Primrose Park

I've just had a great weekend down in Cremorne (north Sydney, on the harbour, for the geographically challenged like me), teaching a 3D artists' book course at Primrose Park Paper Arts. I did my usual thing of being very blase about teaching and then being utterly terrified: what was I thinking? What do I know? How in hell's name am I going to teach that? So I did MASSES of reading and exploring and thinking and preparation - and had a lovely time.

Thanks so much to Christina, Chris, Lea, Julie, Diana, Lydia, Sue, Karen, Brenda, and Suzy for being enterprising, flexible, interested (and interesting) and creative, and to Chris (again, despite feeling ill), Dinah and Jean for organising everything.






















"Show and Tell" with Sara to start things off... you may notice a few BookArtObject books in there, illustrating things!






































































































Why teach about 3D book arts? I suppose it's 40% because I'm so intrigued myself, 40% because my own arts practice appears to have elements of getting 2D printmaking into 3 dimensions by cutting and folding, and 20% because I was so piqued by Professor Ross Woodrow's remarks at the opening of the Southern Cross Acquisitive Artists' Book Awards earlier this year! One of the great pleasures of books is their tactility: the ability to pick them up and hold them, and move the pages. Sometimes - not always - you get even more from an artists' book when there is more to it: more movement, or more texture or more shape*... and that's why I get excited about artists' books, and why it was such great fun to share my excitement with other people.

* apparently there's a theory that less is more. I struggle with that, as you can tell, but I'm prepared to believe there is truth in the idea.

Hermes' horse

Hermes the god didn't need a horse because he had winged sandals and a winged helmet... but of course I'm talking about the Hermes shop in Melbourne which had this magnificent paper sculpture in its window!

LACE

After my week in Melbourne I spent a couple of days at home before flying down to Sydney for a few days. On Thursday we went to the Powerhouse Museum show "LoveLace" which is truly fabulous...



Cecilia Heffer and Burt Bongers




Joyce Fleming






Joep Verhoeven




Jenny Pollack






Janie Matthews








Ingrid Morley







Lenka Suchanek





Michele Eastwood






Rui Kikuchi






Tania Spencer





















Tomy Ka Chun Leung

We went to the Ian Potter Centre of the National Gallery of Victoria this morning, and I liked the exhibition "10 ways to remember the past". One of the artists was Brook Andrew who printed anonymous Aboriginal faces onto metallic cloth in dark grey, making subtle comments about anthropology, White settlement and racism... quite beautiful.




















The centre itself is quite striking: all strange geometric panels and pierced steel sheets. I like it but it looks quite mad across the street from a bizarre but imposing former theatre which has an odd combination of Art Nouveau(-ish) and Moroccan architecture!













































My god(less) son Flyn infront of a telling piece of graffiti! I love the laneways with their strange mixtures of art plus bill posters...

Melbourne

I'm getting excited!

I'm off to Melbourne on Saturday! Two years ago my last visit to the UK was carefully timed to coincide with Impact 6 in Bristol... and this year I've been lucky enough to get a grant from Regional Arts New South Wales to enable me to go to Melbourne for the conference's first visit to the Southern Hemisphere.

I'm excited for all sorts of reasons: I've never been to Melbourne before; I get to meet up with Ronnie, Caren, Amanda from BookArtObject (two of whom I haven't previously met); I will be able to catch up with Sarah Bodman from UWE in Bristol AND Tim Mosely from Southern Cross University; I'm staying with my mate Willis and his family in an apartment at "Hotel Alto on Bourke" which I now discover is a swanky carbon-neutral hotel (v. posh) AND the programme looks really exciting! I can hardly take it all in... And did I also mention that BookArtObject are exhibiting AND that I'll get to see some fabulous art AND for once in my life I don't have to worry about the cost of getting there and back again? That has been such a relief... thank you, thank you to the wonderful people at RANSW who had some faith in me and were kind enough to give me a Quicks grant. Phew.

The past few months have just flashed by: first the intense effort of getting the show at Coffs Harbour Regional Gallery off the ground, then adjusting to the fact that dearest husband is now away A LOT (probably won't see much of him between now and February, *sniff*), then straight into a full-on recruitment process at darling daughter's school to recruit a Principal while at the same time applying for my TAFE job... and then on into the school holidays and Impact 7 in Melbourne... and so on. It has at times been a bit hairy, and I wonder whether that's the reason why I came down with a stomach bug on Monday and feel as if I've been run over by a bus. I NEVER get stomach bugs: the occasional bit of feeling off-colour, yes, and I do have IBS (not a lot of fun when that hits), but this is something else - completely debilitating and energy sapping. I've spent the last two days somewhat disconnected from reality and feeling rather sorry for myself, but I'm pleased to say I ate something this evening and feel heaps better!

Tomorrow I'm having my hair cut and have one last, big meeting at school and then... I can relax a bit and move on in my head. There's a bit of packing to do, some printing out of tickets and programmes etc., and I'd like to buy myself a little Melbourne map of some kind since I don't have a clue where I'm going (or how), but then dearest husband is catching an earlier plane home than usual on Friday and we're going to enjoy a nice dinner here with friends coming over before I hop on a plane on Saturday.

WARNING - not for the squeamish!

If you're squeamish about meat or you have strong views about vegetarianism then I suggest you don't read this post! Hit the back button on your browser or move quickly to another post... Look away now...





















Why all the fuss? Well today dearest husband and I dispatched our first chicken... and I have new-found respect for poulterers because it took us almost an hour and a half to kill, pluck, gut and hang the bird, and it probably takes a professional about 15 minutes.

I can't say that killing our chickens was ever high on my list of priorities, but we were given an extra rooster by friends whose four eggs turned into four roosters instead of four hens, and he was so noisy that even darling daughter expressed the view that she was looking forward to eating him! Dearest husband grew up on sheep and cattle stations and isn't sentimental about animals. Moreover he made his pocket money ferreting, so he's dispatched goodness knows how many fluffy bunny rabbits in his time... He did the killing, and we both did the plucking and gutting. I've now had my hand up a chicken's backside and it wasn't as bad as I thought it might be!

I don't feel bad: if you eat meat, which we do, I think it's far better to eat meat you've raised yourself. Our chickens are organic and they are loved and well-fed, so I can be confident that we're eating good meat. Rocky the rooster had a good life, a GREAT view, and a very quick end. He's now on a plate in our cool room, waiting to be turned into roast dinner on Friday evening when dearest husband gets back from Sydney.

Grounded

We seem to be going back to the sort of weather we experienced when we first came to Coffs Harbour: lovely days, then spectacular thunderstorms and some rain in the evenings! Darling daughter has been learning about the Norse gods at school this term, and I'd say Thor and Freya just had a humdinger of an argument and now Thor's throwing his hammer around... thunder that was faintly rumbling way out to sea has circled back and I can hear it much more clearly now and see huge bolts of lightning grounding themselves just off Sawtell beach.

It's a mad week - again. I'm in the middle of a recruitment process at my daughter's school - again, and I'm also desperately trying to finish my BAO books and sort some things out around the house and do some gardening. The gardening keeps me sane! Our wonderful vegetable garden is suddenly full of little green shoots: tall, pale green sweetcorn; thick, fat heirloom pumpkins; fragile stalks of leeks and spring onions; determined little red beetroot leaves; and a host of other things as well. I find myself day-dreaming about the garden, and about the garden book I want to make for myself once I've cleared some other things off my To Do list. Do I want a hard-cover book or do I want to make myself a folder that I can add to...? Should I divide it up into the geographical areas of the different beds, or leave it as a stream-of-consciousness garden journal? How many pockets should I include, in addition to sheets of graph paper/drawing paper/tracing paper/writing paper...? So many options, so many seedlings, so many weeds.. so little time!

Ah... here comes the rain.

Would've, should've, could've

I would have spent the day in the studio today, except that dearest husband is working in Sydney during the week at the moment and so Saturdays and Sundays are now IMPORTANT FAMILY TIME. I should have spent time in the studio today because I need to sort myself out, shake myself up and DO SOME WORK on my BAO books, but I really, really wanted to spend some time with Trouble and Strife, doing family things. I could have spent just some time in the studio and the rest with my family but you know, I just didn't...

Instead we all spent the afternoon in the garden, digging, rotivating, and planting! It was glorious.




View from on top on the pile of mulch, just up the driveway from the veggie garden entrance.






View of everyone else working!






Darling Daughter's little patch of heaven!








And a view from near the house, looking the other way...









So far we've planted potatoes, dahlia tubers, dahlia seed, gerbera seed, a climbing rose, a celeriac seedling and celeriac seeds, mixed heirloom beetroot seeds, leek seeds, spring onion seeds, and mixed heirloom carrot seeds plus lots of rhubarb, bergamot and plenty of asparagus. Darling Daughter has the climbing rose in her garden bed: she reminded us this morning that for YEARS we've been promising her a garden bed of her own and so today was the day! After Daddy rotivated it we dressed it with Dynamic Lifter and fresh soil, then I helped her to plant four strawberry plants, a speedwell, some flower seeds and heirloom carrots and lettuces. And in her own inimitable way the carrot seeds were sown thickly in the shape of her name (thinnings will go down well with the guinea pigs, we reckon) and lettuces were arranged in a heart shape. It's a creative approach that I hope I share since I'm planting flowers cheek-by-jowl with the vegetables partly so that the garden looks lovely and - there is a pragmatic reason too! - to attract pollinators, of which we have few judging by the fact that I had to hand-pollinate all our cucumbers, watermelons and pumpkins. Future plans include a hive of stingless native bees.




No, not a vegetable


















And yes, unusually for me (I'm known as a bit of a Luddite) I've also been seduced by technology in the form of my new Windows phone. I don't like having to have a new mobile phone (it seems very wasteful and recycling facilities for gadgets in Australia is still in its infancy), but since we don't have a functional landline it's a necessity and especially at the moment since I've got prospective candidates for the Principal position at Darling Daughter's school phoning me at all hours to discuss their applications... Anyway, my old phone (top right) has been on the blink for a while: there's nothing more frustrating that phoning someone or being phoned and the connection going after 30 seconds. Repeatedly. It turned out to be a fault with either the phone or the SIM card, and as I was entitled to a "free" upgrade I took advantage and ended up with the LG phone you can see above.

We're a non-Apple household and I can almost hear my Apple-loving friends yawning since the number of apps etc. for Windows phones is probably a lot less than for i-phones, but bear with me: I've been having lots of fun downloading various favourite albums from our networked MediaCentre onto my phone, with the realisation that I could listen to Verdi on the headphones while sketching! I tend to view anything related to games, music or videos on any gadget in a very negative light: why would you want to be playing Plants versus Zombies when you could be drawing/thinking/meditating? But even I can see some value in being able to listen to decent music while doing something else... Yes, yes, I'm very sad, but also very excited.

Now what else do I have to do this weekend? Ah yes, that's right... I have to felt a pocket for my new phone. You can tell I'm a Steiner parent!

p.s. great news this week: there's a possibility that the Regional Gallery is going to acquire one of my paper works for their permanent collection... which was very nice to hear. Fingers crossed it happens.

After gardening, the rain

Just as we downed tools on Sunday the heavens opened and we had a massive - and very beautiful - thunder and lightning storm. Some of our working bee friends stayed for a while, drinking cider and watching the storm passing over, wrapped up in blankets on the verandah

The timing couldn't have been better! Since then I haven't managed to do more than spread all my seed packets around and contemplate what to plant and where to put it, spending several hours yesterday consulting various gardening books. The result is a plan of sorts, that will see various interesting and hopefully attractive combinations of vegetables, herbs and flowers, designed to provide a sensory feast as well as a sensible pairing of companionable species

This morning I've been to Bunnings and bought poles, polypipe and netting since the last thing I want is the local wildlife eating it after all our hard work. Yesterday I saw a big fat echidna wandering around near the raised beds and of course we have lots of little swamp wallabies and pretty-faced wallabies as well as the usual assortment of rodents and birds. When we are finally paid some more money the vegetable garden will be fenced, which should keep the wallabies out, at least

I realised, of course, that now I need to make myself a great big gardening book with lots of bookmarks and pockets, durable covers, pages for drawing and pages for writing, pages for making lists and pages for planning the next beds... coming soon, I hope, and in the meantime I'm enjoying scribbling on lots of bits of scrap paper!

A veggie garden in a day!

Do you remember this?



















Last July I was blogging about how our digger driver Pete had flattened out a pad for our vegetable garden, down the hill from our house but in the sun all year. I had great fun marking out beds and planning them and then... the rain fell, the sun shone, the weeds grew and we ran out of money! Although I did plant some asparagus I'm blowed if I know where it is now... the pumpkins came to nothing and we had 3 watermelons and some beetroot among the couch grass and the occasional nasturtium. Ah well - that's what happens if you don't get on top of the vegetation in this part of the world: it gets on top of you!

Speed through the year and we get to July 2011 and - look away now, dear permaculture/rural fire brigade friends! - a sprayer full of Roundup, a couple of weeks of dry weather and a pyromaniac husband with a box of matches. Dearest husband kindly waited until I was off the block to "off" the problems, with the result that I drove back along the main road one sunny afternoon, looking thoughtfully at the column of smoke rising up from the driveway and pretty much guessed what was going on.

I must admit, arthritis and all, it was getting a bit daunting with wild Australian grasses taller than me and mouse spiders lurking underneath so I am secretly a little glad that the "problems" were resolved so quickly. From now on we're going to be clean, green and pesticide-free...





















Earlier in the week I ordered nut grass-free super vegetable garden soil and tea tree mulch, and I bought recycled hardwood planks from the local reclamation yard and lots of carriage screws. On Sunday - a beautiful clear day and not too hot - our gang of working party friends came around at 9:00am and we started putting it all together:













































Friends brought ratchets and socket sets, wheelbarrows and shovels, circular saws and sun hats and we provided tea, coffee, cake and lunch (salad, home made onion and herb rolls, home-smoked chicken pieces, roasted vegetables, potatoes baked in olive oil/salt/fresh rosemary/lemon, and home-cured and hot-smoked ham with - of course! - nice beer and cider). We worked until almost 2pm with a short tea-break, then had a leisurely lunch and worked it off again until we called it quits around 4pm.

8 adults over about 6 hours = 48 hours work = a lot of weed-matted paths, two compost bays made from recycled pallets and star pickets, a weed-matted pumpkin/sweetcorn/climbing bean bed, a rotivated and planted potato bed (I've been chitting the heirloom seed potatoes for a few weeks now!), a rotivated and planted asparagus bed with some added rhubarb and bergamot, and four 2.2 metre long/1.2 metre wide raised beds all weeded, stones cleared, wet cardboard in the bottom and 25cms soil and 10+ cms mulch on top.










































The whole 'working bee' idea is just great: four couple works out about right since it means that if you do it roughly once a month you're likely to get two working bees a year at your place, and it's just a fun social thing to do anyway. So a huge thank you goes out to Taja, Robin, Ruth, Darren, Elsbeth and Linda with added support from the kids! And dearest husband did a magnificent job with the food, as well as the gardening. Toby had a lot of fun too, once he stopped barking at everyone.

A great night

A huge thank you to the 200 or so people who came along to Coffs Harbour Regional Gallery last night for the opening of our shows. John van der Kolk was in the main space, I was in Gallery 2, and there was a group exhibition in between. My dearest husband, who isn't biased in any way, tells me that the most excitement in the gallery was in my space - and I think he might have been right, if only because what I was showing isn't what anyone would have been expecting!




This is not a great shot of part of Gallery 2, showing my slates on the wall and two of the cut paper works







These are the slates: three roofing slates, cut into shape about 150 years ago, then screen printed and incised and gold leaf applied by me




























Sleeping City: 6 hand-cut skyscrapers




Communication Breakdown (crappy title but I was feeling desperate!), all cut from a single sheet of paper
















Dying Words: lino cut and chine colle (two plates)
















I had such a fun evening: lots of friends turned up to support me; Deb Wall did a fantastic job of installing the show, making me feel better along the way, AND introducing my work; and people bought stuff! I sold four out of five pieces that were for sale, and received a universal kicking for pricing everything too low. I need to learn a lesson from that, once the euphoria's died down.

This exhibition has been a long and very personal journey for me in many ways. I can't believe how crazily (naively) ambitious I was in saying blithely that I'd produce an entirely new body of work for this show! Madness, frankly, and it brought me as close as I've ever come to throwing it all in, phoning up Deb and confessing that I'd bitten off much, much more than I could chew. I've learned, though, that I am surrounded by supportive, insightful and intelligent friends and family who have been nothing but encouraging, even though I've been a complete whingy pain in the arse. Thanks indeed to my immediate family and to my friends, who've cajoled me into the studio and ignored my stupidity along the way. In one sense I was right, though: by carelessly saying I'd start a new body of work I did indeed kick-start a new body of work! It worked! What I've got on exhibition at Coffs Harbour Regional Gallery represents a lot of effort but is the tip of an iceberg of work that could easily absorb me for another ten years, which is both daunting and satisfying at the same time.

I've also learned the hard way that I need to have more confidence in what I do and INCREASE MY PRICES! I think every single person I spoke to yesterday evening said exactly the same thing... which would have been depressing except that I didn't think anyone would want to buy anything! When I took the work into the gallery I marked it all "NFS" and only had a last minute change of heart, which resulted in a somewhat diffident pricing strategy, but never mind.

The biggest lesson, though, is probably that I need to keep on doing what I'm doing, week in and week out, so that I DO accumulate a considered body of work over time, in whatever form it takes. Then I will have something ready to exhibit when an opportunity arises, or something to sell when someone is interested, instead of scrabbling around to find something because I don't expect anyone to ask. That's a very different attitude, which I will have to find a way to cultivate. After all, if I don't take myself seriously as an artist, why should anyone else?