Misty rusty mountain days

It has been a bit damp and a bit misty here on the mountain today. When I caught up with Susan yesterday morning, we both talked about how we wanted to experiment like Jennifer and Pam with rusting paper by leaving rusty bits on it out in the rain. We also love how Alice gets beautiful marks transferred (but don't know how!).

I have no idea what I am doing but off I went when I thought it might start to rain.

A plastic table out the back, a piece of Arches Velin (watered with the hose) and then a bunch of rusty bits placed on the paper, then on cue...rain.

This is how things are looking towards the end of Day 1.

I plan to leave it all out overnight and see what happens.

I would love to hear any tips or trade secrets about doing this - or whether patience is simply the key ingredient!

And here's some of the mist clearing momentarily - quite a gentle and beautiful sight.

PS Just as I was making the links to folk, I looked again at Jennifer's table and I think she put tea bags on as well, so I am about to run over in the dark and pop a few tea bags down and see what happens. Laugh!

PPS A real sign that Barry is getting better - I was in the kitchen explaining how I had just realised there might need to be tea bags as well; and he just said "so shall I get the torch and we'll go over?". And we did. Laugh more!

Thursday Thoughts...

"She read books quickly and compulsively, paperback after paperback, as if she might drift away without the anchor of the printed page.” 


 Jane Hamilton


I don't know much about the author - she has written books that people love or loathe and I'm not sure if this quote comes from one of those books, but I like it.  I know how this woman or this girl feels.

I feel terribly untethered if I don't have a book around me or some ability to read something, anything. A newspaper, a magazine, a timetable...

I have always found books to be calming and settling influences. In amongst it all, books anchor me.

In Emergency recently with Barry as he was recovering, and asleep, I sat beside him and read a book of short stories on my phone.  I was so glad to have my phone as I hadn't thought to pack a real book when we left the house earlier that morning. Every visit to the hospital after that however, I had the book-bag with me and lots of options.

Being a wee bit of an introvert I also find reading a book in public - on a train, a place, at a coffee shop or clearly in a hospital, enables me to be free of having to talk to folk or interact too much. A little invisible shield goes up that almost says "Don't interrupt me, I'm on important business. I'm reading".

Whenever I need to calm myself, be quiet or settle - I turn to books. They are true companions, always different, often amusing, sometimes incredible, occasionally earth-shattering. When I need to re-energise, I go sit somewhere quiet and read. Reading a book is a tonic that renews and refreshes me and I'm sure I'm not alone.

©2012 Fiona Dempster - Ken reading Barry's book, using PhotoCamera

The Poetic Pen

The wonderful 23 Sandy Gallery in Portland Oregon is hosting a special exhibition called The Poetic Pen. The exhibition is in conjunction with the Calligraphy NorthWest International Calligraphy Conference taking place in Portland from 24 June to 1 July 2012.

I was very excited to be attending my first Conference - over 500 calligraphers attending workshops with some truly amazing and brilliant calligraphic tutors.  It was so hard to choose and nominate a workshop. But in the end, after Barry's recent illness and episodes, we have decided not to try to tackle a long-haul trip to the US in a fortnight's time and I was not feeling good about going on my own and leaving him here. So some lucky person who was on a wait-list now has the chance to participate; so I'm thrilled for them, whilst being a little bit sad for me.

But back to the exhibition.  The Gallery called for works that celebrated calligraphy and poetry and I thought oh well, I might as well enter and see what happens.  I was very excited - like pinch me really - to learn that both pieces I submitted were selected!  They chose 40 works from 140 submissions so I was feeling very chuffed.

I am sending "Artemis" a small book with poetry by Robyn Nugent and "Blackbird" another wee book with poetry by Annie Kerr from Inkhaven.

This is what I said about "Artemis":

Robyn Nugent’s poetry is always spare and often unflinching. I chose a very minimalist representation for the words, but added interest with weight variation. The simple nature of the book enables one to carry a poem in the hand, lightly. 

 And what I wrote about "Blackbird":

Annie Kerr’s words always create such beautiful word-pictures, and the imagery of silver threaded calligraphy, and liquid song as the bird flits through the streets is lovely. This is my own personal heartbeat script, which I think gives a sense of rhythm and movement to the words. This is a very personal format for the book as well—it sits lightly in the hand like a precious object.

Both books will be winging their way across the Pacific Ocean this week, and I look forward to hearing how their visit to the US goes!  For anybody in or around Portland OR the gallery is open Thursday, Friday and Saturday from midday to 6.00pm, and the First Friday artist reception is on 6 July 2012. The exhibition runs from 22 June - 29 July 2012.

ALAW - playing catch up

Well the good news is that Barry came home on Friday afternoon and has been going slowly and quietly forward since then. Little steps and lots of sleeping, but gradually getting better each day, which is wonderful. Thanks for all the healing thoughts and energy that came our way from across the oceans and down the road - it helps to know folk are thinking of you in those difficult moments and times.

In the past few weeks I've not been at all creative, but have still managed to do a few of my letters for A Letter a Week.  We are nearing completion of the first alphabet of the year and I am all caught up.

I have five more letters to do which I should be able to squeeze into the next few weeks. Phew!

I am still loving the simplicity and elegance of this little alphabet. Each square is 7cm x 7cm and the letters are all pierced, as part of the 'going dotty or polka dot' theme for one of the alphabets.

I am still imagining the final piece - I have the main idea, now all I have to do is execute it! Laugh - how often is it that the idea never quite translates as brilliantly to the real thing as when it appears in your head?  Stay tuned.

Thursday Thoughts...

“Optimist: someone who figures that taking a step backward after taking a step forward is not a disaster, it’s a cha-cha.” 


 Robert Brault 

Barry and I laughed out loud at this quote a few weeks ago; and then earlier this week I reminded him of it as it applies so pertinently to our lives at the moment.

What a great way of realising that in fact life and its ups and downs, forwards and backwards is really just a dance. And which dance doesn't ever really involve one of the partners taking a backwards step at some point? A great metaphor I have figured and great wisdom I think.

I popped over to read Robert Brault's blog and it is full of quotes and lines about life in general.

I think this holds true in our art and creative lives as well. So often we figure a disaster is a disaster. Something we attempted and failed. Something that just never fully realised all the potential we had for it in our heads. And yet, I expect with a bit of distance and time, we can recognise that sometimes these failures brought with them gifts.

We took a step backward so we could work out where to go next, or we learnt how NOT to do something, and where to put our feet next time. It's amazing to me how a simple thought or idea, expressed like this, can change my approach to a situation.

This photo (taken at Alyangula last year) reminded me how the tide comes in and goes out - it too goes backwards, and then comes forward.

Snow falling in daylight...

The second book in my bookartobject project this year has also gone out into the world and I can now talk about it a bit. I am also beginning to receive a couple of other books from some folk in my groups so I shall share those soon as well.

I think I chose this title because I love the look of white on white – which is how I imagined the world might look when snow fell in daylight. I embossed and debossed snowflake images I created myself and stacked them as I thought about how they fall and pile up.

I left the edges of the pages a bit frayed – like the feathering of snowflakes, and I knew I wanted to have a really delicate, loose binding that gave the sense of the fragility of the snowflakes – not something rigid and bound.

The Swarowski crystal set atop the book continues the sense of frailty and delicacy.

 The words in the middle are mine – again, how I imagine the world might be in daylight snow.

In the end, it’s a little book of snowflakes.

It is quite small, the squares are only 8cm x 8cm and I made an edition of twenty, so I have some spares for swapping, or for selling through the studio.

Thank you for all the care and support for me and for Barry during this tough time. Sadly, he went backwards on Friday and was transferred back to a major hospital in another town nearby.  He is taking slow and little steps forward.

Thursday Thoughts...

“Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It’s self-conscious and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can’t “try” to do things. You simply “must” do things.” 
Ray Bradbury


It's been a tough week in the Dempster-Smith household.  Barry got an infected heart covering (pericarditis), which caused him great pain and trouble breathing. An episode in Emergency meant he needed to be resuscitated with CPR, and he has since managed to get very damaged ribs, a collapsed lower left lung and possibly pneumonia. He is back in hospital for a bit, at least in Maleny this time, and getting excellent care and attention - and pain management.  Quite the time I must say!

For those who have known and sent him care, support and positive thoughts I say thanks. I never feel really sure about doing the personal versus the art thing on the blog, but I figure my absence from commenting on other's blogs, slowness in replying to comments people are making on mine, and my short but sweet posts probably need a bit of explanation.

But back to business...

The opening sentence of this quote pretty much describes me at the moment. Don't think!  But I really do like it as it applies to making, creating and doing. I find it's a funny old conversation you can have with your head when setting out or working your way thru a piece.  Sometimes I don't think and it just appears - Patti calls that "thinking with my hands". Sometimes I have a little quiet conversation with a friendly muse who hints, guides and send me down the right paths - again I'm not really thinking, just responding.  It's when a conversation starts that I'm in real trouble when I start over-thinking, second-guessing, almost arguing against myself and my ideas at times such that the pieces get really muddled and lose their way.

So often it seems to be about getting out of the way of yourself and letting the piece emerge.

I often think a lot before I begin - thinking still offers me a sense of comfort that I am at least doing something, and I have a plan (love a plan, like a list). Even if the piece deviates completely, I still like that bit at the beginning.

And just because I'm still a little bit in love with it, and it was a good example of NOT over-thinking, but responding, here's another glimpse of Seeking Solitude.

Thanks again for all the care.

A subversive stitch complete

I have sent these little books out into the world and they appear to have reached their far-flung homes so it seems safe now to talk about the process and the finished product in a bit more detail.

The story behind BookArtObject this time around is that Sarah Bodman wrote 100 short stories based on Kurt Johannessen's book Exercises, where one of the tasks was to write 100 stories and bury them in a forest", which she duly did. If you want to know more, you can follow this link...  Each story had a title, (the full list is here) and we were able to nominate which one we would interpret.  I chose first of all "A subversive stitch", and secondly "snow falling in daylight". With no idea what the real short story of that title is like, I headed off with an open mind.

My mind wandered across several different thoughts and approaches for this book and I settled on a combination of ideas around women's work and stitching, darning, and embroidering; about censorship and letters written home during the wars where sentence were blacked out, leaving the safe words showing; about stitching to remove words and leaving others; about history where men mostly got to write it and women weren't featured. Quite an amalgam.

I machine-stitched the words away on the cover, leaving the important ones behind, with threads dangling madly everywhere. On the inside pages, the words are sealed in place and can’t be easily removed or erased; and yet the tracing paper makes it a bit hard to discern what is written. The words are printed on paper where I had also printed an image of the threads off all the covers.

All of the words I used are my own.  I am finding it much more satisfying these days to either work with my own words, or those of people I know, rather than than simply working with someone famous' words.  I still love working with others' words, but my own words are beginning to add another dimension to my work I think.

Here is the book from front to back.

Given so much of my work is quiet, subdued and uses a simple palette - this was a very liberating and exuberant book to make. I loved the mess of the threads, I loved the boldness of the colour, and I loved the messages.  A lot of my work is about quietness, peace and gentleness; yet this piece has a bit of the feminist in me in it which I thoroughly enjoyed expressing!

Thursday thoughts...

"Until then I had thought each book spoke of the things, human or divine, that lie outside books. Now I realized that not infrequently books speak of books: it is as if they spoke among themselves. In the light of this reflection, the library seemed all the more disturbing to me. It was then the place of a long, centuries-old murmuring, an imperceptible dialogue between one parchment and another, a living thing.." 


Umberto Eco


There won't be much thinking tonight on Thursday Thoughts, but I did want to connect a little bit to Jennifer's blog where she is searching for a rainbow on the third Thursday of every month, starting this month with red.

So with this quote in mind I photographed part of my rainbow book stack and it got me thinking that these titles would lead to some very funny and entertaining conversations between the books when I have gone to bed!

Website re-vamp and a shop...

Barry and I have been beavering away here and there, now and then, to try and update our websites. We like the idea that they are a place where people can see the best of our work, and get a real sense of who we are and what we do.

We haven't been particularly good at the updating thing we realise, but in the past few weeks have spent many hours uploading new photos, re-arranging the 'portfolios' of work and generally freshening things up.

What has been really good about doing this, is that we are now both quite comfortable and familiar with the software.  I think one of the things that kept us from updating was that we weren't all that confident; so we didn't, and we didn't keep improving our skills so we could feel more confident...and so the silly cycle went on.

But now we both feel confident to go in and do a quick tweak or add another image and that feels good. Almost as comfortable as blogging!

Another nice thing about talking about the website and what would go on it, was that it really clarified for us who we are and what we do.  What are we known for? Where are our passions? How does our work come together in a  group or collection?  We talked as we drove to Goondiwindi and back (twice), we talked on our morning walks, and we talked over a glass of red at the end of the day.  It was a really helpful process to clarify things.

So please pop on over to my website either here or through the link on the sidebar and see what you think. Barry's website can be viewed here.

The other item of associated news is that we have been working with a friend of a friend to develop an online shop each as part of our websites where people could buy some of our work, and we are thrilled to say we are finally live!

This will of course be a work in progress - what sort of things, what sort of prices etc, but its an important step for us and we look forward to seeing where it leads. If you ever see something that you like and it's not in the shop to speak, we now also have the capacity to make sales and receive money using paypal, so we can always explore options.

My shop can be found on my website here, and some of Barry's beautiful pieces can be found for sale in his shop here.

Phew! Time for a little lie-down I think, or maybe a glass of bubbles...

Featured artist - TreeLine for kids

The Sunshine Coast Council, our local government, runs two major environmental art events. One year they hold "Floating Land" and the next year they hold "TreeLine".  TreeLine celebrates trees, their stories and their important place in our communities.  The Council selects feature artists whose work gets shown in their main galleries; and this year there is a TreeLine for kids focus being held at the Arts and Ecology Centre in the Maroochy Regional Bushland Botanic Gardens.

I was fortunate to be selected as one of the feature artists for TreeLine for kids - primarily because of the way I often re-use books and incorporate old book pages into my artwork.

A few weeks ago the curator visited our house and the studio and selected the works to be shown. It was a fun afternoon as she ooh-ed and ahh-ed at bits and pieces around the place.

The advertising is just beginning, but the official opening is on Thursday 14 June at 6.30pm for any locals who'd like to join us, and the exhibition runs from 16 June through to 8 July 2012.

It will be a varied and different kind of exhibition - with a focus on encouraging children to think about how to re-use and recycle books to make art and things of beauty.

Barry will also have a few works on show which is great!

I will also be teaching a short workshop on my personal heartbeat script at the Arts and Ecology Centre on Wednesday 6 June from 10.00am - 2.30pm (for details please check my workshops page).

I am looking forward to the opportunity to show works at the Centre - it is a beautiful building in a wonderful setting. 

A weekend of bibs and bobs

We are having some of that perfect autumn weather - beautiful blue skies, clear nights, crisp mornings and sunny sunny days. The sort of weather that just makes you feel good.

In amongst the odd saga (oven breaking when dinner party cooking needing to be done) I managed to get in and sort, organise, plan, wrap and finish some pieces - not necessarily in that order!

I have wrapped my little 'snow falling in daylight' book which is the second edition for BookArtObject for the year for me. Tomorrow I shall pop them in the post, and then in about 10 days I'll be able to share their story more.

Here are the packed parcels...

We also have another COMA exhibition coming up. It seems to have come around rather quickly I must say.  It is being held in our favourite book shop in town Rosetta Books, and the theme is the western zodiac.  The show will run from 1 June 2012 - 22 June 2012.

I felt it was necessary to make a book if the work was going to be in bookshop, so I have had heaps of fun and here are some more work in progress type shots.

Anybody spot the little machine-sewing-on-paper addiction that is happening here?!?

The book is well on it's way - needs some covers and a tie than it's ready to go. And I'm even early!

Thursday Thoughts...

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”


Annie Dillard


What an extraordinarily eloquent way to remind me that how I live each day adds up to how I will have lived my life. In fact, it can be a bit scary when I stop and think about how many days are made up of 'do this' 'do that' 'go there' 'call them' 'write this' 'edit that' 'email who?' and so on...

I'm not sure I want to think that in the end my life will have been all about a massively long and frenetic to-do list (not that I don't love  a list - I do). And so I stop and ponder how to make sure that the days breathe, have light and love and laughter in them and are a mix of the creative and the mundane.

I have taken to writing in this little journal each night - despite searching the interweb widely I think it is no longer available. It is by Frank Chimero and is called "the being there diary' which simply asks you each day - "What was the very best moment of your day?" Firstly it makes me backtrack and replay the day so I remember so many things I did that I had already forgotten. Secondly, it makes me think of those moments when I giggled, sighed with wonder, smiled, laughed, felt uplifted, and all of those emotions are great to re-live. It also lets me focus on how it is often the small things that make magic in my day.

A gentle reminder to me to make sure I have something to write in that journal every single day.

Camellias from the garden - a mass of delicate beauty.

Progress with BAO

Well my editions for BookArtObject have been a'happening, and I surprised myself by packing up my first edition (A Subversive Stitch) and getting it into the post today (Tuesday). It is always such a good feeling to get the books on their way, travelling around the world and across the country to their new homes.

I am beginning to receive books from here and there so its good to be able to reciprocate and get my books out to my other group members.

Here is a sneak peek of the packages and the labels all ready to go... I'll post properly on the book once folk have received their copies.

My second edition is called "snow falling in daylight" and I have been having much fun with white on white and embossing.  I have been trying hard to get the fragility of the snowflakes across as well as the sense of whiteness of snow falling in daylight.  These little lovelies are edging closer as well and if I am really lucky, they will be on their way by the end of the week. We shall see...

Here are a few 'work-in-progress' type shots.

Stacks of creamy velvety Arches Velin paper.

A Swarowksi crystal atop a brass post.

Stacks of snowflakes, embossed and debossed.

I have pushed myself a bit further this time and tried to make editions of 20.  We need about nine or ten for the group exchange, for the author to receive a copy and for there to be a copy for exhibitions etc. I always like to keep a couple of books for myself, and that means I will have a few extras to offer for sale at the Open Studios in September - October.

It has also been a challenge to produce two editions, and I am pleased that I have been able to develop ideas and processes which have meant two editions are possible for me.  It is a great project to be involved in, not the least wonderful part being the receipt of other artists books to pore over, admire and enjoy.