The princess slept here.

And this is a quilt made by Ka’iulani. (Thanks Jennifer, for this link)  http://lacma.wordpress.com/2011/02/15/princess-kaiulani-slept-here/

I’ve been thinking about the animation style for the section in Hove. I’m planning to spend a day (hopefully with my photographer friend Rosie) walking the routes that the princess would have taken from Cambridge Rd along the seafront to the pier and also to St Ann’s Well gardens. Feeling the streets with our feet, drawing and photographing.
I like the way the artist Rachel Eardley combines line drawings and polaroids. I would like to experiment with combining archive photos, modern photos, drawings and maps. And I still want to create a kind of Victorian Google Map combining street views and maps. I might need to talk to someone at college about this as it would be a technical job.

I went to a very good exhibition called Ghosts of lost Birds in a lovely little gallery on the not very lovely London Rd in Brighton. http://onca.org.uk/

Lots of interesting work and the theme of conservation of birds including some Hawaiian ones.  Some of the artists are quite well known and it includes a knitted piece by the writer Margaret Atwood and a fantastic paper sculpture in the window by the Makerie Studio.

I have been drawing little extinct Hawaiian birds recently. One can’t help but be moved by how much of Hawaiian flora and fauna have been lost since Captain Cook’s arrival in 1779. And continue to be lost of course.

I had thought it would be really good if the narrator for the Hawaiian section could be a bird, a peacock probably as peacocks are said to have been Ka’iulani’s favourite bird. I’m not sure if this is doable.

Anyway, lots to think about….

Snow days…

http://io9.com/5861647/what-hugo-taught-us-about-the-grandfather-of-science-fiction-film-georges-melies

After a fun morning sledging and snowballing with the boys we spent the afternoon watching the Martin Scorsese film Hugo on DVD again. An enjoyable and interesting film in lots of ways. Its about an early film maker, Georges Méliès and the wonder of early cinema, and its origins in the world of clockwork craftsmanship, toys, games and illusions. Méliès was a contemporary of Georges Albert Smith. Smith made some of the ever first films in Hove and had a film studio in St Ann’s Well Gardens. He is one of the Hove pioneers commemorated in Hove museum.

I’m hoping to bring Smith’s story into my film of the princess.

I wonder if Smith and Ka’iulani ever crossed paths on the streets of Hove….. Or if she went to see one of his hypnotist or “psychic” shows at the aquarium.