Thursday Thoughts...

"A picture produced from the images within the mind can be a more accurate portrayal of human perceptions than one based entirely on observations". 

Tariq Shishani

It is surely one of the most beautiful things about art, that we draw it from within ourselves.

We draw upon our experiences, our senses, our emotions and our responses and form a idea of what that is and how to represent it.  Sometimes we do try to do a direct observation and replication in a way; but oftentimes even when observing, there is transformation.

I don't think this is about abstract versus realism; I think it suggests that what we find within ourselves can accurately portray our experiences and worlds, and the worlds of others, more effectively than a simple direct piece of work.

Mythos by Mar Goman, tells so many stories...

At the end of a run...

After Barry and I finished printing the first of the letterpress and etching pieces for the Sydney Contemporary in September; we still had ink on the plate, and the type was still locked up; there were sheets of paper cut and ready to go, so we did a little bit of extra printing... mostly overprinting.

We started with a single print, then turned it 90 degrees and printed.

And kept turning it 90 degrees, and then also just doing one at 180 degrees...

We were having fun! Four prints, three turns...

And lots of interesting details.

There is a story to be told in there somewhere... just not sure which direction it reads.
This way.

Or that way.

It's nice when one job leads to another idea; and now this work will wait for me to tell its story properly. I know it's in there somewhere...

Celebration of Books - First Editions

It's that time of the year again, when our band of fabulous women present our boutique, book-lovers festival Celebration of Books Maleny.

It is on from Friday 14 July - Sunday 16 July and has loads of exciting events and famous and entertaining people.

To start the event, we have set up the display of First Edition Australian books at the Maleny Library. The display will run for a month (1 July 2017 - 29 July 2017) and is as interesting and fascinating as ever.

One  of my favourite shelves - James Cook's maps...

Followed by another favourite - the Queensland Pictorial magazine from 5 June 1930 with Amy Johnson landing in Brisbane after a 21,000km solo flight in an open-cockpit! What a woman.

This edition of Poor Fellow My Country is no 93 in an edition of 250, and is signed inside. Alongside is My Wicked Wicked Ways by none other than Errol Flynn. A man of chance and fortune...

The loose theme for the event is Adventure and Misadventure, so we selected books from the private collection along those lines.

 Here's another favourite on the top left - The Great Franquin.  A hypnotist who was hugely successful in Australia, New Zealand and Hawaii - and made enough money in 3 years to set his family up for life! He played to packed houses of 6,000 people and was from all accounts truly remarkable. I spoke to some folk yesterday as we set up who remembered seeing him on stage.

A full cabinet shot...

And another with yours truly...not sure what my right eye is doing.

It's going to be great weekend and I hope some folk might be able to make the trip to Maleny and enjoy some fabulous authors (including Michael Robotham of international crime-writing fame), a great book group discussion on La Rose by Louise Erdrich, and listen to some local poets read their poems...

See here for bookings and events!

Thursday Thoughts...

“She is too fond of books, and it has turned her brain.” 

Louisa May Alcott

Oh my goodness this made me laugh! I had never come across it until today and how lucky was I that Thursday Thoughts was pondering books?

If I am to be charged with anything; I would be happy to be charged with being too fond of books and having had my brain turned.

Nevertheless, they remain a lifeline, a world of wonder and intrigue, places to get lost in, lands of discovery and places to turn to for solace and recovery.  My head has been turned often by a book and my world has been made clearer; my compassion levels raised, and my heart and mood lifted.

Guilty as charged.

My tattered version of Little Women. Who didn't love Jo when she cut off her hair?

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.

Finally printing....

I mentioned earlier in the week that I had moved from planning to preparing, and now I've done some printing.

And it feels good.

Barry very kindly spent the afternoon with me yesterday helping me get the letterpress part of the prints right. Partly because I have a shocking head cold and am struggling a bit; partly because he just loves letterpress; and partly because I love having help with the basics that I sometimes forget!

Together we blind-proofed the type and worked out where to register the paper. Then we built a high-tech registration board from a few bit of cardboard and some tape.

We popped the etched page into the registration boards.

Inked up the type.

Barry pulled the wheel around on the Lightning Jobber.

I love all the inkiness on the rollers...

And we printed 12 pages which was pretty darn good!  It was a tricky bit of registration - just setting the type accurately around the blank square and etching properly on the etching press, and then getting it all to come together  with the letterpress - I was chuffed!  I am aiming for an edition of 5 for each of the works (3 more to go) so having done 12 will give me plenty to chose from.

I have also set aside 3 to work on with calligraphy - altho the style has changed enormously from my earlier trials.  I do so love the process of an evolving artwork...

Thursday Thoughts...

“The greatest gift that you can give yourself is a little bit of your own attention". 

Anthony J. D’Angelo

In its own small way it is a fascinating taksk each week to go looking for a quote to use around art, books or life. Many of the quotes have sat there for ages, sometimes years, before they go "my turn".  This is one of those patient quotes whose time has come.

At different points in time I am better, or worse at doing the small things that care for, nurture or support me.  Sometimes I carve out time to do the things I want to do; at others every spare moment seems subsumed by activities other than things that could in any way be defined as "me-time".

The lesson keeps needing to be learnt; to take some small bits of time for yourself; to not just give it all away. In doing so you can empty that well pretty darn fast, and it can take a long time to re-fill.

Be kind to yourself, look after yourself, and do a little thing, or two, that makes you smile.

Thursday had become sewing day, the three hours I nabbed for myself to just enjoy and do something for myself. For lots of reasons including travel, illness, deaths and memorials I haven't been able to go for quite a few weeks; and won't be able to for the next wee while either, and my how I miss it.

Printing and progressing

I have managed to print the first run of the first print for Sydney. This required dampening the paper, inking up the small etching plate and printing 15 sheets. I am also using the etching plate in the book, so there are a few more smaller pages to be inked and printed yet.

Here they are stacked and drying in an old telephone book.

Once they are all dry and good to go, I will print the second run, the letterpress blocks.  Then when that has dried, I will add the red highlights. And then do it all gain three more times so there is a series of four!

With Barry's much appreciated help, I managed to get the covers ready for the Apex Life Member book.
This time around we chose a different binding, one where we could replace pages if needed, without having to re-do the whole book like we did last year (in a strange process the National body like to see the final book to approve it - but oftentimes say something isn't quite right and needs to be changed...tricky).

The front cover underway.

Drilling holes through the great board and the book cloth and the inside lining paper is made smooch easier by using my Japanese screw drill or drill screw, can' quite think what is the best way to describe it. Its a hand tool for punching holes.

You can see that the shaft has swirls cut into it like a drill bit, and this shaft sort of spins/.rotates and disappears up into the handle when you push on it, forcing the cutting apparatus at the front to bore a hole.

That would have to be the most non-technical description of a tool ever.

Primed ready to push down.

And funnily enough I didn't take a shot of what happened! Laugh, but you can see it up in the first hole in the second photo.

And on the way back to the house I came across this perfect droplet...I love how you can see the bare branches of the frangipani in winter reflected in it.

From planning to preparing

My artwork progresses in small steady stages, and I have come to understand that many things take time. The things that take the most time seem to be the things where I am most invested in the final result - the things where I know I am going to be on show in public and want everything to be as good as it can possibly be; or things where I have been specially commissioned to produce a piece of work for somebody.  Also things with  deadlines, because if I don't plan properly and forget a major step, then I am up the creek without a paddle as we say.

When I get to play in the studio and follow my own whimsy or fancy; or let the work lead me, things do tend to go a whole lot quicker.

On a couple of projects I have moved from planning (research, notes, trials, re-dos) to actually preparing.

For the first of the letterpress prints I am making for Sydney, I have sat and worked out the size of the paper that will fit in the Lightning Jobber press and the amount of paper I want to show around the print  once framed (if I wanted more to show I might need larger paper).

And so I collected my draft frames and mats.

Here is the 3cm frame with the larger aperture - more space around the work.

The 3cm frame with the smaller aperture - tighter around the work.

The 2cm frame with the larger aperture.

The 2cm frame with smaller aperture.

Decisions decisions.

Finalising some text in preparation for printing.

Proofing without ink.

Stacking up sheets of the beautiful Gmund 300 paper ready for printing.

Starting the laborious and labour-intensive process of cutting lots of 20cm x 20cm sheets from the 70cm x 50cm sheets.

Almost ready for the first print run!