By Sam Reeve
Rafal Olbinski is a Polish illustrator and painter. His work is not unlike that of the famed surrealist René Magritte, and Olbinski lists him, among many others, as an influence.
Olbinksi has lived in the USA since 1981, and now teaches at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. You can find more of his work here.
Just some quick ones today of pictures that made my eyeballs explode with delight from blog Morfes.
Go to this blog post and have a look at these pretties by Russian artist Tatiana Kazakova. 
I love this pencil shaving fashion lady by Matthew Brodie. 
I do have a penchant for Georgian excess, photos by Helen Sobiralski. 
These digital collages by Catrin Welz Stein are quite pretty. 
The 3d art by Andrey Bobir was quite interesting I thought. 
Fashion photographer Eugenio Recuenco recreated Picasso’s paintings for a photoshoot. 
I don’t claim to be down with the hip cats daddio, you dig (what is with these outbreaks of Kerouacism?)? But during my occasional work as a life model I’m exposed to art from the old Masters to more recent fare like Jenny Saville, and I like to nudge the pickle jar of artistic interest now and then. Here are a few things that have aroused my eyes lately.
First off you should skip over to Slinkachu’s website. You may have seen his Little People before – he does do other things but Little People became quite popular and I love them; miniture vignettes of tiny plastic people left around cities such as this entitled “They’re not pets, Susan:” 
And this, 
“I can’t actually graffiti:”
Next up blog Bizarro Central are continuing their countdown to Christmas with a new post on a different weird artist each month, today being Oleg Dou.
Finally (I said it was a mini bag, I got painkillers to take and The League of Gentlemen to watch Goddammit) are two films I recently saw of a surrealist or dada nature.
Dreams That Money Can Buy, directed by Hans Richter and featuring the visual work of artists such as Man Ray, Max Ernst and Marcel Duchamp, is a surprisingly sweet and very pretty journey through the dreams sold by a young man who just wants to pay the rent.
Finally is Luis Bunuel‘s The Exterminating Angel. The premise is so simple and the ending got him into quite a lot of trouble with the Vatican (you’ll have to watch it to find out why, I’m giving nothing away), and it’s fascinating. Guests at a lavish, upper class dinner party find themselves unable to leave, sinking into desperation and degredation as the days wear on.
Well, that’s it! I’m going to have a cup of tea now, have fun putting your eyes on all the art and that. Byee!
I love my job. This is what I see on my way into the room I work in at the college of a morning…lots and lots of nude mes (me’s?). I think the pictures are lovely:
Here’s another painting artist and fellow Braintree Ways member Steve Waring did of me. Have a look at his site:
I don’t know about you but one of the biggest problems I find with editing is getting somebody to read the damn thing, so the other night I went along to my local writer’s group to see if it was the answer to my dreams. A couple of friends I went to uni with had suggested Chuck Palahniuk’s (author of Fight Club and Choke) online workshop for cult writers which looks pretty good, plus there’s the writer’s workshop and the SFF online writing workshop (Science Fiction, fantasy and horror). There are also free ones, which I’ll be having a look at, such as Critique Circle. Honestly, there’s loads, just google it. At this stage in my career, if I can get advice for free, that’s what I’ll be doing.
I brought along a story I desperately want to get published. It seems if I can do a story in little over a day it gets somewhere, but the things I really love and work hard at I have trouble with. So I went along to the meeting place, a local pub, and joined the others.
Through the shouting of the locals at the bar I learned I would have to read my story aloud. Now, I had to do this during my creative writing course but it’s been a good few years, so as the reading circle drew ever closer I began to feel the palpitations reminiscent of the dreaded ‘your turn to hit the ball’ in P.E.
I began to forget myself, though, as I listened to other’s stories and poems. I get the same feeling when I’m painted in my job as a life model; however hippie this may sound I just like being in a creative environment, and the stories were good.
My palms were sweating when all eyes turned to me. I could hear the sound of my own voice rattling gratingly in my head but, as I continued, I grew in confidence and people began to laugh. It’s a comedy, so that was a good sign.
My only wish is that people gave more helpful comments, I’ve never liked it when people just say “that’s good” if it needs editing. However, on the walk home, I knew from hearing it aloud a few things that could be changed. Although having others read the thing on paper and make comments is invaluable, I think you also need to become ruthless. If you have to read a sentence twice, it needs changing. If you feel maybe there are too many words in a sentence, there probably are.
So, these are my thoughts on the matter, I hope they’re a tiny bit helpful. Good luck!
When I visited Folkestone last winter I was very surprised. I knew there would be sea, and walks by the sea, and tea by the sea, and maybe a town by the sea, but I had no idea what else was waiting. I’ll be honest; I expected to be so bored I’d end up wandering in the dead of night, wailing and rendering my garments. Thankfully, it didn’t come to that.
I had arrived in the middle of an enormous art festival completely by chance and discovered Folkestone has an area named ‘The Creative Quarter.’ Although the festival itself is once every three years (next should be 2014) The Creative Quarter is dedicated to the arts all year round. As it says on their website they have “become home to a thriving collection of studios and (creative) businesses.”
I wandered past the extensive market in the town centre, foaming at the mouth with excitement. The Quarter didn’t let me down; the buildings were as colourful as Mr Men books and each held a different adventure.
It’s a well-worn phrase but there really is something for everyone. Some galleries were smooth and shiny as a space-ship containing beautiful landscapes and portraits. Others were dingy buildings with patchy walls and attic smells. They were my favourites; entering into darkness while a man pulled comedy faces on a screen was like falling into a separate universe.
These were mostly run by a group called The Folkestone Arts Collective displaying video art, sculptures, performance, paintings, models and interactive if you count the coal I got on my jumper from one sculpture’s ‘teeth.’ Personally I loved the video art as there were some beautiful and unexpected moments, such as the Lynchian scenes of a pensioner’s tea dance.
Some of the work I saw was playful, some serious, some reflective and one terrifying – for a moment I had thought a man tied to a chair with a sack on his head was real. I’d stumbled across it in a dark corner and had actually felt goose-bumps. To calm down I enjoyed a cup of tea in Googies Art Café – a pleasant and relaxing place with yet more paintings on the walls.
The local students were just as involved as gallery owners and professional artists and, even better, it was all free. If travel isn’t a concern or you live nearby, I really recommend a visit; check the websites to see what events are taking place. It’s better than spending a holiday wailing and rendering garments.
Madeleine Swann 