Thomas Campbell...

This afternoon, in the middle of a mammoth Christmas shopping session, I stopped off at the Half Gallery, down on Forsyth street to have a look at the exhibition by Thomas Campbell.

I've liked Thomas Campbell's stuff for quite a long time now, I think the first time I heard about him was through his surf film Sprout - which is linked with Jack Johnson in one way or another. Then I saw more of Campbell's stuff cropping up as he did some people's album covers and stuff.

He's a west coast surfer/artist and does a lot more exhibitions over in California, so I was very excited to find out that some of his work was on show in New York. The Half Gallery is a lovely little (very little) gallery in a quiet area near SoHo.

Essentially it was a room, smaller than our apartment with about 10 pieces of work on display, but it was lovely and quiet and you were able to get up really close to the pieces without there being loads of people around or anything.

There were a few pieces that were made up of lots of sewn together patches of different papers and materials, making up these flowers, they were great and much smaller than I'd imagined them when I'd seen pictures of them on the internet.

There were also a couple of canvases, and a couple of sculptures and these two great 3D paintings...

It was so great to finally be able to see some of his work in the flesh, and in such a lovely little space too.

The other great find of the day was the shop right next door to the gallery. It was a shop called My Plastic Heart, full to the brim with vinyl toys! I've been on their website quite a lot in the past but had no idea they had an actual shop - and they had some fantastic toys in there, so really rare ones and some I'd never seen before.

Plus, the Christmas shopping was a success - so it's been a pretty good day really!