::Crying Koi, Grrls and other orphans::

Here is yet another irregular post for your reading/viewing pleasure.

I was recently interviewed by the awesome Brad Eastman for weAREtheIMAGEmakers as I currently have some works on show at aMBUSH gallery for the new WATIM show “Grrls”. Above is one of the new works I recently created for the show “Cry Baby Koi”… this hybrid had been swimming around in my head for some months so I was happy to let it out….. the rest can be found on my Flickr page.

Check out Issue 14 for my verbose answers. The exhibition itself is on for another two weeks in Waterloo, Sydney.

Lately, I have been very preoccupied as to how to work on my productivity and creative output of late and have also been distracted with random thoughts on my dna … as in my ancestry. I recently got an email from a medical student in Florence, Italy who requested the use of one of my illos for her blog, in my reply I made a passing comment on how my surname ,Innocent, somewhere way back was apparently once Innocenti. Her reply was a surprise to me :

“Your surname, first of all in its “Innocenti” form, is very very common in Florence in particular. I’ve written much about that. There was here an important institute, the “‘Spedale degli Innocenti” (that’s the Italian standing for “hospital for innocent people”) – still existent – which took in orphan-children. They grew up as they could (there are even now a lot of stories circulating about their poor life with no family no freedom) and they were all given the “Innocenti” surname in order to make them recognizable for their origin and enough rejected. The Innocentis living at the moment all over the world probably represent the discent of all those poor children belonging to the ‘Spedale and to noone else.

I find it’s nice to see life expressing itself in any case.
Isn’t there some magic? “

Is it wrong that I feel overjoyed at having come from a long line of abandoned and/or orphaned children… so much drama and intrigue…..and, dare I say it, magic too.

Another issue I have been pondering, related more to memes than genes however, was that of ‘latent inhibition’. When I first heard this phrase I guessed it had something to do with how shy you were… when in fact it has more to do with how you see and process the world around. Everyone needs a certain amount of ‘filtering’ the huge amount of visual information that we are subjected to on a daily basis and the more ‘latent inhibition’ you have the less you are distracted by it. ‘Low latent inhibition’, believed to be linked to some mental disorders, is when an individual finds it difficult to filter and block out some or all of this information thus creating a chaotic and/or mind numbing state. More info here.

“In recent years Low Latent Inhibition is being looked at as less of a mental disorder, in the past it was often confused with schizophrenia, ADD, Bi-Polar disorder, and even Depression.” Wikipedia.

Suffice to say, this answers many questions about how personality and creativity are linked. Food for thought me thinks.

Hope you are making happy pictures!