Young Love, Suicide and Greek Myth

Young Love, Suicide and Greek Myth are pretty standard. You've got your Pyramus and Thisbe, Narcissus and himself, Narcissus and Echo (Narcissus and a whole bunch of other people), Dido and Aeneas (straying into Roman but its a good one), Ariadne in some versions, Phaedra, Byblis,... (N.B. it is almost always the girl that has to kill herself.)

So, for my 'Greek Myth' class, we were put in groups of 6 or so and given a scrap of papyrus which had a tiny piece of a myth written on it and instructed to create a 15 minute presentation to persuade the class that our myth was the most relevant to now.

(I'm afraid that I have made this sound far cooler than it was. We were not actually given the ancient, valuable papyrus, just a link to find a picture of it on the internet, but since most of it is missing and most of us don't read Ancient Greek, it was wouldn't have helped us much anway)

 

http://enriqueta.man.ac.uk:8180/luna/servlet/workspace;jsessionid=31DEC59C3463D1BF4A79F8DDD5F448FF?sip0=,ManchesterDev~93~3~37378~100728,568,245,203,316,1338,753,100,156,203,316,1&xwr=16&ywr=9

My group had the myth of Hero and Leander. In case you don't know it already; boy meets girl at a festival,  they live on opposite sides of Hellespont and her parents make her live alone in a tower. Everynight she lights a lamp in her window to guide him as he swims 3km across dangerous waters to have a lovely, apparently chaste, evening with her. Suuuureee....

 

Theodor von Holst 1810-1844

 

Then theres a storm, the lamp is blown out and he drowns so she throws herself from the tower. Or, as this painting seems to show, maybe she just did cartwheels over his body.

 

Jean-Joseph Taillason 1798

And so I thought the most succinct way of demonstrating how relevant this myth is today is with a little animation. I forgot how long these things take to make. In my version Hero and Leander are a young couple, possibly at uni, having a long distance relationship. They could well have met at a festival but I didn't include that bit. They text each other planning to meet up and he drives down to see her. Hero's lamp is replaced by the more current Sat-Nav. Then we have the storm which causes Leander to not see the danger ahead as his Sat-Nav guides him onto a broken bridge. (This really happens, a guy drove into a reservoir just a couple of weeks ago). Hero flings herself off a high up thing into some water. The End. We still have the basic themes of Eros/Thanatos (Love and Death), Light and Dark (with a modern twist), the power of Nature over Man and Gender issues, though it is only a minute long so this is hardly a deep exploration. The main thing is that it is a modern retelling of the myth and fairly believable in a My Chemical Romance (Cemetery Drive) sort of way.

Enjoy!

(make sure you have sound on and perhaps at the credits just turn the volume down slowly because I don't know how to do a fade out on GarageBand)

 

(my presentation partners were Alban, Alex, Anna, Ben and Yerv who did all the theory and literary work while I obsessively pushed bits of paper around my desk and took photos. Hopefully I haven't annoyed anyone with copyright issues, the soundtrack is credited in the video apart from a bit of Nick Cave at the end.)

More to come!

xxx

Pick & Mix

On Wednesday I had the opportunity to display my jewellery alongside other Manchester student designers at Pick & Mix as part of Global Week. We also had live performances from Ariya Astrobeat Arkestra, Extra Love, Hunting Bears and Indigo Outlaw as well as dance from PSA, Aspire and Bhangra!

It was a fantastic night, so much going on and bringing so many different students together, so here are some pictures:

Indigo Outlaw

Aspire

Dream Factory

Hunting Bears (http://www.myspace.com/huntingbearsband)

 

After watching the bands I quickly dodged backstage to add jewellery to the outfits made by R’O-GORMAN (http://skinnybelt.blogspot.com). I am afraid my pictures aren't amazing but hopefully there will be pictures from the proper photographer people later!

At the end the designers and backstage team got to have a little walkabout which was fun (I'm at the back)

 And finally my backstage shots of the jewellery! It was absolutely manic backstage so I had to take these super fast as the Bhangra dancers made their way through but hopefully these give some idea.

Gilded Fly ring and Gilded Chubby Beetle ring

Gilded Fly ring and Gilded Stag Beetle ring with Gilded Fly pendant.

Dung Beetle ring and Chubby Beetle ring with Crest Beetle pendant.

Twig and Leaf bracelet and Stag Beetle ring.

'Spider caught the Butterfly necklace with Fly ring and Stag Beetle ring.

All of my designs are currently available from www.joyeverley.co.uk, just look for Beetles!

It was such a lovely evening and a massive thank you to all the models and the backstage team and especially to Rhona who worked so hard to make the fashion show work!

More to come!

xxx

Time for time to freeze

So obviously I should have done a blog about LFW. And a bunch of other stuff which has gotten all backed up. But first I just want to dedicate a little message to Louise Cattell, probably the most exciting and outgoing and dynamic person I have ever met who died on Tuesday.

 

Louise was one of the first friends I made at secondary school. I was really really awkward. I don't think that awkwardness was something that Louise ever felt. We were very different kids. I spent most of my time reading and hanging out in my room while Louise was going to clubs and seeing bands and just getting involved with EVERYTHING from the age of about 14. I swear she was at BarFly in Camden almost every night. She never seemed to need ID or a backstage pass. She was just there. She would come into school the next day and ask me if I had heard of this band or that band that she had been out with the night before. Of course I hadn't, I didn't know anything.

School had issues with Louise. She did not stick to the uniform. One of the main battles was her hair. the rules strictly said "only natural colours". I believe her hair was blonde, red, blue and green in first year, but her hair has been so many colours I could be getting mixed up. I was constantly shocked by her but with utter admiration. She got a septum piercing. And a plug which she could put a cigarette through. She did piercings herself. She shredded the uniform. The music teacher loved her because we were made to perform and Louise boomed out "Mack the knife" and other Sinatra classics in a deep growl, swaying from back foot to front due to nerves and just singing louder to hide it.

Louise had a broad taste in music. I can't remember most of the music she tried to make me listen to which I just didn't get but I specifically remember being on one of those activity holidays with bunk beds and sneaking down to her bunk to share headphones while she played me Placebo - Sleeping with Ghosts. I was shocked and thought it was terribly morbid. Sometimes we would walk to my house after school and she would be singing Dead or Alive - 'You Spin Me Round' or Ladytron - '17'. I had never heard of any of this music. And during GCSEs when she started learning German I remember her being excited to be able to finally translate Rammstein lyrics.

I think that Louise influenced me a lot. She proved it's a waste of time to fret over fitting in with how to dress and how you should look and you can just have a lot more fun wearing wigs, avant garde make up and tits out!

(This was her blog: http://refashion-rethink-recycle.blogspot.com/2009/04/i-just-killed-god.html  )

She will be loved and missed for ever.

xxx