An Ode to Amelia's Magazine (Happy Birthday Amelia Gregory!)

I recently did the image below - for this article on the new Science Museum Cockroach Tours - which was my very first illustration for Amelia's Magazine! But I have been loving and following the magazine for quite a while...I remember at some point in 2008 I came across it in the Hayward Gallery bookshop during one of my breaks and instantly fell in love with it and wanted to be part of it. The cover was so LUSH, the pages felt great when you touched them and the varied content was so COOL and LOOKING great! - lots of combination of exciting typography with great photography and lovely doodling, yum! I started to buy it, but unfortunately shortly after that Amelia's Magazine stopped being printed - HOWEVER continues to exist at http://www.ameliasmagazine.com/ and tirelessly encourages/ features gallons of good art/illustration, music and fashion. Having started to do some illustration for the magazine now, I have been amazed at the generosity and open mindedness of Amelia Gregory (the Queen of the magazine and someone who sounds very energetic indeed!) and her writers/contributors in commissioning and featuring the work of young artists. So thank you all! 

Amelia Gregory is fantastically passionate about illustration - among lots of other things! - and has produced 2 gorgeous publications: 'Amelia's Anthology of Illustration' and 'Amelia's Compendium of Fashion Illustration'. Today is the last day you can have 10% off 'Amelia's Compendium of Fashion Illustration', or buy it at a discounted price together with 'Amelia's Anthology of Illustration' by using the code ACOFI LAUNCH here http://tinyurl.com/CompendiumofFashion


First Illustration for Amelia's Magazine! © 2011 Maria Papadimitriou / Slowly the Eggs

Let's help to stop suFURing in fashion!

I am not good with words so this is an illustration to express my frustration at the use of Fur by many designers during London Fashion Week. FUYUME.NET wrote a really nice blog article on the issue, read it here. 

'suf-FUR-ring' copyright 2011 Slowly The Eggs aka Maria Papadimitriou - all rights reserved

Happy Valentine's Day!



All images © 2011 Maria Papadimitriou/Slowly The Eggs



'Floor of the Forest' performance

These are some photographs I took while watching the beautiful installation/performance Floor of the Forest last October in the Queen Elizabeth Hall foyer. Floor of the Forest was choreographed by Trisha Brown in 1970 and has been performed since in gallery and museum spaces. Two performers dress and undress their way through a free-standing structure threaded with clothing. A normally vertical activity is performed horizontally and reshaped by the pull of gravity. It is great that one has the opportunity to watch this again at the Barbican Art Gallery on the 5th and 6th of March, 11am, along with a rummage sale based on her 1971 version. The visitors will have a chance to browse through customised clothes and accessories made by artists in the gallery. Tickets are available here.

All images taken by Maria Papadimitriou

Dinner in the Sky

I like connections between things and when I heard about Dinner in the Sky, which is quite a restaurant experience I imagine, I was reminded of a passage that had stuck in my head since reading it from Jeanette Winterson's lovely book 'Sexing the Cherry'. It goes like this:
'...The Family who lived in the house were dedicated to a strange custom. Not one of them would allow their feet to touch the floor. Open the doors off the hall and you will see, not floors but bottomless pits. The furniture of the house is suspended on racks from the ceiling; the dining table supported by great chains, each link six inches thick. To dine here is a great curiosity, for the visitor must seat in a gilded chair and allow himself to be winched up to join his place setting. He comes last, the householders already seated and making merry, swinging their feet over the abyss where crocodiles live. Everyone who dines has a multiplicity of glasses and cutlery lest some should be dropped accidentally. Whatever food is left over at the end of the meal is scraped into the pit, from whence a fearful crunching can be heard'.



Both images not mine but found on google



Showcasing a dilemma

These seven images below are some illustrations I did some time ago and which I love. I remember doing them all almost in one sitting one after the other. One reason why I wanted to post them is that they have elements which might be uncharacteristic of some of my other work (?), but more highlight the fact that I do not have a style. This at times has caused me confusion - for example when deciding what 'kind' of work I should show on my website - but more and more I come to see and believe that my work (whatever one creates) is not really mine; it belongs to a moment and if one tries to impose a style on the moment, then the moment cannot possibly express itself -can it?

All images © 2006 -- 2010 Maria Papadimitriou



Fabulous Monsters

My favorite present this Xmas was from my artist friend Leah Lovett as she knows I love anything that has to do with monstrosity, metamorphoses, duality, heroes etc: it is a book on monsters with gallons of delicious and inspiring illustrations inside. The title is 'Monsters, a bestiary of the bizzare' by Christopher Dell and below are four of the best, I might post some more in the future as I discover more wonders inside...