Only days until exhibitions and workshop

Since I last posted our state has been torn apart by bushfires, there were devastating ones a fortnight ago with over 200 deaths, they are still burning and new ones started yesterday. What a crazy country this is we haven't had any rain in the south for what seems like months we could really do with some to help the fire fighters and up North they've had record floods across vast areas of Queensland and Northern NSW. If only some could find its way down here.

With only days to go until our exhibition I thought I should post a couple of pictures and the invitation. I will be on duty on Thursday and Friday 5 & 6 March so if anyone is in the vicinity of 69 Smith street I'd appreciate a visit. Zoe and I are still working on a few things but the show is coming together at last, looks like being a busy couple of days coming up though. Tomorrow I'm off to Papermakers Studio space at Coopers Settlement in Bundoora Park to beat up some fibre and give one of the other papermakers some tips on using the two beaters we have out there. Zoe is coming Friday and Saturday to put finishing touches to the exhibits then Sunday I'm going into the city to unpack Shared Journeys then pick up they key for 69 Smith Street Gallery.

Here are lots of pictures of one of the books in the show, I loved the way some of the sheets scrunched up so just had to make a book, it doesn't have a title yet but I guess it will by this time next week.

We have done a lot of cyanotypes and some gum bichromates of this bird and lots of other photographs of birds, nests and eggs.

Busy time

I have been very busy lately with editing the Women's Art Register bulletin and preparing for my March exhibition and workshop as well as documenting the postcards coming in for My Paper My Land. It is drawing close to the cut off date so they have been coming in in droves. Yesterday I photographed about twenty which I plan to post asap and today there were another dozen in the mail. It is going to be a great show.

Happy New Year

Well it has been quite some time since I posted anything here, what with Christmas and all. It is really hot today so I've spent most of it sitting at the computer, I've caught up with the postcard blog and shared journeys, sorted out a bit about tennis for next season and have started promoting Nesting, the exhibition I'm having with Zoe in March. I figured it was time to update this blog. I seem to have done so much since December I don't quite know where to start.
Perhaps I'll start with the nests that I was given by Tricia and a couple of her basketmaker friends.

This one fell out of a tree at Tricia's, I found something similar in my backyard, we are not sure of the bird which made it though.


The clever blackbird that made this nest built it around a plant pot.




These three came from another of the basketmakers who's been saving nests for years but was quite happy to part with them.

When we first started planning March seemed so far away, now it is just around the corner. We have been meeting regularily and working on Cyanotypes on large sheets of paper I bought in Korea a few years ago. The sheets are so long we have to expose them in two goes and wash them in large black rubbish bins, it really tests the strength of the paper. We use A3 size negatives and fit 3-4 on a sheet, I think we've done three and we need at least another three or four for the space. We have also been making some nest shapes by moulding over balloons, rice bags and armatures.


This one was made by making the armature, covering it with gauze then dipping into a vat of Kozo then removing the cloth once it had dried.


This one is made from several layers of paper draped over an armature, the inner layer is kozo, then there's bluebell flower stems, mixed plant fibre and the last dark bits are banana which has been cooked but not beaten. The sticks I've used for the stand are blackwood wattle. I spent two days at my sisters place steaming and stripping branches off her tree to collect 1.2kg of fibre for the Aussie plant fibre book. I've cooked it and it is now washing, I'll deal with it once it cools down a bit (the weather I mean!). Anyway the sticks are a very nice byproduct.

This one was made over a balloon.
Now for something completely different, some holiday pics of my time at Mallacoota.

Ahh the serenity!

And the sea



Plenty of wildlife!

Oh and one last thing, before we went away I sent off my contribution to Mapping the Island. My piece of map had some interesting features on it one of which was a mountain group called the eyebrows, it also had murder's peak and duck point, I deciderd to work with the eyebrows. I used dyed bluebell stem paper on recycled.


The front and the back.

More Christmas

What was that I said about it being hot at Christmas time, it has hardly stopped raining since then but here are some of my cards drying on the fibro sheets. I was planning to get the cards written today but somehow the day has disappeared.


The other day I made a slip case for my sample Aussie fibre book, now I need to make up some notes for both the book and the slipcase and work out if there will be time to do both in a one day workshop.

Christmas Cards

Last night my neighbour came in to see if I had any Christmas cards, of course I said yes and I did have a few but I promptly turned around and made some collages using some of my papers plus a collage pack I bought from Papermakers of Victoria. Here are a few of the cards I made last night.

I've also started making my paper ones, this year I've decided to go with an Aussie theme, not very Christmassy but then snow and ice and woolly furlined suits aren't very Christmassy when Christmas is in the middle of summer. I'm pulp painting with a stencil of gum leaves and flowers. I started by using double sided tape to stick some leaves to the mould but after a couple of sheets the leaves started to fall off so I copied them onto some gaffer tape which sticks to the mould really well. It was too hard to cut the flowers from the tape so I've used Blutac for them rolled really fine and pressed into the wire. I made a few sheets today but they are not dry yet so will post pictures of the best next time I post. I can make two cards with one sheet, I started with light brown on the back then red then brown again but about half way through decided to go with just two pulls brown as the base and red with the image, I'm much happier with these but will see how they look once they are dry. Here are a couple of pictures of my mould.