Gifts of winter

Winter arrived this week - and we have had some seriously cold days and nights.  I generally prefer to feel warm and I often grump about needing so many layers of clothes but I do try to recognise the gifts of winter.

We shared pizza by the fire at Susan's with some friends during the week - and who can really enjoy a fire in the midst of summer?

The valley offers so much beauty when the air has moisture and the cold air keeps it down - forming the cloud lakes below us.  I took these photos of an early sunrise and the trees miles away in the cloud lakes in the valley and enjoy the ethereal feel of them.

And our camellias have been blooming and blossoming and just being their beautiful selves for what seems like months now. We brought some of the pale pink and white ones inside and they have gracefully dropped their petals here and there and given us much joy.

The citrus is in full flight and marmalade and orange cakes are being made; the pumpkin glut is nearly over and we're into roasted pumpkin soup and I think the last of the summer's bell peppers were made into sweet chilli sauce this afternoon, so as we nestle down, cocoon ourselves and go gently, we have stacks of food to keep us happy.

Each season deserves to be celebrated, and I'm re-acquainting myself with winter...

Thursday Thoughts...

Books are delightful society. If you go into a room and find it full of books - even without taking them from the shelves they seem to speak to you, to bid you welcome. 

 William Ewart Gladstone


This made me think immediately about how friendly books seem to me.  Just as Mr Gladstone says here, whenever I see them I feel as if they are welcoming me, inviting me to spend some time, open them up, peruse a few pages; or to simply take one in my hands and go and sit down and disappear for a while.

They just seem friendly. For which I am grateful.  As I immediately connected to the notion of welcome and interest and excitement and companionability that resides in a room full of books for me, I stopped to think it's probably not so for everybody.

For some I suspect they are just books. Just things that are there. Some might be interesting, some might not, but I've got other things to do and maybe I'll take a look, but maybe not.  The ho-hum, take it or leave it kind of response.

For others I imagine there can be a bit of a fear response - anxiety around what's expected of them by the books; are they going to struggle to make sense of the contents, the words, the subject? The sadness I feel when I know there are folk made anxious by books is palpable. How I wish we could all be friends with books.

I wrote recently of the joy of meeting a bookshop after hours; I am sure if we closed the door and turned the lights out and pretended we had left, we'd hear them all talking a little bit more...

Part of the SketchBook project Library in Brooklyn, NY. Totally inviting, welcoming and whispering...

A weekend workshop

It was a warm and wonderful weekend in Brisbane with fellow travellers and calligraphers, gathering to learn Pointed Pen Versals with Colleen Little.  It was an intense two days. You know those days where you arrive home and can only mutter and murmur, barely string two words together let alone form a sentence?  My head was tired, yet full of adventures to come.

Colleen was well-prepared and patient, and pushed and stretched us and challenged over the two days. Which is good. But tiring. You never want to walk away from a workshop going oh, well that was easy and I knew that already. I came home with loads of ideas, tips, tricks, techniques and wonders which will keep me going. So many things I learned!

Here are some of the techniques we developed along the way.

Starting way back with skeleton Romans; the hardest of letters to get right despite their seeming simplicity.

Lots of worksheets and letter proportion and spacing to think about.

Adding different serifs to formal Romans.

Then beginning to de-formalise, and remove serifs.

And then to pressure-release with pencils, and then with the different pointed pen nibs.  I discovered I am somewhat heavy-handed and kept breaking my pencils with the pressure part; and releasing way too much ink from the nib with the pens, creating lovely little ink-mountains in each letter! Laugh.  I write notes to myself all over the pages which helps remind me down the track what was going on.

In between we prepared some pages with water and ink, and loosely formed lines for some writing.

We worked so hard and the goal wasn't to do finished pieces - it was to try techniques so there are several half-finished words and works in my book. On the last exercise I got to draw the outlines of some of the letters, but there is much to do to complete them. But yes, the workshop was finito!

Thanks to the Calligraphers of South East Queensland for organising such a great workshop and for hosting Colleen and feeding us lunch on Sunday - delicious and greatly appreciated!

LATE ADDITION UPDATE - I forgot to say that I wore my old tried and trusted apron...just felt right to make a mess in. I think I need to wear Rosalie at home and get her mucky before taking her out in public!

Of articles and aprons...

I do love going to the letter box and finding one of those large flat envelopes inside - knowing that it contains one of the journals I subscribe to, and that there will soon be time with a cuppa and a chance to curl up and read about letters, and books and beautiful things.

Two recent journal arrivals contained articles I had written.

The latest edition of Bound and Lettered has a short article about writing on pebbles and making pouches out of book pages. I have it on good authority that the instructions are easy enough to follow as some enthusiastic folk started making pouches straight away.  Thanks Jennifer and the urchins!

Its always a great journal and I was thrilled with how gorgeous the article looked.

The Australian Society of Calligraphers' journal Colophon, has a review I wrote of the "Pieces for Peace" exhibition in Ieper; and a short guide to things calligraphic in Brugge. There is also a mention of the best place to buy a good flat white coffee as well!

It was lovely to find the exhibition review partnering with a story on the Buderim Calligraphers.

Which is a fabulous segue into the next part of the post. I have just spent the weekend with a merry band of calligraphers from Buderim, attending  a workshop with Colleen Little in Brisbane. More on that to follow when I have sorted my brain and my images, but it did lead me to earlier in the week when I was making the BIG decision around which apron to wear to the workshop. I know, I know. Ridiculous.

You see, I have this old favourite which really really shows its age and much wear and tear. But it just feels like me.

You can see so clearly how I wipe my hands on my apron A LOT.

In an effort to look more respectable when I go out in workshop-public, I made this little one last year, out of scrabble fabric and based on a Japanese house-apron.  This one I like very much as well.

And yes, the ubiquitous hand-wiping marks are there again.

The third choice was this fabulous newly-minted, fresh-as-a-daisy, never-been-worn apron that I recently bought in Melbourne. It features the work of Rosalie Gascoigne and I think it looks great.

So which one did I take?

Thursday Thoughts...

“I would say the cultivation of silence is indispensable to being human. People sometimes talk as if they were ‘looking for silence,’ as if silence had gone away or they had misplaced it somewhere. But it is hardly something they could have misplaced. Silence is the infinite horizon against which is set every word they have ever spoken, and they can’t find it? Not to worry—it will find them.” 

How Silence Works: Emailed Conversations With Four Trappist Monks | The Awl

I'm not quite sure what it is about, but I have a yearning to understand silence.  I am intrigued by the notion; somewhat drawn to the thought of the experience.  It calls me and my sense is that it would make me happy.

Perhaps this is because it also speaks of retreat, and being alone.  I really, really enjoy my quiet time and the times I spend by myself. Being quiet is the way I renew myself and re-gather my thoughts and strength.

The other-way-in to silence that is expressed so beautifully by the man referred to as Father A in these conversations, is wonderful. Rather than having to work hard to find or discover silence, silence will find you.  Oh, what a delightful and uplifting thought - to know that in amongst it all, silence will be there, will be my companion and will work out where I am.

That sense of silence being a constant, quiet companion, there as the backdrop to every word spoken, an infinite horizon, makes me smile.

I love it when somebody can turn a thought or idea around and show me a different way of looking at it.

Sunrise at Kuta Tjula - the silence of the desert at dawn.

Tidying Type

Barry and I were on the road for a few days last week, and one port of call was the shed of an old printer who has hoarded lead type. It was a really great couple of hours poring over old trays of dusty, dirty type; rusty galley trays and re-conditioned composing sticks. Don't I sound like I know what I'm talking about now! Laugh.

It was really helpful to talk about the different things and items and I bought a few bits and pieces.

One of the weird pleasures on return was to fill my first trays in my set of type drawers.

I washed each and every piece of type, removing dust and grime and grease; dried it and placed it in the California job case as instructed.

There was such a remarkable sense of satisfaction in completing this first tray. You can see the mess left behind! It will be in for a wash and clean and then who knows what.

So, from this really dirty, messy tray I confirmed I had a pretty big set (not complete, but not bad) of Placard 48pt Bold and am so thrilled with how shiny and clean it looks in its new place of residence.

And I have punctuation...

I have another tray to go through (as yet un-titled) and then I pretty much have the type I now own in its rightful place; hopefully ready for use in the near future.

I made the unilateral decision to put a couple of very small, incomplete sets of type into drawers (that aren't configured in the California job case style) according to my own particular arrangement.  Upper and lower case in together; and simply running from A to Z.

I think (hope) this arrangement will work for me.

I got grew pleasure from using my two new 'Typeface recognition manuals" to ascertain just which typefaces these sets were.  I felt like a detective when I finally tracked Parisian Ronde down (noting that it's Q was slightly different to Typo Upright).

And after three attempts, confirming that my other typeface was in fact Falstaff and not Ultra Bodoni or Roman Extra, or ....

Up close and personal with Falstaff before placement in the tray.

And after - in my own peculiar storage approach.

It is clearly a highly addictive pursuit this letterpress world, and I am happily playing along!

Under Construction progresses

Towards the end of the week and over the weekend, I made myself sit down and DO something with the layout and body of work that is to become "Under Construction".  I have been staring at the possibility of the wall pieces; but was still feeling too scared to really have a go; so decided I would take the easier route for  me - I would start with the book.

I had chosen to work with BFK printmaking paper - a half sheet - and thought that will look good on the wall and will make an interesting book size as well.  I folded the pages and discovered that the layout needs to be different when you are working with individual pages; rather than simply the flat surface.

I bit the bullet, inked up the plates, registered them, put some paper down and printed.

To my great surprise they worked out pretty well - using about 4-5 plates on a single sheet is always a challenge re alignment and pressure etc - and then I had the fun part of adding other elements.

And the joy that process brought as I went from one element to a completely different, unheralded element to add in and so on - building and constructing this work in response to each layer placed previously.

I have written five short haiku-ish poems about nests as I hope to make five books and five wall-pieces (ambitious I know...). I enjoyed the gentle, whimsical and light script as I wrote with walnut ink.

What had started out as a promise of a test run had actually turned into an almost finished product.

The satisfaction was immense - these snippets show you some of its loveliness...

Thursday Thoughts...

“When we engage in what we are naturally suited to do, our work takes on the quality of play and it is play that stimulates creativity.” 

Linda Naiman

I think I could be the number 1 card carrier for the need to have play time in the studio.  I started out thinking that if I wanted to take my art seriously, then I needed to get in there and do things seriously.  Sit down and write out perfect letters; make sure that every mark counted and went in the right place.

As I have gone along it has become abundantly clear to me that in fact, in order to get better at your art, you need to practise yes; but also to play.

The  amazing things that can appear from a session or two of 'what if?', and "I'd like to try that' can set you on a new course; add that extra element to work you already do or simply break through a time of feeling stymied, and offer you new ways forward.

By allowing yourself the freedom to simply explore, muck around, play and discover you can mostly leave behind the little critic who sits on your shoulder telling you that what you are doing isn't good enough. There's no role for the critic in play-time (except of course to tell you to stop wasting your time, which it sometimes does) and as a result, your creativity can just get on with it.

I don't think that play time is ever wasted; the opportunities it affords pop up in your work time and time again down the track.

These are the results of some play time a while ago. I was wondering if you could print on fabric; with fabric etc etc. and then, could you use scraps in small collages and....

I had a great time and the lessons from this play time are still appearing in work - today, there I was in the studio preparing to print onto fabric.

The gorgeous blues also indicate that it's that time again when we try to find the colours of the rainbow (Roy G Biv) and beyond.  Touch base with Jennifer and Julie to see who else has got the gorgeous blues this month