Elephant Gun

I've been listening lately to the new Beirut album, which is wonderful. This song, Elephant Gun isn't on either the new album or the first one, but I just happened across the weird and wonderful video and thought it only polite to share...

Second Nature

I went to the opening of "Second Nature' last night, a group show of the work of 8 Cornish artists: Andy Whall, Daryl Waller, Rupert White, Andy Hughes, Paul Chaney, Stephanie Boon, Delpha Hudson and Jacqueline Knight. It is an interesting show with the work being exhibited between Vitreous Gallery in Truro and the vastness of the Truro Cathedral. If you are in Cornwall do try and see it, it's showing until 30th september at the Cathedral and until the 13th October at Vitreous (7 Mitchell Hill).

Below is one of Daryl's pieces, 'You are beautiful' 2006.


...and in a moment of fluke I took this one as we were leaving...not bad for a little compact, ha!

Michel Gondry - Be kind Rewind

YaYay! The new Michel Gondry looks really funny and silly AND it's got Mos Def in it...My kinda thing!!!

See...



xXx

Proudness and fairs

I can't belive it's been a month since I last posted...Time just ran away with me over the last 4 weeks!

I've been having a crazy busy time, which started with my participation in the Hidden Art Cornwall design fair at Godolphin House over the August bank holiday weekend. I was so busy making and preparing and designing new tees! The fair was really great fun, and the sun finally shone at last! There was a really good exhibition in the House with work inspired by the house itself dotted about in the grand old rooms, and a good show from the recent graduates at Falmouth College of Art out in the barn. It was a really unusual setting as all the work was nestled in straw and on old wooden carts and stuff. I liked it very much. The whole fair was given extra cred as well by the presence of Mr Aphex Twin himself sporting a haircut and a baby....!

The stand looked pretty hot too! You can see in the first pictures my new BF shoppers, they are double sided and have the tree and either a rabbit or a squirrel depending on which side you are looking at. Also in there are the new plum wings! and the brand new dressage inspired parade tee...All of these will be available in the shop soooon because....

...as well as the fair, I have been working on a big new revamp of the Bonbi Forest shop. It will hopefully relaunch in a couple of weeks with loads of new amazing stuff to behold!! It's all very exciting and the new site is looking really good if I do say so myself. I'm very proud! hehe!

Last weekend I took the Lauder horse to a competition at St Leonards EC hoping to qualify for the BD Winter semi-finals. Which we did! Lauder was amazing and danced his socks off to win with scores of 66.8 and 67.8. Another proud moment, I will post a picture of him soon!

xXx

Total Spec and Field Day...

Total Spec magazine have a feature on me and Bonbi Forest in their latest issue 23, which is out now. It's my first 'in-print' article, woop! Total Spec is an arts/culture/music mag available in big WHSmiths and Borders, see their website HERE

The article is below and if you click on it it should come up large enough for you to have a read...if not you'll just have to go and buy the mag, hehe!!


So, Mark and I and a bunch of other Kernow peeps are heading off to London for the Field Day festival, which is in Victoria Park tomorrow. It's going to be great, I haven't been to London in an age and it will be good to catch up with all of my big smoke friends!! We are staying with the lovely Miss Natalie who makes prosthetic limbs for a living.

We'll be back on Sunday, until then...

xXx

Can't Tell Me Nothing...

Ha ha! I just got shown this, it's a Kanye west video with Will Oldham and another hairy guy...Brilliant!



Enjoy!

xXx

WGSN Interview!

Cor it's been a while since I last posted....I'm not very good at keeping on top of this blog lark!

Anyway, I recently did a small interview for the Worth Global Style Network which you can read if you click on the image below.... (it should come up big enough!)


xXx

Kako Ueda

I have long loved paper cut work, and I recently happened across the work of Kako Ueda.

Ueda, who was born in Japan, states in her Biography that she is interested in organic beings such as insects, animals and people and how our bodies are 'born out of nature but constantly being influenced and modified by culture'.




She mainly works with Black and white and neutral colours, and adds watercolor to the paper cutouts. I'm loving the spider webs and butterflies, they are beautiful, and the detail and intricacy is incredible! You can read an interview with her HERE.

xXx

New jewellery...

I finally have some new jewellery in the shop, hurrah!! It's been a little longer than I thought because Mark does the coding for brand new products at the moment, and he's been busy working on the new Bat For lashes site in time for today's exciting news that front woman Natasha has been nominated for the Mercury Music prize!!!! YAY, we are both very proud!

So anyway, the poor boys been coding his fingertips off and didn't have time to take a breather before I hassled him into adding these few bits for me...hehe!

New limited Candy Cup earrings, they come in red, blue, orange, pink and green...I think they look like psychedelic acorns!!


One of a kind Sky at Night earrings *2...One star is bigger than the other, I like how they are so misshapen too!


Limited Too Wit Too Woo necklace...This little fella has matching earrings and 2 faces!!


All these are available in the Bonbi Forest Shop.

My buddy Emily is coming to stay on Thursday and I can't wait, I haven't seen her since NEW YEAR which is faaaar to long!!!

xXx

Get your Foster wall art!!

Yay! I while ago I made some illustrations for Urban Outfitters to be used in their artist series wall art and I just saw today that the triptych has gone on sale in their online shop!! you can see it HERE

A bit of a bummer though, in the blurb they got my name wrong... They've got May as my surname which is part of my first name!! It should be Lee May Foster... boo! I'll have to see if it can be changed... Apart from that I think they look really good!

It's so nearly ready....

I took some pictures of whats going to be the new studio yesterday, and it's sooo nearly finished and ready for all the Bonbi Forest paraphernalia to invade!! Compared to the first photo's i posted of it, it is a massive transformation.





The electricity is working and I think the tiles I picked look lovely and warm and Mediterranean!

We are just waiting on the base units now so that the work surfaces can go in, and the big sink and screen racks and it will be ready, I can't wait!!!

I'm back and McSweeny's are here!!

I'm back!! Actually I've been back a week now, but I'll admit it's taken me a week to get back into the swing of real life!

Dartmoor was soo good! I met some fantastic inspiring people and did some amazing things and I didn't care that it poured with rain all week because it was so great. It was a leadership awareness week and we had talks from psychologists, personal development coaches, a plastic surgeon and a guy that had been up Everest, as well as problem solving, abseiling off massive cliffs, hiking over tors and bivvying in a tent made with tarpaulin and string in the dark with 11 other people...Great stuff!!

The pic is my team with our 30 foot bamboo flag!! I'm on the bottom left in those oh so fetching waterproofs...

Sooo, I came back to find my back issues of McSweeny's waiting for me in the post...two beautiful hardback books filled with short stories and fiction.
One of the books has got stories and tales all either inspired by, or from Iceland and came with a VERY strange Icelandic mini magazine, and the other folds out all weirdly and wonderfully to reveal the actual McSweeny's issue, a novella by Ann Beattie and a short story by Robert Coover printed on a massive deck of cards...it also came with a comb. (!). I've got some reading to do!!!

Printing printing printing!

I took some pictures of the latest printing frenzy, it's been the biggest one yet with lots being shipped to new stockists and a big new batch of BFL tees too!

First up are rows of Eskimo kisses and our new hang tags for our first brick and mortar stockists! See the new minty Eskimo Kiss colour, they'll be in the shop next week...The gold is such a great colour but it's a big Hurrah! for people who just can't wear yellow like me!

Below is a preview of all the new BFL colours in the hanging out to dry phase... The teal and lemon ones kind of made the room seem to glow! They have to be hung out because in the current Bonbi Forest work space there isn't enough room to use the heat setter at the same time as printing, it just gets toooo hot! (Click on the image to see it larger...) We should be moving into the new workspace in a couple of weeks. The tiles are picked and the walls are nearly all white!!

I was up quite late heat setting the tees one evening, so Mark brought me a few glasses of Shiraz to keep me going...We listened to Interpol's 'Turn on the bright lights', an album I haven't heard in ages, I really had forgotten quite how good it is! It remind me of walking to college in Brighton, that and a Cat Power album and a And You will Know us by the Trail of Dead one too. They were the ones that seemed to be stuck in my mini disc player back then, back in the pre-ipod days!

We were blessed with the presence of Lou Lou cat for the evening, she had a great time observing everything from the comfort of a piece of wadding and a plastic bag bed...But the pace was too much!! It sure is damn tough watching stuff and purring.

Aww! The cuteness!

xXx

Lewis and Clarke

Phew! what a few days...I've been printing like mad, and have made over 300 tees since Thursday! Theres a whole bunch being shipped off to the US for our new stockists and also a whole new batch of Bat For Lashes t-shirts, this time with three new colours, they should be up in the shop at the beginning of next week!! Also I have some Eskimo Kiss and Wings! tees in new colours for the summer, lots of brightness and plum!

Anyway, while I've been printing I've been listening to a lot of music and one album that has really gripped me is Lewis and Clarke 'Blasts of Holy Birth'. I'm really no good at music reviews and stuff so I won't even attempt it, but if you click JUST HERE! You can listen and see what you think!! Track 4 is my favorite...

The album cover is pretty lovely too!!

Ernesto Caivano

These amazing drawings are the work of Spanish artist Ernesto Caivano who has been working on a visual story called 'After the Woods' that explores the relationships between man, nature and technology for about 6 years now.

The story itself is about a pair of lovers who are separated for 1000 years after the conception of their child. He becomes a knight who returns to a time before the Renaissance and is able to influence the evolution of plants and nature and she becomes a princess who is taken into the future and becomes a spaceship embodying new technology. The story tells of their love and longing and of their attempts to reunite in a post apocalyptic future, and of the conflicts and challenges their child is faced with...

The drawings themselves are so intricate and beautiful (click each image to see it larger), these are my favorites, I think he says that a series of similar drawings like this are like an explanation of one paragraph or one line of the story...I have always found narrative in art interesting, it makes me think of my (rather unsophisticated!) degree paintings which were a series of paintings called 'Later the same day...' it was meant to be like an unknown story with clues as to the narrative within the images.


I also really love the series Robert Rauscenberg did called 'Short Stories' He named each painting after the page in a book and a line of the page, so each was like a visual representation of a very small part of a much larger story...

This one is 'Page 12, paragraph 5'

The National

I haven't posted in a while, as things have been really busy! I spent a couple of days selling bits n pieces at the Royal Cornwall show last week and I only took one photo, it's of a man dressed as a massive fag end being interviewed by local radio, not even one of the stall!!

After that we had Natasha come and stay for a couple of days which was lovely! Mark is her website guy too and they were working on some new stuff so it was kind of a business trip as well, but amongst the work we found the time to go and eat some hearty pub grub and go a wandering on the beach too. Yay! Cornwall isn't a bad place to work at all!

My favorite song du jour...Enjoy!!

Bat For Lashes - Whats a Girl To Do?

I wasn't going to post again today but we've just found out about this new video...Check it out!

Postcard for Cut & Paste...

I have designed a postcard for my Bonbi Forest stockists Cut & Paste!

They commission artists from their 'Partner in Craft' consigners to make the cards for them, and they send them out in their orders...You can build up a collection! I'm pleased with mine, it's really bright and summery and has a speaking bird on it...Cheep cheep!

Champion of Champions!

A while ago I designed a tee for Independent record label I Can Count, and the samples they promised me have arrived! The theme was numbers and I really wanted to make a design with rosettes on it, so I made a Crufts inspired Best In Show tee with little poochers all over...

In my imaginary dog show the Afghan Hound was the clear winner with her long silky dog coat, and the little bouncy Pug was a worthy reserve champion...The Labradoodle was last. Funnily enough, only a couple of weeks after making this design I saw a sign in the local agricultural store for some Labradoodle puppies..Too cute!

You can't buy these tee's at Bonbi Forest as they are exclusive to I Can Count, but you can buy them from their online store by clicking HERE!!

The Cornish Hands Made market that we did over the Bank Holiday weekend was great and I met some lovely people and ate lots of REALLY good homemade cake too, yay! to Hazel and Emily for the vegan ginger cake and lemon drizzle cake! I took some pictures of the stall on the first day just after we set up, the pictures aren't particularly good and I did tweak the stall a little after I took these because the signs looked all wrong but they give you the gist. Unfortunately my lights went out during the second day and no amount of waggling the wires would bring them back to life...Boo!


You can just about make out (if you squint and get very close to the screen!) the new Bonbi Forest Kilt Pin brooches in the second pic, they'll be in the Bonbi Forest shop very soon!

xXx

Food roundup or so it seems!!

I had a lovely birthday, and thank you to everyone who sent me birthday greetings!! I had a lovely day, which seemed to revolve around food and various beverages...

My dad grew these strawberries and gave them to me at the birthday barbeque, they are some of the first of the year...needless to say they didn't last long!



Our Bat For Lashes merch stall at All Tomorrow's Parties was a great success, we ran out of free Bat For Lashes and Bonbi Forest badges within about 1/2 an hour, and sold 63 t-shirts in the few hours that we sat there...We were going to stay a bit longer, but Natasha was hungry! So we all bundled off to the canteen and arrived with 6 minutes to spare, a close shave as I'm the kind of person who likes to EAT!!

I met some lovely people there, and some Bonbi Forest customers too!! I think my musical highlights of the weekend were the much hyped Battles (it's really very well deserved!), Akron Family were really great, I really enjoyed Edan and also Grizzly bear too. And The Books, and the half of Bat For Lashes I managed to see as well...and Mogwai... There was lots to like!! I was disappointed that I missed Cornelius, all my friends said that it was an amazing show with really cool visuals...I think I was eating or something ( I think it's not just my birthday that revolved around food....!). On Sunday night I danced like a nutter and felt sooo tired all day Monday, but it's all well worth it. Yay! for ATP!

On Sunday and Monday of this week, I am taking the Bonbi Forest wares to the Cornish Hands Made market at Jubilee Wharf, Penryn..There will be loads of other hand made goodies for sale, demonstrations and all sorts...I've even been told that there may be dancing too!! So if you happen to be in Cornwall this Bank Holiday weekend for Run to the Sun or whatever do try and come along. It's all indoors in a lovely big sustanable eco building with windmills on the roof, so if it rains like its forecast to do (BOOO!) then it'll be a great day out inside!