Pressings: the opening

Hello from my wonderful opening. This photo was taken by Antonia, who is one of the Megalo team. I'm holding up the wrong arm to echo the work, but you get the idea. Sorry for the insane grin, I was a bit nervous. I'm wearing a shift thing that I think of as my 'tuckshop uniform'; it's cut like those uniforms nurses and tea ladies used to wear, but it is black with some funky black & white detailing. I found it at a Melbourne op shop, and thought it fitted my general theme of vintage + recycling.


Another Antonia image, of two lovely Canberra artists: papermaker Katharine Nix on the left, printmaker & illustrator Franki Sparke on the right.



This is the opening according to Bumblebee.

Well, not really. I gave him the camera and asked him not to use the flash, so he struggled a bit with holding the camera still enough to get clear shots. He seemed to perservere, because I have a lot of blurries followed by a few good shots:



Not sure that Sarina (Sarina fair, on the left of the group) would think it was a good shot, but by Bumblebee's standard, it's excellent!



This is Steeev, one of my oldest friends (you might have seen him lurking around Progressive Dinner Party), and Genevieve Swifte, who does gorgeous art and books, with her daughter Disa. At the back of the photo is Lady Duck, looking suave.


A Bumblebee photo; he loved all the little kids who came, I have lots of photos of them all making faces and running around. This is the back of Mummy Crit, with her delicious baby Erik. her other son, D'arcy, REALLY wanted to touch one of my more active-looking books, so I promised him that he could come to my studio after the show and look through it (it's one of the Not For Sale pieces, because it's a personal souvenir of a collaboration).

It was a really lovely evening, and I'm really glad I didn't have any speechifying, because it allowed people to just relax and talk and look at the work, which tried its best to look nice and, I think, succeeded. I'm going to go in during the week and take some 'proper' shots of the work and put them up on my website for a bit of a virtual showing, but I'll let you know when that happens.

One thing I really loved was seeing people looking hard at everything.



I hope they got as much out of the work as I got making it...


Bernice has also done a bit of a post on it, and there's more photos in a flickrset, if you're interested.

Ooh, I almost forgot to acknowledge how bloody amazing Best Beloved was. He didn't get a chance to stop and talk to many people because he was pouring drinks, food-wrangling, washing up empty glasses and plates, and being generally wonderful. He really earns his title sometimes.

Thanks to everyone who came! It was great!