Di Mackey's Blog

Liminal Spaces on Flanders Fields, the ExhibitionFebruary 08, 2010

Take something from the past, change its form and create something for the the present and voila, you have a kind of liminal process ...

Come visit our exhibition, opening Saturday.
Details here.

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Kwizera Alfred, MusicianFebruary 05, 2010

Check out Stephanie Roberts and her latest Little Purple Cow Productions video ... an interview with the beautiful singer, Kwizera Alfred, a young musician in Kigali, Rwanda

Picture Hope: Kwizera Alfred, Musician from LittlePurpleCow Productions on Vimeo.

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The WriterFebruary 04, 2010

And doesn’t a writer do the same thing? Isn’t he knitting together scraps of dreams? He hunts down the most vivid details and links them in sequences that will let a reader see, smell, and hear a world that seems complete in itself; he builds a stage set and painstakingly hides all the struts and wires and nail holes, then stands back and hopes that whoever might come to see it will believe.
Anthony Doerr, Four Seasons in Rome

Borrowed from Nina, thank you.

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New Zealand Day Celebrations, Holland - Homegrown EventsFebruary 04, 2010

This Saturday, 6th Feb, there’s no better way to celebrate Waitangi Day (otherwise known as New Zealand Day) than with Andy - from Homegrown Events.

He has brought together three great Kiwi bands and there will be a Haka performance for those curious about this fierce Maori war dance.
There will also be free raffle tickets at door with some great prizes to be won, including high quality shirts from the fashion label ‘NZA’, vouchers for tasty homemade Kiwi Pies and quality New Zealand wine.

You can read more their Facebook page or visit their website for more information. And you can check for future events over here.

Homegrown Events:Creating home away from home experiences in the Netherlands for expat Australians, New Zealanders & South Africans& inspiring Europeans with the fresh & unique sounds from Oceania

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An Extraordinary Man ...February 03, 2010

You sense that your photography session might be different from all other photography sessions you have ever worked at, when the object of your attention pulls out the bottle of whisky and proceeds to fill up a shot glass for both you and your translator/fixer.

And so it was with Ant, the 85 year old artist, choir singer and bugle player.

I have some extraordinary friends in their 70’s, heading on up to Abe, in his 80s and so I am accustomed to age not being any kind of limit to living a full life but all the same, Ant startled me, delighted me, almost got me drunk.

He was so full of stories and laughter and there I was, nursing that straight whisky because you drink and eat what you’re offered when you work as I do ... and voila, my glass was full again before it was empty. So I discovered I can drink good whisky at 10am in the morning which surely catapults me into the status of artiste, in a troubled and interesting way.

We talked for 2 hours, I took photographs along the way, we viewed photographs of Ant meeting the Queen and Mother Theresa, we followed him up a million stairs to his atelier and there, after the pleasure of viewing his artworks, Valerie and I were each gifted a painting we had admired ... signed of course.

Today Ant’s painting is sitting up on my beautiful new red bookshelves, making me smile whenever I look over that way, remembering my yesterday.

There are some truly remarkable people in this world and in fact, I find most people remarkable, but yesterday I met one of the world’s shining stars.

It was a good day. Dank u wel to Ant and to Valerie, and Steven for organising it all ...

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The Bicycle, GenovaJanuary 31, 2010

I think this image went up on the old blog ... and never quite made it here.

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You, Reader by Billy CollinsJanuary 30, 2010

Sometimes, after reading something particularly disturbing, like the well-known journalist who claims his modest mission is the attempt to prevent citizens in his country from saying later, ‘we didn’t know’, sometimes I feel incredibly raw and frustrated and I slip over to Nina’s blog searching for something beautiful ...

On this visit, I found a poem.

You, Reader
I wonder how you are going to feel
when you find out
that I wrote this instead of you.

that it was I who got up early
to sit in the kitchen
and mention with a pen

the rain-soaked windows,
the ivy wallpaper,
and the goldfish circling in its bowl

Go ahead and turn aside,
bite your lip and tear out the page,
but, listen—it was just a matter of time

before one of us happened
to notice the unlit candles
and the clock humming on the wall.

Plus, nothing happened that morning—
a song on the radio,
a car whistling along the road outside—

and I was only thinking
about the shakers of salt and pepper
that were standing side by side on a place mat.

I wondered if they had become friends
after all these years
or if they were still strangers to one another

like you and I
who manage to be known and unknown
to each other at the same time—

me at this table with a bowl of pears,
you leaning in a doorway somewhere
near some blue hydrangeas, reading this.
- Billy Collins, from his collection The Trouble with Poetry: And Other Poems

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Paper Planes ...January 30, 2010

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The Artist and his ArtJanuary 30, 2010

I love the way the artist seems to merge into his work ...

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Stephanie Roberts and Little Purple Cow ProductionsJanuary 29, 2010

Stephanie Roberts, over at Little Purple Cow Productions, provides me with one of the places I go when I need creative inspiration, encouragement, or a nice place to hang out.

Make sure you have some time and sit a while when you go visiting her website but I wanted to borrow from Stephanie too. She had posted this Ted talk by David Griffin titled How Photography Connects Us. There’s a beautiful ‘leopard seal meets photographer and brings him gifts’ story at the end of this inspirational 15 minute talk.

It goes without saying, that I’m a huge admirer of Stephanie’s work.
Enjoy.

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