The red centre

A couple of weeks ago Barry and I headed to Central Australia for a mini-break and a celebration.

I had never visited Uluru (formerly known as Ayers Rock) and I felt it was an important part of Australia to see.

The landscape is wide and open; not really desert-desert; and the light and the colours just beautiful...

As you fly in, you cruise above salt lakes...

I love the mark-making of the spinifex and its gorgeous get green colour against the red earth., and beginning to understand the important role fire plays in renewing these desert plants.

On our first day, we visit Kata Tjuta (formerly know as The Olgas). This is a collection of around 37 boulder-like, mountain-like rock formations.  They appear like a family grouping and somehow very comfortable in the earth, tethered and nurturing. It was lovely to see them from a distance and then gradually get closer and closer.

The sky was overcast and gave them a very soft and gentle light, radiating from within almost.

 You can see from the trees, and the people below, just how large they are.

And as we walked, through and around them, the light changed and they became more orange, more red...

We did a long walk, through the valley of the Winds, with views like this to reward us. Looking forward to where we're headed,

and looking back to where we've been.

As we returned to where the car was, the sun came out, the sky cleared a bit and the redness  and boldness appeared.

Along the way there were many magical moments.

We built and added to traveller's cairns along the path.

And enjoyed seeing these guys...

It is such a beautiful place, awe-inspiring in the true sense of the word, and very very special.  I'll be back with Part 2 soon - Uluru.

Thursday Thoughts...

“To be an artist or a writer is to be this weird thing — a hand worker in an era of mass production.” 

Susan Sontag

I was sitting somewhere the other day and thinking just this - how good it feels to be a maker; a person who does things by hand; who digs in the earth; who cooks up produce into food; who sometimes can make clothes; and who sits quietly and makes art by hand. Stitch by stitch. Letter by letter. Line by line. Print by print.

I didn't stop to think of it as weird or out of kilter with the mainstream of life; I just thought how wonderful it was to be able to do it.

The satisfaction I get out of making by hand is enormous. It's so funny; whenever I think I'll try to simplify things by mass-producing a booklet or doing some production process, I sit down and try to work out layout and where to put things and centre things and all the rest, knowing that in the end I would much rather have simply sat down and cut the paper and placed the image and written the words by hand.

I trust my hands, my eye and my thoughts.

Although maybe in the end its all about control and where you feel it rests. Despite my many mistakes and mis-steps along the way as I make, I feel my best control rests with me and my hands, rather than with a computer.

I'm sure most  of you are very happy makers too - whether it's a weird thing to be or not!

Filing nibs

It's strange the things you do to resettle into a rhythm or routine.   We returned home from a few weeks away - with work-work and celebrations - and I knew I needed to be in the studio doing stuff.

But I was feeling my way back - it's not always easy to dive into something straight away; I need to re-familiarise myself with the space, the way I work and move through it; consider what I need to do. Work out where to start. So I started with tidying (which was long overdue) and filed and put away and threw away and set aside, and lo and behold the work surfaces returned!

Then serendipitously, we went into town and whilst Barry was asking about some photocopying, I saw on the shelf of the newsagent's a box filled with nibs. Like real nibs.  I almost fell over.  I took it off the shelf and opened it and played with them and thought good grief, how good is this? I could buy William Mitchell nibs and their reservoirs in my tiny town of 3, 500 people!

So I bought a few - including the blue pumpkin - and thought I'd better put them somewhere safe when I got home.

So I sat for a wee while, cutting up some corrugated cardboard into 10cm wide x 5 cm high strips and placing many of the nibs I re-discovered around the studio into compartments, naming them and having them ready to go should I ever need them.

These nibs are mostly NOT broad-edged nibs (I keep them in pen-holders elsewhere). These are nibs for copperplate or pressure-release writing. Some are stiff, some are very flexible.  The ones I use often I have popped into nib-holders; these are the ones I rarely if ever use. Most have come from op-shop finds or when I literally couldn't walk past some old nibs.

Then I found a beautiful old wooden crate-box and they fitted perfectly.  The other bags of nibs have now joined them and I reckon I'm ready to roar!

Filing nibs - who'd have thought?

Poppy progression

Having been thinking about poppies so much of late, they filtered into my mind around making.  I scribbled some lines in a notebook whilst we were working in Melbourne, then started thinking about how to use them in my work whilst we were away in the desert.

They were spilling over in my head and I had to get them out and onto the page somehow.

The progressions goes a bit like this...

Drawing some wiggly lines on scrap paper - filling some of the gaps with words.

Making a long thin piece with lines just at the bottom, enjoying the landscape they create.

Pencils - drawing stylised poppies

Thinking I might like embossed stems rather than drawn stems.

And wondering how blobby or round to make the poppies.

But liking when the black dots went in, and deciding that black ink was better for the writing.

And then working onto larger pieces - embossed and de-bossed rectangles.

Then working on long thin book pages, would I use some really large poppies, add in some words?

Would the words be lead pencil, black pencil, black ink?

And really liking the corners on the larger pieces.

Nothing is complete. Nothing is finished.  A couple of little ideas have flowed in so many directions...onto the wall, into a book. Do they work one way better than the other? Can I use both? Can I do some multiples?

I have been totally focused on these works the past few days - they have absorbed me and kept my focus, and really made me want to stay in the studio and not come home to eat! 

Thursday Thoughts...

I’m old-fashioned and think that reading books is the 
most glorious pastime that humankind has yet devised.
 

Wisława Szymborska
1996 Nobel Prize in Literature

Call me old-fashioned but I would have to agree that reading books is really right up there with the best things we have ever devised.

Reading a book is such a companionable thing, with a sense of ritual. Depending on the time of day and location, it is sometimes about gathering up the right materials to accompany one on the reading journey - a cuppa, a bite to eat...

Maybe it's about settling down into the right chair - curling legs up, stretching them out, getting comfy. Or clambering into bed, and rigging up in winter, covers pulled and reading mittens on!

Grabbing your glasses if you need them, especially if you're tired, the light is poor or the text very small.

And then the world around you dissolves. There is a transition period where distractions in the exterior world can interrupt or interfere; but then the time arrives when you are submerged in reading and nothing outside of you and the book impacts at all.

It sometimes takes me a while to cross that bridge into the dissolved world, but once I have I'm gone.

I've done a lot of reading on planes these past few weeks - finished some good books whilst I was cocooned in my own little world in the sky.

All of that travel led me to here...sunset at Uluru in central Australia.  A magical place and a special place to spend time. 

From the collection - Tide Marks

As mentioned, it is a time of travel, so I don't have much new work to show and share just yet.  So it's back to the collection and another beautiful book.

This one is called Tide Marks #3 and is by Alice Fox.

As a fan of rust and soft and gentle marks, I was slightly bewitched when I saw this book online and am forever grateful I managed to get myself organised and purchase it.

For me,  it is so often about the words, and I love that she has included words in these soft and drifty pages.

It has a lovely soft olive-grey book cloth cover and is a concertina style book - slowly unravelling and unfurling to show the long tide-line and its marks.

I love the columns of blurred words and the rusty and faded marks. Words that are there, but not there...

And the hand-stitching that feels like the trails of small aquatic visitors who have wandered along the wet and shiny sand as the waves retreat.

The rusty forms that almost become organic with their soft blurred edges.

And then not. A remnant, a reminder that people have passed this way as well.

There is a lovely sense of continuity with this book - it gently runs together and tells its tale and I feel calmed just looking upon it. I am walking slowly at the turn of the tide, head down, examining the minutiae and the magic that is on show at my feet, appearing and disappearing, receding and renewing...

A time for poppies

Barry and I have been on the road a bit lately and after a day or two at home have headed off again.  So my posts are a bit random and my comments few and far between for which I apologise.

Last week we were work-working in Canberra and Melbourne, then home again briefly, and now we are in Central Australia. Hopefully I will have some magnificent desert photos to share soon.

But a bit of a feature of our recent days has been poppies.  Partly because we have artists' books in another exhibition "Of War and Peace" at Caloundra Regional Gallery, and partly because we visited the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, and partly because we are leading up to ANZAC Day here (25 April) and for Australians, it is the centenary of the landing at Gallipoli in 1915.

So I'll share some poppies from  our travels and our visits.

Firstly at Caloundra Regional Gallery, there is a poppy installation, and for a gold coin donation you can attach a ceramic poppy by Jan Roebuck to the wall and be part of this beautiful work of art.

"My" poppy...

"Barry's" poppy... at the top.

As a quick aside, here are two photos of my book "The Nurses 2" in the show, taken by Judy Barrass - thank you Judy for sharing them!

In Canberra, we paid tribute to my gr-grandfather and his brother who fought and died in WW1. It was poignant again as we had visited their graves and burial places in Belgium and France when we there in November last year.

My great-grandfather William Mason Proudfoot on the Roll of Honour.

His brother Robert George Henderson Proudfoot.

One of the walls of the Roll of Honour...

And here they are recognised on the other side of the world.

William 's name is on the Menin Gate in Ieper along with the names of 500,00 allied troops for whom there is no known grave. It struck me I was wearing the engagement ring he gave my great grandmother Isabella. They were married for 3 months before he went into barracks and then left for the war. My grandmother was born 11 months after their wedding, and William never saw his daughter; and she never knew her father.

We visited Robert's grave in northern France and left a poppy and a peace tag.

And we found poppies and peace at the "Pieces for Peace" exhibition in Ieper.

So many poppies, so many dead, and still we go to war...