The commission completed

 In the end, the work was all about the map. I used map references in the book; we incorporated map imagery into the wall work and Barry etched a map outline into aluminium for a wee sculpture.

The wall work...

I had written some words (poetic prose?) for the book; and wanted to incorporate some into the wall work as well.  Here is my calligraphic rendering in ink. The property is large, and in western Queensland, and the land goes on forever...

Of course once I had done it, I took a photo from directly aboveand was horrified by the blank space top left. So I tore a piece of the map up and popped it on.

Still not quite enough, so a tiny fragment of the map was added and I could feel the trio of left sided elements making me calm again.

Sadly the clarity of the photos is not transferring well into blogger today - I promise the calligraphy is not blurry!

And so to the book.

It rests with a wrap around cover and band in a custom made perspex box.

The stencil motif was repeated

These words are shared between the two pieces.

Thinking about returning, leaving and memories.

There are five sets of words - some directly from the map; some more personal as I imagined the place from afar. 

And of course, I love the edges.

Barry took the outline of the map and etched it into aluminium, and placed it on a cube of gidgee timber.  The map describes stands of both mulga and gidgee/gidyah so we wanted to reference the timbers where we could.  The bark lines on the wall piece are mulga.

I love how he carefully folded the metal to appear map-like and tethered it in three corners.

And here they are all wrapped and ready to be received.

We had a nice home made lemon and blueberry cake with a sparkler, and the gifts were opened and we spoke about what we had tried to do and it was all very lovely!!!