Charred III and a Fair

 On Friday Barry and I decided that after all the chores we had both been doing, it was time to play and make some art, so we got together and brought Charred III into being.

We worked together to select the bits of rust that we would choose from to put on the cube; and Barry spent time preparing them - drilling holes, grinding bits off, cutting out the interesting bits we might want. And then we began the selection and placement process.

And then we got to pop it in the front garden and let it just be lovely.

And a few days later, I managed to get this photograph of the Charred series I, II & III alongside Barry's Cove Post.

As the sun shone this morning, I came upon my earlier post, sitting in the fireplace now and looking warm and very much at home. Our cottage is a place of posts!

And just quickly, we attended the Watten Craft Fair yesterday and had a grand day out, met some lovely people and made some sales as well. Our table looked very quiet, calm and soft.

And again, the sun shone and we got orem lovely angles and shadows...

We head to Murkle Market next Saturday to meet more folk and hopefully sell some more things. 

The week that was...

 We had a great visit to Melbourne - a fabulous few days of being inspired at the Communities in Control Conference; as well as spending time together with dear friends and eating together and wandering the streets. Some places and some times fill you up, and time spent at the conference, as ever, renewed my spirit.

Our Pop Up Poster shop went well and we chatted social justice and women's issues with many a participant.  A few commissions came our way as well, and more Go Girl tea towels are about to hit the press!!!

One of my favourite wall signs near where we stayed. How I love artists and street art.

Home on Wednesday, to find that the ikebana arrangement I made at the workshop last Saturday was holding strong. Our good friend Tory had arranged for the wife of the Japanese Consulate in Brisbane, Hiromi Tanaka, to do an Ikebana demonstration (she is a Master) and for us all to then try our hands. As you can see a gorgeous gathering, and we all learned a lot.  It made us look at flowers and negative space so very differently. Thanks to John G for the group shot.

On  Thursday I baked bread. More aligned to to the rock family than the bread family, but it tasted good.

On Thursday night we attended a vigil for victims of domestic abuse.

On Saturday I baked more bread. Much better, but more trials to come!

A cornucopia of life - varied and full this week.  Friday and Sunday were spent in the studio with bits of this and bits of that.  Not as much focus as I would have liked but time to be gentle on myself and let things settle into place. 

Beauty on the block and bits of art

Sometimes the art you do is not your art. The other week I spent a full day with Barry as he installed a fabulous piece of public art sculpture he had designed. It is a beautiful piece and looks stunning. Installation day was a big day so it was all hands on deck including mine.

I stayed out of the way of the heavy lifting but was called on to help place the river stones in the cement around the sculpture.

I was lucky to find a couple of heart stones which I had to include in the work.

This one needed a bit of a clean up after it was splashed with concrete. But oh so lovely.

Some of the stones I positioned.

                                       

And Barry hard at work tidying things.

Back on the block it was a week to discover beauty.  Mid-winter, some of the first buds of Spring...

Peace doves seen so clearly against the blue sky with no leaves to cover them.

And one that had fallen, Barry placed in this block...

 Coming back to the house from the studio - a gentle sunset with a bird in flight...

Life is good.

Installation of IGA commission

At 6 am on Thursday morning, Barry and I met Sean from Quality Choice Signs at the doors of IGA in town, just as they opened, so that he could install the lettering work for the piece of art above the cash registers there.

As part of the 2104 renovation, this artwork had been designed by Noela Mills, and installed by Edith Ann and her team. Rob, the owner told me so many people loved it, but didn't really know what it was about, and he asked me to do a storyboard for the work; like I had done for the other artworks in the shop.

His preference this time however, was for a line of words ON the artwork, not a board that was separate to it.

So I had to do a lot of thinking about how to achieve that - what would be the best medium to get words on to composite aluminium? How large could the lettering be? what style might add to the work not detract from it?

The length required was just over 8metres, so I decided I wouldn't try to do calligraphy that went for 8 or so metres; but I would choose a font that I thought supported the work.

I offered Ron and Sam several options and they chose this one; a font that looks hand-drawn without being too stylised, yet is still easy to read.

I went to work trying to determine how to get the lettering into the files that the signwriters would need;   and making sure I had it all at the right length. I posted about my old fashioned approach here.

With the usual stresses and hassles of trying to get work upscaled and commercialised, it was with fear and trepidation that I showed up on Thursday, hoping against hope that I had chosen the right colour, the right size, the right layout etc.

By 10 past 6 Sean had laid out the first bit. I had planned for the baseline to be 200mm from the bottom as I recalled that the Christmas decorations and wreaths impinged on the work a bit; however when he placed it at that height, the words looked like they were floating in the middle of the work and didn't belong; so we dropped it down 50mm where it settled nicely, and should still be seen at Christmas.

It is quite a long piece of work...

When we got to the end, we were faced with a dilemma. Storage of some products hid the end of the artwork. There was no point moving the boxes, putting the lettering up and then replacing the boxes, so we had to modify the layout of the attribution (the title and the artist). But our solution works I think.

Here I am trying to explain how I want it to look. Sean was a designer and understood it all so beautifully; was flexible, and happy to work to make it look the best it could.

The solution (and the problem).

And then there was a little happy clap. Can you see that there is a hole in the floor just in the bottom right? We were working around the builders who had to replace a floorboard; folk coming in to buy things had to run an obstacle course for a bit!

The amount of lighting in a supermarket is amazing.  The words are there, but not there, depending on how you look at it and from where. But not in an irritating way, just in an interesting way.

A few closeups.

 Sean preparing, and revealing, the final (first) word - a job well done!

A pano shot attempting to get the whole work in (no easy task).

That is the final commission completed and it feels amazing. Now to focus on teaching in Toowoomba next weekend and making some of my own work.

More low tech design strategies

As previously seen, I still like to do a good old cut and paste and print it out to see where I am headed with long and large amounts of text for walls.

I have the honour of attaching the storyboard to the artwork that sits above the checkouts at our local IGA store. Back in 2014 Noela Mills designed the work, Edith Ann and her team installed it and here in 2016, I am completing it with words. Rob and Sam the IGA owners, say that folk really love looking at it, but they don't always fully understand it, so could I please help tell the story?

Happy to!

The two walls I have to place it on are 8m and 8.8m wide, so I want the words centred on both.

Rather than try to get handwritten calligraphy to scale I chose a computer font that looks slightly handwritten and scaled it up.

So I thought about what size I thought would work and decided the only way I could comfortably do it was to print it out.

The good news was that I printed on old letterhead, and that the paper was then shredded for mulching the garden...I used 48 A4 pages up front.

As you can see my first attempt at printing went a long, long, way, snaking through the house for 9.5m...a bit too long.

So I fiddled and faddled with font sizes and scaling and worked it out pretty well after quite a few extra efforts.

The top run is at 300pt, the second at 250pt, the third at 220pt and the fourth at 235pt.

235pt won.

So now to choose the colour; to measure the height above the baseline (currently the baseline is hidden by Christmas decorations) and then organise to get it printed, cut and installed.

2017 here we come!