‘Gingerbread Girls’ is a homespun project put together by Arlene Rieneke. “It is my own way to celebrate Christmas and to give a humble gift to close friends and family. The initial idea was to craft a greeting card made of hand-drawn characters which can be perforated off the card -like paper dolls- and hung on Christmas trees, or stuck into cupcakes with the help of wooden toothpicks. Greeting cards are often the first thing to go into the trash can once the season ends, so I like the idea that a part of the card will remain and last for years to come, even if the card itself isn’t. Since then, I’d encountered issues challenging the idea’s practicality, especially the perforation part. In the end, I settled with a panoramic greeting card that comes with dotted lines -around the characters’ outline- instead of perforation holes. The recipients will have the option to cut the paper dolls out of the card if they wish to. Alternatively, they may keep the card in its original form.”

Born in 1984, Jixuan is the elder child of two. Her earliest contact with art was coloring her father’s jewelry designs. Drawing has always seemed natural to her. It was only much later that she came to the realization that being an artist is not a phantom profession. This motivated her even further in the direction of painting.

Dolls are Jixuan’s muses: “They allow me to enter their plane of residence to observe on an elevated platform their curiously empty joy and often-innocent motives. I view their lives detached and without judgment, acknowledging their natural instinct of survival in a nihilistic world.”

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Click here to stream/purchase the tracks.

Not to be mistaken for the retired NFL player and more inspired by the academic/writer of the same name, Max Lane sets out to twist found sounds within broody beatscapes. A project still at its infant stage, the pastiche of sounds has been getting through to discerning ears in Singapore and the airwaves of New York.

The mind and the hands behind Max Lane is one of the co-founders of the elusive upp/circular collective. Being part of the self-absorbed They-Create-You-Tolerate movement, Max Lane insists on flirting with low end frequencies and paving the path of global sounds with clove cigarettes ash till the next batch of aural weapons of mass destruction is found.

The Mim Project is Max’s homage to his long lost cultural heroes. A patchwork built upon the nostalgic sounds of the Malay Archipelago, the producer cut and processed samples from 70’s nasyid and keronchong groups and even stole an interview of the late Javanese literary great, Pramoedya Ananta Toer. The sounds then get interwoven with Max Lane’s signature broody beatscapes.

This digital-only self released mini EP is propelled by Max Lane’s yearning to get his creations out to a wider audience. With the music business still as experimental as Lane’s works, and at a minimum cost of US$1, listeners will be able to name their own price for the 3-track mini EP.

Charlene Chua spent her youth growing up in Singapore, where she divided her time between drawing, reading comics and failing her Mandarin classes. She started her working life in 1998 as a web designer, and went on to become a senior graphic designer, web producer and interactive project manager, with companies like Ogilvy Interactive and The Gate Worldwide. She decided to pursue illustration as a career in 2003, eventally moving over to full-time illustration in 2006.

Since then she has worked with clients from North America, Europe, Singapore and Australia on a wide variety of illustration projects. Her work has appeared in the Society of Illustrators of Los Angeles’ Illustration West 43 and 45, American Illustration Tribute, and Ballistic Publishing’s Exotique 4, as well as several other art books. She illustrated the children’s picture book Julie Black Belt for Immedium Publishing, and the short story Eidolon for Image comic’s Liquid City anthology.

In 2007 she moved to Toronto, Canada, with her husband and two cats. Her latest work reveals a gorgeous full page and spot illustration for Penthouse’s December 2009 issue.

Special thanks to Marc for the tip-off.

“One day, you awake to find a Blue Whale in your room. It is no different from the wind blowing across your path a moth or a paper bag. Once you get over the Whaleness of the moment, your day goes on, like it did yesterday, and most likely, like it will tomorrow. Today however..”

For those who missed the official launch of Like Fins for Feet, an all-ages picture book published under the First Time Writers and Illustrators Initiative, this evening is for you. Not so much a book launch as it is a reason for authors Perry Ho and Kristal Melson to meet friends and strangers alike before the year draws to a close.

About Perry and Kristal

Perry Ho’s learning curve for the form (writing that is) began in Poly where he wrote short stories, short films, and one feature length script. In Uni, he focused on smaller outcomes, writing poems the size of postage stamps, short stories the size of photographs, and one short film. These days, existence has been pared down to one perpetual thought– to comma or semi-colon? that, is the question. Now, parted with academic life, he looks to realise at least one of these. Till then, he keeps an umbrella close by, even when it is raining. And he never chews anything straight off the bone.

Kristal Melson is mostly an illustrator. Boom! Bang! Pow! There goes Kristal. Out the door, spinning around, turning plain things into gold. Wearing mittens to stop things from changing! Hiding in the dark and playing wildly in the night, Kristal Melson captures dreams with pencils and paints alike. Fantastical wonderings, fleeting feet, dancing toes and spiraling tips are all a part of her charm and mystique. Drifting in and out of galaxies at the twitching of her thumbs, she leaves a trail of her doodling behind in large unhealthy clumps. Curvy 5 and Grafuck 3 – in Melbourne and Los Angeles, it doesn’t matter where she’s been or even what she should have seen. Just walk along now little one, and have some ice cream. Child, it does not matter if you don’t like ice-cream.

Saturday, 12 December, 4pm at BooksActually. Also available at this event will be original drawings and selected merchandise.

Click image for more designs. Photo credit: Test Shoot Gallery.

Pauline Lim graduated from Temasek Polytechnic with a Diploma in Apparel Design & Merchandising, and worked on an eight-week internship at Song & Kelly. Earlier this year she received a BA Fashion Design from Lasalle, and started her own label -pauline.ning- with the Fashion Incubator.

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In the midst of recording her full-length album Wallflower, Inch Chua decides to fulfil a little childhood dream: record a Christmas album. Seeing it as a great way to end off a gloomy year, the young songwriter hopes to spread some festive cheer with this release.

Backed by Allura’s guitarist Mark John Hariman on acoustic guitar, she takes on Christmas classics and gives them her own unique spin in this collection of four tunes. Besides giving the classic ‘Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas’ a little electronic twist, Inch places more prominence on the use of the ukulele. The much beloved tiny instrument is in the forefront of several tracks, giving the tunes a much upbeat and buoyant vibe.

The tune ‘Peace, Love & Mistletoe’ is an original piece written specifically for this album, featuring her loved ones and friends. As she sings in the tune: “Let’s ring up your folks and friends/And let them know you are around the bend”, affirming the joy of having family and close friends around your side during this festive season.

Peace, Love & Mistletoe is now available for free download.

Product designer Fung Kwok Pan is one of the pioneering batches set to graduate from the School of Art, Design and Media, Nanyang Technological University in 2010.

Kwok Pan’s work explores forms in various degrees, relating to user interactions.  As such, his design processes range from building and experimenting with actual materials to careful observation of human behavior.  It is by treading on these fields with failures in between that his designs come into useful and meaningful existence.

About his UFO design: “Should we stand on a table?  Should we jump on a seat?  Taking inspiration from the undefined, UFO challenges the typology of furniture by inviting us to use it as we please – as a seat, a table, a pedestal or a stage, with the assurance of strength and structural integrity. The irony of modern products is a readiness to erase marks left by the making process, as though anything short of perfect smoothness is flawed.  By using the oxyacetylene torch to burn the edges, the piece is given a patina of survival as its finishing, accentuating the use of energy in its fabrication.”