Feast your eyes on this month’s Shake6... a handful of inspiring gems to get your creativity rocketing! If you fancy tapping into the power of inspiration, this month we’re sharing a behind the scenes podcast with one of the most incredible alternative bands in the world (Fans? Us?), books to rekindle memories and spark new ideas, there’s a denimtastic lockdown creation and we continue sharing our obsession with art in unusual places. Of course, there’s also one social media highlight plucked from a plethora of posts (try saying that after a few ales).
Podcast
‘It’s a Pixies Podcast’
Available on all podcast platforms
Zipping up our boots and going back to our indie roots for this first piece of inspo. Growing up, collecting Pixies albums was a must for me (Jenna) and mum always gave me a sidewards glance at the covers – well, mainly Trompe le Monde. There are a lot of eyeballs on it to be fair ;). Anyway, the songwriting, the Black Francis vocals and the Kim Deal basslines had me hooked and so when a 12-part podcast of the creation of new album ‘Beneath the Eyrie’ came out, it was always getting a listen. Best-selling author, Tony Fletcher, does a brilliant job as host and narrator and for daily conversations and past stories uncovered, don’t miss it.
Art
Ian Berry
Into the blue we go. It’s definitely a case of the more denim the better for us (double denim? absolutely), and so textile artist Ian Berry has always made us stop and say “wow”.
Ian creates his art entirely from layers and shades of our favourite material. That’s his ‘paint’ and his work is intricate and incredible. When we discovered he’d created his lockdown living room entirely from jeans, it just had to feature here. We particularly love the record player and albums, of course.
This brilliant creation is part of Ian’s exhibition at Museum Rijswijk, running until April 5th. It also includes work from ‘Stay Behind Closed Doors’ - a photo project which saw people from all across the globe send in personal photos of lockdown. 16 were chosen to be printed, with many others lasered in denim to create a backdrop.
His stunner, ‘secret garden’ is also on show.
More Art
Urban Smart Projects
From the Netherlands to Australia we go now and our love of art in unusual places continues, as we’ve been checking out the work of Urban Smart Projects. They help artists and communities to transform traffic signal boxes into public works of art. Here’s a peek at a couple of projects in Hobart, creating vibrancy and energy around the city, as well as communicating key messages through the art.
.
And that’s not all. We absolutely love the transformation of this bushcare toolshed in Albion, Brisbane too, by artist Maggie Lipinska as part of Urban Smart Projects. What a beautiful creative makeover. From grey to gorgeous, we think you’ll agree.
Books
Greetings from Javier Jaen
Don’t you just love the feeling of opening up a brand new book? That woody freshness hanging in the air, the soft feel of untouched pages, the excitement of what’s to come. Well, we’ve been taking the opportunity to revisit the amazing work of Javier Jaen this past month, since his awesome book arrived on our doorstep.
For us, Javier’s visual language is original, playful, smart and of course, inspirational and it’s been brilliant flicking through the iconic artwork gracing the pages of this creative bible.
Basically, it’s a must for anyone looking to remind themselves about shaking things up.
More books
And now for something completely different! This past month we’ve also been revisiting our childhood, in part triggered by a question from our friends at Starlike books, “What was your favourite read as a child”.
Well, the Clever Polly and the Stupid Wolf books by Catherine Storr were firmly at the top for me and I wondered what it would be like re-reading them now. So, I’ve been dipping back into the world of independent young Polly and the wolf who wants to gobble her up – but put it this way, he’s not the brightest button.
In an interview in 2015, Catherine's daughter, Polly (who the tales were originally for and inspired by) said that children love the stories because "they sympathise with the wolf and feel superior to him at the same time". Ain't that the truth! I often felt a little sorry for young wolfie and also remembered just how much I loved the illustrations, so as far as inspo goes this trip down memory lane reignited the awe with which I first read the stories. Have you revisited your favourite childhood books and felt that?
Social media smile
And finally, it’s our big smile. Something spied on social media in the past month that tickled us. Until next time, zoomers...
