Andy Warhol Exhibition at the De La Warr Pavilion

There is currently an Andy Warhol exhibition on at a local museum, the De La Warr Pavillion in Bexhill-On-Sea, East Sussex. The building is a modernist icon for contemporary arts situated right on the seafront.

 

 

I went to the exhibition before Christmas with the children I work with. They had recently been studying his work in art and had made pop art of their faces in the style of this famous picture:

Here are some of my favourites from the exhibition:

There was a whole room of cow, gun and hamburger prints. The kids didn't quite get the meaning of it and I decided not to delve into it, it was a bit graphic! Haha, those people in the photo look scared (google image)!

 

A portrait of the Chinese leader Mao Tse Tung (1972). 

Kimiko (1981), pretty!

The famous Campbell's soup. 

The man himself. Quite an interesting and rather wacky guy! But think how pop art plays such a huge part in advertising today e.g. the Ipod adverts. It would be strange without it!

The Future of Eastbourne

Following on from my last post about rediscovering Eastbourne, I noticed a display in the shopping centre about an extension and revamp due to start this year. The current shopping centre is rather dull and dated with a poor range of shops:

However, a £65 million plan has been approved to transform the shopping centre creating 26 new stores and hundreds of new jobs. It is proposed that it will be finished by 2015 and look something like this:

Loving the double height glass frontage!

 

  

It is also likely that there will be a department store such as House of Fraser or John Lewis, something which is totally lacking in this part of the south east. If the redevelopment of the centre goes ahead as planned, it will mean a huge boost to the ecomony of the town. I know I would go more often. I'm excited, let's hope it all goes to plan!

Memories, Dreams and Reflections 2011

1. Me!

Me on the left, on a night out in London.


2. I Love You

Baby boy!


3. Still Laughing . . .

I love watching him "fly"!


4. Winter Wonderland

5. Birthday

6. Friends

7. I Was Inspired

8. Spring Fever

9. Travel or Vacation

Boston, MA.


10. Summer Days

The lake at summer camp in Maine.


11. A Day In My Life

12. All Smiles

Never too old for smiling on the swings!


13. Autumn Harvest

My moose pumpkin for Halloween! I was missing Maine so had moose on the brain!


14. Family or Home

 

Minty waiting to eat the postman! 

15. Celebrate!

Red, white and blue cupcakes for the celebration of the year - The Royal Wedding.

16. Let's Do It Again

All the fun of the fair!


17. I Miss You

I miss living in London, my favourite city!


18. Beautiful

My beautiful cousin on her wedding day.


19. Dress Up

The counselors at the camp in Maine, where I worked this summer, had to dress up for a game of hide and seek and those that were found by the campers had to jump in the lake. Luckily I wasn't one of them!


20. Macro

These blackberries were hand picked from the country lanes around our house in rather large quantities and frozen. Whenever we need them for a recipe we whip them out of the freezer and defrost, which is what they are doing above!


21. Holidays

22. My Favourite

I love this photo that I snapped in Times Square during a crazy storm in NYC. It was just before Irene and I was on my way (walking) to see Wicked. The blurred man with the umbrella was legging it to get indoors. Let me tell you, Times Square was totally deserted and people must have thought I was cuckoo stopping to take a photo. But I guess if it was my favourite photo of the year it was worth it! Plus I was already soaked to the skin so I thought a few seconds more rain won't matter?


23. Don't Ever Change

These are some of my kids from camp this summer. They were 11/12 years old and it was such a nice age group. They were mature enough to appreciate sleep and not be awake all night giggling but still young enough to not feel embarrassed about wanting to play fun childhood games. I'm not sure if I will return this summer but if I do, I hope my girls still have that innocence.


24. Just Because . . . So There!

25. Hopes and Dreams

Who knows what 2012 will bring? Let's hope it's good!

Rediscovering My Town

I live in a rural part of East Sussex and the closest towns are Eastbourne and Hastings (20 minutes away), with Tunbridge Wells a bit further away (40 minutes). Since moving down from London, one thing which I really miss is a good place to go shopping. To be honest, neither Eastbourne or Hastings have particularly good shopping centres and I really miss that trendy London shopping vibe.

The day after boxing day, we went to the sales in Eastbourne and it was hell on Earth. I wished I hadn't bothered going because it was crazy busy yet the quality of the shops and items was so poor. Today I needed to go back to exchange something and I was dreading it. So I decided I would try and have a look around other parts of the town, convinced that there must be some decent shops somewhere!

So I ventured off the beaten track a.k.a the dull, run of the mill high street which is essentially a clone of every other town high street in Britain. The first place I came across was a Chocolate Cafe which had a beautiful 12 Days of Christmas cake in the window, each layer decorated according to the song. (None of the photos in this post were taken by me, they're all off Google as I didn't have my camera).

It was nearly lunch time and I noticed they did savoury food as well as sweet so we decided to have lunch here instead of the usual sandwich in Marks and Sparks where we queued for half an hour to get a coffee last week, arrghh! Inside it looked like this:

 

It had a black and pink theme which wasn't at all over the top. I liked the black silhouette canvases and chandeliers. Immediately, I felt that trendy London vibe. The food was delicous too. The coffee was served with a single chocolate truffle which was a nice touch and the sandwiches were on freshly made granary bread with some more unusual fillings like Thai Green Chicken.

Success! I had found somewhere new and interesting! After lunch I headed to an older part of the town called Little Chelsea. It is basically two streets of independent shops, close to the attractive Town Hall which can be seen in the picture below. The bells in the clock tower happened to chime as we walked past, cute!

 

There were a few more cafes, tea rooms and pubs which looked rather nice. There were also lots of cute and quirky gift, furniture and craft shops. I also saw a huge second hand bookshop but ran out of time to go in because of the parking meter. I love rummaging in old book shops, you never know what you'll find - I will definitely go in next time. Not only were the books piled to the ceiling inside, they were also wrapped around the shop on the streets either side of it. Unusually in this day and age, the books are left outside when the shop is closed and customers put the money through the letter box!!!

I was so glad I made the effort to seek out new places today. I feel much better about my local town now. When I first moved down here I was excited to discover new places but I think since I've been working, I havn't made the effort so much. Today reminded me not to be lazy! More on Eastbourne in my next post as I discovered some interesting facts about the future of the town today.