91 Today

I remember Antonio Frasconi's birthday because it's the same as mine. If I achieve 91 years I'll still not have a portfolio to match the master woodcutter.

• Antonio Fransconi, After the Rain II, colour woodcut, 1969

The allotment will have to look after itself next weekend; we'll be manning a stall at RUMMAGE! Jumble Sale, an illustrator's special. For more information on events and those taking part visit Superette. See you there!

Rummage
Sunday 2nd May
12-5pm
Superette
66a Sclater Street
London E1 6HR

Painstaking Mouldmaking

I spend so long grumbling over tricky procedures that people must wonder if I've full command of my fingers! Admittedly I've made plaster casts for relief tiles, but this four-part mould was a different order of difficulty. I'd just finished when a kind friend* gifted me Sasha Wardill's Slipcasting bible... so I could see what I should have done. Once glazed and fired, I'll be sure to post any results in a few weeks.
* Thanks again, Ben!

Seedlings

Items you’d usually set casually aside are beginning to migrate around the home as germinating seeds occupy every free surface, a small price to pay when you get to eat the proceeds... eventually.

A few surprises from overseas this week, first a vast cloud of Icelandic volcano ash spread across the UK like a blanket of financial gloom. And then this arrived in the post. Designed by Johanna Kalin/OCH to coincide with Milan Design Week (14-19 April 2010), the boxed catalogue satisfies lovers of stationery and design-art alike.


Daniel Rybakken's work deals largely with a singularly Scandinavian preoccupation, the distribution of daylight. With characteristic style, his simple interventions on reality (through the manipulation, reflection and projection of light) are quietly uncanny.

Anni Albers

Sometimes even the most seasoned Londoners feel a little corrosion of the soul. I've been trying to counter the effects recently by using the city a little better, as an outsider perhaps. So, for starters, I've been visiting more shows with less discrimination, and already I'm tired of having my dearly held preconceptions challenged!

There's little in Anni Albers' (1899–1994) collection of Prints and Studies that suggests her muted geometry or the craft of weaving. Instead we're treated to a trailblazing selection of styles from out-and-out op-art to a neurotic brand of pointillism. Many of the gouaches, etchings and lithographs explore tessellation and play with colour so deftly that its occasional absence is stronger still; even gold escapes its usual function as shorthand for chintz.

Anni Albers, Prints & Studies, until 17 April 2010
Alan Cristea Gallery, 31 Cork Street, London W1S 3NU

• Malcom McLaren installation at Croydon College, 1967

Happy Easter

• The Egg and the Chicken, Iela and Enzo Mari, 1969