Friday Finds – a case of Serendipity

Last month we went on a road trip round South Western Anatolia in Turkey and stopped at the town of Beyşehir because I wanted to visit the Eşrefoğlu Mosque, renowned for its beautiful tiled interior and cedar wood columns. In the square outside my attention was grabbed by two information panels

describing finds at the excavation site of Kudadabad Palace (a complex of summer residences) which was constructed on the edge of the lake here in the 13th century. What had drawn my eye were the images of the tiles. Years ago I had seen these images in a magazine and cut them out intending to use them in a collage at some point in the future. There was no information accompanying the images and I had no idea that they were Turkish and here they were in front of my eyes! The tiles now reside in the safekeeping of the Katay museum in Konya which unfortunately we weren’t able to visit as we weren’t stopping in Konya. However a search on Google revealed a collection of photos of these tiles. These are the 3 ATC’s I made using the images I had found.

Don’t you just love it when something like that happens?

Photo-Heart Connection: October and Texture Tuesday

This is the first time I’ve participated in Kat Eye Studio’s Photo-Heart Connection.
Pick one photo, with which you feel the strongest heart connection, to share. The photo shared can be any photo that you worked with in the last month, either newly captured or edited.
Write about your heart connection with that photo. Why does the photo speak to you? What do you feel?

I saw this man with the kitten on his lap on our recent road trip round Turkey. I asked if I could take his photo and he said yes, I could. I chatted briefly with him (my Turkish is not fluent and he seemed to have some sort of speech impediment) and, as I turned to go, he took a bunch of grapes out of the plastic bag and gave them to me. They were delicious – small, sweet and seedless.

textured with Kim’s Pumpkin Grunge

Friday finds – strange fruit

Does anyone know what this fruit is? (I’m assuming it is a fruit). It’s about the size of a large lemon with wrinkled skin. Inside the fibres radiate from a central core but we didn’t see any sign of a stone or pips. The tree was growing in Side, southern Turkey.

Friday finds

Last week I managed to get back to my favourite cafe, Heartfelt, in Bristol where I took this photo which seems to fit in with Kim’s Spaces and Places theme

image textured with kk-123

this could also become a favourite place to visit – newly discovered Bristol’s Southville Sunday market flower stall

Texture Tuesday: August ending

As August comes to an end it is becoming apparent that September is raring to go and rush us full speed ahead into Autumn. I’m not ready to go yet! I would like to be able to sit in the sun for just a bit longer.

I’ve used Kim’s Appreciate texture from the August end collection and Mixed from the grunge collection, blended with multiply

Friday Finds 9 August 2013

This exhibit is part of the current exhibition at Mudam (Museum of Modern Art) in Luxembourg. We used to live next door to the artist and it’s been a great pleasure and privilege to follow her career.

Texture Tuesday 6 August

Texture Tuesday over at Kim’s cafe is another free and easy edition.
I used this photo I took with Audrey Hepburn’s inspirational quote and blended it with Kim’s textures Music light and Linda

Friday Finds 2 August

I saw this painting for sale in the street of artists, Yalıkavak, Turkey. I really liked the soft colours and dreamy or maybe soulful expression on the girl’s face.

What did you find this Friday? Pop over to Kim’s to see what other people found.

Texture Tuesday – another free n’ easy edition

photo blended with Kim’s Now texture. I took the photo just after a heavy rainstorm as I wanted to try to capture the raindrops on the leaves and flowers.

Did you create a piece for Kim’s Texture Tuesday?

Friday finds: netsuke

I have just finished reading Edmund de Waal’s The hare with amber eyes: a family’s century of art and loss; it’s neither a biography nor an autobiography but a family memoir, a genre with which I was unfamiliar until I read the book.

The author traces the story of a collection of 264 netsuke – from their arrival in his family in Vienna during the height of the rage for Japonisme to their return to Japan with his uncle – alongside the story of his family from their starting point as grain merchants in Odessa, then to being rich Jewish bankers in pre-war Vienna, to their end, in much straitened circumstances in post-war England.

Netsuke are small, tactile miniature sculptures usually made of ivory, box or fruitwood depicting fruit, animals or humans engaged in a variety of activities (often sexual). They were originally designed as toggles for clothing and have a couple of holes in the back through which cords were threaded.

A friend of ours has a small collection of his own. These are some of his netsuke.

Kim Klassen came up with the idea of sharing Friday Finds.