poetry, show and vessels

Haiku for today

bedraggled chooks
rain pours down
spring shower

And an acrostic I'm working on

Nature is all
Around us
Total immersion
Undermines commercialism
Radical ideas abound
Amongst papermakers who
Love to work with fibre

Freeing our minds
Indulging our senses
Breaking the bounds and
Revealing the treasures
Ever-present in the
Sensuous fibres for paper

I have been doing classes at All Poetry and have been having a bit of fun, my poetry still isn't good but I think it might be getting better, the acrostic certainly needs work.

I have just about finished putting the IAPMA Bulletin together and after about a month on the computer I had a day off last week and went to the Melbourne show, I had a pretty good day and had lots of free tastings in the main pavillion (no wonder my weight was up for my Curves weigh in on Friday!), found out about Test drive the Arts and booked a free performance at the Recital Centre and avoided the licorice showbags, though I did taste some licorice. It has been some time since I've been to the show and I was disappointed with the book display, there were only about four entries in each section and my two small kozo books looked very lonely on the top shelf of the case, the winning entry was in the cabinet at the front with the best entries for each craft. In the art books it was my nest book that won, not the Byron book. Come on all you book makers out there enter your books next year and stop me always getting my money back!

It has been too wet lately to get outside so I haven't been doing much papermaking, anyway I have so much paper in stock I really should be using that up. I have started work on a series of vessels and here are a couple of my early attempts.

Indigo and walnut on Belgian flax paper, made in workshop with Amanda Degener

Walnut on Belgian flax

Cyanotype on hemp paper with drips of alkali.

Galleryavanting and show

It has been so long since I posted here I've almost forgotten how. It is a lovely day today but I'm stuck on the computer, I would love to be in the backyard with my hands in a vat but I'm meant to be working on the IAPMA Bulletin and I will get back to it soon. It seems like ages since I made any paper or even made a book, I am itching to get creative. I seem to be spending more and more time on the computer, I've just enrolled in a Photoshop course too to improve my image editing skills.

I did get out last Friday with my friend Denise to a couple of exhibitions, the first was 'I saw and heard of none like me' at the Abbotsford Convent c3_contemporary_art_space the second was to Counihan Gallery in Brunswick to see 'Walk' an exhibition of works by eight artists inspired by the Great South West walk which is a circuit around Nelson and the Glenelg river in the south west corner of Victoria.
I enjoyed both shows particularily the work of Jazmina Cinnas, Deborah Klein and Rebecca Mayo from the first show, Jazmina does amazing linocuts with many colours. In the second show my favorites were Jan Learmouth, Vicky Couzins, Carmel Wallace, Ilka White and John Wolseley. John was the keynote speaker at the IAPMA congress in March this year, he's a very entertaining character and does amazing work. I was reminded of the holidays we've had in the Nelson area, a couple in Nelson itself and a couple camping on the Glenelg River at Wild Dog Bend and some other camps, it is a great place for a holiday and I have done some little bits of the walk, I've definitely got to old to attempt the whole 250k.

Since we were in Brunswick we had lunch at A1 Bakery and bought up big on Middle Eastern supplies, I bought some Konafa (shredded pastry), some Lebanese couscous, and some bourghal. I made the konafa with walnuts (and lsa) on Saturday and plan to make tabouli and kibbeh using recipes from the course I did years ago. Last time I was going to make tabouli I couldn't get bourghal anywhere near here and I never see konafa for sale this side of town.

I just found out that I got a first, second and third prize at the Royal Melbourne Show this year, I don't know which book got first, it was either my nest book which was in our show earlier in the year or a new book I made and finished just before delivery day. That book was inspired by a walk in the bush up near Byron and was photos and haiku on plant fibre papers bound with hemp thread and featuring a stick found on the walk. I haven't got photos of it or of the two books I entered into the Traditional Eastern Bookbinding section, I will try to remember to photograph and post once I get them back.

eco books

Just a little promo here, I designed a couple of the books featured in this publication by Lark Books. Can't wait to see it in the flesh.

Byron and Beyond

We recently spent a week at Byron Bay, it wasn't quite long enough but the change of scene and temperature was welcome. We stayed at a farm stay half way to Bangalow here is the lake (dam) on the property that we could have canoed on but didn't and some of the friendly locals.

Just about the first thing I did was to get my hair cut, I never seem to find time when I'm at home, this is the new look me. It pleased my mum who says that old women shouldn't have long hair!

A couple of pics of the beach and the forest.

Whilst there I had a visit with Tim Mosely at Southern Cross Uni, I was very envious of their papermaking equipment and facilities. He has an exhibition on at the uni at the moment, I missed it by a poofteenth, I visited on Friday and it opened on Monday. I thought I might have been able to see the works before they went up but they were made over the weekend and couched directly onto the walls, what a great idea for a paper show!

Another show I missed by a poofteenth was the SCU Artist book exhibition which opened at Barratt Galleries last weekend, a week after we came home. I called into the gallery though and saw an exhibition by Doug Spowart and Victoria Cooper called Like Fondling Your Seashell Collection. I was particularly impressed with the large cyanotypes which were exposed in the sea, you can see an example here.

workshop and new work

The armature workshop the weekend before last went really well, two days of play with kozo and cane. We made shapes, covered them with gauze then dipped them in a vat of kozo, a technique I learned from Catherine Nash back in 2000 in Tuscany. Pictured is the one I made in the workshop, I dipped it again when I got home then carefully peeled off the fabric once the paper was dry.

During the workshop we did the whole preparation of the kozo from cooking, through washing to beating then Japanese style sheet forming. Most of the morning of the second day was taken up with beating, there were a few sore arms after that. We set up a temporary vat and made sheets which we separated by just a thread in the Japanese style. After a slow, fairly short press with a board and a slowly filled bucket of water I brushed some sheets onto a large pressing board at the Bundoora studio, I took the rest home and rolled them onto fibro cement sheet. I have now torn each sheet into 16 pieces for the next edition of the Deckle Edge (Papermakers of Victoria newsletter). Each workshop participant took home a ball of kozo, myself included, I made some up yesterday to make books for the Melbourne show, I have entered two oriental books, now I have to make them.

Last week was pretty busy after the workshop I went into work to do the tax on Monday, Tuesday was Women's Art Register, Wednesday the Alcove Art Shop, and Thusday I gave a talk and show and tell at Ivanhoe Library, Friday I cleaned the house and prepared for dinner guests, Saturdaywe went to the Dali exhibition and spent nearly three hours there, what a great show and diverse work.

This week I'm catching up on creative stuff, I actually have three days in a row where I can work and as long as I get off the computer I will get a bit done. Yesterday I made some cards using the black card that was given to us by the printer at Bundoora and I bound one and a half books. I also made some kozo and recharged the indigo vat to dye some thread and some kozo pulp, I intend to make some cloud paper with indigo and plain kozo. Today I plan to make some paste paper and do some more indigo dyeing. At my talk last week one of the participants brought in some of the books she'd made, she attends classes with Rae Cummings at Panton Hill. One of the books had a cover of paste paper where the paint used was one of the Lumiere halo colours. I have some pots of that so thought I'd give it a try on the black card. It looked very stunning on the book and I think it would look good on cards.

The books are a series of Melbourne books using some of the photos I took while preparing for the Shared Journeys workshop earlier in the year. I decided to use some of the images for cards too. I have chosen to use a combination of Celtic and Coptic to bind the journals, I like the way these bindings look and how they open flat.