Consumed

I am involved in an art event happening all week at Smiley McSlidey Rehearsal room in East Brunswick Melbourne. It should be really interesting with a wide variety of artists making work on location and installing it and taking it down in 24hour cycles. I’ll be there tomorrow, Tuesday the 4th and anyone can come and be a part of my project if they are passing by. The final work won’t be in display until the evening but it can be viewed from the street all night long.

Folk Ladies

I have just bought two excellent cd’s that are on high rotation in our house at the moment. One is First Aid Kit, two teenage sisters from Sweden who did a live to air concert last week at our local, and excellent public radio station, if you find the recording you will hear me clapping and the baby having a squawk in a quiet but between songs. The second band, also female and folky, is by Mountain Man which is just beautiful especially the song animal tracks which you can hear here. Hooray for music.

Daffodil

The winning flower

My friend comes from a long line of champion daffodil breeders and this last Saturday was the town show in Kyneton when she is from. I have wanted to go each year for the last ten and each time something has come up so a 12 year flood wasn’t going to stop me this time. It was wonderful. A tin shed with the rain pelting down on the roof and rows of perfect blooms created from rare breeding stock and secret pollen deals, battling it out for the various prizes. The winning daffodil was spectacular and was won by someone who swept up many of the prizes. There was also a children’s section where local school children made sculptures out of fruit and vegetables that were particularly wonderful. My friends father also won two prizes to continue carrying the family mantle.

Tara Donovan

A friend has just pointed me in the direction of Tara Donovan. Her work is so simple and so clever created out of everyday items, pencils, straws, Styrofoam cups, but repeated to create landscapes and microcosms. It has got me thinking.

Kinder

We recently returned from a wonderful adventure in Japan. As well as spending time in the large cities and zooming around on the bullet trains, we had some beautiful and quiet times high up in the mountains in tiny villages surrounded by bamboo and cedar wood forests.
It was high summer over there and very hot and humid. The baby was a trooper and took everything in his stride. One day in Kyoto we were hot and getting cranky as we wandered around in the heat trying to get back to our cool tatami mat room so the baby could have a crawl around after being clipped into a sweaty pram for hours. I saw a tiny hand painted sign in both Japanese and English saying there was a children’s bookstore so we went to have a look. On the first floor of a building was a lovely bookstore filled with all the classics translated into Japanese. We were told there was a kindergarten upstairs and we could take the baby there to play with some other children. It was so beautiful, two grandmotherly women played with another baby in a cool clear room filled with beautiful handmade toys. It was just perfect.

Fold

I just saw some images from a project I worked on last year for Qube Konstrukt. I hadn’t seen the finished work and it came up looking pretty great I reckon. It is all made out of folded paper. They have just got me working on a few new things for another project which is fun.

Clash

I kept waiting for the pickle and ice cream cravings but all I got when I was pregnant was a craving for colours. Instead of gravitating towards blues and grays and black suddenly I was looking at orange and pink together and thinking how fantastic they looked. The other month I went into a shop filled with brightly clashing things made of felt. There were these rugs that I couldn’t take my eyes off they were made from individual coloured felt balls sown together in a circle, they were bright, clashing and wonderful. Maybe it’s a permanent change, one for the better perhaps.

Mini-Festival

If you are around Melbourne tomorrow come along to the SMR festival for garage sales, sausage sizzles and lots of great music should be fun!!

Story time

I am working on an exciting project making illustrations and animation for a director I admire. It has been a juggle and stressful at times but I have been listening to This American Life episodes while I work and it makes the hours fly by. You can stream them for free and I highly recommend it. I have also been sent on a tangent through them to The Moth also filled with brilliant storytelling.

Aid

I went to a friends house today to learn first aid. Turns out that class in year 9 wasn't completely lost after all as I kept recalling the answers to everything which could come in handy in case of emergency. Previously my only memory of first aid class was being awarded my certificate and then going to the shopping mall and finding a woman unconscious in the toilets and freaking out and locking myself in the bathroom... she did have a friend with her who seemed to have it under control but my lack of bravado did deflate my confidence somewhat. Any how I saw the most beautiful children's book that had been recently purchased in Spain by Herve Tullet. The pages flipped in sections and you can see it in action here. Herve Tullet's site is pretty fun the scribbling bit is great you can draw on top of his scribbles.

Garden club

My new friend Ella has asked me to join a gardening group. It is a great idea, you go along to one persons house every two weeks and take the babies and everyone helps in their garden doing what ever needs doing to help them grow fruit and vegetables or get a compost going. The children play in the garden and help dig in the dirt, learning bits and pieces as they go. The hostess makes a delicious cake and we all walked away with tiny winter lettuce seedlings, worm juice and a Vietnamese mint plant. Arlo ate a spiky succulent leaf and was like a cat with a fur ball until i peeked in his mouth and scooped the leaf out. Ah nature. I can't wait for the next one.

Domestic Disaster

It's so stupid one minute everything is fine and the next the T.V fell on me as I moved it to hide the power points from the newly crawling baby. It felt like one of those "Mother lifts the car off the baby moments". It is old and really heavy and I was crouched down so it was falling from above, the cabinet was on casters and kept skipping and just behind me I knew the baby was kicking around on his sheep skin. The plant skidded off and smashed on the floor I didn't hear crying so I knew it had missed him, I got the Tv upright with my heart pounding.
My goodness what a way to be done in. Terrifying and all in the cosy safety of my lounge room. Eek.

Pacific

Well after a long long time the series I worked on for a couple of years has been released. I can't say the story is fantastic but it is exciting to see all the models I made for each set brought to life and filled with action. The best part of the whole process was being able to work closely with Tony Pratt, a fantastic production designer and a lovely man.

Harvest

Well we are feeling pretty proud of ourselves after harvesting our huge crop of pumpkins. Judging by the beautiful cloudy colour of the skins I think they must be Queensland Blues. It is a very exciting feeling to cut in to one and see such a gorgeous yellow inside and to know it’s organic and we grew it together. The baby has just started eating food so home grown pumpkin is next on the list of things to try. He has been a big help in the garden and we spend some time most days out there together. He looks at the sky and the trees and the chickens, and I prattle on about what I am up to.
Autumn is such a lovely time of the year I always think. I had a big overhaul of the garden and where mildewed pumpkin vines crept now tiny seedlings of winter vegetables are sprouting. It is a good feeling to see those future vegetables getting started.

Rabbit

We had a very lovely Easter down at the beach. We cooked, we ate, we dug all the cooch grass out of two massive garden beds and planted flowers for spring, no easy task I tell you.
You woke up before the sun and rabbits bounded away across the lawn. The bunny came and brought cloth eggs with bells inside tucked in a bird’s nest. We found a dead rabbit under a bush in the flowerbed and a little cousin left a loved blanket behind and had to do an emergency late night dash to retrieve it.. Bunnies surrounded us.

Stumble

I was researching jellyfish when I found a link to the amazing work of Coe and Waito. They make quite breathtaking works in ceramic.

Fete

I can’t tell if I am the only one that has worked out what a bonanza school fetes are, or if they are so fruitful that there is plenty for everyone. You have to work out which are the good ones, some get too full of them selves and charge $5 for a biscuit but after some careful research I know where to aim. There were three fantastic ones on the weekend and I picked up some great books a chocolate crackle, some baby gloves, a tiny tea set, a wooden watch and this beautiful doll cradle that is perfect to give my niece. This Wednesday she will be getting a baby brother and he will sleep in a big version of exactly the same bed. I painted it and made some little bedclothes and will take it over when the baby arrives, how exciting.

Baby

A baby Elephant has been born in our town and my brother in law not only was instrumental in the pregnancy but also was part of the birth and now care of the little baby. It is amazing what people do with them selves and we were lucky enough to go and see the little one. It was quite a strange feeling to see something so familiar but on a scale that was so surprising. To see an elephant small enough to fit into the front seat of your car was quite baffling and it is so sweet and tumbly with its little trunk waving about copying its mother and its stumble legs making it look like a man in an elephant suit.

The Professional

Sometimes all you see are the dirty dishes in the sink and then a friend flies half way around the world and takes a photo of your sink and all of a sudden you can see the beauty in it. Here is my back yard taken by a professional, in my mind it looks this good all the time.