Of sun and solar

 Well, what a difference a week makes.  Last Sunday I headed to the studio and the sun was scorching. This week we have a fair bit of rain and general sogginess.

I thought I might as well make the most of the heat and blazing sunshine and try to expose my solar plates. It has been a while since I did them and a bit of a trip down memory lane was required to remember the steps and stages and timings.

Some of the photos.

My high tech approach to exposure; holding them up in the general direction of the sun.  Of course as I was set to go clouds drifted across...

It really was quite hot out, so I ducked for cover and left them resting in the carpark for a few more minutes.

Then I rinsed them off and left them to set in the sun for an hour.

And trimmed them down to size.

A lovely plate - bog cotton.

The heart stones at the front door of the cottage in Scotland.

My favourite imagery - the fishing net drying poles at the cove at the end of our road in Scotland.

And an attempt to capture cloud puddles...

And then testing to see if they worked!

All good jumping off points for something!

Thursday Thoughts...

“Books are a hard-bound drug with no danger of an overdose. I am the happy victim of books.” 

 Karl Lagerfeld

I have had this quote in the pile for yonks; and always scroll by it.  I think I react to the sense of drugs and overdose and don't really like associating books with what can be traumatic. Like an overdose.

Funny isn't it? But today I scrolled by and then thought 'no go back and see what it's saying'. Stop flinching.

Because I think what he is saying is really that books can be addictive; they can absorb you; they can call you; they can keep you from doing other things; yet you are not placed in dangerous situations because of them.  Books probably won't kill you.  

Perhaps the link to drugs was deliberate - to link to that feeling of escape, of being high, of indulging yourself or something like it. 

I am pretty sure he loves books, and enjoys being captivated by them.

From the Design Museum in Copenhagen, 2008.

Tags, Type and baking

 If only I could have alliterated the baking in the title!

Tag-wise I have written more tags for Barry's spoons and ladles and spreaders.  Always lovely to see the combination as they head off to the shop. And of course - threads en masse always make me smile.

In the auction hype of a few weeks ago, we decided to go all out and picked up a couple of more random packets of type as well.

First up what looks like a full set of something - not sure yet what it is, but I think it will be a handy typeface to have around.

There was also this part-pack of something large and fancy! I have never heard of 76pt so will check it against some of our 72pt.

I imagine this could become a game or a puzzle trying to make as many words as you can using the limited letters in your pack - like type scrabble or something.

And then this.

A box that doesn't reflect its contents; and yet there is a hint in blue pencil: 6pt OE.

The box is a shambles; as some random small pointed typefaces are when they arrive.  I look at this lot and think - now that's for a rainy day.

The pencil marks did not lead us astray - it is tiny tiny wee. 6pt.

And even more amazing is that I think the OE stands for Old English as it look very black letter-gothic-Old Englishy to me (when I squint and look really really closely. I have never seen one of those types in such a small point size.  Reading it at 6pt will be a challenge! The one above is, I think, an X or a Z; the one below is an S I think.

Apologies for the close ups of printers hands and nails!

They were cleaner when I did this - began my Christmas baking.  Shortbread is a family tradition and I use my wee Scottish great grandmother's recipe. We make it in rounds and one must never cut it.  It can only ever be broken into pieces.

And I have no idea why. 

About now (aged 55) I wish I could sit with Little Gran, Gran and Mum and ask about these things; but it's now just down to me to keep the tradition happening...altho my niece is a bit keen to continue I think which is grand.

Still a few more to make and wrap and share around.

Printing fabric

 Well I honestly don't really know where this came from - one of those moments where a bunch of disparate thoughts/notions/threads came together with opportunity and we were off!

I have been thinking about stitching a small needlecase; so was rummaging through scrap fabric.  I was at home. It is summer. I saw somewhere (and honestly have no recall of where despite trawling through the likely places) an image of a corn cob. What else could possibly happen?

So I went to town and bought a cob of corn, and peeled it. It seems odd to say peel; but that was indeed the action.

The scene is set (the concrete alphabet letters are a distraction - they are acting as paper and fabric weights)

Step 1.

This was a mistake - I didn't hold the fabric down well enough as I rolled.

And these are the results!

Hanging out to dry, then be ironed, then be washed.

It worked on all sorts of fabric and now I have a motley collection of marks to include in my stitching!

Thursday Thoughts...

“Maturity is the ability to think, speak and act your feelings within the bounds of dignity.” 

 Samuel Ullman.

It's funny how my eyes rove over pages of possible quotes and then they land on one, and then I am not sure why. But I linger and ponder, and decide I might as well have a go. That happened with this week's Thursday Thoughts around Life.

I think perhaps it has defined maturity in a way that I could understand, in particular when I see the opposite at play.  Thinking, speaking and acting your feelings.  

It makes sense to link maturity to expression of feelings because when I think about it - that's basically what it is - from toddlers to teenagers to grown-ups. We note immaturity with regard to the expression of feelings. 

Doing so with the bounds of dignity can be hard for all of us to do at times when we are impassioned or enraged; but the mark of maturity is when we see people doing so. We might observe their tension, their quivering, their tightly coiled anger - yet we can appreciate how they express it - within the bounds of dignity.

Perhaps this truth is known to all; perhaps if I looked up a dictionary this would be the definition of maturity and I am late to the party; but it speaks a simple truth to me, and it helps me to think about both maturity and immaturity in these terms.

Anthony Gormley - Angel of the North (life-size maquette) National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.

Beautiful old type

 A few weeks ago we were alerted to an online auction that included a lot of old printing gear and some type.  As I do, I went for a wander online and was stopped in my tracks. Could it be? Was it possible?

Indeed it was!

One of our favourite typefaces is called Elongated Anglo Saxon.  I only know this because despite looking all over for it, poring through my type detective books and asking folk in Australia who might know about these things all to no avail, a fellow in the UK answered my cries for help on Instagram and now I know!

We don't have a huge amount of it (it come in type drawer we bought) yet we both love it.  Knowing how unfamiliar it is and how rare, I could not believe my eyes when I saw a photo of what I thought was it, as part of the auction.  

I printed out the photo and checked it against the samples in the studio and bingo!

We had a nervous wait until the auction began, and bidding was swift and a tad frenzied.  We won one pack of unrelated type and then lost the first pack of Elongated Anglo Saxon. Slight devastation.  Focussed really hard on the next two and were successful.  It was very exciting and stressful - my heart rate was WAY up!

After much faffing about trying to work out how to transport the type from Tasmania to QLD - with lots of help from the auction house - it landed last week and I waited until we were both home to open up the packs.

We were thrilled to discover a full set of Elongated Anglo Saxon...

Part of it rolled over into the second pack where there seemed to be some other things going on. So we had an alphabet, but also some type already set, using three typefaces all up. Quite the fascination.

It seems somehow as if the typeface had been set by the caster for the client and packaged up and sent.  

What came as a big surprise was the these two packs were not quite EAS, but rather EAS in a skeleton like form! Never seen such a thing but most excited. Have discovered just today, again via the amazing David Wakefield in the UK that it is called Elongated Open Anglo Saxon. Perfect.  And that the small one is likely to be 28pt which is the smallest they cast.

Here are a couple of other packs we were successful with. Once more I had never seen an italicised Gothic script and David let us know that it is called Sloping Back, patented in 1869. Apparently it was not commonly used, but it could be used very effectively in Law Blanks for any displayed phrase or word like "Indenture".

We are looking forward to using it to great effect (somehow).

Of course, my biggest dilemma is the packaging and the string.  They seem almost too beautiful to unwrap and use!

We will keep them tied up until such time as we use them; then they will become functional objects not just beautiful artefacts.

Wild/Flower Women III

 Barry and I took a trip to Gympie during the week to see the Exhibition Wild/Flower Women III. There is a long and lovely history of women artists and writers walking this country near Cooloola and recording the flora and wildflowers.

Here, I have captured some of the works which captivated me.

This enormous piece Impermanence (5m x.1.1m) by Joolie Gibbs held my gaze for a long time.

Some details follow.  It was the scale, the intimacy, the wash, the absences, the layering...there is so much held within this work.  The inks were also made from native flora, (bunya, mangrove, eucalyptus bark), and the whole thing was so beautifully integrated.

I have never worked this large and I imagine there is huge skill needed to keep track of the whole and how it is working, whilst offering so much detail...

It was awesome, in the true sense of the word.

A beautiful piano scroll draped alongside vial of ochre  by Melissa Stananrs come go walk and care for country.

A vinyl wall work banksia aemula  piece by Ulrik Sturm.

Found rusted tins... Grasstree Spikes by Barb Hart.

Referencing Xannthorroea I imagine  

Two tea cup, saucer and plate sets by Judy Barrass - handmade paper and print. I adored these with their Australian wildflowers and had to work really hard to NOT pick them up and feel them!

And as you wander to the toilets if you look down here is this whimsical transfer along the skirting boards. I imagine that Ulrike has been playing!

And across the road from the gallery, a graffiti heart.

It was a great day trip and the work was wonderful. It filled me up and lifted me.