Thursday Thoughts...

"......collecting scraps of talk, setting them down like birdsong in my notebook, where someday I would go prospecting for my life." 

 Linda Pastan, Waiting for my Life

It interesting that I came across this one this morning.  Interesting only because just yesterday, I was putting together my presentation for the Artist's Talk I am doing in Brisbane on 28 March, and part of the chat goes something along these lines - "words are the way I make my way through the world. Some artists carry a journal around with them and make quick studies; sketch an outline or a scene. Me, I gather words. Snippets of conversations, beautiful descriptions. Clear and concise understandings". 

And lo, so too does this quote - altho far more poetically.

Perhaps Ms Pastan is speaking more of gathering and collecting scraps  of talk such that they can be used in the future to remind her of something in her life. To hold a light on a time which was important; people who mattered; or things that she learned.

For me; the words I capture spark something into the future. They act as some form of inspiration that might lead to work; they somehow describe something so perfectly that I want to respond to it artistically.

I really do like the notion of collecting scraps of talk and setting them down like birdsong...

from somewhere on instagram...

The love of nests

 I got a wonderfull surprise last week when B came home from his art class, bearing a box with three nests and some eggs in it! His marvellous teacher had told him to "take them home so Fiona can photograph them"!

And that is exactly what I did.

The eggs are a mix of chicken eggs and quail eggs and don't belong to the actual nests themselves, but they do look lovely within them.

Here follows a bunch of photos in all sorts way in celebration of nests (and birds, and feathers, and eggs).

I love the fragment of fabric here...

The final ones are taken using the app that the square point of sale device which we use recommends for taking shots of items for retail online shops...interesting and slightly ethereal.

Deep sigh. They are such glorious things. So clever, so remarkable, so robust.

International Women's Day

 8 March is International Women's Day - first celebrated in 1911, the Day seeks to celebrate the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. It also marks a call to action to accelerate gender equality.

As we sit and watch a world, led mostly by middle-aged or old white men, take us to war in so many places, wreak havoc, and cause death, despair and destruction I wonder to myself - wouldn't women do it better? And I am mostly certainly sure that they would.

But here we are. 

In small ways we do what we can to promote women; to uphold and support women, and to cheer women on. To have their backs, to bolster and boost them and to promote their excellence. Go girls!!!

I make work about women, and I make work about women friends. I hope to do a much larger body of work about women friends mid year; but for today, I am sharing my feminist poster works and postcards.

I have loaded them into the online shop and for the next week, all women's work is 10% off.

A sample of them along with two of my Fragile Gains series.

One of my favourite A4 posters...

This one speaks to me so much of all that is held within the Epstein files - such depravity and abuse of power.

We are so tired of it all - we have had enough.

Women still struggle to be heard when they are talked over or mansplained to.

This should be the starting point in any claim of sexual assault. So awful that so many women have testified to assaults in the Epstein files, and still...no justice for them yet.

We are all so much more than this; and women are worthy of respect, empathy, and understanding even if they aren't your daughter.

A catch cry for women everywhere to keep on protesting, to keep on resisting, to keep on writing and calling their political representatives...

There is only one set of these seven postcards left...

And these fragile eggshells, speak so eloquently of the gains we have made, which we must protect. 

Thursday Thoughts...

 "In books lies the soul of the whole past time the articulate and audible voice of the past when the body and material substance of it has altogether vanished like a dream".

Thomas Carlyle, 1840

I visited the State Library of NSW yesterday with a dear friend, and we both stopped and read this quote, incised into sandstone in the Mitchell vestibule, and sighed. So true we said.

With these words Thomas Carlyle seems to be reminding us that once we have died, have vanished like a dream; it is books that remain and it is books that shall hold memory.

That books shall hold both the soul of the past matters as much to me, as that they hold the stories and facts of the past,. That they retain the intention, the purpose, the desires of the past as well as acting as reminders of what happened and who said what and where and when is a special combination.

The notion of books offering both an audible and articulate voice to the past is comforting. That the past can still be heard and understood in elegant ways, because of books.

Next steps for a book & pebbles!

 I am pushing a couple of things forward at the same time - the wee book for Narratives, and the second Book of Silences. Both are in fact pretty big projects; but the deadlines for both are only a few weeks away for me (given we have plans to return to Scotland. I say plans, because as we have all observed, the planet is a risky place right now).

So the stitching is happening on the pages of the Nest book. I am varying the placement and length of lines of stitching, but have decided on three lines of stitching for each. 

One thing I am missing from the larger public studio space is the light for photographing things. I used to put things on the concrete floor, in an area without direct light and the colours were always pretty true. I am yet to find my happy place for photographs here at home, but over time I hope I will. I think this last photo is the truest to the colour of the pages.

So that work continues, and I have also added some of my calligraphic pebbles to the shop. I was trying hard to work out a way for people to select their own word and I had a few tricks up my sleeve; but without adding 26 letters of the alphabet as items and have people choose 1 x P + 2 x E + 1 x A = 1 x C to create PEACE I couldn't make it work. I thought having 26 items on top of other things in there (like jewellery and book-ets) would just make it look way too messy and be a bit too fussy for folk. So I selected a few phrases and words and priced them; and offer folk the opportunity to email me with requests.

I did work out how to let folk choose if they wanted upper case or lower case so that felt like a win!

The pebbles are $2.00 each; and if any locals want to buy them, there is no postage.  Well depending on how I go manipulating the website, there might be postage, but it will be swiftly refunded!

So many things...

Re-imagining the shop

Once again, my art life is jumping this way and that at the moment. I am trying to stick with the book to be made for the Narratives exhibition; as well as get the second book of Silences printed; and do an unexpected calligraphic commission; and of course update the websites and shops, keeping them stocked and looking nice and friendly. And packing and posting as things get sold.

Oh, and designing and printing some new business cards! I have never had business cards that reflect my jewellery, so these ones now do this; and I have two more designs to consider and get printed then I should be able to include the right card with the right sort of item...

As ever, life is full and varied.

I did want to record and spend a bit time taking stock of the steps for the new shops in a way. The time we spent thinking through what we would and could keep doing after we left the big space was a fascinating time for me. It truly was a time of re-imagining. I had to re-imagine working in such a reduced space; I had to re-imagine what I might teach into the future; we  had to re-imagine how we would sell things if we couldn't display them in our physical shop; and we had to re-imagine what sort of work we continued to make.

It was a time of selection and farewell. Of commitment and release. Of reflecting on the past; but looking to the future. 

One of the jobs with the websites was deciding what categories I would use to put new items in (we deleted our entire inventory - gulp - and started from scratch). In thinking through 'how do the things I make group together', I went looking for through lines.

Previously my shop categories had been pretty descriptive - cards, artists books, posters and so on. Very descriptive of the item - the 'what it is'. What I felt was missing was the 'what it is about bit'. My sense is that people know me for my cards and my artists' books; a relatively frequent refrain when we had the shop space was " Are you the grief card lady???". And yes, indeed, I am. 

But they also know me for my women's work; and my grief work for example.

How best to reflect those sorts of things became a task I dipped into and out of. I would scratch down some thoughts and return to them. I would list things that might cover things;  and would then have to check if some items I wanted to keep making could still find a home. 

So this is where I landed (and may I say the logistics of getting that drop down menu to appear, and then get it in the right order was a Herculean effort for somebody who doesn't do website stuff for a living!).

I ended up with eight categories. Four of which are item categories; four of which are more thematic categories. 

Items: Artists' Books, Jewellery, Cards and Booklets

Thematic: Pebbles, Women, Grief and Pausing.

What I hope I have achieved (and the shops are still not fully stocked, because you know... life) is that when somebody clicks on Grief - they will find Grief cards and booklets (just not yet). If they click on pebbles, they will find jewellery an artists book and some calligraphic pebbles (again, not just yet). With Pausing they will find an artists' book and daily rainbow words... and I think this is where any peace work I do will land as well.

I think this offers options for folk; and also helps me see the interrelatedness of say my jewellery, and my grief is a stone book-ets. And also that I have enjoyed writing on pebbles for decades now... pebbles are a thing for me so I might as well own it!

To support these categories and the shops in general; we have re-imagined the entire shop and display into plastic tubs in a cupboard. What a hoot - so here is the behind the scenes look at our 'shop' these days!

Although I promise we are not selling the pandemic at all - that relates to work-work we did nearly two decades ago which proved rather prescient in 2020...

I expect that as my art continues and grows that I might re-assess these categories or groupings. New loves may appear and require their own name and place. It will evolve.

What started out as a task about "the categories for the shop" became a real investigation of myself as an artist; and a clarifying of what it is I do; what I love; and how I present myself. Fascinating.

Thursday Thoughts...

“Introversion- along with its cousins sensitivity, seriousness, and shyness- is now a second-class personality trait, somewhere between a disappointment and a pathology. Introverts living in the Extrovert Ideal are like women in a man’s world, discounted because of a trait that goes to the core of who they are. Extroversion is an enormously appealing personality style, but we’ve turned it into an oppressive standard to which most of us feel we must conform.” 

Susan Cain

I am happy that I can still roam through my quotes pages and find ones that for whatever reason, jump out at me and recommend themselves for pondering.

I read Susan Cain's book Quiet many years go and felt such an infinity for her world and descriptors. I have actually done two previous Thursday Thoughts on quotes by her I realise - here and here. But still, it seems I have more thoughts! Or maybe, she has different thoughts on introversion worthy of pondering...

I really do agree with this quote as it suggests the world of extraversion is the one which is valued, celebrated and held up as an exemplar of a successful life. Introverts rarely get praised as role models or set up as exemplars.

She appears really pointed when she describes the personality trait of introversion as being considered as somewhere between a disappointment and a pathology. Ouch! 

I have come to accept that folk will oftentimes underestimate me. In part because I am a woman, in part because I don't need to shine in public settings or push forward my position or prove my expertise. I am a watcher and a listener. I am an observer who also carries with her a strong sense of intuition. I can read a room, I can read body language and I can read the temperature of a conversation.

When required to be forceful or project my position; when the job or task at hand requires it, I can do it. Happily and successfully. But I am much happier in my introvert world - small groups of people, time by myself, time to recharge my battery.

The next book of Silences

I have found both the brain space and time to start on the second book of Silences. I sat down and discovered that past-me had been very good and cut all the pages, the end sheets and the covers for the second book; and that she had also done the stitched line pen marks on the cover as well, so all that present-me had to do was print! Ha ha.

I thought I would get a run at a couple of prints, but first up I did have words with the more recent-past-me who as she packed up the studio had pulled apart the chase that she had used to print the first book. 

This was not a total disaster; but it did mean present-me had to spend some time trying to find a photograph of the set-up and then try to re-build it such that the books could be printed looking very much the same as the first ones by getting all the spacing and alignments right.

Funny the things you think about under pressure - I was clearly trying to be tidy, when in fact I made my life a bit trickier.

I did however manage to re-build it and here is the table with work about to begin.

Not the traditional way to set type; but it works for me when I am trying to replicate the location of the type on  page. Here I am using an awl to hold back the type so it doesn't fall into the space whilst I get the next spaces and letters.

The first silence set!

And printed...

One down, only fifteen to go! Plus a title page or two, a colophon, and a thank you page; but we have begun!

Exhibition - Learning My Lines

 We recently had a mini-mini-break down by the water - to celebrate the end of our 6 year lease and the transition out of a public space and to home-based work.

Here is the holiday mood in three photos...

A time to relax and reflect and celebrate.

On our way home we visited the University of the Sunshine Coast University's Art Gallery. The current exhibition is called Marking Time: 30 Years of the USCArt Collection. I am honoured that one of my books  - Learning my Lines - is in the collection, and even more honoured that it was selected to form part of this show. 

I really love this book. It is a bit of a departure for me into the sculptural artists' book realm; but I have been in love with it ever since I first bought the books that form the basis of it.

Its origin story can be found here and here.

This book is where I first learnt to hand rivet. Lovely hand made copper rivets hold the rusty straps together.

And here I am alongside it, looking a tad dishevelled, but proud!

This is the first time I have seen it on show without a Perspex cover and I loved being close to the texture and being able to see the details under gallery lighting...

The University has shown it previously as part of the exhibition Women's Work back in 2019. 

Here I am with it in that show. Much shorter hair, but better groomed (it was at the opening!) and I am laughingly trying to hide my left foot behind the plinth because I had a badly broken toe and it was in a foot splint thingy...