Thursday, March 11, 2004

The cultural devolution of me

There's a giant Festival of the Arts on at the moment. In my IT days, when I could afford to buy tickets to the shows, I would have booked seats for several. But now I'm constrained by a combination of little time (due to study and late work nights), little money (due to the fact that I'm in the library industry), and a partner who gets a whole lot more excited by movies based on graphic novels and computer games.

However, I did get to see the wonderful Osadia at work - briefly - today. They are a pair of kimono-attired creative hairdressers/makeup artists, and their act consists of giving volunteers highly colourful, abnormal, smile-inducing hairdos. With matching makeup. I was only there for 20 minutes, since it was sleep-inducingly warm in that particular venue. It's probably the only Festival event I'll get to this time around.

There's an exhibition of Shane Cotton's paintings opening tonight. I'm such a fan of his work from a few years ago that - when I was doing my brief stint as an art student, I unwittingly made several paintings using exactly the same colours (dark, red ochre, a glowing sepia yellow and a little bit of red-black). I didn't realise the influence until my tutor pointed it out to me. So I'll be going to the opening, and I've already put up a little display his work and life (he's a local). Maybe I'll even get to talk to him and tell him I love his work ;-)

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