Foxen. It’s the plural.

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My life thus far has been a decoupage of mixed emotions and messages surrounding the common fox.

1. My mother hates them as they kill all the chickens and only eat one – necessitating her locking them in their coop every evening. She also used to go shooting foxes on farms as a young vet student.

2. My godmother’s family share the name Reynard and swathe their house in ornate figurines and tasteful imagery of delightfully mischievous, handsome foxes.

3. My favorite Dr. Seuss book was Fox in Socks… Which resulted in my ICQ name and first email address back in the 90’s (Wow. Just wow, that I just said that) being Fox In Sox. At hotmail of course. Also, I thought, what a foxy and appealing name to the pimply braces-clad boys who might court me via the internet in the hopes of sharing a bag of Wizz Fizz at the train station after school the next day; or more desirable even, that we might both be attending the same school-organised dance (I was enrolled at an all girls school, inter-school dances were our livelihood) where I would put on an impressive display of branding, upholding my web presence as the ‘fox in sox’ by donning a pair of knee-high rainbow socks.

4. I was also a big Roald Dahl fan as a kid, and frankly, Fantastic Mr Fox carried on like a complete jerk.

5. My closest family friend has a penchant for arctic fox fur, seizing any opportunity to travel to a climate cold enough and accepting enough for her to adorn herself in her plethora of luxurious wintry garments. Mind you, she’s in the Reynard family so I imagine that had some influence.

6. My most-viewed video on the internet to date involves Banjacks and Pervis (Anna Bennet and I) purchasing fox furs from a vintage store and wearing them while we have a spitting competition in the park. It’s called Vintage Furs.

So where does that leave me? Loving them? Hating them? Killing them? Filming them? Well I’m clearly thinking about them. And in doing so, Klaus and I noticed a flaw in the English language. Check it out:

One Ox, Two Oxen.

So…. I propose

One Fox, Two Foxen.

Come get some, Oxford dictionary. Or should I say, Oxenford dictionary.

Anyway, all this fox business came up as I’ve been asked to paint a fox mural with a friend from work this weekend. We shall name it Foxen and be paid in beer. Thus inspiring the following:

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So yeah. Foxen. It’s the plural. Spread the word.

Blowing up at the Bowlo

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What a coupla babes.

Righto, so sometimes my mate Prudence Vindin and I like to dress up as old blokes and have a yarn. Today’s vid was shot last time I was in Australia over the new year down at my local RSL’s Bowlo. Keith and Kev, two old buggers originally discovered while shooting Wookie Error, had such a warm reception among our mates that we decided to give it another burl.

Pru and I have been nominated for our Heaps Funny Shorts blog (which contains a plethora of videos such as these) in the Pedestrian.tv Blogster awards. Give us a commitment-free like and we’ll be forever in your debt.

I finally got time to edit it between a multitude of social and less-social engagements and my newly acquired gainful employment which involved a hell of a trip to Canada to get my visa (hurricanes, cancelled flights, lost passports, evacuations, the circus that is Niagara Falls…) but I made it. So the content’s coming out a little slower now that I’m ‘getting that cash’ as an architectural designer, but on the horizon lurks yet another mural, more illustration, and a ton of videos.

Double Double Soil and Rubble

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Who seriously does an architecture competition just out of the goodness of their heart without a boss breathing down their neck? Well, despite having 3 landscape designers drop out of our team of 5, Erik Kramer managed to keep me on deck to submit our crack at the San Francisco 280 Freeway comp. Most of our conceptual work was achieved over a bottle of vino and in the company of our replacement 3: my mother (as she visited SF – she offered practical nuggets), Dr Klaus (came for the dinner, stayed for the good times – he offered spurts of inspirational genius), and Casey (came for the dinner, and I think he left after that….?). Then, picture my sorry mug sitting in a Chicago hotel room, alone, at 3am the night before it was due…

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Looks like toffee apple land. Anyway, the competition called for:

… concepts … that are made possible through the replacement of the elevated Highway 280 north of 16th Street with a surface boulevard.

So our design is all about re-use of materials and structure, engaging with vistas,  and re-energising the community… by turning a freeway into a park and other assorted delicious elements. But I’m not so much the architectural lingo frother, so I’m linking you out here if you want to read more.

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Basically, my passion lay in giving it a jazzy name… And as I ABSOLUTELY LOVED the recent Star Trek: Into Darkness flick (admittedly unexpected – Klaus had to bribe me to go see it), I had one of the most satisfying moments of self-entertainment when I came up with this one: Tar Trek: Into Parkness.

Just take a moment to mull that one over.

Yep. Pretty good huh. Especially when put next to my other suggestions (“double double soil and rubble”, “grassy promenade deluxe suite”, “crouching rubble, hidden elevator”, “I can’t get no fenestration”, “banana hammock”, “rocky slice of cheesecake”, “duck crossing”), you’d think I had a winner. However with a crude and blatant disregard of my – I’m going to say it – literary genius, it was submitted under “Bay City Stacks”. How vanilla. Albeit appropriate.

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Thievery, family and paint.

So I vanished from the interwebs for a couple of weeks – and for good reason, well three good reasons. The foremost being: I had no computer. Why? Well this mural above is largely at fault. So am I, but I would certainly prefer to put the blame on something inanimate who will wear it with far more grace than me. Yes – I was painting this mural with Klaus at [freespace] with my car parked out the front (“who parks a car in SOMA?!” – says everyone after the fact.) and my window got smashed, my trunk opened and my laptop and camera gear (among many other things) were flogged.

This is just a symptom of me being a huge noob in San Francisco. Yep, it’s a learning curve. Turns out everyone I mention my tale of woe to has had something stolen from them within the last year in this city. Most of them not lucky enough to have travel insurance and to end up with a faster-than-Usain-Bolt, higher-resolution-than-real-life, brand new macbook pro. Like moi. What a smug little bastard. There it is again. Lemons to lemonade. I do still find myself sans a decent camera, but that will come.

Anyway – the half-finished mural. It’s a collab with Dr Klaus again (although my mum who was in town last week (WHICH WAS EXCELLENT) did have a hand in mixing some colours for us) and there’ll be some ink on top. Perhaps the dripping whitewash will give you a clue…

… Okay the suspense is killing me. I’m thinking of drawing a cow on it.

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We also did these posters that will be cut in half, branded and gifted as thank you’s for the good people who donated to the second month of [freespace]. We taped up some poster paper and when choosing colours, I suggested “let’s just do the whole thing gold”. No objections from Klaus.

In retrospect, the Dr Klaus/thedarclaud mural style may have been ominous – looking like smashed glass and all, one might say we predicted the theft from my car, Carlos. Which would make us clairvoyant. So my next post may be just purely tea leaf-based art.

Ridiplodocus

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Happy 4th of July, pals! hope it’s been rediplodocus. Ridiculous diplodocus. Ridiplodocus.

Mural Mural on the Wall

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Aaaaaaaand it’s done. Chicken mural – check… en mural.

The Pensive Poultry Collection’s Zen Hen? Glorified. Dr Klaus and thedarclaud? Creatively immortalised until they rent the building out to someone else and repaint the whole place white. Good thing I took some photos.

Massive thanks to [freespace] for giving us a wall to get clucky all over. Last night was the exhibition and fundraising party – the most bohemian of hoots. Full of LED lights, bubble machines, face paints – wow. It’s sounding more like a rave. It really was very bohemian. There was an organic veggie patch and a ‘parkcycle‘.

By the looks of the freespace july indiegogo campaign today, we’re going to have another month of it…. which translates to another mural! STRAP IN, BARNYARD FANS. Probably looking at some bovine related content next time around, so all you beef enthusiasts – brace yourselves.

Pre-party and jazzed:

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Good heavens! My hand has disappeared.

From the vault: That time my mother thought I was a gangster

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Writing my last post I got a real feeling of ‘I’ve done this before…?‘. Linking out examples of things to demonstrate a point… Having awesome stuff happen in the wake of awful stuff. Then I realised where it was coming from.

A few years back, after a few life-changing and frankly rubbish personal events occurred, I left my friends and family in Sydney and took a scholarship to go to film school in LA. About a month into it, I put my first ever video on YouTube. It was called Sebring feat. Danny Trejo.

My creative partner, Anna Bennett and I had managed to woo Danny ‘Machete’ Trejo (while he was visiting his pals Mister Cartoon and Estevan Oriol to wish them a merry Christmas) into being in our ‘music video’ that we were shooting on my grandma’s mini DV – standard def.

His bodyguard, Mario, was our cameraman. We shot under the 6th bridge in downtown Los Angeles. Danny choreographed some synchronised dance moves to a recording of us doing karaoke to our own version of ‘Pony’ by Ginuwine. We jumped into a Cypress Hill/Antrhax photo shoot, photographed by Tyler Clinton, to whom Danny proclaimed “I’m rolling with these chicas ‘cos they’ve got f**king balls”. Then he bought us dinner at 2am from The Pantry. Most unexpected and excellent sequence of events? Absolutely.

Anyway, jazzed on this video as we were for its complete absurdity, we went to In Fidelity Recording Studios and recorded the music properly, edited it and threw it up on YouTube and our Facebook walls for all to see.

Mum saw it. Thought it was legit. A little too legit. I received a very concerned phone call.

To which I responded via email, as spoken words were not enough to demonstrate my point:

Hi mooooomie!

ok, hear me out. i have not become a gangster rapper since moving to LA. here’s the thing about that video that i think you didn’t pick up… (simply because these types of music videos are something very closely associated with my generation)… 

it is a parody video clip. a comedy. a social comment. we are taking the mickey out of all the the rubbish video clips that are out there (as you know, there are many). the song in our clip is an existing (very famous) 90’s RnB song with re-written lyrics to take the mickey out of the ‘hot cars, thugs and fast women’ lifestyle of the R’n’B/Rap scene.

an example of such a music video that we are making a joke of is this one: Ja Rule – Between Me and You and this one: 50 Cent – Candy Shop

… can you understand why we chose this genre to make fun of? it is immediately apparent to people of our ‘music video generation’ that what we’ve done is a parody… we have drawn on tattoos, we have fake thick gold jewellery, we’re two WHITE girls, i have a gold grill in my mouth, we’re wearing tourist Rap shirts, the video is acting as though the Sebring is a hot car when the lyrics clearly state that its a heap of junk… all dead giveaways.

this isn’t the first time someone’s done this… we’re really not breaking any new ground here. there is a very long running TV show called Saturday Night Live (SNL) that have been doing parodies like ours for years.. and many other people, e.g. jim carey. There is a comedian named weird al yankovic who did this parody of ‘Ridin’ Dirty’: the original video vs the parody video

… okay so are we on the same page now? we’re making a social comment. for example with the bit in our video  where we sing that we’re living the ‘american dream’ while the images are depicting the poverty, homeless ex-veterans in wheelchairs, skid row, trolley-pushing bag people. (skip forward in our video to 2:42).

so i hope that’s cleared that up for you so you don’t have to be quite so disappointed. please take the time to watch all of the videos that i have listed above so that you have a good understanding of what i’m talking about here.

Give my love to Baba and the animals and a very special kissy to Boblabous. I love you!

xxxxxxxxxxclaud

Yep. Had to do it.

To be honest, I love that song Candy Shop. Always have. Probably why it was one of the first songs that came to mind to reference. But I know hoochie dancing when I see it. And Pony by Ginuwine? If we ever have the good fortune of spending a night of karaoke together, you will know that this is my number one jam. In retrospect, I feel like I should have given The Lonely Island a bit more of a mention in the references. Time for the offending footage?

The video that ramped up my street cred in my family home:

Click here for the second video we released. Venice Cheap-Skates. Post-Sebring, different tattoos, set in Venice. I didn’t show mum this one. And there’s a language warning.

When I got back to Australia a couple of months later, mum still hadn’t clicked my links for reference. Oh how my blood did boil. But by then she had physical proof that I didn’t have the tattoos or any kind of drug addiction… So we were cool.

Expanding the Canvas – Work in Progress

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Turning lemons into lemonade. Isn’t that just something. I think that I can attribute a good proportion of the successes in my life to exactly this.

The proverbial ‘closing a door and opening a window’.

And this time, it lead me to this mural I’m working on with Klaus.

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It was a miserable drizzling day yesterday in San Francisco but we were still endeavouring to get to some free dance classes in Golden Gate Park. After a cascade of events that mounted against the dance class plan, we found ourselves heading to a ‘postcard festival’ in SOMA as advertised on fun & cheap. Turns out there is only one post card in the whole place, but it’s crammed full of artists and they’ve got a wall that they’re wanting us to work on for the [FreeSpace] exhibition on June 26th. HELLO LEMONADE.

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So we rode our bikes through the rain today with a backpack full of paint (leftover from prop building for Winning Formula), masking tape and tupperware and laid siege on this wall with only a vague plan in place. And who dropped past while we were working? This suited-and-tied chap with some deep Patrick Bateman vibes. How’s Christian Bale playing Bateman and Batman? Only difference is the ‘e’. Well there are lots of character differences but that’s not where I was going with it. Anyway, the guy who came to visit was the Lieutenant Governor of California and former Mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom (here’s an image comparison just to make this all worthwhile: Newsom vs. Bateman). Nice guy though.

We’re halfway done on this mural and I’m heading back tomorrow for round two. Ding ding.

Pensive Poultry 2 – Ugly Goose

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Collaboration: Watercolour by Dr. Klaus, Ink by thedarclaud