Celebration / L'Officiel Singapore

for upcoming issue

L'Officiel December 2009

Beauty Opener

Whoops, sorry for being inactive for the past month! I've been quite busy.

On the art front, I've been dabbing into watercolors again. As usual, it is a bit hard to control and not really my best medium ( I prefer pencils and pens to brushes ) but it is good to play with it again after some time. I also have an exciting project going on right now, the sketches are coming soon after I get them transfered to my computer.

Also, I feel very flattered to be featured in Carmine Magazine courtesy of the lovely Miss Jami Rosa. I enjoyed reading past interviews, especially finding more about Zoetica and Sarah Ferrick and the beautiful, organic jewelry-sculptures of OctopusMe. There's also an interview and write-up about my works on the newly launched KVLT magazine, which promotes independent art and culture scene of all mediums in Singapore. It's really encouraging to see such local movements here, personally, so I wish the team the best of luck!

Medical ethics

Inspired by this article in NY Magazine

"Can One Sibling Pull the Plug If the Others Don’t Want To? And five other vexing medical-ethics dilemmas, examined."

commissioned

Full size here

Another experiment with book covers.

From Amazon:

"Animals, especially imperiled animals, make ominous cameos in nearly all of these stories. There's the wounded anteater who crashes the hotel room of two old friends, both of whom seem willing to sacrifice their friendship for a few nights of banal, artificial romance. There are the thousands of cows whose imprisonment in a beef-processing plant haunts a young man, himself imprisoned by a relative's blithe and repeated attempts at suicide. There's the sheep struck and killed on the road by a driver rendered temporarily insane with unfocused, diabolical jealousy. And in the last and most curious story, there's a chatty talking dog named Steven, who narrowly survives being thrown in a river and commits the remainder of his spared life to running, eating and playing with maximum gusto."

P.S: I could have done the typo better. The 'hungry' was kind of shoddy.








for Jeffrey Eugenides' The Virgin Suicides.

Synopsis from Audiofile:

What if all the pieces in the kaleidoscope were black? Meet the Lisbon daughters. Cecilia is first to end her life, followed not long after by Lux, Bonnie, Mary, and Therese. The girls, shielded from life by overprotective parents, leave everyone wondering--why? Jeffrey Eugenides, who won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Middlesex, reminds listeners that sitcom suburbia is a facade, that troubles lurk just behind the pretty paint. Narrating from the point of view of the town's collective consciousness, Nick Landrum makes the ethereal feel real and the unusual, commonplace. Whether voicing the sisters, reading their diaries, or revealing the secrets of "boy-think," his voice nudges the listener into a strange place that seems oddly familiar.

For an article about the new wave of androgynous fashion.

CURVY 5

I just received my copy today...:)

First, let me say that seeing my works on the latest issue of CURVY is a surreal experience of the Indiana Jones kind. I looove all the previous issues, and have found a lot of gifted, inspiring artists from it ( Just to name a few: Miss Van, Fumi Nakamura, Mathilda Ruta, and Lilly Piri ). So to be featured among this year's batch of artists is just....I don't know what to say. I feel honored, that's for sure. This sounds all so formal and serious, but then I am! It really is an honor.

Thank you Yen Magazine & Curvy Team! *bows*

Reinterpreting book covers makes a fun project.



The concept of this is taken from the book's dual-narrative concept; with a protagonist living parallel lives, one real and one imagined. The book is narrated from a young woman's perspective, and dwells a lot in the nature of romantic relationships between adults, while gently brushing on modern, real-life issues. While it is not a 'chick-lit' by any sense, I find it appropriate to design the look of the book in a feminine yet modern way.

Below is a summary quoted from Publishers Weekly / Amazon:

"The smallest details of staid coupledom duel it out with a lusty alternate reality that begins when a woman passes up an opportunity to cheat on her longtime boyfriend in Shriver's latest (after the Orange Prize–winning We Need to Talk About Kevin). Irina McGovern, a children's book illustrator in London, lives in comfortable familiarity with husband-in-everything-but-marriage-certificate Lawrence Trainer, and every summer the two have dinner with their friend, the professional snooker player Ramsey Acton, to celebrate Ramsey's birthday. One year, following Ramsey's divorce and while terrorism specialist "think tank wonk" Lawrence is in Sarajevo on business, Irina and Ramsey have dinner, and after cocktails and a spot of hash, Irina is tempted to kiss Ramsey. From this near-smooch, Shriver leads readers on a two-pronged narrative: one consisting of what Irina imagines would have happened if she had given in to temptation, the other showing Irina staying with Lawrence while fantasizing about Ramsey. With Jamesian patience, Shriver explores snooker tournaments and terrorism conferences, passionate lovemaking and passionless sex, and teases out her themes of ambition, self-recrimination and longing. The result is an impressive if exhausting novel. "

You only have to click to be able to see it full-size in my Flickr page.

More coming up!

Utopia

Inspired by 99 luftballons



Relatively old piece, but somehow I'd forgotten to put it here.

edit: I feel compelled to spread this. A call for Christmas charity....

A Night Before Christmas - L'Officiel Singapore, Dec 2007

Note: click on the pics to see bigger ones...










Sketches & other drawings not in the magazine :

back before midnight

All About Eve

Watercolor + color pencil, A3, for an ad promoting House @ 8D Dempsey Rd....(client: Spa Esprit) The spread can be found in L'Officiel Singapore, October ed. They divided it into three small pics, so you wouldn't see it in this panoramic form.






link to bigger pic: here

Another thing: I have a little exhibition as part of House's monthly 'adopt-an-artist' program. It's been running over a month, but you can still visit it until Dec 15th.

Harajuku Fever

sense & sensibility

Close-ups:

All the world's a stage....

click on the preview above for bigger image, or here
close-ups:

Black Market BBQ

Hello people, I will be selling some stuff at House's flea market tomorrow--merchandise from the adopt-an-artist project last year (2007, I mean). The address is 8D Dempsey Rd! See flyer and map above for more information; should be clear enough. You can take bus no.7 to Singapore Botanical Garden and refer to the map after; should be quite close from there.

Sorry for the last-minute notice!