A White Christmas? A Wet One? Or Just a Great One?!

Oh this rain! Everything is wet inside and out, the garden looks atrocious and my dog looks like he just surfed the biggest wave of the century!

It is nice though huh? It kind of makes me feel as if perhaps this is what the beginning of a white and cold Christmas might feel like. Who knows?! Maybe we will get a bit of snow...I mean to have summer weather still under 30degrees beginning December?...Pfft, not normal!

However, the rain has certainly brought loyal customers (or shopaholics?) into the store. Or could it be our amazing 20% off EVERYTHING IN STORE? At least if nothing else, we are able to get to know our customers through great long conversation in between downpours that allow people to slip in and out the store. It has been very nice indeed actually...what can I say? I love my job.

So only 19 sleeps until Christmas, and wow has this year gone ever so quickly! It will continue to slip away as the new year creeps up like a sneaky Santa in the night....

Maybe we won't have a white Christmas after all...whatever the weather ends up being...hot, cold, wet, dry, hail, sunshine or snow....hope you all have a safe, happy and merry Christmas. Now is the time to indulge in everything that is up for offer and not feel one ounce of guilt for it...EAT DRINK AND BE MERRY!!!!!

Natalie M.

Don Quixote - Ballet Nacional De Cuba

with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra

I really don’t see why more people don’t take opera glasses (or in my case standard mini binoculars) to performances such as this. Even though being housed in the beautiful Lyric theatre means pretty much every seat has a stand out view; I think those who were unable to witness the majesty close up, as I was myself, missed out somewhat.

This vibrant performance was characterised by the joy of the dancers. There were no misconceptions; these are highly trained dancers, who absolutely love what they are doing.
My understanding of the story of Don Quixote goes little beyond the knowledge that it is the origin of the term ‘quixotic’ which happens to be one of my all time favourite words. But I was surprised by how little the title character (Don) actually danced. Other reviewers have commended the ‘serious and dignified’ treatment of this title role; where as I left the theatre thinking ‘what treatment?’
This may of course be due to the story (which I haven’t read) or the transition to the stage, which can effect the telling of a story. But I did feel disappointed that this very interesting and charismatic looking character, spent so much time as a part of the backdrop.

Viengsay Valdés was the star of the show in her role as Kitri. The passion and vibrancy she brings to every step, was infectious. And she pulled off some pretty astounding moves, easiliy out-shining her partner Elier Bourzas; who was very talented but seemed to be a little out of step; opening night jitters perhaps?

The issue of ‘when to applaud’ always surfaces during a ballet. Any seasoned ballet enthusiast will tell you to take it easy on the clapping in the begining, because you have a lot more to go! The show ended with the usual (what seemed to be) ten or so curtain calls and lavish curtsey routines. The end of the show is not the only opportunity to vocalise your appreciation for the dancing, but when to clap always causes some confusion amongst audiences, so I thought I would do some research and write a short spiel on the topic.

It is generally favourable to clap during a ballet performance, and no time seems to be particularly wrong to clap, however, if one is unsure of when to clap, you can wait and the music will generally indicate to you, with a crecendo or a break. Usually there’s applause after a dancer has completed a particularly tricky routine, or a pas de deux (a duet) is completed. I personally suggest to wait until the series of turns or other difficult step is over, there will undoubtable be a brief pause for the applause then. Otherwise clapping sporadically during the routine, can somewhat disturb the vibe of the show. And get ready to clap for atleast ten minutes straight at the close of the show.

Star ratings are hard with this kind of thing, but in relation to other ballet’s I have seen I would give this 3.5/5.

Wendy

Buttons Galore!

Since creating the Four Hearts and Gift Gallery almost a year ago now -( Happy Birthday to us) I've been intrigued about what women love to collect or what really touches them somewhere deep inside . Whether it's seeing that certain item in store that triggers a treasured childhood memory I'm not sure . For me it's a pleasure to watch people respond and connect with various items around Four Hearts and the responses are always different from giggling with their friends over a saying on one of the retro tea towels or a soft sigh as they spy something that evokes that special feeling or memory .


Top of the "Ohh" lists are : Owls , Dragonflies , Butterflies, almost anything retro and believe it or not BUTTONS! I would think anyone my age would have some recollections of Gramdma or Mum's bottle of buttons stowed away in case of an emergency 'missing button crisis'. Colourful , pretty and generally hidden away, out of the reach of little fingers , I know the bottled buttons sparked my imagination.



Now I don't have a bottle of buttons much to my shame but when my youngest daughter came into Four Hearts and saw the porcelain buttons we have in store she knew she wanted them and she knew exactly what she was going to do with them. so last Christmas Imogen finally took poccession of three porcelain buttons curtsey of Four Hearts and her parents and this is what she created in her bedroom .




Don't they look amazing . I love walking into her room and seeing them on the wall . It gives me that warm feeling of home,my mum and my childhood.

Debbie x

It's Just Me and My Brain Today..Yes I'd Like to See the Menu... Thanks!

Greetings once again beautiful people..I trust we have all had a week full of missions and milestones?...It was brought to my attention that in fact I did not really introduce myself last week...the intent was there, but I guess life got in the way, or was that art?

So here we go then...

I am a South African Australian woman/mother/artist...Natalie M. Adams ... Nat to my Friends and Natalie M. in artist mode. My parents are both of mixed ethnicity including anything from African to Italian to Chinese and at various points in my life I seem to cling onto at least one and explore that side for a momentary month or two (I'm now 31...think about it).

My four sisters, who are all extremely crazy but equally lovable, refer to me as the hippy of the family. All because I love to dance and burn incense?...eh-hem...'Guess what ladies? It's normal!'...This is what I've spent most of my life saying...one would think that even I would believe it by now...would you ask me again later please? Many thanks.

So yes...moving right along... I was born in Grahamstown, South Africa to an Anglican Priest and the daughter of an Anglican Priest in the last decade of the Apartheid. As a family we travelled to live in United States, New Zealand and Australia in early life, and Europe and Queensland Australia in more recent years on my own.
Now I seem to have this unavoidable life ethic evident of exposure to people, cultures, politics and art both locally and globally.
My dysfunctional family and relationships affects how I see the world. Both make me feel raw love and absolute wrath but I cannot live without either. This might also have something to do with my son, who I can love and instantly despise in a second. Why are boys the way they are? is this really my debt owed to my parents? I was not this bad, SURELY!!!!...ahh, but I do love him...because at the end of it all, my son is the only person in the world who reminds me that I am not alone...in this chaotic world where war is livid and a baby is born every minute...he reminds me that...

... am woman, I am friend, I am laughter, I am sex, I am mother.

I am peace and war, love and disregard, warmth, comfort, anger, irrational thought, angsty female, crazy mother and in need of happiness.

I am normal.

Oh come-on.....Do you really want to hear more??? I don't want to tell you about my life...you will be looking at your computer for hours wishing you could beat the screen with a carrot whilst infusing an animal tranquiliser into the hard drive!

However, I can talk more about my art...and myself as an artist.

So yes... I have a great fascination with the relationship between contemporary culture and human norms expressed through art and the constant rebirth of traditional methods that enables the communication between art and human understanding.

I love ...and I mean looooove to play around with :mixed media drawings – Japanese ink and recycled print ; sculptures – wood, metal, materials bought and found ; printmaking processes – mainly etching; jewellery designs - usually one offs from bought and found materials; clothing design and textiles - definitely one offs as they are all hand made.

Currently I am working towards a body of work that communicates Addiction and Redemption.
I guess it's because I look at human life and it seems to me that we find solace in the act and the ritual of addiction and redemption because it allocates
a renewed approach to the situation..….which is what life is, birth..death and rebirth.

We all seek a form of escape that redeems towards a feeling of comfort and certainty whether it be mental, emotional or physical. eg. Addiction being chocolate and the Redemption found in a 6 km walk.

Even if you are a Van Gogh or a Julia Gillard, all of us at one stage or another in our lives, will experience this...we will experience devilish pleasure and pious apology.

Be easy on me my friends...I am still really trying to solidify this concept .... can an Addiction and Redemption be the same thing? I think so. Or can it? You tell me! My own brain can be very argumentative with me you see.

I think this is enough for now.... I will surely return to enlighten you all on the stylings of Natalie M. in the next few weeks and indeed, what I really think about addiction and redemption.

Until then..... stay safe and remember Art is Life is Art.....nothing but love people.

Natalie M.

If you would like to see some of my past and current work you can contact me via: natalad@yahoo.com , I will be more than happy to share 'my life through my art' with you :)

Art is Life is Art

ART IS LIFE IS ART

A female robot made from old cereal boxes, egg cartons, toilet paper rolls and straw. This was my very first art work, a sculpture, at the age of 9. It was laughed at by my classmates, because I made a point of giving my female rather proportionate breasts. To me it made sense, to complete a female form with the very things that make it obvious to the outside world that in fact, she is a woman.

I suppose I have always viewed life from a very feminine angle by seeing beauty and sensuality as integral elements of not only life, but death and the cycle of both that propels constant rebirth.

It’s been 22 Years since that very first robotic creation, and my art has come a long way and certainly been influenced by life’s little surprises and random shocks (which includes more than just the first morning glance in the mirror).

Not in the least, my time at James Cook University’s Art School not only taught me invaluable methods, and techniques, but also provided me with a maturity towards my own life and the way I use art within my life.

Nudes were a big thing. Life drawings and executing plastic torsos with anything from graphite to polyester resin was not unusual and this is where, I think, my love affair with art and how it can illustrate life, really began. Although, as I was not always the sharpest pencil of the pack….my work always had a ‘brave substance’ to it, as I was once told. At the time, it would have seemed that I took no notice of the lessons being taught…but even now when I spend my time painting, drawing, sculpting or printing…. I am grateful for those lessons, as they feel as fresh in my mind now as they were then.

Of course also, I have been influence by many Artists before me and those who create work now in 2010. Frida Kahlo and Marlene Dumas are two of my favourite female artists, Brett Whitely and Richard Gillespie have also created very abstract works with finite concepts….but it is not the famous artists that really influence me in my work.

Life and the human condition is what I love to work with. Men, women, children, hunger, anger, eroticism, food, music, sex, culture, water, fire, a living breath. .. The list goes on. These are the things that excite me in my work to a point of no return. I feel it is why I have been put into this world; to bring beauty to people in a way that they don’t expect, through sadness and joy.
In my art I want to make people feel the rawest emotions they have. I want to strike a chord within souls that reveals newness to them. I want to start a revolution of love, life, difference and indifference through what I create in my mind through my hands.

Needless to say, it can be a struggle to really get your work out there as an emerging artist, especially if the trends within the art world are not really as inviting as producing something totally new or accepting of things totally innovative.

However, I have faith in life and art, that life is art and art is life. Is this all I need to be a happy artist? Only time will tell, as well as the money I make on my work.

So, as a concluding spiel to the thoughts of my artistic and erratic female mind that firmly believes that breasts have an important role in our world….I shall leave you with this small exercise to perhaps try in your own life and time. When you are listening to your favourite music and sipping on a rescuing coffee or glass of wine…think to yourself, ‘what is it about this moment that I am truly indulging in? How do I feel? What colour do I feel? What am I thinking? Why? How can I externalize this feeling?’ ,….and even if it is picking up a pen and writing a few words….this my friends…this is art…because, life is art..Is life.

Now let me go and create more art and live…..
Natalie M.

‘I never paint dreams or nightmares. I paint my own reality. Frida Kahlo

Ivan finds a new home

Recently at Four Hearts one of our beautiful wooden ducks, Ivan, broke his beak when he was knocked over by gusty wind. Well I'm happy to report that Ivan has found a new home with staff member Wendy. It took a bit of glue and a bandaid but Ivan's beak is now firmly back in place. Here is a pick of him enjoying his new home.



Now taking care of Ivan got me wondering how all his friends are going out in the world. And how our other critters are doing like the adorable squirrel and owl lamps. So I invite anyone to send in pics of their ducks or critters from Four Hearts in their new happy homes!

Just send your pics into fourheartsgifts@bigpond.com and we'll post them on our blog!

Wendy xx

Japanese Tea Ceremony

On the 15th of May Four Hearts was the proud host of a traditional Japanese tea ceremony. It was a beautiful sunny Saturday morning when ceremony masters Aya and Kazuyo invited audience members to join in a traditional tea ceremony. We at Four Hearts feel very honoured to be able to partake in this ancient tradition and hope to host other events like this in the future.

Below are some pictures from the day taken by Debbie's hubby.

Wendy's movie pick - Inception

The most difficult part of reviewing a film, particularly one of this nature, is expressing your opinions and providing sufficient detail, without exposing the complex underbelly of the narrative; it’s twists and turns. This becomes significantly difficult with this film, so forgive me if the review seems vague, as divulging more than a faint taste of the narrative will undermine this fabulously crafted film.

Let’s for a minute go very deeply down the rabbit hole of dreams. We all have them (well I speak for the majority); but we don’t all talk about our dreams, especially to a stranger. Think now about another universal experience but one which we all talk about a lot; the weather. Obviously dreams are very personal, whether you believe they are an expression of repressed desires or just random firings of our neurons and memories. Either way you wouldn’t want just anyone seeing your dreams, your fears, desires and importantly your secrets.

Inception takes us to a world where your dreams in sleep are not necessarily your own. Through a process that Nolan has called ‘extraction’ your dreams can be hijacked by those seeking to learn your secrets. Leo’s character in the movie, Cob, is a professional extractor, but now he is being offered a proposition that he can’t refuse. A prospective employer wants Cob to plant an idea in someone’s dream. Now this process, called inception, is a lot more complicated than uncovering someone’s secrets. And as we follow Leo’s character on his mission we get dragged deeper into an unusual and perverse world of the dream and begin to question the fragile divide between our perception of reality and the dream.

Firstly I would love to hear Freud’s take on this film. It is certainly a movie you will want to see with a good friend or partner so you can spend the remaining hours of the evening after the credits have rolled discussing the film. While Chuang is having difficulties figuring out if he is a butterfly dreaming he’s a man, or really the man, I wonder how he would cope with, ‘is the man in fact dreaming he is a butterfly, in which dream the butterfly is dreaming it is a man, who’s dreaming they’re a butterfly’ . . . and on it goes.

This film was written and directed by Christopher Nolan, the master behind The Dark Night. Inception is somewhat of a magnum opus for Nolan, with all characters skillfully designed. Leonardo Dicaprio delivers a believable performance, as can be expected from previous performances in Shutter Island and Blood Diamond; and Marion Cotillard is chilling as the enigmatic Mal.

The CGI in this movie is tastefully restrained (I can imagine how easy it would be to over-do the computer graphics when designing a world where anything is possible). But the landscapes are still rich and imaginative, and justify spending the extra money to see it at the cinema.

I’ve had comments from some people who felt that the action elements of this film were a bit superfluous. I would normally be in agreement with a statement such as this; I usually am only thankful for loud action scenes in a movie when I want to open a chocolate packet without the crackling emanating throughout the cinema. Indeed they may not have all been entirely necessary to the story line, but essential to the climax of the story. Without the action pushing up the heart beat I feel this movie would become too much of a think piece without having the emotional impact that it had.

I loved this movie; I loved the way it made me think, incited discussion and opened my mind to new concepts. I give it 4.5 out of 5. It loses a half mark for a few small incongruences in the story, and the lengthy action scenes.


Wendy

Wendy's movie pick - Toy Story 3

The world of the inanimate object has been of great interest to me since I was a child. Being a massive fan of Barbie dolls; my sister and myself would spend days constructing elaborate worlds and narratives for our toys to inhabit. I would get pangs of guilt for keeping my dolls stuffed away in squishy boxes, and felt sorry for the less favoured toys that would spend weeks on end without being played with. Well those days may be long gone, as are the toys, but the magical ‘what if’s’ remain. What if our beloved childhood toys had lives of their own? What would they get up to after we went to bed? And how would these toys feel when we grew up and no longer played with them?

In the third installment of the very popular movie series Toy Story, Andy is now a teenager about to head off to college. This throws the lives of his beloved toys, including Buzz and Woody, into uncertainty. What will become of them when he is gone: will they be tossed out, donated to a daycare center, or stuffed away in the attic never again to see the light of day? The toys take their future into their own hands, but there are tough decisions to be made and loyalties to Andy to be considered.

The Toy Story movies have a way of portraying the magical realm inhabited by children. Delving into a period of time that most of us can only vaguely remember. I thoroughly enjoyed the narrative of this film that was at times adult. The style of animation is consistent with the first films which assists in maintaining the characters and over-all warm and fuzzy feel of the films. Don't wait for a younger sibling, cousin or child to drag you to this film.

4 1/2 out of 5

Wendy :)

A Must See- Ron Mueck

If you haven't visited the Brisbane Gallery of Modern Art lately then it's time to schedule a visit, before the 1st August. The Ron Mueck collection is showing at the moment and, I promise, you will not be disappointed. Ron Mueck is an Australian born artist whose specialty is the mesmerising creation of lifelike human sculptures. The first time I viewed the collection I was hooked. So much so, I had to go and see it again. I didn't know anything about Ron Mueck before I went, and I was shocked at the intensity and range of emotions I experienced looking at these sculptures, that so accurately depicted the anatomy of the human body. Not only that, the works projected and expressed such a range of emotion and evoked the same within myself. You'll walk around the exhibit going "...but how does he do...?" and "that's just s-oooo amazing".

Be warned if your prudish about the human body in all it's glory, you might have to prepare yourself before you go. Most of the figures are naked and some figures are giant sized . . . so big the artist wouldn't have been able to find a fig leaf big enough to cover the male sculptures most manly treasures, if you get what I mean. Michaelangelo has nothing on Ron Mueck’s idea of proportions. In any case if you’re in Brissy try and squeeze it in somehow because you will not be disappointed.
x Debbie

Welcome to Four Hearts

Hi and welcome to the new Four Hearts Blog site. For those of you who don't know Four Hearts yet it is a small but delicious gallery style store in the heart of Paddington, Brisabne, Australia.We are one of the new kids on the block and myself and the wonderful women that work for me at Four Hearts are working hard to bring together an eclectic but functional array of well designed gifts, fashion and homewares to inspire and enchant you.

We all know that having "stuff" is not what it's all cracked up to be. While there is nothing like feeling like Julia Roberts in "Pretty Woman" where she spends a day being pampered and treated like one of the rich and famous, we also know that having for the sake of having sometimes makes you feel a little empty.

I've tried to create something different at Four Hearts. A sacred space where you can come and browse,escape from the outside world for a brief time and leave feeling recharged and re-energised and hopefully find something magical instore for yourself or someone you love.

Who am I ? My name is Debbie thomas and I am married to a wonderful man and have two teenage girls,Laura (almost 17) and Imogen (15 years). I never set out to own my own gift store. I had spent about 14 years raising my children and doing bits and bobs from home.I needed time out and went and asked at a couple of local stores for some school hours work. I was happy doing that but as time went by the idea of owning and creating my own store seemed to evolve and as my self confidence grew Four Hearts became a real manifestation.

Don't worry this blog is not all about Four Hearts and what you can buy.Like I said I am setting out to create a more textured and rounded experience. You can expect many things from this blog.We'll be doing reviews on books,recipes,music and travel so stay tuned and watch this space.

X Debbie.