{"id":1381,"date":"2008-07-27T00:01:41","date_gmt":"2008-07-27T06:01:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=1381"},"modified":"2008-07-27T00:02:11","modified_gmt":"2008-07-27T06:02:11","slug":"7-imps-7-kicks-73-featuring-rima-staines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=1381","title":{"rendered":"7-Imp’s 7 Kicks #73: Featuring Rima Staines"},"content":{"rendered":"


\nJules<\/font><\/strong>: Yes, that’s a clock. A beautiful clock. But I’ll get to that in a minute. First of all…<\/p>\n

Happy Sunday to all! It’s a new week, and—as usual here at 7-Imp—we’re taking some time to reflect on Seven(ish) Exceptionally Fabulous, Beautiful, Interesting, Hilarious, or Otherwise Positive Noteworthy Things from the past week—whether book-related or not— that happened to you. <\/p>\n

This week we’re celebrating with Rima Staines<\/strong><\/a>, U.K.-based illustrator, painter, maker of things, and teller of tales, “inspired most of all by stories and by the edge of things, strange and odd and dark yet familiar.” Rima told me, “I grew up in an artistic household<\/strong><\/a> and now scrape a happy living making {my} art.” Rima has always loved to combine words with her images and likes to play with language and rhyme. Her fledgling stories are aimed at child-adults and adult-children, and her paintings are reminiscent of an old medieval-coloured folktale world where things are not quite as they seem. She is living for the moment in the hills of Scotland, building a home on wheels with her boyfriend to live and travel and write stories in. At Rima’s site, The Hermitage<\/strong><\/a><\/em>, you can see many of her sketches, drawings, paintings (watercolors and oils on wood and paper), and prints (She’s also started experimenting with stop-motion animation<\/strong><\/a> and, for the near future, has plans for making a puppet show and at long last writing and illustrating the tales that have been stored in her head, as she put it.) And you can see clearly that, as her site’s bio<\/strong><\/a> puts it, she’s always “had one foot in Early Medieval Europe.” The rest of her bio sums up well what you get when your eyes take in one of her paintings or drawings:<\/p>\n

“Rima’s curiosity leads her through the many worlds of words, languages and lettering, books and stories, puppetry, nature and interesting people, music, superstitions, folklore and fairy tales, and most of all the otherness that can be found on the periphery of our lives, the strange and grotesque, the absurd and unnerving…that topsy turvy in between place…”<\/em><\/p>\n

As for that lovely clock pictured above…Rima has recently announced<\/strong><\/a> that her newest creative venture is clock-making—or making “unique original oil paintings on rustic chunks of wood” and making them tick, as her new site, Once Upon O’Clock<\/strong><\/em><\/a>, explains—since she has “a delight in Heath Robinson-like contraptions, automata and all things that clink and clonk, I love to paint folk tales in medieval hues, and make things from wood.” I cannot even BEGIN to tell you how much I want to start saving my pennies for a Rima-clock and how very much in love I am with the web site, because not only do I love the sound of a good, hearty clock ticking, but when you launch the site, there’s this wonderfully bizarre and discordant clock song of sorts that plays, which I’ve been listening to repeatedly as I type this. If you like a good clock like I do (which is an affinity that’s difficult to explain), you’ll enjoy it as well.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The clock featured at the opening of this post is “The Perfumier’s Clock,” which Rima posted about here<\/strong><\/a> at her blog, also titled The Hermitage<\/strong><\/em><\/a>. Rima was asked by a perfumier to paint “a wise woman, a brewer of magic, a young witch rather than an old crone…I am very pleased,” Rima wrote, “with this second clock, I like the warm colours that put me in mind of distilling petals and sunlight through bottles of who-knows-what along a windowsill. This perfumier is stirring her brew as time turns around her cauldron… she is stirring time.”<\/p>\n

The first clock Rima made is pictured below. This is Old Mother Time<\/em>. As Rima explained<\/strong><\/a> at her blog:<\/p>\n

“…{T}hese new once upon o’clocks are made from slices of wood from a tree down the way that has been logs for some time, logs that are a perfect round clock size.<\/p>\n

The wood, once cut, was sanded and the bark left on. Then the hole for the spindle was drilled, off centre to match the rings of the tree. The Old Mother Time<\/em> painting is inspired by the many world myths of the fates spinning the threads of our lives and of time and the familiar old woman of fairytale who spins.”<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Aren’t they beautiful? Below are some of Rima’s drawings and paintings as well, and we thank her kindly for letting us feature her work today. Here<\/strong><\/a> is The Hermitage’s<\/em> home at Etsy<\/em>, should anyone be interested in any prints, by chance. <\/p>\n


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Once Upon a Time<\/em> (pencil)<\/font><\/center>
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Old Woman Tossed up in a Basket<\/em> (colored pencil)<\/font><\/center>
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The Pigeon’s Bride<\/em> (colored pencil)<\/font><\/center>
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Penny Farthing Tea<\/em> (pencil)<\/font><\/center>
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Telling Stories to the Trees<\/em> (watercolor)<\/font><\/center><\/p>\n

* * * eisha’s kicks * * *<\/strong><\/font><\/font><\/center><\/p>\n

Ooh, I am digging the earthy, creepy goodness of Ms. Staines’s art. It’s kind of like if Maurice Sendak<\/strong><\/a> and Brian Froud<\/strong><\/a> had a lovechild who grew up to illustrate The Hobbit<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

1* First off, my bit of bravery<\/strong><\/a> for the week. It’s pretty lame, but here goes: I have a wretched singing voice and I’m really shy about using it in public. But at work the other day I belted out the chorus to ABBA’s “Dancing Queen”<\/strong><\/a> (there was a context, but I forget what it was). And it was in the company of someone who is actually a trained opera singer, no less. Guess what? No one threw any produce at me.<\/p>\n

Dang. I didn’t think this through, but in relating that anecdote I probably just lost all my street cred. My parents had the record, okay? Don’t judge.<\/p>\n

2* I found, in the pocket of a suitcase, my long-lost jewelry bag containing my favorite bracelet (a San Francisco souvenir), a really too-nice-for-me ring my sister gave me for my birthday a couple of years ago, and my all-time favorite barrette – black enamel with mother-of-pearl stars, moon and planets – which I’ve had some version of since college and replaced twice from the same little boutique in Nashville whenever it gets broken. These things had been missing since I moved last summer, and I’d given up on seeing them again.<\/p>\n

3* My neighbors got a produce windfall – they got to pick up a friend’s farm subscription plan stuff when she was out of town in payment for feeding her cats – and they shared with me. Kale, carrots, and green onions. Yum.<\/p>\n

<\/a>4* Oh. My. God. Did you guys see the Joss Whedon internet-only 3-episode supervillain musical, Dr. Horrible<\/em><\/strong><\/a>? It was so perfect. And it is the best thing I’ve ever seen Neal Patrick Harris<\/strong><\/a> do – seriously, his performance is flawless. And it’s so great to see my boyfriend, Nathan<\/strong><\/a>, again – I just miss him so bad. And I can’t stop telling people “These are not The Hammer.” Thanks to Robin Brande<\/strong><\/a> for the heads-up.<\/p>\n

5* Despite not having taken the prerequisites, my sister got through her very rigorous Trigonometry class, one that induced twice-weekly phone calls in which she would weep and moan to me that she was going to fail, there’s no way she passed that test, the teacher is impossible, she should just drop it, etc. etc. She didn’t just pass, she got an A – proving once and for all that one of us must be adopted.<\/p>\n

6* The same sister is all the time trying to get me to watch So You Think You Can Dance?<\/em><\/strong><\/a>, because she doesn’t understand how my appreciation of a good dance performance can be overruled by my deep and profound loathing of all things Reality TV. She keeps sending me YouTube links to some of the better dance numbers to bolster her argument. This one finally got my attention:<\/p>\n

<\/param><\/param><\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

Dude, I’ve already mentioned how much I love that song. And how great is that part where he opens the door and she’s hanging on it? And is it just a weird camera angle, or at about 0:31 does he actually shove her face back through the door with his crotch<\/em>? Whatever, I LOVE IT.<\/p>\n

7* Thanks to Jules’s suggestion after our Jenna Fox co-review, Adrienne<\/strong><\/a> is coming to Ithaca today! We’re gonna go check out the X-Files<\/em> movie. *sigh* I’m a little scared – that last season was just wack and I barely remember it. I hope Mulder is still hot, at least. This<\/strong><\/a> doesn’t give me a lot of hope, though.<\/p>\n

* * * Jules’ kicks * * *<\/strong><\/font><\/font><\/center><\/p>\n

I had a lovely week, but I’m going to forego seven, separate kicks. It might have been lovely, but it was rather quiet and full of—as corny as it may sound—simple joys. I have to say: My girls are both at particularly adorable ages (sure, there are still sibling squabbles and fussing and time-outs and such), and so I spent a lot of time this week finding myself rather in-the-moment with them, drinking them in, marvelling at how fun and clever and beautiful they are. (Of course I’m gonna say all that — I’m the mama.) Kicks for me this week would be like: My two-year-old’s eyes are slowly changing, we suspect, from blue to the grey-green of my eyes, and I can hardly believe how beautiful they are, while my four-and-a-half-year old’s are still blue like the ocean on a bright sunny day. See? You’d all be gagging at my maternal gushy-ness. Oh, and the biggest kick is probably that we’re reading James and the Giant Peach<\/em> this week, which is one reason I put that second image of Rima’s up there — that’s a Roald Dahl<\/strong><\/a> quote.<\/p>\n

I also have no be-brave<\/strong><\/a> moments to report. As I told Eisha, I promise I wasn’t particularly cowardly this week. Again, just a quiet week. I didn’t notice a single chance to be brave in the way I had challenged myself. And, shoot, I wasn’t gonna force it. <\/p>\n

And I’ll also skip seven kicks, since I went on and on about talented Rima. I don’t know about you, but I’ve got a coin jar here. Gonna save up my loose change for a one-of-a-kind fairy tale clock. <\/p>\n

What are your<\/em> kicks this week?<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jules: Yes, that’s a clock. A beautiful clock. But I’ll get to that in a minute. First of all… Happy Sunday to all! It’s a new week, and—as usual here at 7-Imp—we’re taking some time to reflect on Seven(ish) Exceptionally Fabulous, Beautiful, Interesting, Hilarious, or Otherwise Positive Noteworthy Things from the past week—whether book-related or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-seven-good-things-before-monday"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1381\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}