Hugh Holland's 70s skate kids: Locals Only

HUGH HOLLAND'S 70s SKATE KIDS

"Lost in a turn, board and feet melting into pure expression, illuminated under scorching sunsets: photographer Hugh Holland's incredible portraits of 70s skate kids - pre commercialism and sponsorship - capture a magical moment in sideways culture.

Now collated in his book Locals Only, this glowing and unique collection of images all began with a chance encounter in 1975....

Holland, just starting his career, was driving up from Laurel Canyon Boulevard in Los Angeles, when he spotted the bodies of brown kids weaving up the sides of the drain ditches adjacent to the canyon..."

(via Nollie)

WEARABLE HOMES (via Pruned)

WEARABLE HOMES

(Marry Mattingly, Always On, 2005. 28" x 20" Chromogenic

Dye-Coupler Print.)

(Mary Mattingly, Possibilities of Multilateral Communication,

2005. 30" x 30" Chromogenic Dye-Coupler Print.)

"Some specifics: “The fabric used is an outerlayer combination of Kaiok, a phase change material like Outlast® Adaptive Comfort®, waterproof Cordura, Solarweave UV protectant fabric, and the inner muslin layer. The fabric has the ability to keep the body at a comfortable temperature no matter the weather. The encapsulated warmers (like those found in electric blankets) are also woven into the innermost layer of the home, and through sensors, are adjusted to your bodies temperature and keep the home warm or cool on the inside to counteract the outside. The electronic silver threads in the fabric connecting to the sensors will give the wearers the ability to monitor themselves, their health and introspectively study themselves, as well as monitor the outdoor conditions, and transmit information to another, currently through a ZigBee connection or secure nodal random key coding and patterning frequency that can be set up to directly interface with another person’s home and information. This infrastructure will be able to receive signals from satellite and aid in GPS, mapping VA goggles, cel-sat and Internet..."

(via Pruned)

Update!

It's been nearly 3 years since I last used the blog, but thought I should start using it again. Will share some interesting things design and architecture related and anything random and maybe post a bit of what I'm working on at the moment. Enjoy.

THE WAVE MOTORS OF CALIFORNIA

"Still embedded somewhere in the shores of California, buried by more than a century of sand, are lost hydroelectric machines.

Deep in the prehistory of green energy technologies now being researched by Alexis Madrigal for his forthcoming book, there is a whole series of devices intended to generate power from the sea.
Precursors of today's interest in tide power, these were "wave motors" and mechanized basins that turned the coast into a series of timed catchment reservoirs. The landscape itself became a machine.
One of the earliest patents filed for such technology was by Oakland resident Henry Newhouse in 1877. The purpose of his machine was "[t]o utilize the tide for a water-power," his patent text read, as quoted by the San Francisco-based Western Neighborhoods Project, "and preserve a continuous power by means of the arrangement of a reservoir to catch the water at high-tide, and a discharge-basin to let the water out at low tide and shut it out while the tide is rising."
Like something designed by Smout Allen, tunnels would be drilled through littoral rockfaces, even as natural bays were both expanded and reinforced. The coastline is soon a linked sequence of valves through which the tides can flow, generating electricity as they pass through a maze of elevated waterwheels and pumps.

A great example of this type of wave motor comes to us from "the Armstrong brothers"; it was built on the coast of Santa Cruz in 1898."

(via BLDG BLOG)

Another double-page spread from my moleskine.

Fårösund, Bunge

Fiskeläge (fishing village), Digerhuvud

Inside of eremit (koja), Hotell Furillen

These are photographs I took during my summer in Gotland and Fårö. Common topics being Hotell Furillen, Grey sheep, mackerel, knäke bröd, old Scandinavian vernacular architecture, old wooden fishing villages, baltic sea, pebbles, raukar (rock formations), Ingmar Bergman's land, arvesund,
hästens säng, grilled food, hand made bread, countryside...

eremit (koja)

nacho sheriff
(The story of a retired Lucha Libre wrestler gunslinger, turned sheriff)

wooden hooks

I recently came across this firm called Live Wire Farm that make things like hooks, napkin rings, shelf supports, spoons etc. from timber and wooden branches in a very traditional Scandinavian style. I love these sort of things and it brought back a sudden flood of memories from when I lived in Sweden as a young child. We made our own hooks at school for our coats, like in the picture, did a lot of ray mears craft type stuff, built a small traditional cabin the size of a playhouse out of wooden logs as a year long project (and found this half dead scarred rabbit underneath a log we were going to use). When we finally finished, it became our cosy hang-out spot which we filled with rabbit and polar bear fur carpets.

Brighton ship, pier, sea, captain

Old West Pier, Brighton, reminiscent of a capsized skeleton of a pirate ship

Nikon FE

Kodak Portra 160VC
Fuji Superia xtra

Mal Pais

Just another sketch I forgot to upload from my travel sketchbook.

Mal Pais, Nicoya Peninsula, Costa Rica

Driftwood

1 An embedded circular box perforated with bars
2 Antique old metal birdcage
3 Skinny table legs of mahogany
4 Life's obscurity
5 Magicians, sheriffs and moustaches
6 That dark horse that comes riding in to seal the deal
7 Feathery half-mechanical object
8 Piece of driftwood
9 Trapdoor
10 The last grain of sand slips away.

The 'driftwood', waiting to see where the sea of obstacles and opportunities will take it until the point it's washed up on shore.

FUP a modern fable

FUP by Jim Dodge is a brilliant book, one I borrowed off my brother.

A story about Jake, an old addicted gambler and immortal from his home brewed (97% pure) Ol' Death Whisper wisky and his giant grandson 'Tiny' who goes hunting after his nemesis, a wild bore called Lockjaw together with his pet duck called FUP, no ordinary duck, a massive detective duck with a nose to track down lockjaw's trails. They all share something in common, they are all insane. - Read it, you'll enjoy it.

Willy Wonka's sugar cane factory

As close as it would get to a Wonka factory, in the midst of stretches of sugar cane
fields, lies a small building where they make sugar, toffee and sugary sweats from the
ground basics, old skool way. Was an experience to remember. and I definitely ate
way too much...

La Cangreja National Park, Costa Rica

Expedition (across central america)

A few snaps from my epic, adventurous trek across a continent, through Costa Rica.

Olympus Trip 35
Kodak Portra 160VC

Moin (Limón) - Playa El Ray (Savegre)

flying drawings

I found some pictures I was drawing on the flight from Madrid to San Jose, Juan Santamaria. It was a really long flight and I was running out of things to do, so I whipped out my sketchbook and drew random things whilst listening to Johnny Cash and Elvis Costello.

Saying Goodbye

This was the hardest part, saying our farewells to the families we'd lived with and gotten so close to, the locals we made friends with, the 'rudboys' with the machetes strapped to their belts, to the little kids that always followed and played with us in their curious ways (Alfredo included, the little 7 year old that chopped off the head of a snake with 'his' machete in his living space, the pig castrations we had to listen to for half an hour which were done on mature pigs without any anaesthetics, Armando the man with a name on his high white horse and womanising charms, mr president of the community with God knows how many mistresses who fell in the spell of his attraction hidden behind his thick beard and buckle belly, the many skinny cows I took pictures of, the smoke that would suffocate the air at 4 am followed by the cockerel and hounds orchestrating their own music with the birds, pigs and the chickens. It was a very emotional early morning, but we set off eventually with our giant rucksacks into the hills and to a small town 7km away called Yali to catch a public bus to Esteli and from their back to field base to get our next project...

Abode

Pictures of my house and kitchen, taken with my 'Olympus Trip 35' camera.
More pictures can be found on my flickr account.

Getting close...

Progress with the community centre was going well and by this stage we were almost finished with the first half of the construction, which would be carried on by a second group coming in after changeover to finish the beautiful work we'd built together with the locals...

Monkeys & revolution

On our last Sunday we were curious to see monkeys which could be found higher up in the mountains amongst the tall trees. So we thought it would make an interesting adventure, so that's what we did. A local took us up to a part of the forest high up which he explained was where the battles of the last revolution with the Sandinistas was fought, and home to many bunkers now lost and forgotten in that very jungle. It was an interesting day, but unfortunately the wrong time of the day so no monkeys were spotted. But the trek and the views from the top made everything worth it.

First day at work

"We met the local craftyman, builder, engineer, legend called Noel. This is the day we began building the foundations for the building after a brief introduction to the communities way of building, measuring (using their unique measurement called vara) with strings and sticks, making wires from scratch and mixing concrete the traditional way."

Expedition in Central America

Just over a week ago I retired from the magical landscape of Costa Rica and Nicaragua and the great people I was fortunate enough to meet in my travels and volunteer work there. For the 3 months of my expedition I had brought with me an Olympus Trip 35 camera, an old point and shoot from the 70's, in almost pristine condition. I also brought with me a small sized Moleskine sketchbook which I brought almost everywhere. I kept a journal in it as well, and now is my chance to upload everything and share the places I've been, the things I've done and the people I've met.

When I arrived in Costa Rica, I stayed in a Hostel in San Jose for two days, where I met up with some friends and volunteers before heading off to the fieldbase in Turrialba, 2 hours eastwards to meet up with the rest of the volunteers and project managers and co-ordinators.

After a short week of jungle and survival training I was on a bus heading to Miraflor, northern Nicaragua which became a 2 day bus journey. There I was to live and work with an indigenous community in some valleys within the Miraflor region called San Ramon. We were to help build a community centre for the adults, right next to the school the charity organisation helped build back in 1997. This would be my home for the next 3 weeks, living with a family inside a shack, sleeping on a wooden bench with potato sacks.














These are just a few pictures from my arrival on the 2 days (you can find more on my flickr account).

shunt, london bridge

It was my 19th birthday on the 22nd of Jan, and we went to shunt in the old underground of London Bridge. We ended up seeing some pretty weird things, first the shockingly amazing Gothic Circus with grotesque mechanical figures and inventions by

Sharmanka, acrobatic dancers along the spotlit walls of the chambers, dark synthetic park made of red roses, various art exhibition spaces by various artists and towards the far end; several wooden tables and chairs by a bar area in a large pitch black room lit by single candles on tables and pianos, the whole scene resembling something out of Lord of the Rings (the human's village). It was definitely a night to remember. Luckily I brought a camera, unlucky, it was the one camera that does not go down very well with nigh shots or dim lit situations; my Olympus Trip 35 (1979). Anyway, these are some of the photos.