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Friday, March 21st, 2008
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10:30a - Found things - from Michelle - left on the steps of the Art Gallery of NSW
Each week, a decorated matchbox with a tiny present hidden inside is left by a girl (and sometimes willing friends) somewhere in her travels. It's a random act of semi-artistic kindness aimed at disrupting someone's day in a tiny but positive way. That's if they dare to pick it up...
Michelle jokes that her Mini Majellen zines were designed to make her friends, very specific like-minded friends, and not money. She tells me this a good six months after I picked up one of the said zines on at a Spring afternoon zine fair by the river and was absolutely taken by what I found between the covers.
A palm-sized square of a zine, the Mini Majellen is all about urban adventures - playfulness, appreciating very small and simplistic things and having fun everyday. Made entirely from found objects (discarded tickets, illustrations from old story-books...) its concept was simple, it was aesthetically very beautiful but best of all revealed a very appreciative and inquisitive mind. And so, as the Beatles song goes, a small game of 'I've got to get you into my life' followed.
Over many emails, coffee, tea, cake, lunches and several breakfasts Shell and I discovered that we have parallel creative lives. At first we were a little spun out but now love (and are used to) having someone to bounce ideas off.
I love the way Shell thinks and seeing how her ideas are manifested into beautiful things. I may have cheered out loud the afternoon she showed me the prototypes for her latest project - bookplates. Pretty little stickers to mark your personal library. Two weeks later I was happily sitting in her studio helping her cut out the collection of Red Shoe Girl bookplates and fold a fresh batch of Mini Majellen zines for an upcoming market.
She told me about another book project of hers, a personal one, where she asked her friends and family to recommend their 3 most favourite fictional books, with the intention of working her way through all of them. So far she's got everything from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, to Jane Eyre and Franny & Zooey. I've finally decided that my top 3 would be:
1. The Wind Up Bird Chronicles - Haruki Murakami
Because it consumed me as I read it and left me in a daze for 2 weeks after. Incredible.
2. Star Girl - Jerry Spinelli
A discovery of my sister's about a renegade present-giver - the details in this book are just lovely. And..
3. White Noise - Don DeLillo
For Chapter 16 alone - 'This is the day Wilder started crying at two in the afternoon.'
Shell didn't miss my enthusiasm for her bookplates and when I casually asked if she could make some tiny ones for this project, she said she’d already started. Handing them over a couple weeks ago she wondered aloud how I would decorate her box. With a sticker from her city scapes collection of course! Thank you M!
x
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