I just heard on the grapevine that Staring Brat 2 is no longer in his job. Nothing to do with me, I did everything I could to remove the real culprit and make sure he was able to stay in that job so he could spend some quality time with his wife, who was also working up here.
I wonder what happened? It seems most unfair given that he did what he was told to do. That is a horrible company so he is better off out of it, to be honest.
Starting my new advisory thing tomorrow. Life is getting very complicated, but a lot more fun than it used to be.
Chair is going to be stunning, on the final stages of the first layer of the first internal structure. The lovely effusive man would like me to go and stitch in his cafe, but that is some time away so perhaps I will be making something else by that time as this chair is going to spend about six months hogging the studio when this bit is finished.
I hope Staring Brat 2 is okay and happier away from the horrific Staring Brat 1.
It wasn’t until I was applying the braid that features heavily in this latest artwork that I realised where I had seen the whiny little bitch lack of initiative of Staring Brat 2 before.
The reason he keeps reporting back to Staring Brat 1 – AKA the sadist from the story of the same name on the books page – is because he is ex army. There is a Colonel in the Indian Army with exactly the same name.
Another mystery solved, and the only way it even entered my head consciously is because I am making this chair.
I think I have finalised the name now, but other things are still developing. It remains a very angry piece of work, because I am very upset that people this disgusting exist, never mind that they are able to earn a living.
There are quite a few more things that I can do if I feel like it, because as long as they continue to act like this, people who are unfortunate enough to encounter them in the future are at risk from their delusional behaviour. If they wish to avoid this, I would suggest they find a different website to stare at.
The chair itself is looking fabulous, and it is looking very positive for a final result so far, although the weight is going to be a problem. (isn’t it always)
I am missing my walks, and I would like to move on to something constructive sooner rather than later, so I think another week or two and then I will possibly go and do some writing.
Also feeling rather fat, so I would like to recommence walking as soon as I can free up some time.
It is amazing. I can sew for about 16 hours and then suddenly I cannot do another stitch.
I am also working five jobs at present as it is safer when so many people are insecure and power mad, so I guess being tired is inevitable.
I would like to meet a nice uncomplicated and reasonably attractive grown up now please.
Chair still trucking, a few complications with the tongues, but nothing major. Shiva’s four arms are being replaced with eight tongues and the lips of Staring Brat 2.
This is not related to the post, but I really liked it. It is nicely done and very funny.
The chair is going very well. I am using every trick in the book to make it pop this time, as I am determined that it lives up to Little Shiva.
This may seem peculiar to regular readers, but that seems to be what floats my boat. With the exception of Boris, every single person I have ever made a piece of work about has been hurtful in some way.
So, I guess my extravagant chair says something different to my more direct thoughts. I am usually trying to resolve something when I take time out to make a piece. This time my entire life has become centered around making the thing, so I guess, as a man and his small daughter said the other day as they strolled through Finnieston, I am an artist now.
I am a little bit obsessed with it at the moment, but this is, from experience, subject to change. I sometimes get to a point and then put the thing away for a few months, so I am trying to get it to the waterproofed and resin stage before that mood hits. I also have several more practical pieces to do fairly urgently, and I have two businesses still pending, but life at the moment, although superficially very hard work, is working better since I can sew during two of my four or five different commitments.
I absorbed quite a bit from him, without even looking at him, which is fortunate. I think so far the visual idea is exactly what I mean, incorporating pride, an element of reservation which I really liked, and a strong element of anger. He was a very angry person. I don’t really know why. He was also a surprisingly innocent person, which is why I have been quite so careful not to directly retaliate.
I have some idea about the outside elements affecting what happened, but being of a strong character I cannot understand why he would choose to participate in it, so I am still digesting what this means. I usually draw some conclusions by the end of the piece. Generally speaking mindless thuggery for no reason is an indication of inherent weakness, so it is important to bear this in mind when trying to understand what it means.
Overall it will be a very glamorous piece, and I will be following it up with some other less practical work once the initial small item collection is complete. We also need to do some photography, filming and I think Ina will be releasing a book of work fairly soonish.
I also have a great deal of other work to finish, and a lot of reading to catch up with, so at some point I will have to worry about that.
In the meantime, a whole lot of needling is necessary. I am hoping to finish the basic shape in the next week or two and then I have to add the tongues, which will take at least another two weeks.
If I decide to also do the base, I will be adding about 800 gbp to the cost of making it, so it will be held up by money. This is not really what I want, so I am considering a variety of options.
To the person that asked me whether my focus indicates love for Little Shiva, I do not have that luxury. He belongs elsewhere. It isn’t up to me, thanks for asking anyway.
Back on 10 veg a day for the forseeable future as I ate too much salt at Christmas and am too busy on the chair to walk at present.
I am furiously dreaming up titles for Little Shiva’s chair at the moment. I say furiously, because the title depends on my mood. This is a bit silly, because the initial emotional pain which gave me the design was minor compared with what he eventually ended up doing to me.
So far I have come up with about ten titles, varying in viciousness. I do not really want it to be entirely vicious, and I am hoping that the process renders me less furious by the time it is finished. It is just as well it is a big piece, because I am not likely to forgive his making sure I cannot work in banking contracting any time soon.
I think my favourites for today relate to honour and dishonour. This person has been rendered corrupt by cowardice and I am very, very angry as a result. This usually makes for a better piece, however, I can see for example, from the work for Boris that I genuinely like him but I am very gentle with the direct work. The associated work being mainly Conservative allows me to be a bit more savage.
In the case of Little Shiva, who actively damaged me for no reason at all and told a lot of fibs to other people because of his own insecurity I am quite livid, so it is taking a lot of work and energy. It is a very complex piece.
I am working it, as usual, in layers. So, for this piece of work the basic shape is formed in 3d embroidery, which you can see some progress towards with the Wolfe bags on the fashion page. This is an egg chair, so as you can imagine, equates to being a giant handbag in terms of sculptural embroidery. I certainly don’t know of anyone else who does this, so I guess it is quite special.
To explain to any fellow embroidery geeks, my form of embroidery is based on horizontal tension rather than the more traditional precision, variety and surface texture, which is why I have to layer things very carefully. I am on layer two now, and I have made the rather brave decision of doing the top half of the egg first to make it easier to work due to the size.
By the time I have punched in the carpet elements, knocked out the windows and overstitched it will be as solid as shoe leather and the egg will then be waterproofed before I start sculpting the outer shape, probably in papier or fabric mache. It will then be gilded and beaded before being finished with resin.
I am thinking of also making the base for it, since I am only going to do this once, but we will see how it goes over the next few months whilst I build the shell.
There is probably another month’s work to do on the interior and ‘arms’ and I have also to create a viable trident for the top. Thereafter it will sit in my studio taking up most of the space whilst I determine the level of precision for the shell.
There are a huge number of things that may go wrong with this, but the most worrying element is whether I will be able to get it out of the door when it is finished, so it may be that the dirty studio has to be cleaned and used, in which case the resin cannot happen until the summer months. With something of this size and shape you cannot fully coat it every time and it has to cure between coats, which can take a couple of days or weeks depending on what you’re doing.
I am currently worrying away at the interior gold whilst I finish layers one and two. Layer three is decorative and I also have to figure out how much 3d embroidery I add to the sculpt.
As you can gather it is a rather crazy thing to do and in terms of time we are looking at 25-30k, so I do not think I will be making too many of them. I should also be concentrating on smaller pieces of work as a build up to this one in terms of establishing my name.
You know what it is like however, you have to work as the spirit moves you, and the spirit is screaming Little Shiva at the moment, probably due to loneliness but who cares about that when you can make a spectacular chair?
Finally, I am reaching the point of Faberge, which was a heavy influence along with Tiffany and to a lesser extent Lalique, when figuring out the point I wanted to hit.
The colours are going on now, and even in it’s early state, I am very pleased with progress.
Little Shiva is beautiful. I am content. Good old Staring Brat 2. He won’t approve, of course but poo to you, SB.
Otherwise another hard working day, and the next week or so is busy, busy, busy whilst I generate capital for the second business project.
I am sure there will be a few more dramas along the way, there is a section which I cannot add until this part is done, but so far, so good.
This seems to have been the year of disconnection.
It started off with being one of the top five performers in a company of 350 and being told that unless I agreed with American right wing corporate propaganda I would not progress in the role.
When I objected to this I was terminated as ‘not being a good fit.’ I would have been with the company now if it had not been for the force feeding of badly made corporate propaganda videos from a wide variety of companies.
Let’s hope Hugo Boss doesn’t make the uniforms, kids.
This week I got a metrics warning from one company who three days later promoted me and gave me a 25% pay rise.
I recently left a very well paid position because at entry level I knew far more about the business than the manager who had been there for years, on the grounds that if I didn’t she made it very clear she was going to invent reasons for terminating me. As this year has been hard enough, I took a short cut and again returned to freelancing. She chased me out of the door shouting that she was going to report me. I replied that I had already reported her.
I was offered two jobs this week. I will probably take both of them, but in the meantime am increasingly being offered shifts on a job where I sit and do artwork whilst waiting for the work to come in.
None of the people I met in actual workplaces seemed to have any connection to each other, instead waiting like baby birds for the great wage provider to tell them what to think.
We are already in a state of fascism. People rely on the money supply and the TV to tell them what to think, and I see little in the way of resistance. This does not bode well for free thought.
The world has become entirely crazy. I was discussing this with my friend, an international political journalist in Eastern Europe this evening, and she also sees this happening. I discussed with another friend, an artist and film director, and his comment was that since 80% of the population were morons anyway, what I am slightly shocked by is actually just another 18% or so going the same way.
I think the most shocking thing of this year was sitting discussing management with a person who described themselves as senior, who agreed with my comments on what management should be but had so little to do that he was going to go ahead and ruin my career in order to show that he could fill in some paperwork.
I am, sadly, less shocked by the actions of the Staring Brats, although the effects were devastating on my life. Apparently male sexuality is so acceptable that it is entirely right and fair to destroy someone because you aren’t getting what you want and then openly admit it in writing.
I am not sure at what point people became so disconnected from themselves and others.
Themselves, because it used to be that you were entitled to be a free thinking person as long as your work was okay. Now there are a myriad of non-related work reasons for you to be abused, and there is no protection of your right to think for yourself.
Others, because at least one person this year has openly suggested that I was doing something wrong by dealing with the family commitments. The idea of the elderly as refuse to be got out of the way seems to be prevalent with stupid people. My peer group, on the other hand, have largely taken care of business, despite our declining rights and access to pensions and benefits taken for granted by the selfish and overpaid boomers, who then proceed to have the nerve to complain about the millennials, who largely share their more thoughtless views but for more impressive reasons.
I feel rather fortunate to come from a time when people still connected with each other, who regarded it as shameful to isolate others on the grounds of age, gender or race and who – shock – horror – actually saw each other in person. Perhaps it is our reliance on technology and interaction with the screen that has reinforced the glass wall?
In any case, I am feeling very confident that what I have to contribute is worthwhile, so I will be spending the near future finishing up unfinished work for Wolfe, Boris, and Little Shiva prior to doing an awful lot of writing.
I am crossing my fingers that the very serious chap hasn’t lost my number. He does know about Ina, which is rather worrisome, but we live in hope that he can see past that. It is a lot to take in, I do appreciate that, but it is mostly hard work rather than being particularly intrusive.
Working my way through all the boring large bits of sewing as I work on one of my jobs. Now that this effectively puts a time on my work, I am astonished at what a huge commitment my work is. I have put in 60 hours already, and very little has been defined.
I think it will be a beautiful piece of work, and it certainly has a lot to say about religion and art history.
Stained glass windows, for example, are meant to represent the hymen of Mary, which is useful, as my first determination was how to combine the wild experimentation of Wolfe with the colonialist Indian influence of Boris in one piece.
As this was originally intended to glorify a Hindu, this is brought together with a touch of the Taj Mahal, and a blaze of colour, it will take several months after the initial sculpt is done.
I have no idea who will want to spend 20 odd grand on a chair, but who cares, it is a fascinating romp and probably my last blast.
I am busily friending lots of unsuspecting male Indians, one of them will be truly blessed in a Shiva/Hindu art kind of way.
Today was not great, someone tried to sell me a very expensive course which I would like to have done, but not enough to spend money that is intended for the chair. I procured another couple of opportunities instead. Life is a lot more fun like this.
No word from the gorgeous man with the nice vibe has yet. It is a bit soon, I guess.
I’m going to be looking for a male Hindu that wants some publicity in a few months, so if anyone knows one, please get him to email. I don’t care what age you are, what sexuality, or what you look like. All of those things are pretty irrelevant, to be honest. A story would be nice, but again, I just need a nice Desi boy really.
It is a long story, but I’m making probably my most ambitious piece of work yet, inspired by some dude that objects to his name being used, even though it means nothing to anyone. Going by some of the stuff he has said in the past, he is likely to use it to attack me, so I obviously cannot link it to him. I don’t know why he is like that, but I suspect somebody stupid implied he would get something out of it. In any case I wouldn’t trust him now even if he said it was okay, which is a shame because I was fond of him, but he apparently didn’t appreciate me terribly much. It is very sad that I have to think like this, but I don’t see any option.
I did try doing a few posts to see what the hit pattern was like, and it doesn’t look as if anything has changed, so either we do it this way, or I will ask my friends on facebook to find someone in India.
I do like to have a name on my pieces, as you can see from the website, so if you like very strange furniture – it is adapted from the idea of an egg chair and will be very, very lush in terms of colour and texture, please get in touch and let’s have a chat before the design is finalized.
Uff, since last night I have had a lot of shifts dumped on me, so I guess this chair will be well underway by January since that is what I am most interested in doing whilst sitting in the car.
I would suggest you leave this on headphones whilst doing something else, it is very long.
Did a long religious text today, it was extremely tiresome listening to Americans at a waterfall discussing futile aspects of metaphysics. They really are tiresome.
Went to the supermarket last night. I have been studiously eyeing up Indian dudes since I met Staring Brat 2 in an effort to figure out why I was so unusually assertive about him. I’m usually a very cautious and shy person, especially as I do not trust people at all any more. You can make all the excuses for them you like, most people are basically quite shitty and have very little to nothing in their heads. That was not news in the case of the staring brats.
Anyway I met the eye of a new age Indian dude in his 20s with a man bun. This is the first one that had something like the whatever-it-is. Otherwise he was unremarkable and not somebody I would even notice, and I’m sure the feeling is mutual. We both duly scuttled off to a different shelf. He looked a bit less married, but otherwise I am not really into chasing dudes around a supermarket. Interesting though that we both did the same searching thing before moving on.
I am into the Shiva moment now on the egg, so a lot of serpents will be involved in the next day or so. It is very big, and very tiring and I am glad of my sunroof in trying to coordinate it.
Live show tomorrow. Also appearing intermittently over the festive period. I am sure it will gain more colour in due course but at the moment it looks like a piece of crap, which I am sure is quite appropriate.
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
