Issue#2

2 disco under world december 2008

issue #2 contents Meet Joe Blogger: Mike’s Space. Page 49 Dylan Culhane Page 13

Pinkman: Page 21

Follow up on last month: Who won the $500? Page 9 Quick quiz: Think you’re smart? Page 7 Web sites to watch: Page 63 And for something completely different: Have you heard the one about the rugby playing hair dresser? Page 33

Page 65

be seen zine

Neil Buddle: Page 37

James Barnett: Page 53



www.discounderworld.com. direct address page

“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving” What they’re saying about issue #1

Albert Einstein The Greeks did it with humourism, the Chinese believe in it in Yin Yang and we all do it in some way in our lives. Keeping balance between different aspects of our lives helps to keep us out of the hospital or loonie bin and in a state of healthiness. This issue profiles a diverse selection of individuals, who each portray balance in their lives through different means. From the career choices they have made, to the messages they portray in their artwork, to how they go about their everyday lives, the people in this issue balance opposing or alike ideas and views to create their own vision of life.

I hope you enjoy this issue and I look forward to hearing from you,

Stacey Childs P.S. I think the idea behind New Year’s resolutions is that we balance out the over indulging we all have to look forward to over the next few weeks. Enjoy it! disco underworld is published by Online Insight Limited © copyright 2008. We welcome you sharing the information in these pages, but copyright laws apply for reproducing or using any images or articles for any sort of gain. Editor: Stacey Childs [email protected] Sub Editor: Tessa Prebble

“Interesting, especially your article on Gen Y. I don't buy into generational pigeon-holing. There are too many individuals. I look at my nieces and nephews and don't see typical Gen Y-ers, and I look at my staff here and I can't put them all in one box or give them one label.” Dean Williamson, Sales Director, Country-Wide Publications. “Hi, My name is Marissa and I'm a 3rd year graphic designer currently studying in Unitec. Your magazine was highly entertaining and provided a great inspiration for me! Your magazine encourages young designers a lot and influences us too.”

“I am most impressed with where this looks to be going. The magazine looks to me to be something with great potential. Incidentally, I liked your piece on Generation Y.” Peter Gilderdale, Head of Department Graphic Design, AUT University “Hey Stacey, congrats on your first edition. I've checked it out and it's impressive.” Marie Young, iJumP www.ijump.co.nz “WOW Stacey! disco underworld issue 1 is just fab! I forwarded to other artists I know and they love it! Well done girl! Wishing you much success!” Amie McCarron

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disco under world



Opportunity Navigator:



is

by

y publishe l d u d o r p

www.discounderworld.com. do you know it all? page



Be profiled and have heaps of people read about you and



your work. You’ll also have the chance to win $500 and a spot in The Gold Edition. Entry on page 30.



Be in

The Be Seen Zine. Entry on page 65.



Design



our front cover. Read more on page 34 and e-mail [email protected] to find out more.

Do You Know It All?

7. What is the tip of South America called?

1. Who is the youngest person to ever win an Oscar?

8. What does the word ‘manu’ mean in Maori?

2. Who is Bret McKenzie?

9. Which three South American countries does the equator pass through?

3. Where was President Elect Barrak Obama born?

Contact them first for all your digital publishing needs. They will collaborate with you, or create for you, from start to finish, anything from digital media kits, travel brochures and annual reports to regular publications such as magazines and newspapers for you to share with the world.

Visit www.online-insight.com and request an obligation free quote.



5. What is the only animal that cannot jump?

10. Spell the word that comes before this line: “............... Even though the sound of it Is something quite atrocious”

6. Which two planets in the solar system do not have moons?

Find the answers on page 63 along with our web sites to watch.

4. In the human body, which lung takes in more air?





7





www.discounderworld.com. who won the $500? page

and the winner is... Whitney Reid A big congratulations must go to Whitney for winning the $500 for being last issue’s favourite profile. Since being in disco underworld, Whitney has completed a very successful trip to Melbourne for a client who has offered her ongoing work. She has also been connected with DL Consulting, who have provided her with a design job at Innovation Park (Hamilton) where she is the sole designer responsible for the company’s corporate designs, and the web based design for their clients. As for the money: She is reinvesting it into her design work, putting it towards her degree show next semester. You can read Whitney’s article in last month’s issue here.

Make sure you vote for your favourite profile this issue, the voting forms are at the end of each article. Enter your e-mail, and we will send you one back to verify your existence. If your person gets the most votes over 100 votes, they will win the $500.

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Who will

‘bow chik-ca reow reow...’

be in

Four ways we can get to know each other a little better:

The

Edition?

Vote for your favourite profile using the forms at the end of each article. The profile with the most votes wins a spot in The Gold Edition 2009, an annual print publication with glossy pages, which re-visits the most popular profiles in disco underworld as voted by you. It’s designed to look hot on your coffee table or bedroom floor.

If the winning profile receives over 100 votes, they will also win NZ $500 cold hard cash! You can vote for as many people as you like, but only one vote per profile per e-mail will be counted. Voting closes Sunday December 21st, 2008 at 12 pm NZL time.

facebook

become a ^ fan

d un isc de o r

Gold

Follow our blog and we’ll follow yours

ld

r wo

Find us on Behance

it’ll keep you cool

Join us on @discounderworld



www.discounderworld.com. dylan culhane. page

“I think you just have to do what you love and find a way to make that work out for your life.”

Dylan Culhane

“Chaos” “This is a page from my visual diary, I drew a couple of little drawings each day merging it into the rest. It’s what I have seen, heard and thought about that day/week/month all rolled into a drawing.”

Join our email newsletter and be the first to find out about the profiles in the upcoming magazine and first to read every edition of discounderworld.

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W

www.discounderworld.com. dylan culhane. page

hen disco underworld interviewed Dylan, he was busy working on the final stages of his animations for a project at university. He created an identity for a television channel, seed TV, and had already produced other promotional material such as business cards and posters (on next pages), but the animations were his pièce de résistance.

The process to create the animations was quite simple, but very laborious. Dylan filmed his sister Rosie, using a cheap digital camera, then imported the video into Adobe Flash, where he drew over the video, using a tablet. He drew every single frame of these animations, a process called rotoscoping. Before talking with us, Dylan had completed over 500 drawings in just a few days. The effects were clear. “My eyes are becoming slightly melted from the deep monitor burn and my hand is cranking occupational overuse syndrome.”

Animation by Dylan Culhane Music by Jeremy Hantler

When you consider that it takes one hour of drawing to produce just two to three seconds worth of frame, and there are over 600 drawings in his animations, occupational overuse syndrome is par for the course for Dylan.

“My eyes are becoming slightly melted from the deep monitor burn and my hand is cranking occupational overuse syndrome.”

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www.discounderworld.com. dylan culhane. page

“Had a pretty good art teacher at intermediate, he went by the name of Mr. Ralph. He has since quit teaching art and has become a full time drag queen. I’m not sure what name he goes by now.”

The concept poster for seed television.

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Dylan describes the finished product as a “colourful creative exploration of ideas”. The story is about the transferring of ideas and inspiration. “The seed of an idea grows in the brain giving birth to creativity,” Dylan explains. “This creativity gives others new ideas and so the seed spreads.” Dylan decided in 2006 to go to University after a bout of what he calls “post high school depression”: not knowing what he wanted to do with the rest of his life, and thinking that art “somehow did not seem like a totally valid option for a career path, too uncertain, too unreliable.” The turning point came when he realised that for him, settling for something that just paid the bills but that he didn’t truly enjoy, would be selling himself short. “I would prefer to work a job that I thoroughly enjoyed but had miniscule pay than a high paying job in which I struggled to get through the day. The extra money would be spent trying to make me feel good again! I believe that if you love doing what you do you will succeed at it. So I enrolled at uni the day before it began and have been cranking out the art/design since then.”



www.discounderworld.com. dylan culhane. page

The business card design for the seed series.

Dylan chose to focus on computer graphic design because of his love of computers, and the ever-expanding world of possibilities they create. He also enjoys the texture and expressiveness of paint and traditional methods of art making. “Computer graphic design lets me create a mix between these.” For his ‘seed’ project he used newspapers, grid paper, paints, and pens and pencils, combining them all with his hand-drawn animations in Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Flash. In the future Dylan hopes to publish children’s books and comics, and “have my spirit remain

uncrushed by the real

world that I keep

hearing about.”

Animation by Dylan Culhane Music by Jeremy Hantler

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P I N K M A

Who will be in The

Gold

Edition?

Vote for your favourite profile using the forms at the end of each article. The profile with the most votes wins a spot in The Gold Edition 2009, an annual print publication with glossy pages, which re-visits the most popular profiles in disco underworld as voted by you. It’s designed to look hot on your coffee table or bedroom floor.

If the winning profile receives over 100 votes, they will also win NZ $500 cold hard cash! You can vote for as many people as you like, but only one vote per profile per e-mail will be counted. Voting closes Sunday December 21st, 2008 at 12 pm NZL time.

The inverted pink triangle was originally intended as a badge of shame, used by the Nazis to identify male prisoners in concentration camps who were sent there because of their homosexuality. It has now become an international symbol of gaypride and the gay rights movement, and is second in popularity only to the rainbow flag. By choosing the name “Pinkman”, Pinkman juxtaposes the two words, blending stereotypes and rebelling against them at the same time.

Pinkman’s latest painting: “Miruko”. “Miru” means “looking” or “seeing” and “ko” means “boy” or “girl” in Japanese. The figure, which is both male and female, is conscious of its sexuality, but is also criticising itself.

P

inkman, aka Ryota Saito, lives in Tokyo, Japan and describes himself as a fairynot because of his sexuality, but because he actually is a fairy, something he realised on a recent camping trip in the woods. He expresses his sexuality through his art work, which ranges from paintings on canvas, to “live paintings” where he performs at raves and nightclubs around the world and starts from scratch, painting on anything from paper to windows, walls to ceilings. His work attempts to overcome obstacles in his life such as religion, gender issues, race and sexuality. He draws on everyday life, music and his critical mind to create art from his unique perspective. We interviewed him through his friend and interpreter, Tim.



www.discounderworld.com. pinkman. page

What materials do you use?

“Geijutsu wa bakuhatsu da! which means ‘Art is explosion!’”

How long have you been painting for? I started going to art school at seven years of age. Who do you most admire from the art world? Why? Taro Okamoto, because he said “geijutsu wa bakuhatsu da!”, which means “Art is explosion!” How would you describe your art? I don't describe my art. I paint what comes into my mind. I express my feelings or my thoughts and impressions on things (be they around me, or from things I have read or seen). I read about the pink triangles and the holocaust and have incorporated that into my art recently, but my art evolves and moves and changes as I do.

I paint on canvas mostly, but am also often asked to perform Live Paintings at clubs, raves and events where I paint on anything from windows to walls. I don’t usually decide what I am going to paint before these events, I go and let the space, crowd, mood and music inspire me. What has been the biggest challenge in your life? How did you overcome it? I decided to drop out of my art course at uni. It didn't inspire me and I wasn't challenged. After that I didn't know what to do. I worked part-time in crappy jobs and moved to the countryside by myself for a while. Then I realised that if art was what I loved, I could still paint. I didn't have to follow a conventional method, so I began painting again. I think following your heart is the most important lesson I have learnt in my life so far. Also... being gay in Japan. I told my mum, she wasn't happy, but now she's come to understand and accept me, but she won't let me tell my father. What is your philosophy for life? Eat curry, wear pink, follow your heart and be nice to fairies.

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Live Painting @ COQDO records



www.discounderworld.com. pinkman. page

About Live Painting at COQ records: I had decided that I wanted to do a painting of two people kissing as I began to set up for the event. When it was time for me to paint, I just started and let the paints and colours help me to build my image.

Go on! Share your talents with the rest of us!

It took about 2 to 3 hours. As people come up to chat, it's a different timeframe/process each time I do a live gig.

Access to music & art (there are so many scenes in Tokyo) and of course THE FOOD.

If you can capture your work on paper, video, audio...whatever, we can publish it, and if we do you will get these:

I also love the “weird” things about Japan that don’t exist in other countries.

n hyperlinks to your blog/email/ website

Worst things?

n at least a four page spread of you and your work

Lack of art funding and expense of gallery space.

n the chance to be profiled again in The Gold Edition, published December 2009 Enter your details here, along with a description of you and your work. Include your website/ blog if you have one, and we will be in touch!

I don’t try to be a Japanese artist painting Japanese-esque images. I try to let my paintings express me and be relevant to everyone across cultures. If you could go anywhere in the world where would it be and why? I don’t remember the country, but the place that has the pink beach.... why? Because it’s PINK!

Best things about living in Japan?

discounderworld doesn’t discriminate:

n the chance to win $500, decided by our readers

Do you think your culture and upbringing manifest themselves in your art?

How would you describe the people there? It seems people just want to be regular.

Visit Ryota’s website to see more paintings: www.pppinkman.com

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www.discounderworld.com. now for something completely different. page

33

Did you hear the one about the rugby playing hair dresser?

T

here is a store in Tennessee that has the title “The Shoes and Cheese Store.” WTF? The juxtaposition in that choice of name made me want to know more. So when I heard about a rugby-playing hairdresser that lived in my home town, I had the same reaction, and popped into his salon to arrange an interview. Aaron Smith was part of the New Zealand under 20 rugby team that took out the World Cup in Wales this year. His is an unusual, but intriguing story about balancing his passion for playing rugby, with his finesse for hairdressing. When I asked which one he prefers, his eyes lit up immediately. “Rugby. I love it. It’s every boy’s dream to be an All Black.” Aaron’s life would be a lot simpler without hairdressing, and when asked why he does both, he quotes All Blacks coach Graham Henry by saying, “better people make better All Blacks”, and he believes that the balance that hairdressing and rugby provides keeps him grounded.

Written by Stacey Childs

“Better people make better All Blacks.” “Mum always told me that rugby doesn’t last forever, and that you have to have balance in life. And she was right, I broke my leg playing rugby in August this year.” Luckily, his leg is healing well, and he is back training with his team. A normal week sees Aaron getting out of bed at six am for his training programme; work from 9am–5.30pm; followed up with more training with his team. Games are on Saturdays, and Sundays are for rest and recovery. He also juggles family, a girlfriend, and hair college, but says he wouldn’t do it any other way. A mixture of things got him into hairdressing: one of his mate’s mothers owned a salon and would trim and style all their hair. Aaron was always interested in what she did, asking questions and learning how to cut and style himself.

www.discounderworld.com. now for something completely different. page

Have a crack at designing our front cover, and we will thank you publicly for your effort. We may even use it on a future issue, which then means you will have a choice story to tell your friends, and lots of people will see your design. Hence “kudos”.

Eventually, he started cutting his mate’s hair whenever they needed it, and knew he wanted to study hairdressing. Unfortunately, every school holidays he had a rugby camp so had no way of taking up a hairdressing apprenticeship.

Want Kudos?

After finishing school, he was lucky enough to be offered an apprenticeship with a local hairdresser, who was sympathetic to the fact that he needed a lot of time off for rugby. He now works there when he is not playing rugby or attending hair college. When Aaron was younger (and didn’t know the option of being an All Black was a real one), he wanted to be a jet fighter, and later, Neo from The Matrix. He realised he could make money from playing rugby when he was 17 and first began getting paid for playing the game he loved. “At high school I made the best team we had, at 15 years old. Then I was picked for the Junior Hurricanes (the team for emerging players in the province). When I made the Manawatu team while I was still at high school, that was when I started earning money for playing rugby, and I was like, yeah I can do this.”

“When I started earning money for playing rugby, and I was like, yeah I can do this.”

He lists failure as the most difficult thing in his life, but also labels it as the driving force behind his success. He has failed at making teams in the past, and “out of failure, comes wanting it more.” Aaron is working towards the dream of the All Blacks, taking steps in the right direction, with club rugby, New Zealand age group representation, and provincial rugby. At only 19, he’s well on his way to every Kiwi boy’s dream. And one last thing: Does he get much shit from his teammates? “Nah they think it’s kinda cool, kinda different. They ask how they should get their hair cut.”

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www.discounderworld.com. neil buddle. page

Neil Buddle “I am not overtly political or obsessively so. I just think it is really important for artists to engage with contemporary issues and concerns. Well, more important than endlessly self-referencing art and making in-jokes anyway.”

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www.discounderworld.com. neil buddle. page

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O

riginally from the UK, Neil immigrated to New Zealand in 1999, where he worked hard in different arts roles to establish new programmes and develop the reach of the arts community. At the end of the day, he had little energy left to pursue his own artistic interests, so when the opportunity arose, he moved to Wanganui, choosing a job which gave him the ability to balance his professional career, his own artistic interests, and his family life and children.

He uses the alias for collaborative work, such as DJing, and for DIGzine, his once off art zine, which was inspired by the idea that artists don’t have much money to buy other artist’s art, postcards are the only cheap way to collect other art. The DIG zine was only $5 and featured 11 local artists work. Geography is one of the biggest influences in the work Neil produces. When studying in Wales, his work was made up of mostly ‘found’ objects, from drains to charred pieces of wood, he would use the piece as the inspiration, and tell its story through the painting he did on its surface. Since living in New Zealand, his work is mostly done as lino cuts ‘linos something I’ve done since my early teens, and the reason for continuing is the ability to do it at home and the ‘quintness’ of the medium. Most people do

Technique for Self Sabotage: Shoot yourself in the foot. “A humorous take on the last couple of years of my life. This was due to past decisions coming home to roost essentially setting me back in my life. Often we like to blame outside forces for our difficulties, however on reflection all my difficulties were directly or indirectly a result of my own past decisions, actions and attitudes. This spawned the idea of self-sabotage and the several popular phrases to describe this i.e. shoot yourself in the foot, cut off your nose to spite your face, burn your bridges and hoisted by your own petard (Historic = To be blown up by your own bomb).”



Neil believes it is an artist’s job primarily to communicate with as many people as possible, and then to be involved in politics, whether they be local, national or global.

“Artists have lost their ability to be involved. They are becoming self indulgent, and because life is easy, they have been taken away from the need to be political. I’m not staunchly political, more interested in creating discussion.”

www.discounderworld.com. neil buddle. page

Since living in New Zealand, his work is mostly done as lino cuts. “It’s something I’ve done since my early teens, and the reason for continuing is the ability to do it at home and the ‘quaintness’ of the medium. Most people do wood cutting, and lots of people say lino cutting is a children’s medium. I like that. And I like the smell.”

Neil has been inspired by the beauty of the landscape (see “Towards Karekare”, one of four prints done on the west coast of New Zealand, around Piha), the link between politics and culture (see “H is for history”) and by expired New Zealand icons (the Afterlife series), of which Bruno Lawrence is the favourite so far.

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www.discounderworld.com. neil buddle. page

H is for history

“Due to the Maori dialect in the Whanganui area pronouncing 'wh' as a 'w' not as a 'f', the early settlers who transliterated the name, called it Wanganui. If the rules regarding transliteration are followed the English written name means nothing in Maori whereas the name with the ‘h’ means big water, or close to. The semantics I see as unimportant, however, how the tangata whenua feel about it is. The print depicts the name like the Hollywood sign, stuck on the side of a wealthy hill suburb, the H fallen and neglected in the river.”

The Afterlife Series

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“The phenomenon of Reality TV has swept the world, providing the media-makers with an endless supply of cheap programming. As we, the public, become the stars, or villains of our own entertainment, we become cannibals, essentially consuming ourselves in an unhealthy voyeur-fest of vicariousness by proxy. Our perceptions of ourselves and our environment are becoming warped and distorted and our participation and interaction with the 'real', diminished. The piece itself shows a dismembered hand operating a remote control and setting off an explosion on the screen which simultaneously blows up the TV. The image on the TV is of a couple watching an atomic bomb explode but the image in the background is a couple looking at a tree in the moonlight. The suggestion is that TV often exaggerates and portrays things as worse than they are, for dramatic necessity, thus if you only see the world on TV, you aren't seeing the truth.”



quick fire questions:

www.discounderworld.com. neil buddle. page

1

Do you have any vices/guilty pleasures?

Goodness, the answer is yes, but not so much anymore. I’ve always enjoyed the odd psychedelic experience, but am relatively vice free now.

2

What is the most awesome thing you have ever done?

Children. Nothing is quite as miraculous, rewarding, challenging and painful than having children. It’s the biggest miracle I’ve been involved in.

3

What is your philosophy for life?

Being optimistic. It is very important to retain a sense of magic in the world.

4

What are five materialistic things you just can't live without? I’ve lived with nothing, when backpacking around Europe, I just had a sleeping bag. We had a list of criteria for finding a place to sleep, and they went in descending order of importance: first was safety, then dry, then comfortable (i.e. lying down flat).

5

What is life's greatest mystery?

Life itself. Humans are so passé, but everything is amazing, we are amazing. Visit Neil’s web site to see more: www.differentdrum.webs.com

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www.discounderworld.com. mike’s space. page

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P

Mike’s Space:

eople talk about culture shock as a thing that happens in other countries. You know, over there. No one ever talks about it in relation to coming back home.

When Culture Shocks

But coming home can be just as disorienting, scary and shocking as travelling to a foreign country and culture. Maybe even more so.

“See: thinking a hooker was a restaurant hostess and accidentally walking into her place of business.”

Teaching English in Korea for a year was fraught with more than its fair share of awkwardness and embarrassment. See: thinking a hooker was a restaurant hostess and accidentally walking into her place of business. See: having to explain to a roomful of attentive teenagers why Uranus is the funniest planet of all the planets. Despite all those moments, finding a way to fit back into my own culture upon my return was even more awkward. I arrived back in America after a 14 hour flight from Seoul that was so painfully boring I watched An Inconvenient Truth four times, and X-Men 3, once in Mandarin



because the English audio channel didn’t work. When the plane finally landed, I waited patiently in the customs line, holding my excitement subtly under my bouncing heels. These two guys in front of me, both wearing backwards baseball caps, Hawaiian board shorts and cut-off t-shirts showing off toneless biceps starched with a more than an ample amount of meat and potatoes, started complaining about the line. “Aw fuck,” one says to the other. “This shit is so gay.” “Calm down, dog,” the other replies. “We’re almost the fuck outta here.” Me, I was just behind them, smiling. What’s this I heard? Blatant homophobia directed at an inconvenient by-product? Unashamed use of explicit language in a public place? White guys trying to talk black? Hell yeah, I thought. I’m back. I’m back in America! I almost dropped my bags and kissed the ground.

Despite my euphoric introduction back to my homeland, it only lasted so long. My first week back in the States was spent in Florida. It was October. The beaches were deserted, save for the snowbirds slowly shuffling along the tidelines in their running shoes and stretched tube socks. I walked with them along the beach. I watched the moon tuck down under the ocean in the early morning since jet lag told me it was midday. I wandered aimlessly around town, still weaning myself off a steady diet of kimchi and fumbling my way through a meal without chopsticks. Forks seemed strange and awkward. When I ordered food from a restaurant, I said “Thank You’” in Korean when I left. The hostess was confused and chomped her gum loudly in my direction. I was a stranger in a strange, yet vaguely familiar, land. My second night back, we ate at a seafood bar. No sushi was available. No squid jerky, either. The only things available were fried fish, fried catfish and french fries. A man sat in the corner and tapped away Jimmy Buffet songs on a keyboard.

www.discounderworld.com. mike’s space. page

Towards the end of the night, he started playing the opening stanzas to a song everyone obviously knew because they begin to stand. He asked everyone to hold hands and form a circle. They were already doing this before he spoke. This was a solemn moment.

“He then requested everyone sing along to ‘I'm Proud to be an American.’ I held my mom's hand, caught somewhere between falling over in exhaustion and trying to suppress laughter.” “I'm just not ready for this,” I told my mom. “It’s too much.” She just gave me a hug, and told me I needed to rest. On the way back to the hotel, the soft refrain of “Cheeseburgers in Paradise” echoed down the coast. Part of me wondered if that was all there was to eat.

Mike Woodruff lives in Los Angeles. He is currently working on his first novel, The Spanish Mar. When not writing, he enjoys playing basketball and throwing rocks at unsuspecting brown bears. He also likes to eat Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. You can find him on the internet at www.mutinouswombats.blogspot. com. Read last month’s Mike’s Space here.

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James Barnett “Enjoy the experiences life gives you, even if they are not what you were hoping for or expecting.”

www.discounderworld.com. james barnett. page

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“Swim”, taken at the Salt Water baths in North Narrbeen, Sydney

J

ames is a professional photographer whose work and motivation in life are shaped by his unique perspective of the world. James immigrated to Australia when he was 12, from his birth country of South Africa. Born with only one hand, James says he “had to discover new ways of doing things to keep up with mates”. Today he operates his camera without any modifications, working things out as he goes. James describes his childhood in South Africa as just about the same as any kids. "South Africa could be a dangerous place, but for a kid who didn’t know much else, South Africa was just the way life was.” Leaving mates behind and having to find new ones in another country with another culture was difficult, but he says the hardest thing was getting used to the Australian sense of humour.

“I guess most of my life I've had to discover new ways of doing things to keep up with mates!”

“60 Long Reef”, Sydney



James’ South African heritage plays a big role in the things he has done and the hopes he has for the future. Instead of celebrating his 21st birthday with a big party, he and some of his mates put in money to help build a school in Africa, and he hopes one day to work on building sustainable projects overseas, using his photography

to help people in the third world. After 11 years of living in Australia, the thing he misses most about South Africa is the national pride, as South Africa comes out of apartheid. The nation is strengthening and growing and hopeful for the future, but he realizes that his life now would be a lot different if he was still there.

www.discounderworld.com. james barnett. page

“Talking to people who grew up as teenagers and young adults over there reminds me how different things are. I don’t know if I would have had the same opportunities to follow a passion over there.” Australia has given him the safety and freedom to pursue his dreams, and South Africa has shaped his view of the world.

“Seeing and growing up around the poverty and violence in a third world country has really helped me to keep perspective in my life. The world is a big place with lot of people worse off than me and I aim to do my best to make the most of the opportunities I've been given.” Visit James’ web site to see more: www.jaywill.redbubble.com

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web

www.discounderworld.com. web sites to watch. page

s i t e s

t o

wa t c h www.sketchswap.com

www.onesentence.org

Draw anything on the pad, hit “submit drawing”, and get one in response. Makes the world feel like a smaller place.

True stories told in one sentence. Our favourite so far: “As I woke up from my nap to find written on my feet ‘This is my momma and you can’t have her,’ I realized that my child is very, very strange.” Hop on there and find yours.

Answers to the quiz on page 7 1. Tatum O’Neal for Paper Moon 1974. 2. Bret from Flight of the Conchords. 3. Hawaii 4. The right lung 5. An elephant 6. Mercury and Venus 7. Cape Horn 8. Bird 9. Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil. 10. Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

www.postsecret.blogspot.com

Do you know something no one else knows?

People send in their secrets on the back of postcards, which are then posted on the blog. Topics range from mundane to meaningful, and there is an English, French, Korean, German and Spanish version too.

Suggest questions here:

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AMIE McCARRON

be seen zine Created to give every artist exposure to people who appreciate a good piece of art when they see it. Be in the next one:

started working life climbing the corporate ladder of multi-national companies based in New Zealand. The daily grind was wearing her out more and more every day, and she came to a point in her life where enough was enough and she had to get out of there for sanity’s sake.

She now works from home, painting, designing web sites, and walking dogs on the side. Even though she is not earning like she used to, she is happy and doing what she wants. Her first exhibition of paintings landed her the National Women’s Work Painting Award. Amie carried on to sell well both nationally and internationally but she began to notice poorer quality copies of her work being flogged off at cheaper prices.

{Amie McCarron: Figurative Paintings}

www.amiemccarron.co.nz

Name: Amie McCarron Style: Figurative or Abstract Website: www.amiemccarron.co.nz Email: [email protected]

Early 2008, she’d had enough of similar styles flooding the market so decided to try a new medium: encaustic. Encaustic is one of the earliest forms of painting, used by the ancient Greeks 2000 years ago. The paint is created by mixing pigment in a heated beeswax and resin base, and is built upon wooden frames, layer by layer. All five visible sides of the frame are covered by the wax, creating depth and texture. Amie was introduced to this style by encaustics guru Paul Hutchinson, from New Plymouth, who taught her the techniques of mixing the wax and fusing the layers. Amie’s husband provided the inspiration for the series, suggesting she use the pictures of stars and nebulas on the NASA web site as inspiration.

be seen zine

The Be Seen Zine, introducing you to a wider range of styles and arty types. Proudly part of disco underworld since this issue.





{Darcy Gladwin: Documentry Photographer}

www.blueamp.net.nz/darcygladwin

{Justine Beckett: Colourful and Composed}

www.justinebeckett.com

Name: Darcy Gladwin

Name: Justine Beckett

Style: Documentary Photography

Style: Colourful and Composed

Website:

Website: www.justinebeckett.com

www.blueamp.net.nz/darcygladwin

Email: [email protected]

Email: [email protected]

The Be Seen Zine, introducing you to a wider range of styles and arty types. Proudly part of disco underworld since this issue.

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