Friday 29 April 2011

The first hurdle.

Yesterday I gained an inkling of understanding into one of the most venerated cliches of all time - the impoverished artist. I have some shocking news. Artists are not starving in their Parisian attic boltholes because they have chosen to live outside of the bourgeois confines of a capitalist society. Nor are they living on a cup of coffee a day because their artistic genius has gone unnoticed by the self-involved, self-satisfied, rolling-in-ready-cash potential benefactors of the world. The reason they are six months behind on the rent, starving, unkempt and generally grumpy is because they had to spend all their money on paint.

I trotted off to the art supply store yesterday all starry eyed and filled with dreams of perusing the aisles for hours, filling my (probably wicker) basket with goodies, pausing occasionally to adjust the rakish angle of my beret and discuss the merits of cadmium yellow over burnt sienna with the charming & helpful store assistants. Hah!

It turned out that buying paint requires the kind of sums of money that make you reconsider whether your child really needs lunch every day this week. Will it be this teeny tiny tub of paint? Or bread, milk, eggs, a trip to the DVD store, a gelato and some new Bonds undies? Seriously. The whole found object artwork thing suddenly makes a whole lot of sense. I am not sure if I can afford to nurture a creative process that involves paint. I mean really, how hard can it be to manufacture paint? Why is it so expensive? Are Oompa Loompas involved? Or is it a conspiracy of the capitalist structure to break the spirit of emerging artists and send them back to work in retail jobs where they belong? Either way, my hopes of chucking around vast quantities of paint died a very sudden & unexpected death yesterday. Sigh. I think I need a cup of tea.

Tuesday 26 April 2011

Garden state.

Tex and I went to the Mt Annan botanical garden today. It was ace. We rode our bikes around in the rain and things got very wet and very funny but we persisted and the sun came out and everything was beautiful. There was heaps of space and light and green and a lake and flowers and awesome prehistoric trees and ducks. And there was a tree from the Blue Mountains that had been so encroached upon by humans that it's entire species had been reduced to one single tree and the Mount Annan guys & gals took seeds from the last tree and planted it in their botanical gardens and then took seeds from their tree and started planting back into the wild. How amazing is that?

But that's not all. On the way to the gardens, I was struck with a terrible piercing disappointment because I had forgotten the camera. The disappointment abated somewhat after riding my bike in the rain and eating my excellent picnic lunch in the sun (what kind of birds don't eat lettuce?). However, it was not your standard 'oh I won't be able to take any photos of my handsome husband on this adventurous outing' kind of disappointment. Oh no. It was the 'jesus shit god damn there is going to be some kick arse things here to take pictures of and I wanna take pictures' kind of disappointment. Can you see where I'm going here? I think it's starting to work. By making myself engage with the world in a more creative way, well, certainly in a more photographic way, I am starting to look forward to experiences not just for the joy they bring, but also for the opportunity to make cool pictures.

Don't get me wrong, I am fully aware that I am no great maestro of the photographic medium. But at the moment, it's not doing it really well that counts, it's just doing it! And today I really felt that.

Saturday 23 April 2011

Poetry alert.

I have been trying to come up with the goods in the poetry department: I had set a goal of one every two weeks. This is actually quite achievable, however the standard of the poems may become questionable. Although, of course, the standard may well have been questionable in the first place, so maybe it won't make any discernible difference. It is pretty hard for me to feel like something is finished enough to put up in public after only two weeks work on it. Usually I circle around poems for pretty lengthy periods, coming back to them again and again to fiddle and change and shift. Truthfully, this can sometimes go on for years.

So today I am posting what is possibly my first ever poem written in one day. I woke up with the seed of it in my brain yesterday, scrawled some notes through the haze of my post Good Friday champagne brain, and then spent three short bursts working on it today. In between I went to the markets, where I scored a double album of Ella Fitzgerald singing Irving Berlin, and bought a fabulous leek & mushroom quiche so I don't have to cook tonight. Oh, and Tex bought some home made tomato relish from the nice old lady who likes to have a chat about the weather. So this poem is a little bit of an experiment, based on the premise that maybe too much fiddling can prevent something from coming to fruition. And these days I'm all about the fruition.

Sixteen.

She is unprepared
for the freedom
the power
the hot wind
that catches her up
in her ship of skin.

She sees herself
a feathered vessel
a heron
long limbs poised
possessed by the shadow
and the secret of flight.

She gives in
grey eyes glinting
and peels away
her last layers of girlhood
arms up, hair down
like a long held lucky charm
lost in a heart shaped hill
of fabric on the floor.

Hello.

Look! Crochet jewels! Find them at http://www.etsy.com/listing/68127989/silver-petal-necklace

Tuesday 19 April 2011

I spy.

Every time I am near a body of water in the bush I have the overwhelming desire to a) take off my clothes and get in the water & b) see a platypus. Sadly, I did neither of these things at Jellybean Pools.

I spy.

We did a very sedate bushwalk down to Jellybean Pools at the base of the Blue Mountains. We decided to go further up the mountains to find something a bit more rugged but the traffic on the only road up was so bad we couldn't access the bloody bush bits. So much for getting back to nature. We went indoor climbing instead.


Saturday 16 April 2011

Kozyndan doing the bunny.

I am just loving this Kozyndan print. I am lucky enough to have been gifted one of their bunny prints by a very generous boss I had a few years ago, and now this one is occupying my brain. You can see all their beautiful work at http://www.kozyndan.com/


According to their site, Kozyndan will be exhibiting in Sydney during May. Hooray!

Double dessert.

I think dessert is innately creative. In this house there is a strong dessert urge in both myself and my (nearly) 13 year old son Seth. In my husband Tex, not so much. For as long as he has been able to hold a wooden spoon, Seth has seen dessert as a creative playground in which he can frolic about ankle deep in ingredients, unencumbered by a recipe, and turn out messy piles of inspired creamy, goopy, chocolatey goodness. I clearly remember, against the backdrop of our hilariously crappy kitchen, Seth turning out a batch of anzac biscuits infused with fresh strawberries. And I clearly remember his face when he had the idea of chopping up the strawberries and putting them through the anzac biscuit mixture. It was inspired. It was filled with glee. It was a genuinely creative moment. I think he was about five.

These days he's more of a recipe guy, and I'm more of a 'don't make so much mess' kind of mum. Boring. I think this calls for a new rule. Once a week, in the kitchen, aprons at twenty paces for me and Seth and bugger the mess. Bring on the joyous dessert creation.

I spy.

There is just something about this device. It makes me happy.



Wednesday 13 April 2011

Other people's llamas.

Look at this excellent painting. She has more on etsy http://www.etsy.com/shop/jilliBird?ref=top_trail



And this one is from http://blog.lamadesigns.com/category/friday-im-in-llama-2/



Seems like the llamas are loving it up all over.

Monday 11 April 2011

The snoot factor.

So this morning I enrolled in a painting class. I can't believe I am actually following my own rules that I made up. It seems almost unbearably well behaved. The course is called Painting Foundations and although I had to converse with an unattractively snooty lady, I am otherwise very excited. My whole brain has been very excited by all sorts of things in the last few weeks. And now I get to go to an art shop and buy supplies. Hooray!

And also I have been having some ideas about what to do with this blog. Because, quite frankly, I sincerely doubt that just talking about me is going to be terribly engaging for very long. I'm already getting bored with myself. Plus talking about myself makes me feel like I have my head inside my own bottom. So. I've been thinking. I know a whole lot of extremely creative and fairly amazing people. And some of the things I am interested in doing more of are photographing and writing. So I am thinking a series of stories on the people that I know and the things that they do. I will talk with them and photograph them and you will get to see a little bit of their process and their story.

Which is a nice fit for me, because part of this process is beginning to remember that creativity is everywhere and it's not all special and secret and snooty and all sorts of folks are doing truly great things right under our noses. And I am about to start ferreting them out and asking them to have a chat about it.
 
What do you think?

I spy.

I love this wacky green lady that my friend Jen gave to me. Thanks Jenno.


Sunday 10 April 2011

Charmed.

I saw her first
at a party
in a small town near the sea
she was a satellite
adrift and eavesdropping
searching for life.

In the days
before she leaves
I am jealous of everything
she touches
even the cat
and her old friend Ruth.
After she’s gone
I swim for hours
buoyed by a tide
of angry longing
for unknown boys
on surfboards.

Thursday 7 April 2011

Coledale pool.


The local pool where I live is kind of amazing. It gets a bit skank and filled with seaweed on occasion so it's not actually my favorite place to swim but it is a tops place to hang around and look at stuff with the camera or just with eyeballs.










Alrighty then.

I am setting some rules. I figure some kind of purpose is required or else I will just waft around suffering from intermittent bursts of half formed ideas. So.

Rule number one.
I need to photograph something inside my house, or in my immediate surroundings, at least once every 48 hours.

Rule number two.
I will enrol in a painting class and go to it and do painting. I have an idea about painting a llama. True story. And in a beautiful piece of synchronicity, two of my delightful birth support clients insisted on giving me a monetary bonus today - which will pay for painting class. Thank you Polly & Simon.

Rule number three.
I will produce at least one reasonable piece of poetry every two weeks. I think. I'm not really sure if this is possible but I can have a crack at it.

Erm. That might be all the rules for now. Oh, and I will update the blog at least twice a week. Even though no one might especially look at it, it is a thing I like to do.


Tuesday 5 April 2011

This is a bit good.


You can find it at  http://airofprague.blogspot.com/

I spy.



These creatures have been part of my visual landscape for as long as I remember. In every household of my childhood (and there were quite a few) my mum would always find the right place for these classic carvings. I was really thrilled when she passed the antelope ladies down to me a couple of years ago; thanks Mum.

Hello pet.


I have this image of a lovely all grey nanna blanket with just a few asymmetrical black shapes dispersed through it. As I only just figured out how to crochet a short time ago, I think this is probably my first square of an acceptable CWA lady standard. So only about ninety nine to go I figure.

Some ways to encourage my waywardly sensible brain.

If this is gonna work, I reckon I have to take every opportunity to discourage my brain from being filled with straitlaced, sensible trousers noise. These are some things I think might help.
  • Look at other people's amazing stuff that they have done.
  • Drive in the car without the radio on; how can people be paid so handsomely to talk such shite? 
  • Enforce laying-down-on-the-floor-time.
  • Be in the nature.
  • Make plans. Or even a list.
  • Take over half my husband's music room and turn it into a place for me to do stuff that makes mess.
  • Stay away from the television.
  • Listen to Sesame Street songs, like the llama song.
  • Chuck some paint around with wild abandon and no care for the quality of the finished product.
  • Buy some paint.
  • Take the camera out on excursions.
  • Stop reading textbooks.
  • Oh my gosh, here's a revolutionary thought, maybe I have to stop reading. Reading for me is compulsive and it's possible that it has become a well disguised agent of procrastination. I mean, as long as you are sitting on the couch with the fruits of someone else's creative process being sucked up into your brain, you kinda don't have to do anything. Eek.
  • Encourage others in their creative pursuits.  
  • Go take some classes.
  • Forget about the washing.

Monday 4 April 2011

Rabbit reward points.

 I used to walk past this gallery all the time and somehow never managed to get inside it's doors. For a while I wasn't even sure if it was a gallery. Right now, it looks like a total box of fun. When I finish working on my current mammoth brain project, for which the deadline is 15 April, I'm gonna grab my kid, stick him under my arm, belt up the highway and through the doors of the magical Rabbit. Lickety split.

Now showing | White Rabbit Gallery

Looking, looking, looking.

Looking at things. Trying to figure out if I have to look at things differently to get all creative on their collective asses. Hmmm. Car park still looks like a car park. If I were actually an artist, which I am totally not, would I see something else? Would it still be car park? Or would it be huge swathes of grey, yellow stripes and chirpy coloured cars with black, black tyres? Do artists have some kind of app in their eyeballs that turns everything into a potential project? I did get a bit excited by a kind of weird power box electrical mystery object that had a lovely symmetrical row of holes along the top of it. I could for sure crochet a cover for that. It would just be a variation on the theme of tea cosy. Nice. 



Friendly Fire.

Swimming again today
mid morning
with everyone
a colony, a cluster bomb of
screeching kids
scattering shards of happiness
that lodge like shrapnel
under my skin.

I watch my son
fingers spread like starfish
sprawled on the hot sand
cheek to cheek
eyes closed,
antennae quivering,
tuned to
his personal frequency
grain by grain.

Back home 
my bathtub is a halfshell and
I am Aphrodite
with kelp hair and boardshorts
risen from the rock platforms
to sing my heart out
through the open window.

Sunday 3 April 2011

Let's get this over with.

Okay. So here is the embarrassing bit. I'm figuring the best thing to do is just get this out of the way right up front. Please accept my apologies in advance.

I write poetry.

Well, I used to write poetry & I would like to again sometime soon. If that is going to be a problem for you, we should just politely go our separate ways now. It's okay really, I won't blame you. Poetry can be pure malevolent evil on a stick. Forewarned is forearmed; some poetry may appear in this blog.

And so it begins.

Okay. The first, most obvious, and easiest thing to do is pick up the camera. Uncanny how this used to make me feel like some kind of knowing, suave hipster who just got back from Berlin and now it makes me feel like a pretender. A clumsy, foolish tourist poking around on the rock platforms searching for a cliched still life with sea urchin. Still. It's a start. I can't just be all full sick hipster creative on my first excursion. Right? Actually, I'm pretty confident that I have never really had the hipster thing covered. I don't think crocheting & op shopping are the activities of choice for hipsters of any generation. Although guerilla knitting has brought the whole handicrafty bonanza some street cred. I did see a beautifully clad stripey, woolly pole in town recently and it made my day. Maybe I could go for a Christo style installation down at the beach and crochet covers for the rock platforms. Suddenly a rug seems a feeble choice. Just. Pick. Up. The. Camera.