Montalto, Linden etc.

Had a great weekend starting off with a trip to the Peninsula for the Montalto Sculpture Show,
some terrific sculptures (including one by Andrew Wood our neice's husband) and such a lovely venue with the vines, the olives and the fabulous vege patch. We try to get down most years for the show which is well worth the visit. We also went for a walk along the beach at Shoreham before heading to Flinders for a coffee then home.

On Sunday we were going to a party in Albert Park so decided to fit in a visit to the Linden Postcard Show, it was mindblowing close to 2000 entries including one of Katy's and three of neice Josie's plus a few other names/work I recognised and and know. There were some fabulous works but too much to take in in one visit.

I spent a bit of time last week fiddling with this blog and my website, I worked out how to get the link to etsy and to set up a slideshow which is made up of old work. I removed everthing pre 2004 from my website but still like a lot of the pieces so moved many of them to my flickr site so 20 of them show up in the slideshow at the right.

Today is the closing date for the next IAPMA Bulletin so I'll be at the computer for the day, sorting through what I have and doing some editing, it is nearly midday and I haven't even started, anything to avoid work!

Sale and etsy

I was very excited to learn that I sold a piece at the Contemporary Art Society Exhibition on Herring Island, I don't know which one yet but both framed works that went in were quite old. I'm on duty on the afternoon of Saturday the 6th so will find out then. Any Melbourne readers should check out the exhibition, it is on for the next two weekends and you get the Parks Victoria punt over the Yarra from Como Landing, South Yarra. The Island itself is worth visiting, it's a great place for a picnic and there are sculptures all around the island.

My prize from the OWOH extravaganza arrived this morning, it is great thank you Wendy, it is a viscosity printing of Anne of Cleves and you can see how it, as well as the rest of the series, was done here.

I spent several hours over the weekend setting up an etsy shop but I haven't worked out how to get it to show up in my side panel yet, I'll work on that when I get another day, it took me hours just to set up and list five items.

I've spent a fair bit of this morning getting a CD ready to send to Korea for the Paper Road Exhibition, I find I spend so much time on documenting and filling out forms it doesn't leave much time for creating. These are the works I'm proposing for the Paper Road exhibition, you are allowed three entries.


Pardelot Four cyanotypes on kozo with Zoe Culbertson and Celine's Nest cotton paper and mixed plant fibre with blackwood wattle branch and twig.

Dreamcatcher One cane and kozo

I am also helping to plan the first Valda Quick Paper arts Biennial which will be held at the Access Gallery at Bundoora Homestead from 3- 21 November, we had our second meeting yesterday, I'll be writing more here as that progresses.

I should also say that today I posted off the two body books from my post last week to the Mermaid in the Attic so I'll look forward to seeing what magic Christina works on the books. The shell book was bought by Carol, I hope she enjoys it.

The winners are..and more

The winners of my OWOH giveaway were Barbara, Morgan and Regina all from the USA, I'll be sending off the prizes in the next day or so. Congratulations ladies! I was very lucky myself, I didn't get around to very many sites but I won Wendy Shortland's Anne of Cleves. I plan to continue my tour through blogs of those who kindly left comments on mine, I just got snowed under and only viewed about half.

I ran a workshop for the Calligraphy Society of Victoria last Sunday which went very well, it was basic Oriental binding, they've asked me back to run another one later in the year on one of the two books of mine that were in Eco Books, the exposed stitch with fabric covers and leather spine.

I am also preparing for two workshops later in March, one in Sydney and the other in Bairnsdale. The Sydney one is a repeat of the armature workshop I did for Papermakers of Victoria last year and the Bairnsdale on a variation on that without the papermaking aspect so I've decided to include some lightshades ala Helen Hiebert, I've made some models using unrushi that I'll be supplying to the class and one from cyanotyped hanji.



I seem to have a bit of a blue thing going on here, not sure why except that the blue and white unrushi were cheaper than a lot of the other colours and I figured my first one should be the most expendible. I used straight EVA (like PVA glue) on the blue one and feel that you can see it through the paper so for the white I mixed EVA with cornflour paste and it is much less obvious.

I have also just about finished the A2 pieces I showed wet in my last post, they dried a lot paler so added some black later to boost up the shadows. I did two of each though I haven't finished the second craypot picture. My two cormorant pictures ended up with the horizon in different places so needed the birds different sizes here they are.

Resting Cormorants 1

Resting Cormorants 2

Apollo Bay Craypots 1

new work and old

Since joining the magic carpet blog ride I have been trying to get to look at all the blogs of people who've left comments on mine but it is slow progress, my apologies if you are waiting for a comment from me, I don't know how Lisa does it, she has looked at all of the over 900 blogs. You can see the gifts I'm giving away in the post below this one.

I have been trying to get a few work things done in the last week or so and to prepare for some workshops I'm running later in the year. I've spent the last two days working on some A2 pulp paintings inspired by Apollo Bay, here they are with the photographs that provided the inspiration, I intend to add the birds and the cray pots later as digital images.


Here is the one that got away, I rather like the look of it so I am keeping it to see how it looks once it is dry luckily I had three of that one.

Here is my large vat and my trusty press! My standard press only handles up to A3.

The other thing I've been doing is tidying up the room my younger daughter moved out of so that I'll have a workroom and a place to run workshops at home. I have also been cleaning up my other room and consolidating all my paper, I now have two large containers of collage bits, I used a miniscule number of the scraps to make these cards and a few others.

In my cleanup I found this writing set.

And these books which I made many years ago.


Looking at them now I feel that they need some text or something so I am thinking of asking if anyone would like to embellish two in exchange for one of the books. I have two slightly different copies of the body book and a book of fossils that could be a companion to the shell book. Leave me a message if you are interested, either an email or a comment on this blog.

And I forgot to say, I'll be hanging about a dozen of my 2D in the Alcove Art Shop at Box Hill Community Art Centre, they'll be there for two months from this coming Saturday.

Magic Carpet Ride

I have decided to join the magic carpet ride and give some of my art to any blogger who leaves a message on my blog. The idea came from Lisa at Whimsical Bohemian and this is the fourth time she has organised it. It is a bit like a virtual gathering and gift swap for bloggers. I am a little late joining in there are already nearly 900 bloggers joining in the fun. I've decided to give away a book and two pulp paintings to the randomly drawn commentators. Please include in your message your preference and I will try to accommodate.

Landscape sketch book with hannemuhle pages and a combo coptic and case binding. The cover is dyed handmade recycled paper with found leather pieces and it is 8 x 20 x 2 cm.

Waga Waga abstract pulp painting inspired by reflections in the tropics 21 x 21 has deckle edges on all four sides and is made from dyed recycled archival paper.

Fern Forest base paper is cumbungi with tree fern other fibres include gumleaves, kozo and banana 29 x 21 cm once again there are four deckle edges.

You have until 8 am Monday 15 Feb to go in the draw, thanks.

I apologise to those of you who commented today, I was getting spam comments so had set up to moderate all comments, I have reset and am just using word recognition to keep the spammers at bay.