Plein Air

CRAFT FIND OF THE WEEK


Marie Antoinette very much enjoyed her own version of the outdoors at the idyllic farm village 'Petit hameau' originally built by Louis XV for Madame du Pompadour in the on the grounds of a park bordering on the Palace at Versailles. Apparently model farms were all the rage with the French aristocracy of the time and it was where Marie did much lying about in the long grass wistfully quoting philosophy and played milkmaid with her ladies in waiting in muslin dresses. This getaway provided the perfect antidote to the suffocating etiquette of the French court, and it was here she held tea parties complete with fresh cows milk and wild strawberries and lounged about on silk damask serenaded by attractive and attentive bards playing guitars...
Sounds perfect, could this be the prototypical exercise in downsizing or the tree change we now hear so much about ?

With this vision of a somewhat debauched milkmaid in our heads, it seemed nigh on impossible to go past this delightful op shop find from last year as the craft find of the week.

the queen is dead long live the queen

SHOW OF THE WEEK

It has taken quite a while for us to get there, but on the weekend we finally managed to get to what has been our most hotly anticipated release of 2006/07 so far... Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette.

You are all,no doubt, au fait with Coppola's contemporarising of the story via analogous comparisons made between the new hollywood brat pack (Paris, Lindsey, Britney etc) and the 18th Century French court. And, that Marie Antoinette represents the final chapter in a trilogy of films that includes The Virgin Suicides and Lost in Translation. You may also know that all the shoes (sans the controversial lilac chucks) were made by Manolo Blahnik.

What you may not know is that the film is funny, moving, subtley acted, intelligently scripted with restraint and maturity, is fantastically shot and includes a kickass soundtrack... any film that uses Adam and the Ants Kings of the Wild Frontier as the backing tape to a plein air make out session between the pompadored regent and her swedish lover gets our vote!

The costuming by veterean costume designer Milena Cononero (who designed Stanley Kubrik's Barry Lyndon another HML fave and the best work Ryan O'Neil ever did) exceeded even our expectations. But dont think (as perhaps we did) that the frocks, in all their splendour overshadow the unfolding story. Coppola knows that the dress can reflect the mood, when Marie asks "Do you prefer it with ruffles, or without?" we knew that she was seeking approval beyond the taffeta cloud she found herself in. When Marie demands something "simple" to wear in the garden we held our breath as she was at last, briefly, allowed to be herself.

Hands down the very best costuming in cinema. Marie Antoinette makes comparable costumy films - The Age of Innocence, Dangerous Liasons, Moulin Rouge - look crass by comparison. This is costume as language, landscape and lament for a dying era and a doomed girl.

Shot in the Palace at Versailles, production Designer KK Barrett (who also worked on Lost in Translation) used the claustrophobic rush of Rococo excess brilliantly, and Coppola's approach of filling the screen with these period details led to an optical overload that literally takes your breath away like a corset being pulled tight.

We did expect to absolutely love this film, but we didn't expect to be surprised by it. A fantastically delicate, refined and deliciously subtle feast of light. Please Ma'am can we have more?

pretty as a picture

I MADE IT MYSELF

One half of hml is running up hill trying to get her new card catalogue out in the next week or so. Faced with the challenge of doing a range of 'florals' and having no decent paints or canvas or flowers (water restrictions people!!!) meant that a little ingenuity was in order.

It's kind of poor Margaret Preston meets second rate Rosalie Gascoigne meets year 11 high school art but looks swell when shrunk down onto a card. One image down, four more to go...

What's in your pocket?

We wanted to find a website that would let you all make groovy calendars. so alot of googling was done using words like 'organise,plan, dates' and we stumbled across this amazing project by a mysterious chap by the name of Brian Collier who seems to have developed a passion for the classification of small objects.

The website is an intriguing mix of scientific research, art and most impressively an extensive database where contributors have 'catalogued' small things as diverse as shells, safety pins and M&Ms. Collier gives instructions on how to find, name and display your object and offers details on how to contribute to the project. We thought it was superb

Further definitions of a Very Small Object:
1. Any object that is visible to the naked eye but small enough to go unnoticed most of the time.
2. The maximum dimensions of a Very Small Object are 8 mm by 8 mm by 25 mm long. The object must be able to fit, unforced, into a 1 dram vial. Anything larger than these minimum dimensions should not be classified under this system.
3. Very Small Objects may consist of any type of solid material.
4. Liquids and gasses may never be categorized as Very Small Objects.
5. Living things may not be classified under this system due to possible overlap with other existing classification systems.

www.verysmallobjects.com

what a dish!

CRAFT OBJECT OF THE WEEKThe youngest member of the HML team has been at it again with that enviable trait that all people under the age of 13 seem to posess - the assumption that they can do anything anyone else can do if given the right equipment. For more than a year now the senior staffers have been banging on about learning Ceramics 101. We collect, admire, write about and adore the medium and it would be great to have a better understanding of process and finish. Meanwhile young Hope said "I'm taking ceramics classes after school" and this is what made it under the Christmas tree this year. It usually has a stack of chocolates on it - being the quintessential sweetie dish - but they all seem to have dissapeared sometime between midnight and 2am (must have been that late night screening of House of the Flying Daggers...)

Schools out for summer

SHOW OF THE WEEK

is no show at all really. While half the team suns themselves in tropical North Queensland the other is holed up in the studio trying to get work done but really just ends up watching the cricket and reading back issues of Martha Stewart Living (more on that later in the week). So above is the pile of books that can be found in the staffroom at the moment. You can see from the artful stacking that not much work is being done...
That being said there are alot of babies on their way in the hml world and so we are madly baby booting and quilting to beat third trimester deadlines (why our friends and family all have babies at the same time we'll never know...blame the moon perhaps?)

seasons greetings!

Ok everyone, we know we have lapsed on the daily updates from hml headquarters but really who gets everything done over christmas!
We hope you all managed to get the christmas lights untangled, eat way too much rich food, see all your loved ones, recieve and give great pressies, survive the once a year relatives, drink a little too much, sing some terrible christmas carols and fall asleep in a chair at someone elses house... or was that just us?

We would also like to say thanks very much for getting on board the hml train in 2006, it's been an absolute pleasure meeting y'all and and now that you have all recovered from the NYE celebrations, we'd like to wish you all

A VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR.


and yes, you guessed it we've already started planning for 2008.