And now back to the everyday nitty gritty

I am missing them already!

With friends up the hills in the storm and by the sea in North Berwick

Our trip to North Berwick was a complete failure in finding vegetarian chips (apparently they are all fried in animal fat in the fish and chips shops, so no luck for Adam - a vegetarian of two decades) but a massive success in the number of creative photography on the golfcourses and beaches.

Another trip we did was during a beautiful afternoon up on the Arthur's Seat but as we reached the top (discussing if Enjoy the Silence Corbijn's video could have been shot there - well no, as it turned out) a huge storm cloud covered the skies and we all ended up drenched in a sudden outburst of torrential rain. Luckily the sun was up again within minutes and we mostly dried up by the time we got back down to the Hollyrood Park.

Soaked Adam ^ carrying my bag in which we have packed his D5 to save it from the downpour - I prefered not to be responsible for it's contents if I would slip on the wet slope...

Friends visiting - more details

One of my most beloved friends - Adam and his talented girlfriend Dea left on Sunday morning (actually it was still deep into the night when we all had to wake up, gather the belongings and head for the airport bus accompanied by crowds of barefoot Edinburgh Saturday-night-drunk-partygoers heading opposite direction) and I am missing them already, especially that I have no idea when I will be able to get down to meet them again in Berlin where they live their busy lives. All my spare funds will be slurped up by another year in the College and I will be busy with the graduation project which does not leave lots of spare cash or time for travelling.
They were also the most patient and helpful models in my photographic ideas last week.

Therefore the more I appreciate their visit - I had a chance to be creative (ekhem ekhem) and we had a fantastic time.

One of my other favourite friends described once an experience like that as communicating on the same wavelenght, the same frequency and this is exactly the way it is when I get a chance to spend some time in Adam's company.

We have met in hilarious circumstances many years ago. Thanks to his guidance I had a fantastic time when living for a while in Paris (where he laboured for IHT for several years). Thanks to Adam I will never forget where metro Abesses is (we have once spent the whole afternoon searching for this particular location from a certain very famous French film which just came out in French cinemas at the time of my stay) or his guidance around labirynth of Le Marais when I accidentaly managed to scout a new l'appart for him .

He is living in Berlin now, in a spacious flat, thank God ( and just a couple of streets from my other best Berlin friend Monica, which is very handy for when I visit - not that I would visit that often, unfortunately). He has also teamed up with a wise, charming and very patient girl (qualities not so often encountered amongst modern women) who understands a lot about photography even though she is, on the contrary, an extremely tallented violinist. They form such a vivid couple so all I can do is hope that it is going to stay that way for both of them! (Well it is none of my business but one likes to see happines of one's best friends!)

My favourite literary penguin has a prototype called Hedwig

Yesterday Simon and I had a chance to meet another of our favourite writers, a Russian who became one of the most well known Ukrainian writers - Andrey Kurkov. I have read his story about penguin Mischa and then joyfully distributed it amongst our friends here who immediately became hooked. They must have thought that the story of a depressed penguin is a pure invention by its author.

Yesterday I managed to grab the microphone during the meeting with the charming author and ask the question myself: was one of my favourite animal characters of Russian language literature (second one being Behemot) a real one or Mr Kurkov made it all up?

Well, he sort of made the penguin bit up (though it sounded awfully real to me for a story set up in Ukraine in the beginning of the 90s. You see, I still remember the 90s in Poland, a time which they never had that intensively here) but then when the book became popular in Germany too, Bild asked him if he would adopt a blind girl -penguin called Hedwig from a Hamburg Zoo. All her mates were wiped out because of some virus which struck the Zoo penguins and she was the only one who suvived the epidemic, though left complitely blind. To cheer her up, she was put into the same enclosure as pelicans and in addition adopted by one of the most charming Ukrainian writers.

And Mr Kurkov is indeed charming. He told the audience his incredible life story (Scottish audience did not seem to believe him, again. To me, again, it all sounded extremely plausible.), answered some questions (pity that some people asking the questions did not do their research properly before grabbing the microphone) with his characteristic nice giggle - in other words a guy who wears his heart on his sleeve, just like his characters. There was no acting, no pretending to be smarter than others, no doing what Simon and I call 'pulling a NY art scene'. WYSIWYG.

It also turned out that he wrote a review of the cliche-ridden Marina Lewycka book about Ukrainians in UK (which became a best seller here - something that I would put down to a great marketing, a great title and a great bookcover design). I have read the book a couple of years ago and when I finished it I was just plain angry - this woman fed her readers on pure stereotypes and now it turned out that she was technically not even a Ukrainian! And everybody in UK were praising the book which flew off the shelves. I was affraid that maybe there was something wrong with me since I did not enjoy the story AT ALL. Seldom anything I read makes me annoyed but this book did exactly that. Now, after reading his review, I feel much better...

I also feel much better since Simon and I got a very nice dedication to one of our well fingered copies of Kurkov's novel:'To Sylwia and Simon with the very best wishes from Ukraine. A. Kurkov'

Andrew Bird in Edinburgh

There are many things that I admire about my friends (and I have known Adam for 10 years now!) but what I appreciate the most, is when they are able to show me something completely new, interesting, something that I have never known that it existed and what I immediately like.

This was the case of Andrew Bird's music. Thanks to Adam and Dea, we ventured just down the road to listen to a beautiful concert with access all areas pass. My spectrum of favourite kinds of music is wide (from Stravinsky to Faith No More) but somehow I managed to stop following what new was happening in music many years ago. So it was very refreshing to learn and like the art of one of Adam's friends.

I have especially liked the process of creating the music with loops, with a masterfull use of instrument (violin and beautifully designed electric guitar, not to mention a two-headed gramophone) - instruments that Andrew ruled not the other way arround like in case of me and the piano - and birdlike indeed, whistling. There is also in addition a deep, smooth voice (he must be invincible on the phone, especially with a female recipient on the other side of the wire) and a delicate, slightly shy posture and a very kind face.

From a short conversation we had in the musician's changing room when he was playing Dea's 200 years old violin, I learned that Andrew Bird is coming to play in Krakow in November. Definitely check him out! Unfortunatelly, I will be in Krakow in December.

Friends visiting!

I am as usual late with the home news, but to let you know - Dea and Adam arrived for their holiday week in Scotland. It was great to see them again as last time we have seen each other was over 2 years ago in Berlin. I went to meet them at the airport and to my surprise also managed to accidentaly meet a friend who flew in from Belgium! Two birds with one stone or rather another proof that the world is small indeed and as we say in Polish - two mountains will never meet but two people will somehow manage sooner or later.

Here is a small sneak-peak of what was happening after their arrival!

Shelves

I like to have things in a perfect order - I have an impression that it makes ideas in my head equally well arranged. Everythings has its place, each thing has its slot.

A visit from friends is the best motivation to rearrange our home environmant into someting more agreable since we have never made it to MacFurniture store, as Adam nicely put it, aka Ikea (remeber that scene in Fight Club?).

Actually I sat for a while and admired these shelves like they were some work of art.

Tracy Chevalier in Edinburgh

It was a warm, humid mid day when we ventured down the Lothian Road for a meeting with Tracy Chevalier during the Edinburgh Book Festival which traditionally takes place at Charlotte Square. Surprisingly we got there 15 minutes before the start of the meeting but the queue was already well formed around the central lawn of the Festival's Square and as we have roughly counted they managed to squeeze about 700-800 people into the tent.

I must say that I really like Tracy Chevalier's writing - actually I have realised today that if I ever were to become a writer (which of course I will not as I deal more with visual than verbal stuff) I would specialise in the area she does - historical fiction. I liked a short discussion that occured after a question posed by Antony Beevor (author of 'Stalingrad') when Tracy Chevalier joyfully stated that she does not envy him in his writing to be limited by pure facts. I like the elegant way in which she uses language in her novels, with main characters talking directly to the reader; I like all the meticulously researched facts (she called the research her procrastination). Actually all her books I have read seemed to be written by a tiny brunette, while actually a solid blonde came up on the stage and merrily talked about her work with a strong American accent.

After a meeting I decided to queue to get my brand new hardback of her latest novel signed while Simon went to get some coffee (it was an early afternoon by then and we desperately needed a caffeine injection). Do you also get this frantic urge to say something extremely brilliant, something very significant, something that would separate you form the rest of the queue of waiting fans to say to your favourite writer? In the end I decided to spare Mrs Chevalier of my carefully proepared tirade and just asked her to dedicate the book to Simon. She looked very tired and when I had a look at her I mostly wanted to be remembered as a girl who did not create too much fuss.

Merry weekend

My brain is fried after solid 12 hours of work over a new illustration commission (and that after all Saturday of another 12 hours of work over some other commission) so I am just puting up some nice images from a lovely weekend (from a week ago) we had in Haddington - there were friends visiting, Simon was playing beautiful clarinet and flute duets with his sister, children were little angels, conversations were vivid and funny, food delicious as usual. Enjoy! We certainly did.

Tomorrow a day of relaxation and intellectual stimuli - we have managed to book tickets for a meeting with Tracy Chevalier during Edinburgh Book Festival . A well deserved entertainment.

Disapointment

Stills put their new exhibition up couple of weeks ago. Not a very good one, unfortunately - again.

The text explaining the whole concept of the arteest idea is muddy and not very well written imho ('history has the ability to not only to reflect experience, but also to construct and create it through speculation' Hey, what eaxtly does it mean? Is it still history if it speculates? If it actually means anything or the curator was just to write a certain amount of words and had to fill in the gaps with something that sounds complicated enough to actually not to mean anything?), the whole idea of showing the opium trading lacks concept, pictures are made in this typical way where documentary photography is just badly exectuted so that it can pose as modern art instead. All in all a disappointing afternoon and what is worse we will be stuck with this exhibition for months on end as the funding is short and they keep therse shows for 3 to 4 months instead (and it is at least a third bad one in a row already!). Why the only proper photogallery in Edinburgh actually never shows any GOOD photography (there are so many good documentary photographers around who are not actually posing as artists who use photography as their medium?) while there is so many good projects around which actually never can get shown? People who, if they go to Calcutta to photograph an example of the opium trade, are going to come up with something more viasually and conceptually sophisticated than a b&w picture of a derelict house shot form two different points of view and shown without any explanation or introduction whatsoever. Unfortunately I know how this business works and it the artist was not living in NY but in for example Esbjerg, nobody would bat an eyelid to show his works in a nice, prestigeous gallery. So annoying and disappointing!

Or is it just a saying shown in practice that modern art = I could do that + yeah, but you did not.

Spain in Edinburgh

Two weeks ago (two weeks!) we went to visit an exhibition of Spanish and Spain inspired art in Scottish National Gallery. As usual there was a lot of uninteresting fillers among real gems (a beautiful portrait by Velasquez with these magnificent yet simple brush strokes and my favourite painting of El Greco that I used to stare at for hours when I was a child: Fabula, Around 1600, a Boy Lights a Candle, as a Monkey and a Bearded Figure Watch . I could not take my eyes away and was coming back again and again to annoyance of the rest of the family). There was as usual the whole bunch of Scottish artist inspired by Spanish sunshine while on vacations in the Med. The most spectacular discovery of the day was Arthur Melville and his big watercolours. I really liked his technique and colour choices and since I use watercolours more and more often in my own work I was studying him very carefully.

I am attaching some images of Melville's watercolours I have found on the web (I cannot remeber where, sorry!) - one with corrida was featured in the exhibition.

I have to find somewhere at my various stocks that fascinating book by Ortega y Gasset about Velasquez and Goya that I have read so many years ago!

Zeppelin above Grass Market

Window shopping part 2

A jewellery shop in George Street had these charming figurines in their windows:

I wanted to take couple of more photos as they had several of these characters on display but I was too affraid that somebody from the shop would suspect me of taking a picture of their alarm system!

Window shopping

I had to go into the dangerous area of Harvey Nichols yesterday (I cannot go there too often as my wallet and conscience suffer later on) and they had their spectacular shopping windows decorations up!

Down by the water - in Leith

I am having a strong sense of deja vu here - Krakow and Kazimierz, Edinburgh and Leith.

Leith has always been Edinburgh's port and until 1920 was a separate town. Stevenson was well acquainted with the area of Pilrig Street (I often go through there to pick up developped films from one of our favourite labs), often going to Leith Walk to sonsort with prostitutes. Irvine Welsh situates his characters in the area (wile referring to Edinburgh's Old and New Town as 'shortbread disneyland' and 'run by snobs for snobs').

At the moment Leith is quickly becoming a very fashionable part of Edinburgh - old workshops are converted into posh flats, the top advertising agencies have their headquaters there, old port brothels are being converted into boutique hotels. Although if you get a 16 bus down Leith Walk there are still really strange people getting on it and through the window one can see an array of dirty shopping windows (blame the tramworks), Polish delis and defence lawyers (mind you - they are always defence lawyers which have their offices in Leith).

We have been having a photoshoot near the old docks and after this busy working time we went to a nice fish restaurant just by the waterside. It was a pleasant but exhausting afternoon and we were happy to get up to our part of town.