WhooooaaaaaaAAAAH!

I am totally excited about this. About six months ago when I was on a research trip in New York, I blogged about the illustrator Sophie Blackall. What I didn’t say was that when I saw her drawings in real life, I fell completely in love with them and left new york with quite a sizeable collection.  I absolutely love what she does. Her line is so sophisticated and feminine. Elegant and yet still very whimsical. Check out some of the images below, a couple of which are actually on the walls of my home!

Sophie is from Australia and lives in Brooklyn. For a time back in Oz she even worked in a robot factory. She then won a green card in a national lottery back home. She now illustrates children’s books as well as draw for newspapers and magazines.

I have now moved from my studio in London to start working with other musicians in LA. I have thinking up a plan for an art project to do while in the studio and thought of this:

I remembered when I was younger, I was obsessed with playing a drawing game, where you would start a drawing, fold it over so no one could see what you drew, then hand it to someone else who would continue it and they hand it back and so one and so forth until you could unfold the paper and reveal the often strange but amazing result. It dawned on me that this would be a perfect game to play whilst recording. However this time do it with an amazing illustrator and without folding the paper.

SO, over the next few weeks Sophie and I will be collaborating on a drawing without communicating apart from on the piece of drawing paper which will be sent back and forth, from LA to NYC.  The idea is for me start something, send it to her, she adds to it, sends it back and we continue back and forth until we think its done. We will then be making a limited edition object with the final drawing, which we will run a competition on the blog for people to win. Brrrr that was complicated to explain!

I have no idea what it will look like or what the end object we chose to make will be! Thats what’s fun about this process.

We will be starting this week. In the meantime check out Sophie’s website.

www.sophieblackall.com

With love, from sunny LA,

M!xxx

We’ve had an idea. A few people have been asking how they can post a direct question to me. So we’ve come up with this…

If you’ve got something you would really like to ask me, send us your question at mikaquestions@googlemail.com

Once a month, a number of questions that  will be chosen and answered here on the blog. So send us what you’d like know and I’ll post up the first of these blogs in the next few days.

M!!xx

It doesn’t feel like a Wednesday night. As I sit here in the studio in London, I am trying to figure out where the past few days have gone. The biggest problem is the lack of daylight.  Whether its 10 am or 2 am my windowless studio stays the same. I am sure you can imagine how weird that can make you feel! However this was not helped by the way I spent my weekend. I spent my whole Saturday at the Barbican Theatre, watching a nine hour play by Robert Lepage called Lypsinch. Yup you read correctly 9 hours! Thing is, it was brilliant. It went by so quickly. Kind of felt like I could sit back for a day and watch other people’s lives unfold themselves over two generations. I left the theatre with that satisfied smirk you get on your face when you manage to read a long book in one sitting!

Robert Lepage is a Canadian director/writer/actor from Montreal. His shows may seem abstract and a bit unapproachable at first, but that’s not the case. They are often long and in more than one language. However this is still some of the most unpretentious theatre you could go to. If you ever get a chance to see something he’s done, give it a go!

Lepage recently collaborated with Cirque Du Solei on Ka (above) as well as doing a 3 million euro installation on an enormous silo in Montreal to celebrate Quebec’s 400th anniversary. I was so tempted to take a trip out to see it as all the footage I’ve found on youtube is terrible. But I thought it wiser to get on with my work and not waste money on such a decadent “research trip”! Either way for years now, the man has become a total hero of mine… yes another one!

When in writing mode, I find myself looking constantly for things to inspire me and fill with head with new ideas and you never really know where that will come from. For example, writing Big Girls after watching a late night TV show. All I ever look for is a phrase or sentence that I can build something around.

Speaking of things I liked, I saw Somers Town last week and I loved it. Thomas Turgoose (the actor from This is England) plays a kid who runs away from his home in Nottingham to escape his family. He bumps into and makes friends with a Polish boy and this close friendship blossoms. It focuses on how these boys emotionally survive in London in the absence of their parents. Thomas Turgoose must be one of the coolest actors in England. 

I’ve been plotting a really sweet collaboration with the illustrator Sophie Blackall, which I will explain later on in the week. Going to see Madonna tonight. Can’t wait.

M xxxx