More gameboy plushies!

A new litter has arrived at cloudsparrow.etsy.com! For custom orders, contact me at the store – I’d be happy to bring a plushy into your life.

Get a real job!

I just thought I’d post this opening paragraph to an article featured on the Yahoo! frontpage today:

“Advice for Fresh Graduates During Tough Times

by Ben Stein

posted on Mar 10 03:34am

…

Learn a Genuinely Useful Skill

First, learn a genuinely useful skill. Abstract art and conceptual sculpture are great if your parents are wealthy. But if times are lean, as they are for most of us, learn to do what people need done: [my italics] medical care of all kinds (the shortage of nurses gets more acute every week, and wages are skyrocketing), accounting, engineering that is used in defense, and any kind of work connected to the criminal justice system (crime is an ever-growing menace)…”

Which gets me thinking, how much value do we really assign the arts?  And how much should we?  Is it ‘needed’ at all, and what would we do without it?  Hmmmm…..

I wrote an article on this theme for the last issue of dB Magazine (Adelaide).  Unfortunately it’s not up online as yet, but you’ll find it in Issue 642, 11 Marh – 17 March 2009.

Adelaide Festival of Unpopular Music

As our favourite independent undeground venue in Adelaide, we of Hidden Village are proud to announce that we will be performing at the

Gallery De La Catessen once again!

Director, Luke Altmann writes of the festival that “April marks the end of the fourth year of musical activity at de la Catessen. To celebrate, a selection of musicians with a special emphasis on those working in Adelaide’s underground, experimental, and academic fields will present a series of concerts from April 12-23.

The performance schedule includes:
ALEKSANDR TSIBOULSKI & JACOB CORDOVER: Classical Guitars
DAVID KOTLOWY: prepared guitar, ruined piano, shakuhachi
ADE SUHARTO: dance
STEVEN KOTLOWY: bowed metallophones
DEREK PASCOE: saxophone
JASON SWEENEY with Tristan Louth-Robins: Panoptique Electrical
CHRISTIAN HAINES: technology
TRISTAN LOUTH-ROBINS: technology
MINIMAX featuring Luke Harrald (computers), Derek Pascoe (saxophone) and Chris Martin (piano)
BITCHES OF ZEUS, solo sets and trio by Daniel Varriccio, Patrick Saracino and Mourgos Grund
ADAM PAGE SOLO
HIDDEN VILLAGE

Hidden Village (little scale and cloud sparrow) have a substantial online following and are internationally recognised in the contemporary chiptune community. They are re-discoverers of common discarded and nostalgic electronic entertainment equipment such as atari, game-boy, and commodore-64, as well as inventors of the electro-acoustic laser and water instrument the toriton.

The closing concert of AFUM is one of Hidden Village’s major performances for 2009, and will feature a keyboard controlled walkman-melotron, singing bowls, and live VGA hacking.
- Luke Altmann, Gallery De La Catessen

Be there, or be somewhere else!
7:30, 23rd April 2009

Yesterday, I thought of you.

As part of the ST5K festival (Adelaide) I’ve put together a little project of free art postcards.  If you’d like one, or if you’d like to know more about the project, head on over to:

www.yesterdayithoughtofyou.blogspot.com

ST5K / FORMAT festival

As part of the Adelaide Fringe 09, a group of inspirational DIY/ street artists have put together the FORMAT festival, which includes a whole bunch of DIY workshops, a zine hub, street art projects and much more.  Embedded in the Format festival is ST5K – literally, STreet 5000 (Adelaide’s postcode).  I’ll be exhibiting some free, DIY-style works on Friday 6th March at NotCoffee as part of a giant ST5K group exhibition.  It will be called ‘Yesterday, I thought of you’.

A special gift!

A few days ago I received a giant parcel from the US. I had been waiting for a pair of my shoes to be returned from a customer as they didn’t fit properly, and assumed that this was what was in the box. Well, the shoes were in the box. What I wasn’t expecting, though, were the other gifts nestled in amongst the layers of material and tissue paper.

All I can say is – thank you! This wonderful customer has completely restored my faith in selling my work, and in pursuing art and craft at all. I get so nervous about selling my work – always worrying it wont be good enough, the customer wont like it, something will go wrong, etc. So when I receive such overwhelming thanks and feel so appreciated it really gives me confidence in what I’m doing, and inspires me to do more.

Thank you, running stitch!

Super Quarantine Cat: in ur box checkin ur gifts

Quarantine Cat checks paper flower for hidden compartments.

Quarantine Cat: always suspicious

The Wedding! 7th February 2009

Seb and I got married a few weeks ago.  It was the most beautiful day I can remember – we had so much fun, everybody that we knew came together to celebrate, our closest friends and family gave so much of their time to bring everything together, and we couldn’t have been happier!

The ceremony and reception were in the Adelaide Hills in a big old building that slept 60 people, surrounded by Magnolias and Oaks.  We had a vegan cocktail reception provided by my mum and Bliss Cafe, and people celebrated well into the night (and, for some, well into the morning), before settling for a BBQ breakfast cooked by my Dad.

Despite the last minute chaos that came with doing everything ourselves, it truly was the best day of my life.  I’ll go into more detail in the coming weeks.  For now, here are some photographs taken by our wonderful friend, Damian West (except for the first dance shot, taken by our other wonderful friend, Tristan Louth-Robins).

(click images for larger!)

Invite design.

Seb and I have finally got round to design the invites for our wedding and, with only 8 weeks to go, we certainly have cut it fine in getting these finished and ready to send out! We didn’t really have any ideas before mucking around with this design, but it seems to have emerged as a kind of mongrel crossbreed of old photographic carte de visites, treasure maps, and arcade tickets… which is probably very much what you would get when you crossed Seb and my brains anyhow, so I guess its very fitting!

There will also be a couple of loose cards in the same style, namely:

+ a dorm pass with a designated room number (guests are staying the night in the heritage building we have hired), and details regarding the overnight stay.

+ an RSVP card.

+ A card detailing charity options, in lieu of gifts.

These still aren’t quite finished – I can’t decide between the brown or red colours. Hmmm… Hopefully they will be finished in the next day or so.

Koi Shoes… (an update)

I feel very humbled by the amount of interest people have shown in regards to my Golden Koi shoes (see earlier post).  These shoes are now available as custom orders on my etsy.  As a custom order, they can be make in any size or style, and designs can be adapted to suit the individual.  I will also be uploading some of my jewellery pieces in the coming days.

Site available here:

www.cloudsparrow.etsy.com

Craftzine.

The ever-inspiring Craftzine have been so kind as to feature my golden koi shoes on their site.    Check out their wonderful work here.  The online publication features daily updates on all kinds of creative projects, podcasts and tutorials, together with a community forum and blog.