take but have as yet put off. For 3 days I have listened non-stop to radio national...a lot of election reporting which has now become tedious, although I must say this election has me fascinated.

I have caught some brilliant programs - losing myself in the world of Radio National and this altogether mysterious painting below. Why I say mysterious is because it has a life of its own... I'm coming along for the ride... its dictating to me and I just shut up and follow. As I have been working on it I feel my head clearing. After 5 hugely busy months where it seemed all go, go, go.... this has been like doing a very large puzzle... the brain activity of deciding ...ok... this colour here...that line there.... its enveloped me in a way that has had the effect of clearing my head. After chaos ...the re-ordering. Probably I need to do a fair bit of this re-ordering in my home office and such...but starting here is a very enervating place to 

apply that energy.

I have no name for this yet. I know its not finished either ...but Im wondering if the finished work is as important as the process in this case. Below is a close up of a section of the work...

Whatever will be next?

Anway...back to the artist who's signage art works were shown above.... Richard Tipping. If you click on the word editorial below it will take you to the text he wrote for this Australian Art Journal. See Google images for further visuals.

Editorial

Artist: Mr Richard Tipping, editorial

Richard Tipping looks at the role of text and language from an historical and contemporary context, covering areas of interest such as recent technological advancements, graffiti culture and going as far back as 46,000 years to briefly discuss some of the oldest found examples of Indigenous cave art in the south of Australia. Along the way he looks to medieval and ancient Phoenician developments, Clement Greenberg's promotion of painting as a purely optical experience, one in which text has no place except as another kind of surface, the role of Dada in claiming the relationship between word and image and discusses other important figures such as Duchamp, Brancusi, Stephane Mallarme, Christopher Brennan, Picasso, Braque, Kurt Schwitters, Charles Olson, Alex Selenitsch, Allan Riddell, Rosalie Gascoigne and many others.

good news for dear ada fans...

After almost 5 years and 3,100 posts or so.... dear ada decided it was time for a new chapter.... and signed off on this magnificant  weblog. 84 comments later (to date) I just noticed there's been a decision to publish photos on a tumbltr site. This is good news for followers indeed..so if you dont know this blog do take a peek and if yur keen to  see the new (abrieviated and less frequent) site go to the tumblr version of dear ada.

screenprints from birdie (dear ada) - found at birdie's flickr site:




flickr - from industrial beauty set



pale L.A. set



found at dear ada blog:


Mogu Takahashi


Found at the tumblr site: Josh Blackwell - Plastic Baskets. It is a must to go see this extraordinary collection...for their pure inventiveness...and patterns employed.

                                        

From the website archives:

Loren (XXL)

Dots Speak Dots 2005


Dice Roll 2004


Love handles 2004

What have I here?

After a busy week a slow start this Saturday morning!
Waking up slowly,  looking out on a grey day ...quietly trawling a few saved links from the "in" box.

Oh, by the way, great show opening ...good buzz...almost too crowded to move really. Lots of good conversations though and the quiet and cool night air outside to draw breath. People seemed to really enjoy the show and Ill have some pics soon. Back today for a sitting and chats with people I've invited along!
My warmest gratitude to all well-wishers and locally to those who came along and were most responsive. Special thank you to Nicola! And to the lovely organisers - Thank you and well done!!
Many commented they would return at a quiet time for a viewing - a wise move as last night did not allow for that! More soon!

So...what have I here?

First up - from Container list - the blog of the Milton Glaser Design Study Centre and archives comes Dada, explained.

MILTON GLASER COLLECTION, BOX 112 FOLDER 24. PUSH PIN GRAPHIC, UNDATED.

Here’s an ironic instructional piece from early Push Pin Studios member John Alcorn. A highly accomplished designer and illustrator, Alcorn also designed the opening titles for several Fellini films.

I need to find the info on this one which I saved a while ago...its from this same blog!

As is this curious one below.
Quoting from the post Alan Fletcher's "Feedback" :

Starting in 1976, Alan Fletcher, a founder of Pentagram Partners London, began publishing an informal guidebook to interesting places to eat and stay around the world. Contributions were solicited from artists and designers, and compiled into sections organized by region, perfect-bound and fitted in a hard plastic outer binder. In the first edition, type was roughly formatted in Courier and there was no contents or index — the 1979 version expanded the range and gave the publication a more familiar Pentagram gloss, with Caslon set in a tight typographic grid.

THE HENRY WOLF COLLECTION, BOX 15. PENTAGRAM’S FEEDBACK 1976, MORE FEEDBACK 1979, ANOTHER FEEDBACK 1986, AND FEEDBACK 1992 AND 1996.

The contributors were an impressive bunch, counting among them Saul Bass, R. O. Blechman, Wim Crouwel, Rudolph de Harak, Lou Dorfsman, Bob Gill, Sheila Hicks, David Hockney, Armin Hofmann, Walter Landor, Herb Lubalin, Josef Müller-Brockman, and Maximo Vignelli in the first issue. Many of the designers whose archives we maintain — Ivan Chermayeff, Tom Geismar, Seymour Chwast, Milton Glaser, George Tscherny, Henry Wolf — also contributed.

Here we have David Hockney's contribution;

From Olivier Mourge, Paris, designer followed by London film-maker Bob Gill;




Pentagram is still putting out Feedback:




Feedback—now in its 8th edition—is a guide to interesting places around the world with contributions from colleagues and friends.
(1974-present)

This reminds me I have a wonderful book by Alan Fletcher still packed away. I particularly loved the idea of these personal anecdotes as a guide to places to visit. I guess blogging and the web provide this in buckets - but there is something particularly appealing about the idea of reading the recommendations of - say Hockney - to some out of the way place.

'Matisse as Printmaker' is a title from Pentagram;









more on this one later....


Time to head off to the gallery...
ciao!

keyword: m a k e

more quick posting - wandered over to the delightful swallowfield blog via the industrious and clever Kim at little something blog and found this image above by Jen Renninger that Jennifer (of swallowfield) snapped on the wall at Etsy headquarters. Given Etsy is the successful global enterprise that gets the creations of many out to the world I thought it a simple but fitting motto - 'making' being the key word for me... whether it is a garden, good food, a comfortable dwelling, or things to enrich ones everyday I would say when we make rather than buy we are more likely to be ticking valuable boxes for well-being and sustainabilty.

Which reminds me - has anyone seen that TV show on the chef in London trying to open a restaurant using all food sourced within the city limits of London. It makes one think about food security issues quite seriously!

underground rediscovered, Sydney

If ever I found myself stuck underground waiting awhile at these train stations in central Sydney years ago I would most certainly be wishing I was elsewhere ...
There nothing like good design in public transport. I think the photographer got creative here though - bringing these places to life with the camera. I wonder where one finds the best public transport systems around  the globe. I dont travel enough to know these days. I always loved the old rattlers - as they were known - or wooden trams of Melbourne when I lived there... the seating arrangement and seriously worn-in look was the stage for frequent drama and conversation.





those stairs, escalators and walkways can be very drab - great angles here.




I loved discovering these images from yellowtrace earlier this month. Do have a look at the entire post and read the background to these photos if you are curious. I was impressed - seems it was a photography class exercise.... a student!!
This series makes me smile - almost feel nostalgic. Great Blog by the way with many eclectic categories but strong on design.
I found yellow trace through the lovely young Sydney based artist Renee Anne here

playing with living spaces...

...composing spaces to live in is something I used to love to do...and here are some images that reminded me of places I've lived in some small way - or things that appeal for one reason or another... below is a room where I'd like to have wonderful dinners and long conversations. This table suits letter-writing, sitting doing watercolours, a game of scrabble? ...thats a very inky blue in the wallpaper! Now what music I wonder? I can even imagine the food I would serve - nothing too labour intensive but delicious and slow-cooked... an unpretentious red wine for this honest room...yes it has drama...but its also relaxed. I lived for 5 years once-upon-a-time in a decaying grand old home with this kind of ambience...oh the dinners... the conversations...!

lots of shelves - above - definitely crucial and that chair's quite lovely...i'd get paint all over that white though! 

Below: walls and floors that look worn and aged...yes! wood - yes!

this room below with the table and chairs kind of randomly placed says lived in and worked in, breakfast, chats, multitasking, making a mess, cleaning up, relaxing ... its all fine! All these places and rooms below suggest its ok to play and create in these spaces...well there is a studio below...but why not have all rooms with the potential to become a temporary studio... I'm all for houses as doing and being spaces - rooms where all sorts of things are possible...rules bended and broken...

these images are all from James Merrrell, a London based photographer found through keen eyed Katherine at urbanfleadesign.net which I was browsing through earlier tonight. I have seen the work of this photographer in various magazines and there is a distinctive atmosphere and sense of drama which I find playful and reminds me of places I've lived and fun I've had creating spaces and arranging rooms like a giant visual composition. Hey i've even broken the format tonight for loading images onto a post...looks odd?...well they just kind of went that way - it wasn't planned..! Sometimes the thing just goes its own merry way and i have to follow along and hope for the best. Does this happen to you?