Paper fiddling

Whilst I have not been a totally successful participant in an arty gesture a day this month, I have found that the idea has helped me think of being arty when I might not otherwise have been so.  That might not make make a lot of sense, but I did enjoy having a few paper folding things on the go as I cooked dinner last night.

In between checking on pots and pans, I would pop over to the dining table and fold a few bits.

I made lots of hearts out of old book pages - and am thinking they might become Christmas decorations for our minimalist tree perhaps...

I also made quite a few wee envelopes for cards out of the same pages.  The flower fold ones didn't quite meet in the middle, which would have been problematic for posting (rain might get inside I thought) so I used the strip from down the side of the page to create a band - which also acts as the place to write the address. A simple and elegant solution I thought!

ALAW almost done

I have completed my letters so that is an achievement in itself in amongst the total madness that has been our life the past while. I have enjoyed folding the paper and now have to think about how to present them.  I assume I'll make a book.

I think I missed a few iterations, but here's the end of it all...

The gorgeous kaleidoscopic jumble of the finished letters - now to create some order from the chaos

Whilst most of the folding worked out using the same sized square paper to start with, clearly the "U" had different ideas. How squat!  I kind of liked it and thought I'd keep it, but in the end, I went for uniformity and re-did it. See beyond a bit.

The re-jigged "U" with a slightly more elegant torso, although the dots were done sans eyeware and will require tidying!

I think I missed showing you these previous ones, in particular the lovely fold on the "Q" - if anybody knows the name of the cross-bar on a Q, I'd love to hear from you. So far I have "qua" and in French "queue", meaning tail. I just wondered if calligraphers or typographers might have a more professional name?

COMA Christmas exhibition

Our local bunch of fine and fun art folk COMA - the Collaboration of Maleny Artists - is holding a Christmas exhibition this year. This is our tenth joint exhibition, previous exhibitions have focused on weeds, scratching the surface, between the lines and quite a few others.

This time we are all being asked to create a piece linked to the the song The Twelve Days of Christmas.
All works will be 2-D (wallpieces) and will measure 30cm x 30cm (12 x 12 inches). They will hang in a local coffee shop for a month around Christmas.

Given my less than sense of delight when it comes to drawing, and to figurative drawing no less (all those maids-a-milking, pipers-piping and drummers-drumming etc) it was a no-brainer for me to think about the 5 gold rings.

I had quite a few ideas which had me turning the canvas over and filling the hole left behind; stitching things through and onto canvas and plenty of others. As ever I went this way and that and in the end, was influenced by something I found.

I came home and found a few bibs and bobs lying around and they became the focus.  Here's a bit of the progress of my 5 gold rings...

A long way from golden, but I thought these rings had potential!

And so I got down to work - I had earplugs and goggles on and gloves, and used pliers to hold the smallest pieces as they got hot (but clearly hadn't tied my hair back!) as I got down and dirty with the polishing. A typical background scene on our block.

The contrast was just stunning and my hope that underneath the gunk lay some 'gold' was fulfilled.

5 Gold Rings underway, now to work out what to do with them!

Thursday Thoughts...

…usually, I start from how interesting the material is…what its suggestions are, why I like it, am I remembering something?...does this remind me of anything?...and as I work it usually hardens into something, usually…

Rosalie Gascoigne

It's back to Rosalie this week...

Because she worked with reclaimed and discarded materials these questions make perfect sense to me as they connect so strongly to memory and remembering and association. Working with things that have had a former life, somehow for me, also makes me wonder about them, why I am responding to them, what do they signify for me, why do I love that rust so?  How do they make me feel, what am I thinking about as I play with them and explore their potential?

I rarely get this way with new materials, but certainly the used or worn ones send me off on this path of wondering what it's all about. I don't have many answers, but I just know I love them so, respond to them and want them in my life and art.

The little bit that kept catching me with this one tho, was the final "usually...". 

I found it heartening to read into this that things didn't always go as planned for Rosalie; that the process usually got her to a resolution, but not always. I sometimes find myself down a path and attempting something and having to stop. Drop it. Turn around and start again. So it's nice to think that I'm probably not Robinson Crusoe on that one.

I think most of us listen to our materials and the tales they have to tell...

Art and about in Perth & Adelaide

We are home. After a whirlwind 6 weeks we are finally sitting quietly on our mountain appreciating the beauty, the quiet and the nurturing of this place we call home.

Barry and I managed a walk most mornings whilst we were away and again enjoyed discovering the art in the public spaces of the places we visited. We don't often get the chance to visit galleries and museums when we are away for work as we are...working through the day. So we get a lovely feel for things as we wander the streets instead.

Some visual highlights from Perth included this fragment of a wall piece in the foyer of the building where we were working by Brian McKay. I loved the soft colours, the strong geometric designs, the scratched into surface and the forms and letters. The foyer of this building (which had about 26 floors) was also hosting a photographic competition, sponsored by the building owner, for all the people who work in the building. It had several different categories and was a great show - but also created a real sense of community within a normally business-like environment.

This is another fragment, this time a stainless steel cut-out over rusted corten steel of the top left hand corner of Western Australia by Tony Jones. I loved this look and it gave me lots of ideas.

This was part of an art piece celebrating the life of Sir Charles Court, a former Premier of WA who established a lot of ventures and centres during his term in office. I love corten steel (rusted) and I love letters, so it was nice to see words cut into the steel, by Tony Jones again.

This is one of a series of about 8 bronze and copper sculptures we found one morning when we were hunting for a place to sit and have a cup of coffee. We sat in this park (fake grass, between several buildings) and were thrilled to see these lovely pieces by Andrew Kay (2006).

I didn't take my phone with me both mornings in Adelaide so I only collected a few images, but I did enjoy this one of a stack of books, at the feet of Dame Roma Mitchell along North Terrace.

And it was the lead up to Remembrance Day and I was touched, as ever, by this display of poppies and crosses, row on row...

Hopefully I'll be back making and doing art for myself soon and can share some of that as well. Apologies to all folk who I normally 'visit' but who have been neglected as we travelled here and there.

Frame-making

I have spent my occasional moments at home recently working on some lovely pieces which will be going to some nuns who are retiring. I know nuns never really retire; but these women are retiring from running schools and shelters, and handing their work over to community groups. In recognition of their amazing efforts, one of the Boards is giving them some art.

I found out a fortnight ago that they were due in Melbourne on 29 November - minus a week for transporting and two weeks for framing and yep, I've been busy!

But back to the framing.

I needed to house the works in box frames and our local framer Phil, had previously hand-built the frames for me. When I popped in to the shop the week before last to let them know I would need five large frames built and that I could give them 2 weeks to do it in, I was saddened to hear that Phil was heading to hospital for a month the next day. He and Jennifer worked with me to problem solve some options - nobody knew anybody else who could build them.  We came up with the solution of purchasing 23m of moulding, cutting one of the rebates (ledges) off and gluing them together, thus making it deep enough, and only one rebate. Jennifer worked the phones and found the lengths, and arranged special delivery and freight to get them here.

That was Wednesday, we went to Perth. We came back Friday and had to ask my dad to go in to collect them as we got caught in traffic driving home from the airport.

Barry and I got out the band saw and cut the rebates off 12.5m of moulding on Friday night. Then spent Saturday gluing them together and clamping them. Sunday we were at a course all day. Monday we delivered them to the framers for them to cut up and make the box frames. Tuesday we flew to Adelaide and beyond.

I'll show you the pieces soon - here are the soon-to-be-frames!

They arrived in a box, individual lengths wrapped. Apologies for the thongs in the shot...

After the sawing - one length with rebate on, one with rebate off and rebate in hand as well!

We bought these fabulous quick-release clamps and they worked a treat.

A bit of a close up showing the two together...

I was thrilled with what we achieved in the timeframe - Phil and Jennifer helped me find a solution, Barry and I carried it out and the frames are being built. Hopefully all in good time for delivery to Melbourne.

Thursday Thoughts...

Life is a horizontal fall

Jean Cocteau

To fall. To stumble. To drop. To be weightless. To lose control. To lose contact with the earth.

And to think that life is a horizontal fall. That we are somehow moving along a continuum, from birth to death, some nice little pencil line, and in reality, we are stepping off the edge of a cliff each day - into the unknown.

I like the sense of perpetual movement inherent in this thought; of life being about moving forward, and also that sense of living life like an adventure, not really knowing what will happen next, but stepping into the void each and every day, and discovering what the day holds.

I admire the man for thinking of life like that and for being able to describe it so well - never in my wildest dreams would I have come up with a horizontal fall.

Fortunately for most of us; the fall is not an extensive one, not a sharp drop onto rocks. Most days we fall a little bit and step across the breach that isn't so deep or treacherous and we place our feet upon firm and solid ground once again. But still we don't know before we begin.  Some days we do fall. Big time, into voids and worlds we never knew existed and we find ourselves resident in some very tough places when we touch the earth again.

But hopefully, its mostly horizontal and we pick ourselves up and keep going.

A few artistic gestures

Here are a couple of the little things I tried to do last week - trying to so something arty every day.

Barry has begun developing and designing prototypes for a new range of jewellery for men - see here. He is having fun and I think the pieces will work well.

I have turned my head to some of the packaging possibilities - nothing too fancy; nothing too flowery kind of thing, so I fiddled around with a packaging prototype where the pendant sits within its own cardboard package with an opening highlighting the piece.

I think it might work...

We were invited to dinner at a friends' house and had a delightful time with her and her two daughters. We sent a little thank you note before we hopped on our next plane, and here is the envelope.

A little bit of personalised envelope art is always a bit of fun I think.

I have a good friend who asked if I could do a calligraphic piece for her and it is her birthday this week so I offered up a birthday gift certificate with the promise to make the piece for her after we have had some chats about colour, style, size etc.

Having Ronnie's little challenge in the back of my mind has meant that instead of just typing and printing something I have gone for the hand-written which is nice.  A little encouragement and then you realise it's not too tricky to spend the time being creative in small everyday ways...

Jewellery play day

As madness would have it, despite having done trips to Melbourne, Sydney, Melbourne, Cairns (Melbourne again for Barry), and Perth in the past 5 weeks, with another departure appearing on Tuesday, we booked ourselves into a one-day aluminium and perspex jewellery workshop held at Cooroy Butter Factory, today.

It was run by Christine O'Reilly who is a talented metalsmith and jeweller and we had loads of fun experimenting, playing and discovering how aluminium works and reacts, and learning how to put pieces together.

I was thrilled to finish a set of earrings, complete with stainless steel threads and hand made copper rivets.  Christine taught us how to anneal, and fold the aluminium, then how to create different surface textures and then how to join the aluminium to the perspex in my case.

I created a lovely shiny folded piece of aluminium, learning how to heat the metal with a blowtorch, then pop it into water to cool, then place it in a vice to fold it, hammer it, anneal it again then pop it back in the vice to unfold it and then do it all over again!

I was pretty chuffed, going from a shiny piece of aluminium like that on the left below, to a folded piece with a lovely warm and burnished surface on the right. BTW, can you tell that my iPhone has an orange case?

The warm burnished effect comes from heating olive oil on the aluminium - I loved the warmth that it created. So then I used that piece of aluminium to cut out a few strips and attached the strips to some smoky perspex which I had cut and filed the edges on, by creating rivets from copper wire. Little copper rivets made my heart skip - delightful!

I also enjoyed beating these two little cups in a shallow hollow. Not sure what they will be or where they will go; I just wanted to see if I could shape some metal.

All in all, a great day - one where we totally immersed ourselves in creating, learning new things and the right brain just had a lovely old wallow. Tomorrow will be here soon enough for the left brain to get back in charge...

Wedding Celebrations

My brothers and I are in the midst of getting things done for mum and dad's 50th wedding anniversary celebration in December. Mum and dad of course, are busy getting things organised as well; but we kids are doing a few things here and there. Mostly we are laughing at all the old photos of ourselves and thoroughly enjoying the nostalgic trips down memory lane.

One of my tasks has been to do the invitations.  Its always tricky working out what folk might like and so I started off with quite a few test runs and options for them to think about - some with intricate folding and envelopes; some long and thin, some more regular, some embossed, some with a photograph and so on.  Any designer knows the process!

Little by little we got some clarity about what they were imagining the end product might look like and we grabbed some firm ideas early; others sort of appeared over time.

Barry and I sat down together one night right at the beginning and hand-embossed the 50 onto the front page of the card. I cut two templates form the sides of plastic milk containers and we sat side by side in companionable embossing mode.

I then had to do quite a few roughs to try and work out how much info we could get on a card; what size to write it; what bits to embellish, what style of writing to do and so on. Any calligrapher knows the process!

And then I had to try and work out how to get the final words onto about 35 cards - and I struggled again with scanning and with Photoshop so I ended up printing/copying each one from the original.

I worked out how to get the gold 50th onto each card - again after I tried all sorts of options and all sorts of pens and styles. And then decided it needed a little bit of something, so did gold diamonds by hand on each of them; and then right at the end, decided that I needed to separate or highlight "Graham and Adrianne" a bit from the rest, so tiny little gold diamonds were added alongside their names to each one.

I found the gold paper and envelopes in town - excellent! But there was only one sheet of paper and I needed about 15. So luckily we found more in Melbourne on one of our recent work trips. I cut each printed page down to size, each gold sheet down to size. And attached the gold to the card.  I didn't dare attach the printed page until I had hand-written everybody's names in case I mucked them up. I didn't want to have to throw the whole card away.

Then I attached the printed part to the card and we were almost there. The envelope selection came next and we tossed up white, white with gold or gold and Mum chose gold, so we bought all the envelopes there were in town.  Then the issue of how to address them - labels, handwritten, all calligraphy (eek) or a bit.  We settled on a capital letter and the rest just hand-written by me, so it showed a bit of care and creativity without being over the top, for which I was grateful.

They were popped in the post and have been received across the country. Phew! Now down to the party...

Thursday Thoughts...

Stories you read when you’re the right age never quite leave you. You may forget who wrote them or what the story was called. Sometimes you’ll forget precisely what happened, but if a story touches you it will stay with you, haunting the places in your mind that you rarely ever visit.

Neil Gaiman

I was thinking to myself - that name's familiar - but only in that "I think I might have heard of it before" way; not "that's someone I know but I can't place them" kind of way.  When I checked him out online I worked out that he is a comic writer and I have on occasions been asked to search out his works on behalf of my niece - if we are o/s and can get access to them before they are released here in Oz.

Phew, glad I got that sorted.

Anyhow, I like what he writes about those books that touch us and reach us when we are young and so open to all that is in the world. So open to the worlds that are in books. So open to learning about different ways of being, to having our imaginations fired up; to seeing who we are and how we are played out in a story; or to see the person we could be, or aspire to be take the role of a character. And how we remember those things and they stay with us. I read loads of the Famous Five books and always loved "George" the best - a rough and tumble tom-boy of a girl with no fancy pants stuff - that was me.

Its funny, I thought he was talking about childhood reading because he mentions age and that's where my head took me - but as I go back into I think No; its the right book at ANY age that matters. And I really like how he says that the story touches you and stays with you, even if you can't fully recall the detail or who the author was. You recall how it made you feel. That's me and books in a sentence.

And just to finish with a smile, I've mentioned my brothers and I are trawling thru photos at the moment - I've titled this one "She always did like books". Me as a tot reading in my pyjamas.

An art gesture begins

I was reading Ronnie's little challenge to herself over the month of November - to do/make something arty every day. Nothing big or dramatic or impressive, but just spend some time doing something artistic or creative. I loved the idea of a gesture - the perfect word to describe it.

So I thought I might try to keep her company in a small and probably slightly random and chaotic way... I am not sure how I'll fare given our travelling schedule over the next wee while, but I think its nice to have the daily mind set that I WILL do something creative today!

I probably (let's be honest - definitely) won't get to blog every day, but I will try to record and share my forays and whatever they produce.

I had some recent inspiration to kickstart me. I was reading Carol's blog and was really taken by Carol's iPhonography with a couple of apps, and went and bought them both (0.99 cents each). Barry has also been playing with iPhonography since we went to the NT earlier this year and has achieved some amazing effects as well.  Carol's kaleidoscope one really impressed me, so I started to play with an image of my old torn and tattered books and here are some of the results...

The old book image is on the bottom left. The way it worked was that the app started doing all of these kaleidoscope movements - it just morphed from this to that and then to that and you had the option to take a screen shot, which I did every now and again.

I am not sure what the print clarity would be like - but they seem to me that they could make lovely card images or swing tags or gift tags, and also some interesting bits for collaging or even writing on.