Everything started right after my second solo exhibition, exactly one year ago. In that moment, I just wanted to introduce myself and my creative work to the crowd. Exhibition “We are not alone” was opened on Thursday January 14. I bought this awesome domain name on Saturday, coded a very simple WordPress theme during that afternoon and my adventure has begun in the morning January 17.

Die without art was such an amazing experience for me. I’ve met many cool peeps, made lovely friends and had a lot of fun in general. Hooray!

I’d like to pick out some of my favorite posts. So, let’s go back in time a little bit. Stephen Morris made us crazy with his amazing creativity. You must see his jumps and standing-on-head’s. Incredible sisters Mirna and Martina told us their life stories. I felt a big responsibility to bring their story, amazing, must read. During the Stockholm Fashion Week I’ve presented Balkan-inspired clothes by Lamija Suljević. Her main inspiration was the Balkan traditions. Feeling when art makes you younger is very familiar to my dear friend Marta Lamovšek, I simply couldn’t believe she is older than thirty.

I’m very proud of two amazing interviews I did during the first year of Die without art—with professional fashion and portrait photographer Lindsay Adler and lovely Erin Loechner of Design for Mankind. Three guest bloggers helped me while I was away. Sky Nash wrote about five books she loves, Giulia Scifoni showed us photography in the opposite direction and Yamille Marmont presented an exclusive preview of 500 Seconds Of No Breathing, her most personal work ever and a collection of 20 years of images. Thank you girls.

I was dreaming about my studio, my own huge creative space where I can work on visual art projects with my friends. I was official blogger at my favorite regional photography festival Rovinj Photodays. That was awesome!

Thank you all for reading this blog, this is 110th post here. Happy first birthday Die without art! Cheers people, love you.

Is this time when kids are watching Home alone? I’m not worried about idiotic burglars Harry and Marv, because Kevin always wins—he was my hero when I was little. It usually snows around Christmas time, which makes the holidays much more idyllic. What about this year? Where’s the snow on Christmas? Somebody is playing with us.

My family is far away, Google Maps calculates more than 600 km. I’m kinda feeling like Kevin on Christmas. Hah, not really! I will see them right after New Year’s Eve. Otherwise, student life is awesome. New town, new country actually, new friends and so on. Everything’s really cool.

Die without art wishes you a Merry Christmas & Happy 2011.

My friend Goran Škofić has new crazy stuff for you, again. The human figure is shown as a sign on the white surface without objects, set on the ground with no support, within a rectangular cut of the frame in the abstract field of the world of image. It just looks simple!

Hybrid composite image makes it possible to create a world that is perfectly convincing and real, but at the same time incredible, full of scary visions, phantasms, nightmares, fears, and anxieties, with contours that are precise and inexplicable. — Branka Benčić, text from catalogue

This is totally his style, loop videos connected through the exhibition set-up. Get the full experience of Goran’s set-up in MK Gallery in Zagreb (Croatia), watch the video below!

Haven’t seen you in a while. How’s it going my friend?

I’ve blogged about this amazing guy before, his name is Darryl Richardson and he brought this interesting prison story to us through photography.

Nothing To Lose is a series of photographs documenting the Angola Prison Rodeo. “Once deemed the bloodiest prison in the south, the Louisiana State Penitentiary (nicknamed Angola) has transformed into a criminal safe haven thanks to efforts put forth by Warden Burl Cain. Angola is home to 5,200 inmates and 9 out of every 10 prisoners will die there.” – Darryl said. The rodeo is held every Sunday in October and it provides the way to escape the daily drudgery. On the other hand, it also gives them the opportunity to make an income while in prison, by selling various handmade arts and crafts, or by winning an event in the actual rodeo.

When inmate Michael Lewis was asked to provide his thoughts on Angola, he simply started, “if you have to be in prison this is the place to be”.

This set of the frozen moments explores the brutal reality of America’s mass incarceration culture. Once you are incarcerated, society treats you as an inhumane object, no matter what the crime may be. The restoration process for criminals returning into the real world is virtually nonexistent. Unfortunately, all of your rights as an actual human being are detracted.

With each photograph captured, I attemped to delineate the combative livestock as society and the views in which the majority of society has towards convicts.

In this set you see the inmates put their lives on the line as they fearlessly struggle with the aforementioned “society”. It is easy to risk everything when you have nothing to lose.

Thank you for sharing this with us Darryl, the story is much more interesting through art.

Let’s move to abstract world of metal captures. This creative submission came from Seattle, USA. Guy who sent me this beautiful textures, Josh Martin is a fairly new photographer who grew up in Southern California. He had parents that were deeply involved in the art world as both professors and critics. He never really saw himself as an artist until he moved to Seattle 6 years ago. When Josh did something about the climate and its effects on metal and concrete sparked his creativity and imagination came out the camera.

Thank you Josh

I was writing about Joshua Stocker before and you probably know he’s a graphic designer based in UK. This post is about his new film. He sent me some more information behind the scenes.

I wanted to explore the relationship between time, location, and memories, and felt this open briefed university project entitled “I Am Here” would be the perfect time to do so. I called up my Dad and my Brother, and the next day in the early morning sunlight we set off to Wales.

Growing up, Joshua’s family would spend every summer in Wales, and he remembers vividly the cliff edge roads, the huge magical forests, and the wondrous sound of a waterfall. Even the Lake spurred all sorts of thoughts in Joshua’s head as his dad explained how the reservoir was in fact once a town. And that in the mid 1800′s they built a damn and flooded it. So there is in fact a whole village built underneath that water.

With such vivid memories, but having not been back there for 10 years made the day an emotional experience. There are only a few times in life where you can re-visit somewhere so significant to you, and share that with the people you love.

Joshua put the film together a few days later. He knew the sort of music he wanted to use, and ended up picking a piece by Max Richter. Joshua managed to relay some of the emotions he felt on that day, and the relationship he share with his brother and father, which is in fact what this piece is really about.

Bad news knocked on the door last weekend. Maybe it’s not so bad because I still don’t understand what happened. Yes it is about my new little toy Canon 7D. I was working whole summer long to buy it and now the camera won’t turn on. Why? What happened?

During photo shooting with Elen a weekend before it turned off and we had to break off and sadly go home. I came home and recharged the battery. Green light and it turned on. I was so so happy, like I got a baby. I downloaded photos, edited and uploaded some of. Then I had to pack my stuff for moving to Novi Sad. Whole madness.

I moved to Novi Sad, Serbia three day ago. The city is cool and everything is fine but I’ll publish another post about that. Beside I was a speaker at BlogOpen 2010, here in Novi Sad, I also supposed to be official photographer and catch everything around this awesome event. It was Friday morning and I still thought 7D is all right. Before the shooting with aprons for BlogOpen I went for a photo walk and when I tried to turn my camera on, again the same story, it won’t turn on. I couldn’t believe! I was crying that night.

I was searching for the answer. Maybe it’s about the battery or battery charger. Hope it’s nothing serious. The camera was bought from UK, brand new and it’s only 2 months old. 3 year guarantee is fine but I have to send it to UK. If there is another way I’d like to try it. I need it back! Can somebody help me?

In 2009, Little & Company reached 30 years of creating, inspiring and being inspired. We decided it was time to commemorate our longevity and success. So we turned to those who keep us fascinated in this industry.

I’m following design world more and more every month and I love it. It’s a really interesting and creative topic at all. Little & Company sought out the world’s most creative professionals and asked 30 of them to record their thoughts on design. “What single example of design inspires you most?” and “What problem should design solve next?”. They also did this last year and it became a huge global conversation through social networks. Visit the site and watch their answers!

Didn’t you always wanted to design and make your own piece of clothing? My Slovenian friends Biljana Janković and Kristina Berčič have something to share with you, enjoy the story.

Last weekend City Art Gallery Ljubljana and Socialdress had an amazing workshop, but how the story begins. The link between gallery and Socialdress started because way back in the time these wide trousers were being warn in Paris for the first time, not too much behind them were the first ladies from Ljubljana who started wearing that kinda revolutionary trousers. In history at the exact gallery where this workshop took place, used to be a shop where they were selling these trousers.

Amazing one day long workshop that brings out your creativity to the fullest and at the end you end up laughing for no special reason. I chose to make one out of jeans. Love them, took me awhile but they’re just the most comfortable trousers ever. My friend made one out of jersey, also very comfortable and stylish. I love days like this. Full of creativity and hanging out with great people!

The author of Socialdress Marija Mojce Pungerčar uses the term “social dress” for clothing that has an integrative effect in terms of community. The Socialdress workshops spread knowledge about clothes making, at the same time reinforcing awareness about the consequences of globalization to the Slovenian textile industry, and about the gradual disappearance of craft skills. At Socialdress workshops they create functional items of clothing with a lot of soul that are easy to make as well. An important part of the workshops is an exchange of stories and experiences. In this way they create and propagate the Socialdress brand label. You cannot buy a Socialdress dress in a shop, you can only make it yourself.

If you are in Ljubljana, come and visit their work included into ”word for word without words” exhibition at City Art Gallery Ljubljana. It will be open till the end of October. Thank you girls!

Last days I’m working on a brand new experience of Die without Art blog, redesign. Before the launch I’m collecting and processing all important information of how people use my blog. Who they are and what they are looking for. I must admit this is really hard work. I’m reading a lot about design and user experience on the internet, and what is interesting, I’m not a web designer or any kind of a designer actually I’m a photographer and blogger, but I’m trying to do it all by myself. I need a very simple, clean and useful design for my blog. I was brainstorming till 5am last nights. I’m still drawing a new concept, testing different widths, colors and fonts. I’m learning how to use a pen tool in Adobe Illustrator, because I’ll need it for the logo.

Hope the near future will come with new pretty stuff and readers will enjoy totally new experience of Die without Art. If you wanna help feel free to leave your thoughts down below. By the way, why don’t you take a quick survey?

Photo © Rosie Hardy