Gone To Earth.

I vowed to keep this blog up to date this year, but I didn't anticipate getting stuck in the states, or coming back to a huge work load and staying up 24/7 watching the news in anticipation for a good outcome from this election. Which hasn't happened.

Nearly a month away from university and I have so much to upload on to here. I think I am going to upload the photos and drawings from my trip in sections of places that I visited, intermixed with work I have been doing since I have been back in the UK.

After flying in to LAX, hiring a car and having no idea what the speed limit was, how to drive an automatic, how to use the petrol pumps or indeed which type of petrol the car took, we headed north on the Pacific Coast Highway and stopped off in a shady motel for the night in Santa Monica.

The next day we drove to Malibu for the day and then on to Santa Barbara. It took a little longer than expected, as it's impossible to drive over 50mph on the PCH. So 6pm we roll in to Santa Barbara. Sarah pulls the car over in front of an art gallery and I run to the visitors centre, but it's closed. When I return to the car a man comes over. Turns out we've pulled up outside his house, which is a huge old building that he has converted into a flat and an art gallery. He offers us his place for the night, for free. We look around. Surf boards. Golden Retriever. Roof terrace. Beers. Hand made furniture. Could this be more perfect, or Californian?

We stay up late talking of traveling, politics, art, films, literature. The owner's name is Richard and he tells us that he bought this building when he was our age and has slowly built it up himself into one of the best laid out houses I have ever seen. Jet lagged, we hit the hay and plan to spend the day roaming Santa Barbara tomorrow.

Oh volcanoooooo

Cheers Iceland for making me miss essays, hand ins, final shows and pretty much my last term of uni this year. Give a shit? We get a 2 week extension on our trip to California, with hotels and food paid for. So we're still in Palm Springs, heading in to Los Angeles again tomorrow afternoon until monday when we fly to NYC to stay in the Chelsea, party with some cool cats and do some shopping.

Thanks natural disaster!

Crazy Love, volume II

I have packed my suitcase today, as tomorrow I go back to Manchester for a week and a half, before flying over to LA with the lovely Sarah Boardman. Me and Boardman are going on a little roadtrip around California before heading down to Palm Springs to meet up with friends and go to Coachella festival. Exciting times! I am taking a sketchbook and me and Sarah will have multiple cameras between us, so when I get back this blog will be bombarded with images from our journey. Hopefully that is a good thing.

I am fully sick of London, the south, British weather, university and certain people. I can't wait to go home, get some R&R before flying 1000+ miles away with a good friend. A change of landscape and climate are exactly what are needed to cheer my blues.

Graceland.

Another scroll with the stella drinking otter from Kirkstall abbey, looking especially sober and cheerful this time.

I cannot stop listening to Paul Simon. He is amazing.

99th Floor.

Backstage at Mary Katrantzou, London Fashion Week A/W 2010.

Laissez Faire.

And we hunted, like young lions, death with its black fur dappled with pale crosses, who ran before us in the vast violet sky, palpable and living.
And yet we had no ideal Mistress stretching her form up to the clouds, nor yet a cruel Queen to whom to offer our corpses twisted into the shape of Byzantine rings! No reason to die unless it is the desire to be rid of the too great weight of our courage!
We drove on, crushing beneath our burning wheels, like shirt-collars under the iron, the watch dogs on the steps of the houses.
Death, tamed, went in front of me at each corner offering me his hand nicely, and sometimes lay on the ground with a noise of creaking jaws giving me velvet glances from the bottom of puddles.
"Let us leave good sense behind like a hideous husk and let us hurl ourselves, like fruit spiced with pride, into the immense mouth and breast of the world! Let us feed the unknown, not from despair, but simply to enrich the unfathomable reservoirs of the Absurd!"
F. T Marinetti, 1909

Suffragette Suffragette