Photos: The street art of Valencia

On a sojourn to Valencia this week I was struck by how prolific and inventive the southeastern Spanish city's street art scene is. An already beautiful place with an historic old town with clusters of impressive buildings (a nip up the Torres de Serranos and a  swing by the ceramics museum are musts), the graffiti lifts the experience still further. 

Its university's central location - including a design school which has a shop well stocked with spray cans - doubtless plays a big part. Almost every available spot in the hipster hotspots of the centre's northwest side and its successor Rassafa are taken up with incredible throw-ups, recurring yet interesting tags/stencils and paste-ups. 

Like Madrid, the most startling images are found in both Valencia's tourist-filled heart and tired backstreets. There are loads of recurring themes ("Are you dead yet?" is repeatedly stencilled up) and artists whose work is familiar, probably from the pages of VNA, but I'll let the pictures do the talking. I took loads more, so give me a shout if you'd like to see them.

                  

         

        

                     

Guide: Madrid's arts and crafts shops

Delicate prints and clever handmade oddities dominate Madrid's thriving independent crafty stores. An eagerly consumed tour of the trendy Malasaña area's cute selection of outlets on my honeymoon quickly reveals this is something special.

Malasaña has all the hallmarks of areas dubbed trendy - dirty streets, plenty of graffiti (some great, some dire) and with a disturbing number of prostitutes. The area is well known as Madrid's hipster hive, rammed full of colourful cocktail bars and more burger joints than there are cows in Spain. But the style and number of great stores is remarkable. Here are a few:

La Antigua, Corredera Baja de San Pablo

A narrow shop stacked with delights, from handmade cards and patterned paper to clever DIY kits to make books and kitchenwares. The artwork of Lady Desidia, who pops up all over town, features heavily, most remarkably in her incredible light boxes, which showcase the carefully drawn Manga-style women of her pieces. A must visit.
http://laantiguadepez.blogspot.com.ar

Rughara, Corredera Alta de San Pablo
Despite describing itself as a 'concept store', this little shop decked out in neon string is unpretentious and fun to browse. Dominated by clothing, there's plenty of clever designs and Anna quickly snares a tortoiseshell necklace and a handmade leather purse and returns later for a hand painted plate. It hosts great tunes too, with Emiliana Torrini's catchy Jungle Drum getting me dancing.
http://www.rughara.com

La Intrusa, Corredera Alta de San Pablo

Specialising in clothes and bizarrely, jewellery featuring Playmobil characters, this light, airy store sucks away time as you browse its wares. Lady Desidia's light boxes make another appearance, as well as jars with lights within them shining through images of trees and plenty of other great ideas to inspire. Anna snaffles some earrings with lightening bolts on.
http://www.laintrusashowroom.com

La Integral, Calle León

Away from Malasaña, this tiny record store and book shop is a must visit. It features an excellent selection of new vinyl from US alt country to a small but incisive collection of African compilations (an Afrobeat Airwaves LP could not be left in the shop). The store is a bit of a nerd's supermarket - everything from fanzines, lomography cameras, comics, and items with pictures of lomography cameras on complement the music. But it's well presented and does not feel like the standard issue quirky gift store evident elsewhere in Madrid and in London. 
http://www.laintegral25.com

Despite La Integral, and a few other small record stores including enchanting funk, soul and r'n'b specialist Upbeat Records, I couldn't find a big independent music store to get my teeth into (albeit high street chain Fnac hosts a huge store). 

But Madrid is well worth a visit for its independent stores alone, and that's before you get to its world famous galleries, great bars, the buzzy San Miguel food market and grand opera house, in which Antony & the Johnsons put on a mesmerising performance while we were in town. Have I missed any? Feel free to comment below.

How I discovered my perfect woman (or three)

There's a scene in my beloved Red Dwarf when Rimmer questions the Cat's attitudes to women and claims it's all about sex for the evolved feline. Dressed in an impeccable pink suit, the Cat replies: "Hey, I want to settle down. And as soon as I find the right small group of girls, the seven or eight women who are right for me, my wandering days are over, buddy."

Well, if I ever shared any of the large-fanged one's sentiments, then it's mission accomplished. Trawling some blogs for both inspiration for CD covers and a distraction from Jo Brand's cake version of Archbishop Desmond Tutu on the Great British Comic Relief Bake Off, I discovered Paula Bonet's collection of enigmatic ladies.

The Spanish artist's hive of portraits on her blog struck me as both incredibly simple but very effective. The collection of pencil, watercolours and collage are consistently striking, intriguing and clever. 

Bonet's women peer sideways out of pictures with aloof distain, accompanied by intense red patches and featuring heaps of character. There's a bizarre mix of women and animals which would make Hugh Hefner blush. Be it fish going through heads, a woman wearing a fox's nose or a portrait laid over a stag's horns, the combinations work well and prove lively. 

Perhaps the most striking image is that of a gagged redheaded woman with 'oh no', seemingly written on masking tape above her head. Bonet says: "What really interests me is the skin. I am interested in the skin and everything in it is readable." A perfect quality for a portrait specialist and there'll doubtless be plenty to come to leave me enchanted.