An amazing thing happened in July… one of the lovely ladies from Pony Boy Parlour (284 Albert Street, Brunswick, Melbourne) got in touch with me to ask if I’d like to stock some of my handmade goodies in their store! Beyond excited, I eagerly agreed and got to working on putting together a kick-ass package. For a while now, I’d been mulling over creating a new identity for my brand, and this provided the perfect opportunity to finally stop thinking and just do it. A new irninology identity to celebrate the new decade…
And also, a couple of photos of my things now sitting cozily in the beautiful shop that is Pony Boy Parlour. I can honestly say that I’m completely enamoured with its decor, and am itching for some of the goods I can see from the other designers! If you’re in Melbourne and looking for a fabulous new source for vintage wonders and unique Australian-handmade designs, do pop in and check out the store (at the very least so I can live vicariously through those who have seen it in person)!
Wrist cuffs and Scarves by irninology, Bow hairclips by Whiskers Lane
Milk magnets by ME! (top shelf), Resin Rings by Kelly Christie, Flower Cocktail Rings by Savage Kitten and Pom-Pom hair pins by Pom By Pomegranate.
Retro-chic Necklaces by irninology
All photos courtesy of the lovely Pony Boy Parlour team.
As you may have guessed by the trend of my posts in the past year, I’ve become quite invested in different theories of life satisfaction and wellbeing. Last semester at uni, I got the chance to explore this in the way of creating a stop-motion infographic. I had so much fun learning animation (fledgling steps as they may be) and putting the whole project together. It was really satisfying to bring my ideas to life.
‘Are You Satisfied?’ is a response to the ubiquitous need for balance in daily life, as this is the ultimate key to achieving sound health and wellbeing.
Modern life places a large emphasis on wealth and thus, it’s easy to believe money is a fast track to happiness. While it is linked to wellbeing, it’s not our bank balance, but rather the balance between our social relationships, our contribution to the world and our level of self-satisfaction, which has the largest effect on our state of wellbeing.
Challenge:
For the month of May, I’ve decided to take on the challenge of eliminating all negativity from my life. After the Vegan Challenge where I dealt with self-control in regards to pre-meditated actions, I thought I’d try my hand at administering my own Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (which teaches people that they can change their behaviour if they are aware of the impact of their negative thoughts). I think it’ll be a great detox of sorts, and a true challenge to change the way I think and react to things, large and small, from losing a source of income to missing a train.
Rules:
1. No complaining or expressing words of the “woe is me” variety.
2. No gossiping or bitching, even if it seems harmless.
3. No temper-induced words.
4. No sarcasm.
5. No more cursing or flipping the bird at people (even though they never see or hear me) when they wrong me whilst driving.
6. Curb any negative opinions.
7. Make sure my words or actions don’t make anyone else feel down.
Tools:
1. When I feel my temper or rising or frustrations surfacing, take a few deep breaths.
2. Think about every word before I speak it. Find positive ways to express myself.
3. When a bad situation comes about, strive to find the sunny side of it and know that it will turn out OK (it always has before).
4. Smile at everyone, even if there’s unresolved beef there.
5. Remove some negative words and phrases from the daily-usage-bank: hate, this sucks/ bites/ blows, bad, never, I can’t/ won’t, fail.
6. Change a negative opinion into either a positive from another angle, or at least a neutral.
7. Use the affirmation cards I made a few years ago as daily feel-good sources.
8. Treat everyone with the kindness and politeness I daily show to strangers and acquaintances.
9. Aim to not only focus on the negatives I’m avoiding; truly celebrate the positives too.
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I challenge anyone who reads this to join me, in any degree you like… I’ll send along my daily affirmations to anyone who’s interested as well 
Wish List
1. Wacom tablet
2. Dress form
3. Magazine subscriptions to frankie, yen, russh
Causes for Happiness
1. Priceless time spent with friends… old, new and best
2. Reading feverishly
3. Embracing new habits and challenges
Achievements
1. Creating a logo
2. Finding a near-doppelganger of a favourite cardigan I lost on a flight
3. Making a model of a building
I received this in my email today and couldn’t stop nodding in agreement. A little food for thought for all my artist friends…
Why do we do it after all? What’s the driving force? Passion or glory? Do we end up working harder just to stay afloat?
Let’s be clear about something: it is infuriating that most interesting artists are perfectly capable of functioning in at least two or three professions that are, unlike art, respected by society in terms of compensation and general usefulness. And compensation—which is money—is not only for feeding lavish lifestyles or taking spontaneous beach vacations. Ask anyone who has children or sick relatives in a country without good health care—which could now be almost any country as the administration of life is deferred more and more to the private sphere of personal finance. This only makes the question of fair compensation all the more pressing—it is no longer an issue of some kind of moral or ethical principle, but of life itself. So why should so many talented and hyper-qualified artists submit themselves willingly to a field of work (that is, in art) that offers so little in return for such an huge amount of unremunerated labor? For some reason, either due to artists’ own vanity, to being hypnotized by some sort of authorial diva imperative that promises large-scale recognition, or due to the expectations of the culture itself (not the field of “cultural production” but the de facto one, the less dynamic and slower moving one) and its own befuddlement with regard to artists’ usefulness, the artist is left to expend an enormous amount of professional energy in the doldrums of a murky pseudo-profession that absorbs work under the auspices of some kind of common belief in its higher value. But art is not a religion, and, though it often seems structurally similar, it is not a charity either. This idea of a “higher value” that presides over—and indeed fuels—an idea of art labor as free labor must be contested. All are to blame for it: though classical exploitation is rampant, it may actually pale in comparison to the amount of self-exploitation—the willingly inconclusive, highly generative work that is either too useless or too stubborn to ever align itself with the mundane, but remunerated, field of average labor: that of bakers, garbage men, police officers, cobblers, lawyers, engineers, day laborers, and so forth. These are the people you make your work about, and perhaps who your parents are. Art, you would like to think, is a shining vision of a possibility for something else. So you secretly support your art work with your money job, even a high-paying one. You are your own sugar daddy and trophy wife in a single package. Your gallery sells your work, maybe for a lot of money, yet something does not line up there either. The work does not find its reception even when it is well received. You keep dumping your personal resources into producing your work, your relationships crumble, and the work simply doesn’t find its audience the way an engineer’s building plan will inevitably be constructed, for better or worse. One option is to blame it all on authorship and the cult of the author. But that seems frankly ridiculous. Erase your name, and not only will you not get paid for your time, you will not get credited either. It’s like performing an act of charity for a plant. The only option available could be to simply work more—but while claiming the privileged capacity of the artist within the fields where your determined amateurism has made you a functional expert.
—Julieta Aranda, Brian Kuan Wood, Anton Vidokle
