iPhone photography: city walls Visby

Here’s my letter from my journey to Visby on Gotland, my snapshots, my postcards, some of my thoughts and visual inspirations. A letter from “the island of roses and ruins”.

iPhone photography: blue cottage with roses, Visby, Gotland

This adorable cottage covered in roses is one of many in Klinten, the upper part of old Visby. So picturesque that it’s almost surreal! And yet, Klinten used to be a poor part of town. Today, these properties fetch a high price.

iPhone photography: ruined cathedral, Visby, Gotland

In the old part of Visby there are so many ruined churches from the 11-13th centuries that you can easily lose count. But why are the ruins still there? Why, in all these centuries, didn’t anyone tear them down? These ruins in the middle of a city that played such an important role? Because all ruins start off as derelict buildings, and it isn’t until hundreds of years later that we can appreciate them as ruins and even think of them as romantic.

Some sources claim that after the churches were abandoned, they were used to keep cattle in and that the city by then was so poor that they couldn’t afford to pull down the buildings. It’s intriguing. And to think if there will be any ruins left from our time? To imagine people in hundreds of years, strolling through ruins built in our days, snapping photos and imagining our time…

iPhone photography: poppies

On my way to the beach to gather my thoughts, I came across these poppies and I snapped this shot before wandering along the seashore.

iPhone photography: the baltic sea

I was thinking about cities, and how they grow with time, how the patchwork of different times gets stitched into the weave of the city and how it reminds me of growth and “imperfection”. Memories living on the same doorstep as day-to-day life. That a city evolves much like a human, with bits and pieces from different times, with scars, additions, broken parts, victories, plans, dreams and losses. That all these layers of truths, or identities, each as valid, blend into the identity of the city. Or the person.

iPhone photography: purple poppy

As I cut through the Botanical Gardens, I took a photo of this purple poppy. When I got back home I was struck by the serendipity of it! What happened? Where did the glow come from? I don’t know, but it looks magic.

iPhone photography: flowers on patterned table cloth

At the crêperie in Visby I’m taken aback by the combination of romantic flowers in a vase and a bold, modern, black and white pattern on the table cloth.

iPhone photography: peacock pattern

Café Krönet has the most amazing view of the Baltic Sea as well as the most imaginatively designed restroom with this fabulous peacock pattern on the wallpaper as well as framed as a picture.

And finally, another serendipitous photo, this time of a poppy. Ordinary magic.

iPhone photography: poppy

Blue Branches

I’ve continued my studies of the sky and trees that I worked on last Thursday and yesterday, and something happened with theses shades of blue that I’m very happy with! This is IT! And I’m going to make a wallpaper and a calendar for December with this design. So keep a lookout for the new desktop art!

Today I’ve been experimenting with layers. Trees. Silhouettes. Winter. Paint. Bare branches. Photography.

Shades of brown and a blue. A watercolour sky. A crisp and cold winters day.

Dreamboard. Full Harvest Moon. October 2009.

A Dreamboard for the Full Harvest Moon. Layers of transformation, expanding creative expressions, painting, photography, writing, type… The past, the present. And finding a focus for the future.

I was standing in the museum of a castle ruin, reading fascinating (no I’m not being sarcastic) and informative text on those typical museum boards, when suddenly the graffiti on the wall behind the board caught my attention. Or rather came forward to me, like a wave of text, like light, layers and layers of graffiti carved onto the stone wall. And I started to photograph the graffiti, going from room to room, floor to floor, captivated by it, following its light, and forgetting everything else… The earliest date I found was 1609, and the most recent was 2009. It was like a living memorial to all those people. I imagined each person writing their name on the wall, carving glorious moments of stolen kisses, or writing a “here I am, I exist” in the middle of an everyday experience… I wondered if people ever recalled, later on, the moment when they crafted that graffiti…

When I returned from my journey to Öland, my best friend wanted to see my photos from my trip, but I mostly have loads of photos of this graffiti from the castle… One of the images, the one below, was the starting point for this collage, and was meant to be the focal point, and yet it didn’t make it in! Somehow it just got to be too much.

Here is a desktop wallpaper and an October desktop calendar version of my Harvest Moon dreamscape.

Centuries of layered graffiti on the wall of a castle ruin.

October. Russet, plum, dark brown, rust, gold, purple and green. Mushrooms. Candied apples. Figs. Pumpkins. Roasted chestnuts. Halloween. And as I walk down the road, a scattering of acorns, pine cones and oak leaves.

I’ve been working on this image, inspired by my trip to Öland and the graffiti in a medieval castle. Creating a dreamscape in a whole different format when I realised it would work as a desktop wallpaper too, so I adapted the montage with its layers of writing and watercolours to desktop sizes. This download contains fullscreen, widescreen and iPhone versions. Montage wallpaper works very well with the collection of Purple Luminous Folder Icons, the Orange and Pink Folder Icons and Vintage Folder Icons: Purple Grapes.

< — Save this wallpaper to your computer.

I’ve got the late summer blues. I feel so melancholy to see the gradual end of summer. To see the light go. All my dreams for easy living. The fruits of a whole winter of longing. If it were March, I’d be delighted that it wasn’t until half past nine in the evening that it was getting dark. But it’s August, and turning darker.

What happened? Did summer rain away? Is my memory faulty or skewed to remembering long days of work and lousy weather? Was I just not able to seize all those moments?

Wait a minute…. one of the things I love about living in Sweden is the intense difference between the seasons… The longing, the awareness, the heightened senses, the early summer fever, the winter sunsets that go on for hours and hours, the sound of snow crunching under my feet, the rich and ever-changing palette of autumn leaves. The exceptional sense of change and being in the present, and perhaps that is it, a sadness that I wasn’t quite in the present this summer…

Besides, I love rain!

Can there be layers of truth? Or layers of perception? Layers of memories?

Because in many ways this has been an astonishing summer!

This summer, I found some precious time for myself and my creative journey, met a crowd of inspiring and creative women, and unravelled my interest in photography in stunningly poetic photographer Susannah Conway’s e-course “Unravelling: Ways of Seeing My Self”.

I’ve always had a passion for helping people who use computers to have a personalised, gorgeous and at once practical desktop. It’s the reason I’m an icon designer. This summer I found the time to launch my dream project. Creating three brand new collections of extraordinarily useful and beautiful icons! In this unique project I’ve designed icons for people who use computers – directly – and not indirectly through the interface of software or a website. The basis for these icons has been based entirely on feedback from people who visit Marmalade Moon. Everything from the metaphors, to the style is a result of ideas from people who use computers and who care about what their desktop looks like. And I’ve created the icons with the same professional eye for detail and care for functionality that normally only goes into corporate icon design. A dream come true for me!

And still, this late summer blues…

iPhone photography: cherub