Mosaic

I spent a few hours the other very hot day putting labels on all my posts and giving my earlier ones titles other than the day of the week. Learning a bit more about blogging and realizing I've been at it for over six months now. I grouted the new pavers and have put them in position but I need another two times what I've done already to run across the front of the yard and I still haven't pulled the weeds out, maybe when I get back from our short break and before the year gets started in earnest.

My first ever mosaic paver made a year or so ago in a class with Anne Marie Gentile at Box Hill Community Arts Centre.

My letter box with some of the pavers in the background.

A few of the new pavers in position, the weeding still hasn't been done but the top side is the lawn.

When I came back from the Brazen Breastplates class I taught at Geelong Textile Fibre Forum I mosaiced one of the moulds. My daughters reckon we are the only house around with mosaiced boobs in the garden.

New Year

Well here it is another year bites the dust. I'm not one for making New Year's resolutions but one of the first things I must do is tidy up the 'Art Room' so that I can do some work in there instead of on the ironing board and every other flat surface in the house.

I have been having a holiday from paper and book work while everybody is at home and needing lunches and dinners and company. Before Christmas was a very social time but since then it has been quiet, I had planned to invite people over for dinner for New Years Eve but didn't get around to it and since the forecast was for 42 Degrees C and we don't have air conditioning we decided to go to the movies and freeze instead of boiling at home. We've had a few hot days in a row here so have hit the movies twice in a week after not having been for months. On Saturday we saw 'The Darjeeling Limited' and being an Indiaphile I enjoyed it though felt it missed the mark a bit. Last night we saw 'I'm Not There' which was a very strange movie loosely based on the life and times of Bob Dylan. Plenty to think about with that one, Cate Blanchett did a fabulous job of playing one of the Dylans. I didn't quite get the Richard Gere/Billy the Kid connection but it made for some interesting foootage. Some of the London scenes were so iconic, really brought back the 60's.

I have had one creative day out of the kitchen in the last month making mosaic pavers. Months ago Katy brought home from school some tiles made by year 8's but left behind at the end of 2006. I have been using them as the focus for the mosaic pavers which I'll eventually have right across the front garden in the hopes that they will keep the buffalo grass out of the garden beds. I don't very often get time in the garden so would like to minimise the amount of weeds that need pulling. I did six pavers on Sunday when it was a bit cooler and ran out of tiles so bought more yesterday but it's already hot today so I can't see me getting the rest done until it cools down a bit. I haven't grouted them yet so you can still see quite a few gaps.

ornament books

On reading Wendy's http://quirkyartist.blogspot.com/ and Lee Kotner's
http://leekottner.typepad.com/blogorrhea_ii/2007/12/ornament-books.html
http://www.paperstudiodemos.blogspot.com/ blogs about ornament books I was reminded of a book I recieved in a Christmas book swap back when I first joined the online community. It was made by Raven Regan Arts and Crafts in Canada. It was made the same way as the book on Lee's site but had several pages and a bead closure.

That lead me to make a few variations on the theme.

Starting with squares, the pictured book is made from printouts of a snowflake clip art. The clipart had one side blue on white and the other white on blue. When joined together the book has one side blue snowflake on white and the other white snowflake on blue. I made six pages but I think it would have been better with five. The bead on the ribbon holds the book closed and will hold the covers together when the book is open and can be used to hang the book either open or closed.

This is another variation with shaped pages. There are lots of possibilities for this book, here are just a few.

Back in 1998 I made a series of blue pineapple books which were explosion concertinas. I only had a small amount of the pineapple fibre so made lots of small sheets from plain pineapple fibre and indigo dyed fibre, the darker indigo dyed paper was made from pineapple tops and the rest was from fibre imported from the Phillipines.

Another day at the computer

This will be a short post since I don't want to spend another day at the computer, my family is getting jack of me sitting here all the time. I was going to do so much else on Tuesday and must do more today. Anyway I spent a bit of time updating my website http://www.gailstiffe.info/ yesterday. I figured I only had work I had done in February on the site so I selected a few of my favorite pieces to represent the year.

Christmas Cards and creativity

I have just spent over an hour reading emails in between looking at blogs and there's so much more I could read but I promised myself I'd catch up on the washing, dishes and try to do a bit of a tidy up. I'm looking forward to a very uncreative day, I've packed away my papermaking gear and drained the pulp. I have only one more project to complete before the end of the year and that is to get some denim beaten for some friends, I promised it to them months ago but then my beater stopped working, in fact it is now in pieces, so I guess the first thing I need to do is get it back together, I'm afraid I've put that in the too hard basket. I'll see if I can hire Papermakers of Vics beater this week and then put my mind to getting mine fixed, I might need to hire a handy man.



I feel very relieved I finally posted out all the IAPMA (http://www.iapma.info/) bulletins, I've been working on them since 1 September, got them back from the printers about 3 weeks ago and apart from the first night have put covers on and samples in over 350. The paper for the covers was sent from Scotland months ago and I sent J one of my Bundoora books in exchange for the postage costs, I hope she's happy with it. My next editing job is the IAPMA newsletter, then the Women's Art Register Bulletin. The newsletter should only take a couple of days but the Register Bulletin will take a little longer, I didn't have much for it but I've chased up a couple of articles and have extended the deadline to mid January. On my way to Portland last weekend I called into the Warrnambool Art Gallery and saw a couple of shows, I was very taken by an exhibition by Katherine Bowman which was black and white figures, almost just suggestions of figures but when you looked closely small sections were beaded. I bought a copy of the catalogue and was able to contact Katherine re including her work in the forthcoming bulletin, she pointed me in the direction of Craft Culture http://www.craftculture.org/Review/rbarry4.htm where there is a review of the exhibition and sent me some images for the bulletin. I'm also hoping to include an article on Bronwyn Oliver, her work was on the cover of our second bulletin back in 1988 and not since then. Given her untimely death last year I thought it might be time to feature her work again.



I have been doing a little bit of creative work lately. The time came to make Christmas cards, it's go so that each year more people expect handmade cards from me. This year I've taken a bit of an easy way out, instead of handmade paper as the base card I've used watercolour paper. When I did the card class I discovered a shop in Croydon that sold books of 280 gsm watercolour paper for $10, there were fifteen A3 pages so I was able to get 60 cards from one book. It wasn't very good quality for watercolours but fine for cards with a rough and a smooth side. I got a bit carried away and made over 60 cards (I've bought 3 books all up). Here are pictures of four of them, the others are all similar, just variations on a theme. It all started with the scraps from my Christmas books, I just added a bit of paper which had been sprayed with a bit of gold acrylic and with strong red dye.


Now I really must get off the computer!