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Caroline Warman's new translation of Isabelle de Charrière's The Nobleman and other romances was published yesterday in the US (and will be out in September in the UK). I did the cover design...
Penguin says, "The Nobleman and Other Romances will delight fans of Jane Austen and Enlightenment-era French literature."
Very sadly my last Five Minute Academy for Metro: it's been fun...
As freelance work becomes more common and technology means your boss can get at you wherever you are, your leisure time is now your work time. You may as well get a latte with that.
Fig 1: get there early to get a table. NB avoid the breakfast rush.
Fig 2: Learn art of cafe-table Feng Shui. Distribute your belongings in a way that maximises your wellbeing and discourages sharers.
Fig 3: If the cafe gets full, shut out potential table sharers with one of these strategies.
Fig 4: If you see a friend, you are allowed to make room. If you have your laptop open, chatting counts as 'work'.
Fig 5: Learn to leave a 5% residue in the bottom of your cup. That way your table won't be cleared and you won't have to order another coffee.
Fig 6: Work out your £ per hour ratio. Congratulations. You have paid £1.70 for an espresso. You have gained free heat, light, electricity and wifi for three hours. You are a cafe pro. Award yourself a donut.
“Does anyone have dinner parties nowadays?” That’s what you used to say before the recession when you could afford to eat out. Now that double-dip translates into home-made hummus and tzatziki, how best to spice it up?
Fig 1: Who to invite? Anyone. Your recession-hit guests will be delighted to attend.
Fig 2: Seating: you could agonize over who gets on for hours. Don't bother. If your dinner isn't fun, at least it will be memorable.
Fig 3: The point of a dinner party is to make the maximum impression with the smallest effort and expense. Start with posh olives and a nice drink: move on to...
Fig 4: Stew and plonk. Starters and dessert must be impressive. But no one notices the main course and...
Fig 5: nobody makes dessert. Buy something from a supermarket. But don’t forget to ‘destroy’ it a bit for that ‘home made’ effect.
Fig 6: Getting rid of your guests. Remember Tuesday's a school night. If you can't think how to break up the party, try this strategy.
If drawing this series has taught me one thing, its that, with regular routes to success less available, the experiences of the women who've ended up on this list have been far from orthadox, as have been the methods they've sometimes used to achieve their goals.
So I guess the lesson I've taken away is, behave badly: alter your age (MIA, Kahlo); fake the awards the state won't give you (Seacole); commit acts of violence (Pankhurst)...
And if you need their (abridged) life stories to remind you, I have a set of my postcards to send to someone who nomintes her (or his) inspiring woman in the comments box below. I'll pick a winner after midnight tonight.
It seems a little disjointed that, although all the other women I illustrated have links with the UK*, the artist I was asked to draw has none.
Before the 20th century female artists were (even) more rarely successful but the nature of 20th Century art has been so much about transgression that it may have been difficult to choose a woman whose work is, at least at first glance, easy to look at (of course I'm aware that, if you look twice, Kahlo's art is as full of complication and disturbance as any other artist's).
My nomination would have been Louise Borgeouis with her 'Filette' tucked under her arm. No UK links there either - except her current retrospective at the Freud Museum.
Dora Carrington, Bridget Riley, Barbara Hepworth, Ceri Richards, to Lucas, Emin, Dean etc. British or not - who would you choose?
*the project is UK-based
Tonight I'll be talking in the Whipple Museum, Cambridge, for the Cambridge Science Festival, about Georges Perec and how to conquer the World using only a piece of paper (and a few Oulipian constraints).
Details are here. It's free but you have to reserve a ticket by emailing hps-whipple-museum@lists.cam.ac.uk.
Here's one I made earlier (for The White Review, issue 3).
I liked doing this one, a little influenced by Bastien Vives' beautiful Taste of Chlorine.
And here's WHOLE WALL of my postcards at the South Bank this weekend. I don't often get to see my work like this: I'm so proud to have been part of this project!
Don't forget to leave a comment about a woman who has inspired you below to win a set of my postcards - winner chosen at the end of Wednesday 14th March.
Mrs Bertimus who, when not wearing it, would use the scarf to 'fend off killer seagulls' in Saint Ives.
I'm not quite sure how she'd do it but I'd like to see it done.
Mrs B, Ali from Age of Reason will be in touch with an e-voucher for the scarf: photo please...
And, to show you how it's done, here's poet Kelley Swain modelling the scarf (she entered the competition but got too impatient and bought one last week).
If you missed out and would like one too, Age of Reason are offering a 20% Spring discount right now with the code NEWSPRING12.
It's also available at The Tate online.
And don't forget that I still have an Inspiring Women postcard giveaway running 'til Thursday. There'll be more Inspiring Women tomorrow.
My second in a series of five postcards (first one here).
Google some photos of the WSPU: they were a stylish bunch, never sacrificing fashion for comfort or the ability to get away quickly from the authorities. I've tried to stick to their colours here: green, white and purple (I had to commute the purple to a kind of burgandy here which worked better for late Victorian bricks...)
Please let me know your most inspiring woman below and I'll send one of you a set of the five postcards I designed for the Southbank Women of the World festival.
To celebrate International Women's Day I drew five postcards for Fuel Theatre Company who are currently running events at the Southbank Women of the World Festival.
If you'd like to contribute your own inspiring woman to their site, click here (see if you can find mine).
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I didn't choose the women on the postcards but Mary Seacole is one I'd like to know more about.
Contrary to her rather dull schoolbook image, seems she was a consummate high Victorian: a self-publicist, in and out of the debtor's court, whose Crimean 'hotel' (and, some thought, brothel) was run for profit as well as charity; an outrageous character who flaunted her self-awarded medals when she discovered the British state had overlooked her, due to her sex and race. I'm disappointed she never turned up in a Flashman novel.
I know it's confusing to run two giveaways at the same time but I have a set of all five postcards (which I will be posting on this site over the next few days) to give to someone who adds a comment, on any of my postcard posts, about her (or his) most inspiring woman.
Think carefully about the word 'inspiring'. It doesn't mean someone you admire because she has done 'good' or 'achieved'. An important part of feminism, for me, is throwing out the concept that women must behave correctly in order to be admired. Pick a woman who has had a direct effect on your life or on the way you see or do things - and go for it!
