Explorations and the odd wrong turn

I'm having a slightly different experience this time around as I work on the second book in our (Susan and my) collaboration.  The first book had me uplifted and carried away - this second book is taking a lot more ponderous thinking.

At times I have felt as if I am wading through treacle in gum boots. Heavy going. And I'm not sure quite why I am making such hard work of it this time around, but I keep getting stuck in those lengthy conversations with myself that end up going nowhere, going backwards or arriving at dead ends.

I think, I almost think, I have found the resolution I need to make it feel like me, but just out of interest, here are some of the twists and turns I have taken...

Trying some gold dots around a tea-rusted washer on paper...

Inking over Susan's gestural marks paper and then adding a gold highlight...

Trying some gold letters against the dark background paper...

Using oil pastels to adhere silver leaf and then scratching marks out of it...

Embossing the paper...

Adhering gold leaf this time and making marks and embossing...

Threads I had stitched into the book then discarded...

Susan's rusted tracing paper with graphite and gold rubbed onto it...

It will be interesting to see how many of these options and approaches make it into the final book!  I am wondering if it's simply the colour palette that I am not used to and can't quite find my way around...

A gorgeous gift

As many folk may know I was supposed to attend a big calligraphy workshop/conference event in Portland, Oregon in late June. Because of Barry's health situation we decided to cancel and I was unable to attend.

My good friend Gemma, was one of the tutors there, and it would have been a lovely way to catch-up, even tho we both agreed that travelling to the US seemed like extreme lengths to go to see each other! Gemma now lives in Hobart, Tasmania which is really down south for us and we rarely get to visit.

Anyhow, in the post on Friday a package arrived from Gemma and here is the little magical box within it... some tiny, gorgeous metal type!

I was so excited as I opened it  and I just loved loved loved it.  I also loved that to the side was a separate package with the ampersand in - I know how much Gemma loves ampersands. Gemma had bought it in Portland and sent it to me as a memento of the conference I couldn't attend.

I love all the little bits in it...hearts, clubs, diamonds but no spades? Some dollars and cents and more ampersands including a very funky one at the top. A lovely bracket on the right, some twirly decorations, a fraction and lots of stars.

This is a precious ampersand.

You can see how tiny some of the type is by the scale of the pen.

What a happy day!

Thursday thoughts...

“Loneliness is like sitting in an empty room and being aware of the space around you. It is a condition of separateness. Solitude is becoming one with the space around you. It is a condition of union. Loneliness is small, solitude is large. Loneliness closes in around you; solitude expands toward the infinite. Loneliness has its roots in words, in an internal conversation that nobody answers; solitude has its roots in the great silence of eternity.” 


  Kent Nerburn


Occasionally I come across words that touch me deeply, that let me sit here on my mountain, often late at night and feel as if somebody I don't know, thousands of miles away has reached out and said "yes, you're right, this is how it is".

I often don't even know that I had been feeling or experiencing or thinking along these lines, and then - it all falls into place and the words express it beautifully.

Now and again I ponder why I think solitude is such a pleasant way of being; how I feel it nurtures and renews me and is so often what I  crave after being in company for a while or in the city too much. I have always known it is never about loneliness, but about something bigger and more beautiful than that.

And so it is.

©2011 Fiona Dempster - Umbakumba lagoon

"...expands towards the infinite."
"... in the great silence of eternity."

I'm going to let these words float and flow around me for quite some time.

From old to renewed

I wrote about the sad state of affairs of my nibs a little while ago.  I had lots of suggestions that really the rusty nibs were beautiful in and of themselves and that perhaps Barry could re-use them; or they might make little sculptures on their own somehow.  All great options!

However, I had a couple of other thoughts in mind to pursue, so with the idea of possibly resurrecting them I set off to discover how to remove rust from metal.  Funny how you can go so far down one rabbit burrow you lose sight of the path you have just been journeying on.  I went this way and that, searched here and there, found some whiz bang brush for car rust and the like and Barry just looked at me quizzically and asked "why don't you just try tea?"

I. Was. Floored.

Of course! I have been using tea to remove rust from chains and the like, transferring the marks to paper for the last few weeks - so why didn't I think of it?  So off I went, to see if it was possible to use the tea to remove the rust.

I made up a strong brew and popped the nibs in. Straight away the rust started to drop off in small bits and into the water - changing it to a lovely dark colour (mixed with some ink I think).  I left them in for a few hours, then dragged them out, painted some paper with the rusty inky water and placed the nibs onto paper to see what marks they might make. Added more tea as I went along.

I popped them into a new brew of tea for a bit longer, and they came out pretty well - the tannic acid did its gentle thing and removed much of the rust.

So far so good.

 Not sure why this middle one below didn't work so well - perhaps it was stuck inside another one.

Then I sat for an hour or so and gently rubbed them all with fine steel wool to remove the last bits I could see.

Barry asked me how much nibs cost.  I said they weren't that expensive, but I get mine from the US or the UK now so there is a transport cost factor as well as a time delay, so I wanted to see if I could retrieve this set and have them as back ups in case of emergency. The likelihood of a calligraphic emergency is probably not all that high, but you know...

I think the tea worked quite well, and am pretty sure these nibs have legs for a bit longer yet.

They are now safely stored, in a box, resting on some absorbent paper. If the whole experiment ends up failing and they go totally rusty again - then it's off to the sculpture, jewellery or assemblage department for them for sure.

Tread Lightly finishes

The lovely exhibition Tread Lightly, at the Maroochy Regional Bushland Botanical Gardens, finished today.

I have really enjoyed taking people to see it, and hearing feedback from folk who have visited. I think it is a special exhibition in that it doesn't have a single piece of traditional art within it.  Every piece seems to me to be filled with imagination, inquisitiveness and ideas and exploration.

One person said they thought it was extraordinary - there wasn't a single piece in the whole exhibition that they didn't like. I've had friends recalling every piece and how it made them feel, and how it inspired them. Others spent the time just taking images of the shadows and the paper for what seemed like hours. So I think I'd have to say it feels as if it has been a success.

Another feature of the exhibition has been the placement of artworks within the gardens themselves; mostly ephemeral works that will drift and decay, some that will last a little bit longer.

I contributed my rusty tree wraps, that are hand-stitched, use lots of rusty fabrics (inlcuding leather) and have words like 'meaning', 'connecting', and 'belonging' written on them.

Here are some shots of them wrapped around a magnificent tree...

And some of their details...

Seeing them out in the bush again has made me decide to leave them outside when they come home...wrapped around a tree or a log or a rock to gently weather away. They have been outside before, and started getting some great marks on them; but now is the time for them to stay outside I think. They will have certainly weathered more in the past few weeks; we've had a lot of rain...

A new dance begins

Yesterday was a cold day on the mountain, but Susan' studio was warm and we had another special day, developing up the second books in our collaboration.  We had decided this time to give the other one some pages, well in advance, and then let them make a book from them, so in a way there was less pressure to work fast yesterday, as we were keeping the pages, not handing them back. Nonetheless we have given ourselves a deadline of the end of the month to have the books completed.

I arrived and Susan had the pages I had given her and a few other bits laid out, and we spoke about what she planned to do.  I smiled when she spoke about introducing metallics, and aluminium and other hard shiny bits.  I had sat in my studio yesterday and gone 'gold' and had quickly grabbed metallic pencils and pens to make marks on the surface of my papers.

There are times the synchronicity is intriguing...

We spent the day exploring our books - I started out with quite firm ideas this time and followed thru with my plans; but am now left pondering what to do next.  I have ideas, but have to find the best way to introduce them to the pages.

I think both of us have been surprised by the bits we have left out and the paths we have ended up taking.  I began thinking I would use the ochres and the purples Susan introduced; but then I found myself working much darker than that.  My pages here look very different to the bundle that arrived!

I spent most of the day piercing holes, stitching and weaving with threads, but some words and letters did appear...

Not much sign yet here of the gold...but it will come I think.

As Susan mentions, we both discovered that our books are developing along the theme of transition.  Mine is telling a story from darkness to light, yet just how that will be fully expressed is still in the melting pot. Once more, a delightful day, sitting across the way from each other in the studio, chatting about this and that and enjoying the oohs and ahhs of excitement as we discovered or tried something. It will be interesting to bring the books back together again and see exactly where we have taken them since we parted...

Thursday Thoughts...

“All ideas are second-hand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources.” 


Mark Twain on the myth of originality in a letter to his friend Helen Keller, who had been accused of plagiarism.


I think this topic is that one that could be explored over and over, inside out and upside down and all the ways about.  (I also apologise in advance for the weird spacing - html gone mad and I have no idea how to resolve it).

I am not so sure I agree with the notion that ALL idea are second-hand; I truly believe there are moments of inspiration and originality that have never been before.  I do think however, that it's probably true that a lot of our ideas are exactly what he says - consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources.


Sometimes we are aware of a direct link to something we've seen or talked about and we openly wonder "how can I apply that in my work?" Or we recognise that "I was thinking about snow; or I love that feeling when; or I saw the kettle in that light; or it's just like the dots on the guinea fowl feather" and off we went.


It doesn't happen a lot - but I sometimes come across something that is so directly linked to something I have done I can't believe it.  I made what I thought was quite an original little book several years ago - I cut circles, and folded them in half and stitched some fabric pieces into the middle and then sewed them all so they look like a ball and suspended it so that it turned on a bar. And then a few months later on the front of an exhibition brochure was a circle book, just like that (without the fabric or the suspension), and worst of all, by somebody I had taken lessons from. I died of mortification and pulled the book to pieces. Even tho I had not been taught that book by that person; I imagine I must have seen it in their studio when I was there, and the idea embedded itself in my brain, despite me having no recollection of it all. 


I'm working on the theory that's the unconscious bit Twain speaks of.


Sometimes the unconscious connections are far more subtle and it can take years to realise where the inspiration came from. It's a bit like dreams - waking up in the morning and recalling them, and then wondering 'where on earth did that come from?' and rolling back thru the previous day for anything that might have sparked the weird adventure from your sleep.


There is so much to be in awe of in terms of creativity and where ideas come from - I think Twain got it pretty well right all those years ago. 


There are however,  many other posts that could be written on the whole 'stealing ideas' and plagiarism aspect of this...

I look at this image now and wonder if it had anything to do with Wire Music?  

The Unbearable Whiteness...

Well this funny little project, which started out here and here, has gone for a whole six months, not just the summer, and is now completed in a quirky, fun and whimsical way, kind of like the idea itself.

Before I go any further, I have to make a disclaimer. I LOVE this book. I really do - it is so much fun and such a delight for me. Barry has to keep telling me to stop playing with it. Sometimes, I listen.

A quick re-cap - the impact of La Nina's weather pattern on us this year has meant a lot of rain. Almost 2 metres of rain in the first 6 months in fact. So we often found ourselves waking in a white-out; where the mist and cloud are so low and so close we can't see our back fence. I thought I would make a book using paint swatches I matched to each white-out, to capture the unbearable of whiteness of summer. The white-outs continued beyond summer so I kept going for six months.

I had been wondering how to include all the swatches in a book, and saw on one of Lesley's posts how she had used a concertina spine with a kind of origami pocket to hold luggage tags. Inspired, I headed off and found a pattern for the very same fold. Yay. Thank you Lesley, you have provided me with so many hours of entertainment with that fold!

So here it is, with 26 paint swatches - meaning on average we have had one white-out per week so far this year!

I love it in all of it's permutations.

For the covers I used the same fold and the same paper (BFK Rives), but I just dipped them in some weak ink. They turned out grey and a bit motley which I think gave a sense of the mist quite well, and a counterpoint to the shiny swatches.

In the first fold (the title page) I included a piece of paper which listed the colours for each day in case anybody really wanted to know.

It curves, it arches...

And here it is outside in the sun - quite a long book and had to photograph in its entirety.

But my, it makes for great shadows!

Still undecided on whether I should attempt the second half of the year and make a companion piece or not. Tempting...

Dark and Light

I mentioned this book that was causing me grief a week or so ago, and got a lot of helpful ideas about how to handle my response to it, and where to take it next.  In the end I borrowed a few of them and talked to Barry about it. I really did like the idea of a bonfire to start with, then I loved the notion of barbed wire.

In the end I decided to simply wrap it up. To bundle the pages and covers together and wrap and wrap and wrap until it couldn't be undone.  Somehow this made  me feel better - that the difficult stuff was all tied up and able to be put aside safely. It may be waiting for me again; or it may have found a new form.  Barry saw it all wrapped in black and asked me if I'd thought about weaving some white thread into it as a sign of hope...

So I did, because he is so wise, and it offers me a way forward and a way not to stay stuck in the dark stuff.

But I'm never there for long, so I thought I'd share some of the light things I have been playing with as well of late.

I have finished my last letters for the first ALAW alphabet. Phew, just in time. Sadly I haven't finished the piece yet - but the ideas are still there.

Secondly some lovely origami envelopes I have been making as I finalise my Unbearable Whiteness...book. I had planned that it would only be for summer, but I decided in the end to do a half-year, so today the collection of paint swatches is finished. Stay tuned for the final book.

And then, to find the balance between the light and the dark, I thought I'd show you a few bits from a wee book that the lovely Lesley from Printed Material sent me as a prize-gift.  It is a gorgeous book and has such beautiful paper in it, and Lesley encouraged me to "do something with it".  I think we all suffer from giving beautiful blank-paged books away only to have folk face them with fear and trepidation and never write or draw in them. So I decided I would make a little book of black marks.  Here are some of my pages so far...

What a ramble and rave, but the idea of light and dark shone thru this week. The week was dreary grey and white and misty; today dawned still and bright and blue!

Thursday Thoughts...

“Woke up this morning with a terrific urge to lie in bed all day and read.” 


  Raymond Carver


Oh yes. Today like quite a few others of late, dawned late. Light emerged gradually, slowly as if it was tired and heavy.  It was raining, the mist swirled all around the mountain and the wind had begun.

A day that begged to have one lie in bed all day and read.

My response was less positive than Carter's - I didn't want to get out and join the day as it was presenting itself to me. The notion of bed and warmth and books and quiet was much more attractive.  I sense from this quote however,  that he almost burst awake with the positive intent that staying in bed reading was a perfectly exciting and active option to choose; rather than my kind of fallback position.

I wonder what sort of life one would lead where the active choice of staying in bed all day reading was actually a reality?  It's a dream for many of us I think - the idea of being able to indulge ourselves like that is almost one of those perfect wishes. Spending a day with just books, disappearing for hours into their world, rather than the daily bibs and bobs that demand attention.

I know I've never done it, doesn't necessary mean I never will, but it does seem like a far-away idea. One day perhaps.

Out with the old...

And in with the new.

Being the less than well behaved calligrapher that I am, I have not looked after these nibs. Granted, they are nearly a decade old (I can hear the gasps of horror from around the globe, apologies for distressing you all) and therefore probably well past their due date.  Sure, I wash them after each use and try to dry them off, but sometimes I leave them to finish drying off themselves. Hmm.

But they have been working fine for me, the ink has flowed when needed, and they haven't been scratchy. Actually I think they look worse than they really are... but then I would say that at this point in the game I guess!  I'm also just not the type to toss things out until they really don't work any more.

On close inspection this week I came to the view that the last wet season REALLY took its toll on them and for the first time in my life I found I had seriously rusted nibs. I don't think even I could have attempted anything with them in this state. Probably also shows I haven't sat down to write anything calligraphic for a few months...

So it was time, and I sat down for an hour or so the other afternoon and changed them all over.

Here are the bright shiny new ones. They make me so happy I am almost not game enough to use them!

I am thinking it might be worth my while to buy an ultrasonic cleaner - one that really gets in to the crevices and removes the last smudge of ink.  Then I wondered if I could get an ultrasonic dryer because that would really help me, but I don't think they've been invented yet. Sigh.

I've also read that maybe I should rub them with olive oil after washing and drying because the oil would stop the rust thing happening...but it seems a bit weird to put oil on your nibs. I can only imagine it transferring onto the paper the next time I wrote because I would forget I had to wipe it off.

Maybe I just need to be diligent. Sigh again.

Does anybody have any good ideas about rust prevention and nibs?