Thursday Thoughts...

“There’s always a lot of magic, but our way of seeing is very small and we mostly just call it Nature. Why, we are not at all surprised that we can pick an apple in the autumn that was a pink flower in the spring. That’s natural magic and we don’t really notice it.” 

 The Hounds of the Morrigan, by Pat O’Shea

They often say "the miracle of nature" and I guess it is. This quote so beautifully describes a moment we observe throughout the year, but probably don't stop to appreciate enough.

That whole transition from pink bud to edible fruit is natural magic at its best, and illustrates the point so beautifully. There is also a sense that we are almost sleepwalking our way through sometimes, and forgetting to notice that miracles and magic are there every day.

What I think I like about this quote are the notions underlying it. To me it is a beautiful and simple way to remind me to:

a) be open;
b) take notice;
c) observe with wonder;
d) celebrate magic or miracles; and
e) appreciate the little things.

I know my life is better when I do stop each day to notice, to reflect, and to appreciate.  When I am just busy or rushing, I lose that silken thread connection to the natural world which offers us so much beauty and wonder. Taking a fragment of time to be aware, to observe, to notice and to give thanks or simply smile, makes my daily life so much richer and content.

One of my favourite pieces of nature and it magic and miracles - nests.  Every time I come across one I stop in awe and wonder. How such a wee thing can work so hard, collect so much material and then weave it so perfectly that it creates a safe and welcoming home for a precious babe - astounds me. 

Burning books meet

Well, after much angst and anguish our books have met and we are all very happy.

Both Susan and I have been a bit bewildered by how we crossed wires on these books and have struggled to work with what we were each given and just about every step of the way felt like we veered off course but struggled to right ourselves again.  Honestly, it was that hard.

We chose to make big perspex books - mine stands 60cm high and Susan's is slightly shorter.

They are both concertina style and stand majestically, but we have no photos of them standing majestically together because they are impossible to photograph!

This come about  primarily because of the reflective nature of perspex; and this combined with their size means that they catch lots of reflections.  And worst of all our house has loads of windows, few if any blinds or curtains and an angled roof with lots of timber trusses - so not even a flat white ceiling to reflect.

We have done our humble best to capture the two of the meeting together quite demurely.  But some of the angles and details are still delicious. Enjoy!

Here's a lower angled shot of the two, side by side, but still with a great streak of clerestory window light across them...

Because this is what happened when we tried to shoot the from straight above - see what I mean about reflection?!?!?!

So it was down to the really lower angled shots, and details...

I think that despite the photographic challenges and the ups and downs along the way - we are both thrilled with the books. They are glorious standing statements which both express us well - once again, they look like us.

I'll post more fully on my book in the next wee while, telling the story and showing better photographs of it standing...but for now, it's just so great to have them done and to have seen them both together.

Burn baby burn

Susan and I are nearing completion of our 9th collaborative book - our burning book.  We hope to catch up next week so that the books can meet. I have a few bits to finalise and tidy on mine, but it is otherwise pretty much there - big sigh of relief.

But the burning bug has been caught big-time.

I was thinking about grids the other day and how calming I find them to be. Simultaneously I was tidying up the studio and came across a bunch of old watch parts that Barry and I had collected in New York, and somehow the two worlds collided, and then intersected with burning which was well and truly on my brain.

Here is where I started; you can see the few scrawled notes on a page of my notebook. Note I didn't end up cutting up a print and it didn't turn out black and white. The burning bug bit.

I started playing with some squares and some incense-burning patterns.

And things just grew from there, I kept thinking of different patterns I could burn, different combinations, different distances between holes until I had 42 squares and possibly two long thin pieces.

I don't know, maybe they'll become something, maybe not.

I added in a random selection of clock parts - note to self, must raid more of Barry's stash.

Some close ups horizontally,

Vertically,

and one by one...

Clearly it isn't finished - I have a lot of soot to remove and need to think about how to attach the watch parts and the paper and to what and with what other embellishment (or not). I also need to look closely at the layout and design, the different curves and straights and heavies and lights and the size of each watch part,  but it was  surprising outcome from two or three scrappy thoughts.

It has once again been a kind of meditative delight, sitting slowly burning holes, thinking about what and where next, but with absolutely no pressure at all. It was play and exploring and light and yet somehow rather lovely.

And one day during the week I sat down and sewed myself a little top using fabric that Jennifer had sent me ages ago.  It worked out quite well (I am no seamstress) despite having to make loads of adjustments to the Japanese patter. I am edging closer to mastering this!

I didn't want it to look like a bullseye in the centre of my chest, or worse two large circles up the top, and yet I wanted that lovely rusty detail to be featured.  It worked out OK and I have worn it twice already.

Front

and back.

Thursday Thoughts...

“Art is a line around your thoughts.”

 Gustav Klimt

Hmm. I liked the notion of this without really thinking about it.  The more I think about it, the harder I find it to work out why I responded to it!

I guess for 2-D artists who use lines and strokes to express things, it is a great description. I like the idea that artists express their thoughts using lines, that the lines and marks on their work are expressions of their thoughts.

Lines that can tell a story.

But then I keep coming back to the line AROUND your thoughts - which makes me feel as if somehow the line joins up and encloses things which is slightly different to simply expressing your thoughts.

In the end, I think its the imagery it evoked for me that made me like it - I immediately saw scratchy pencil lines and marks in my mind...and was lucky to find a photo that sort of describes it.

Leon Ferrari

Untitled (Sermon of the Blood)

Another show and more peace...

I spent a bit of time on the weekend playing some more with my graphite pencils - the water soluble ones.

I wanted to see what a long line of writing might look like with lots of lovely graded grey letters.  I also made more colourful initials, but the thing I needed to know was could I put a bunch of letters together into words, and then a bunch of words into a sentence and have it look OK.

So I wrote some words  - Each day is a new chance for peace - and got out the pencils and the water and the brushes.

I had fun and liked what emerged...

I am always fond of a nice long thin piece.

Soem details of the letters.

After I looked at it for a bit, I thought maybe a red dot over the 'i' would work.

I think I've almost got the hang of how to apply the pencils and the water to get a softly graded look.

And in other news, my book "Silence helps no-one" which is about family violence, has been selected for the Manly Library Artists' Book Award 2015 show, so I shall be posting it off to Sydney soon! It is wonderful to be in such great company and I wish I could see the show - so many wonderful books.

Details of the show can be found on my "Works on show" page at the top of my blog.

What a monochromatic blog post this was!

Wild weather and the things we do...

As many of you might know, we've experienced some pretty wild weather here for the past few days. A serious cyclone crossed the Queensland coast on Friday morning and managed to dump a lot of rain and heavy winds on us as it made its way down the coast. Nothing like the impact it had up north - just devastating.  For a few days before hand we also had massive rain and wind and so the place is saturated and we are all feeling a bit damp.  We had around 400mm of rain in 48 hours.

Here are the peace flags at the front of our house.  The wild weather took them from Peace to Pace - Italian for peace - so it feels as if peace might be battered, but not beaten.

And this is what the small creek that flows thru town looked like on Friday morning.
You can tell it normally only goes thru the bit on the left - the tree in the middle is usually growing on a creek-bank.

When we were in town, the creek still had a metre to rise before it backed up against the road - fortunately it didn't happen. Normally folk walk along the footpath under the bridge...

And the road near the dairy - pelting rain and flooded.

And so we found ourselves in that strange netherworld of not being able to do anything outside, combined with a little bit of worry and lots of concern for folk.  Hard to settle. It meant I didn't feel at all creative, but wanted to do stuff. So I fiddled and I faddled.

The funniest moment was on Friday afternoon amidst really, really heavy rain when I started to iron burnt tissue paper.

I looked at myself and thought "has it come to this?"  Who else would think ironing burnt tissue paper was on their to-do list?  Possibly a few of you!

I do love a stack of nicely ironed tissue paper.

And on Saturday, I managed to get some ink out and print onto it - a few experiments to see what they might look like.  I am not sure where its headed but the thought has been in my head for a while and now I've done it.

A good way to use a weird old day.

I really like the fragmented nature of this work.

It is whispering to me and I need to sit quietly so I can hear what it says.

Thursday Thoughts...

“We read in bed because reading is halfway between life and dreaming, our own consciousness in someone else’s mind.” 

Anna Quindlen, How Reading Changed My Life

I have enjoyed reading and rereading this quote. First time around it seemed as if I got it, short and sweet. Second and third times around I really tried to get my head around it!

It is a habit of mine to read in bed.  Oftentimes I will just go to bed early so I can sit and read for ages.  It is a very rare or a very late night when I don't read. It is such a transition to sleeping for me; a habit ingrained over many years I guess and I really like the quiet, gentler time that it is. Somehow reading in bed leads me to sleep.

Which, when I think about it, is why I like the quote and the way it ties reading in bed into dreaming and therefore sleeping. That transition notion again as well as the sense for me, of dreaming as a halfway state.

But I think the quote is actually saying more about reading - that it is a halfway place where our minds are intertwined with another's; that our action of reading is linked inextricably to what was happening in somebody else's mind. That reading itself is a practice that is halfway between living and dreaming. Oh my.

The closer I look the trickier this quote gets, and I think I'd better leave it there before I find even more complications to ponder!

A recent sunset - a burning orange transition from day to night.  This marks month two of Jennifer and Julie's search for the rainbow (Roy G. Biv) and other colours too. Pop on over to their blogs if you'd like to see what orange others found; or to join in.

Works on show...

It has been a really busy start to the year and I have work popping up all over the countryside in some gorgeous looking shows.

To kick start the fun, we are showing in Cairns.

Rose Rigley has organised for 4 book artists from Far North Queensland to show alongside 4 book artists from South East Queensland in a show called 4x4.  We have each sent 3 books in  a sculptural form which means a delicious collection of 24 books. The works will be on show at the Cairns Regional Gallery from 2 March - 29 March 2015.  The exciting news is that we will also be showing these works in Brisbane in the middle of the year - stay tuned for details.

My three books: Learning My Lines; Library of Lost Words; and Rural Journal

My book Ways of Peace has landed safely in Perth in Western Australia and will be on show at in the exhibition Between the Sheets at Gallery Central from 7 March - 2 April 2015.

Robyn Foster has done an amazing job bringing together the second Personal Histories show - this time a whole new set of artists' books around the theme of personal history will be shown at Redland Art Gallery from 27 March to 10 May 2015.  I can't wait to see this show - the first one was gorgeous and this one will be stunning I am sure.

I am sending three mini-books which tell a bit of my story - A Life of Words.

In addition, the Gallery is also hosting artists books around the First World War. Susan, Barry, Helen and I are all contributing the books we sent to Ieper for Pieces for Peace, so my book The Nurses will be on display there.

I am also contributing two other books I have previously made to honour my great grandfather's service. He died near Ieper and has no known grave.

Absences.

No Return.

As mentioned, Caloundra Regional Gallery also wanted to host these works, so we have each made a variant of the book we sent to Ieper to show there in the exhibition Of Peace and War.  This show runs from 25 March - 10 May 2015 - you can't really get more simultaneous than that!

The Nurses and The Nurses 2.

I'm tired just thinking about the logistics of it all.  What a great start to the new year and how wonderful to have so many opportunities to share books around the country. If only I could travel to see them all...

For full details of each of the shows - see my Works on show... page at the top of my blog. It would be great to see you at any of the local openings and if you happen to be visiting any one of the other locations, I am sure the shows are worth viewing.