Thursday Thoughts...

“We are living in a culture entirely hypnotized by the illusion of time, in which the so-called present moment is felt as nothing but an infinitesimal hairline between an all-powerfully causative past and an absorbingly important future. We have no present. Our consciousness is almost completely preoccupied with memory and expectation. We do not realize that there never was, is, nor will be any other experience than present experience. We confuse the world as talked about, described, and measured with the world which actually is.” 

Alan Watts

Well this is an unexpectedly complex deviation in my path! Pondering Life, I came across this and it made me think; which is akin to pondering; so here we are.

I wondered where he was headed after the introductory words "We are living in a culture entirely hypnotised by ..." there were so many things I could end that sentence with! But he really focussed on our almost cultural unwillingness to acknowledge that the here and the now is all that we have.

The past is feted as having set us on this path, that everything that has happened to us has meant we are here with all these worries and issues; and the future is so important and holds all the answers; or is also the place to be most feared and concerned about.

It's a really interesting balance for us to get right - and in the end it's all about balance. It seems he is suggesting that the past is important; and definitely sets the course a bit. We must surely also pay attention to the future. But perhaps he believes we shouldn't give overwhelming weight to these. Memory and expectation should not be all that we have.

I love his description of us living on, or in, this infinitesimal hairline - that is so small! And also that last sentence that differentiates between how the world is described v how we experience the world - one present moment at a time. His word images really sparkled in my mind.

Daily Word bowl, Barry Smith.

Almost done printing!

 I think I might have finished printing my silences for the Book of Silences! This is an exciting moment as the many pages, printed back and front and on left and right sides, sit around the studio space drying and waiting.

If all goes as planned, I have printed title pages, 16 silences, an acknowledgements page and a colophon. I have a low level hum of minor anxiety/concern/worry that when I go to  fold the pages and put the book together that I may have calculated incorrectly or planned wrongly and things don't matchup, line up or go in the right sequence.

I will however cross that bridge when I come to it. For now there is a real sense of satisfaction at having made it this far.

Here are some of the printings...

And hear are some of the many, many tests, trials and proofing...

A wee break for a bit, then I shall return to prepare the covers, and fold the pages and the end papers and the covers.

Then I will pierce the stitching holes for them all; then I will stitch them all; then I will trim them all.

All being well, and with no detours to printing again in the meantime!

Thursday Thoughts...

Tell your own story, and you will be interesting. 

Louise Bourgeois

I seem to be circling around these notions of authenticity as I have gathered my Thursday Thoughts over the past few weeks.  I wonder if it is all a bit in focus at the moment because I have been teaching and talking about making meaning and building stories in artists' books?

I think it may be related, as with each student, I try to help them find a way to tell their own story. To make it theirs. To not take other folks' thoughts and impressions of a story and try to interpret or re-create them.

These words of Ms Bourgeois are so true. If we make it ours and we make it personal; it will be interesting. So often the personal can also be universal. Folk may find things within your story that resonate. That strike a chord; that light a spark of recognition. I think that if you make it yours, your passion, interest, care and concern will also emerge and people will find it good and interesting work.

She is also perhaps suggesting that authenticity is interesting; that mimicry, copying, attempting to be someone or make something else is not interesting. It is also usually sub-standard and not as good as the original.

Telling my story of moving between two homes...

Sewing serviettes

 For some reason, I have a thing about fabric serviettes. I sew them from recycled fabrics - old bags, old sheets and the like and I just love having them around. Oftentimes they act as finger wipers say when I'm having morning or afternoon tea - they are rarely big enough to sit in your lap and catch lots of sauce. When made from scraps, they are also oftentimes odd and mismatched sizes.

So I trimmed the old linen sheets, mitred their corners and hemmed them.

Then I went with my wing needle and a hemstitching stitch on the machine and stitched these lovely daisy-like edges. And I now have five more mixed size serviettes to take back to the cottage!

Things aren't always smooth going with me and my sewing, and after the first two, I went to try and sew the next couple and things went seriously awry. I have never seen this happen before and was a tad perplexed. All that bobbin thread pulled up and off the bobbin? 

An impressive tangle that's for sure.

I ended up using my quick unpick to slice the strands off a few at a time and thus release the bobbin. What a sight! To remedy things I simply took all that thread off, wound another full bobbin and set off with fingers crossed that it was simply a case of a poorly wound bobbin. Which I think it was, because the rest of the sewing and hemstitching went smoothly.

I was also gifted some lovely hand embroidered ones from a friend, which we have in Scotland. In a funny turn of events, she asked how they were going; I said we used them every day over there and washed them frequently and they were still going strong. And then. 

A couple of them got caught in a huge wind and a blow as they dried on the washing line at the cottage and the overlocking got shredded.

I brought them back and after having my overlocker serviced, I edged them back together. I had to apologise to her - because I remain somewhat intimidated by my overlocker, I never change the thread. I  overlock anything and everything with grey thread. So this pair will stand out a bit, but they can return to use and that is fine thing!

I do love me a fabric serviette!

A Letterpress print play day

On Thursday we happily hosted a group of 6 artists/printmakers from Brisbane for an introduction to Letterpress printmaking. They were a great bunch of women, co-ordinated by Sandra Pearce of Art From The Urban Wilderness - a community art centre in Brisbane, and together we managed to learn heaps, laugh a lot, print some great things, eat a delicious lunch, share birthday cake and experiment! It was a full day and full of joy as well.

Here are same happy snaps of the day.

Talking about letters that could go either way, and how to work out what is the bottom of the letter and what is the top - here you can see the N is upside down and would print differently to the O - making the line line of print look wobbly.

Barry joined us after lunch and was a mighty help!

Getting the alignment right.

Deep in conversation about something!

A good example of how a letter placed upside in the chase, prints above the base line of the rest of the type...ss in darkness.

However, the printmakers liked it that way and kept printing! Three pairs of printers made three postcards and we all shared them. 

Selecting wood type for the galley press printing. We had a lot of fun with this random layout of ransom-note letters and numbers and punctuation.

Towards the end I got to play with it too, and here I scrunched up some tissue paper, and filled the gaps around it with some small off-cuts. I loved the result - the fracturing of letters when I straightened the tissue paper out.

And finally, an ingenious solution to how to transport an open tub of cream back to Brisbane safely - a glove, of course!

Thursday Thoughts...

“I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of anything than of a book!”

Jane Austen

I've got to hand it to Ms Austen here - I concur!

It's interesting to me how often I want to just sit and read a book. When I was a student, living away from home and studying a high intensity course, there was little time for any reading  other than text books, lecture notes and research. My load was pretty much 8 or 9am - 5pm each day at Uni and for each hour of contact we were expected to do at 2 hours of home study, so most nights went late, and weekends were for study.

But still. I tried to always have a novel, by the bed which I could pick up and read a chapter of, or half a chapter or a few pages before falling asleep. Reading was my reward.

During that same time I loved visiting the homes of friends who still lived at home - I walked in and could wander through their bookshelves, their libraries and simply be surrounded by books again. Oh it felt so good! As a student in rented accommodation I had one bookshelf and it was full of text books and folders. To see books! To get lost amongst them! Oh it was heaven.

Books continue to entertain, to provide solace and reward and I sincerely doubt I will ever tire of them.

And I love finding books in out of the way and unexpected places. Isle of Mull 2016.

Would I follow me?

 As mentioned here, I am have been pondering things like my creative brand and social media platforms and marketing and....all the stuff I struggle with. I am however committed to working my way through things and understanding it all better, so the other day I sat down to assess my Instagram account.

And one of the funniest things I wrote down was "Would I follow me???".

It came about because I was thinking about what I am looking for when I follow an Instagram account as it is one of the questions that Kim asks in the workshop. For me I think it is a combination of things:

• The art work and style have to appeal to me
• I like the look of an account to be consistent - that sense of when I go there I will find the sort of things I like on a regular basis
• I don't enjoy too much irrelevant information or imagery - food, travel, people etc
• However it is nice to have those occasional moments of life outside the art revealed.
• I like to see the person, the maker on occasions
• I like to see the process as well as the outcome
• I like to see close up details of things and the whole
• I don't like to see  a heap of promotion for events, mostly because living in a small country town I am unlikely to be able to see any of them!

I was surprised by the number of things that fed into an account's appeal and I wondered how my own account would stack up against my collection of 'criteria'.

And as I imagined, I was a bit disappointed and not entirely sure that I would follow me at all!

The first full screen from my Insta account (on my phone which is where I mostly look at Insta) when I did this check, had some book-ets, a close up of paper, some jewellery a stack of books, a promotion of the garage sale, a silver wire nest, promotion for Libris Awards, some cards, a black and white shot of some artwork, more promotion this time for for the pop up show in Scotland, some earrings, and black and white photo.

So I didn't give myself many marks for consistency, lack of promotion, or images of the artist or works in progress. And personally I just really don't like yellow and it felt 'ick' to see it on my page!

The next full screen of images was a bit better. The colour palette was more consistent, there was a photo of me, a bit of promotion and a real sense of the exhibition Hame which was the main focus at this time. Also a couple of random domestic arty moments which may or may not work.

Going further back, things were a bit hotch potchy, but the palette was soft and soothing, a mix of my work and others, and a lovely domestic moment (the vases) which seemed to complement the arty things.

I went back one more screen and the colours and paper-based nature of things worked well, the artists' books and the cards. I imagine the pax was for the International Day of Peace. The earrings sort of stood out a bit as different. I liked the pop of gold leaf int eh Circles of Concern.

My learnings from this were to really consider what I posted - both the why and the what - and to see if I could get the mix right of consistency with variations and interest, colour groupings that pleased the eye, and to use promotion very carefully. Especially when the colours don't suit me! I noticed some folk would have their art for a show on the front and the last image in the carousel would be the promotional image. The text would talk about the exhibition or show or whatever it was, but the promotional material wasn't the number 1 thing.

I am also now testing and trialling reels and stories - making short videos from images and adding music here and there. It is all a bit hit and miss at the moment, but a worthwhile thing to pursue I think.

The process is also making me think about, and try to understand, what I do where (like here on this blog) and what I do on Insta and what the website is trying to do and how they all fit together.  Fun times!

Bits of teaching, marketing and sharing

 Life as a creative, as an artist, is full of all sorts of weird things that are tangential to the making, yet make for a full and arty life.

I count amongst these the work I do researching, planning, thinking and prepping for teaching. Recently I wanted to update some thoughts about how to progress work when it feels stalled; or where you think you might have got the perfect solution really quickly. I came across some of my learnings from a workshop six years ago and refreshed them, added to them and printed them. 

 

And as I so often  do - I reckon I got the its v it's thing wrong again here! Why oh why doesn't it have an apostrophe for the ownership bit??? A do-over won't hurt. Sigh.

Fixed it!

And today I got to use the cards as I taught another workshop on Building Narrative in Artists' Books. It was such a joy and delight! It's a small group - only four folk - and we get to go deep, think hard, and explore a lot.

I get to teach in Kim Herringe's beautiful space The Studio here in Maleny, with so many lovely things around us how could we not be inspired?

One of the things I teach is about how to read an artists' book and we have some lovely, lovely examples to dive into.

A few weeks ago we did a short evening workshop with Kim on Marketing and Social Media for Creatives. It's never easy for me to do the marketing thing, but Kim offered sensible and clear ideas and information about how to go about it.  And I think I can do some of it!  It was so good in fact that I started my homework the very next morning!

And to share some small good news...the State Library of Queensland recently purchased my small Grief is  Stone book-ets. In fact they bought two of the editions so that one could go in the Education Kit to share with visitors, school children and the like. I am thrilled to know they have a public home; and will also get the chance to be shared and talked about more.

So I packed them up and posted them!

An artistic life is full of this and that, and oh what fun it can be.

Thursday Thoughts...

“Does not everything depend on our interpretation of the silence around us?” 

Lawrence Durrell

As I work away on my book of silences, this quote popped out as having real meaning to me this morning. 

My sense is that this is really quite a profound way of looking at and understanding our existence and our world.  It really took me aback to think of things this way.

I daresay that words have equal impact - of course they do; but perhaps he suggests that we hear those and understand them and that they are available to most of us to interpret. Of course, they can be layered and confusing and misinterpreted too!

But with this thought I think he suggests that the silences around us are ripe for misunderstanding and our ability to interpret and possibly translate silences; to fully understand the subtle messages they reverberate out into the world, is a kind of superpower. An ability that elevates our understandings.

Silence can be understood so differently between people - for one it is a pause, a moment to gather thoughts; to another it appears as rejection and disagreement.

I have been gifted so many amazing silences for this book and from within them I am discerning so many more silences than I would ever have imagined knowing for myself...

Practising calligraphic silences, 2015.

More printing and proofing

 My book of silences continues to take small steps forward, and to date no major dramas, just the odd problem to solve and sort.

Whilst waiting for some ink to dry, I got the 18pt Univers out and got the title ready - although this is not the layout of the title page, I have it out, ready to go when the chase is finally free from the 16 silences that are making up the first book.

At the moment, the plan is for an edition of 21, so I am printing 25 just in case...

These great little drying racks also offer some wonderful paper moments!

As I have previously mentioned, there is a fair bit of imposition and alignment to get right. I was trying to check whether the silence on the front and the back of the page had printed at about the same height, and thought - oh its such a great sunshiny day I am sure I'll be able to check out there, And I did.

I am happy here that the top lines on each sides line up.

And here I was hoping that the where I had to print on both sides would broadly line up as well, which I think it has.

And just what a great sky it was. So good for soul to feel warm again and to enjoy the bright light that is Australia in Spring and Summer.

And it is definitely doing magical things with my Dad's orchids as well!