Sigh of relief

I'm finally at the point where I can sit and relax for a few hours before going to the NGA Print Symposium dinner tonight.



Here's the 'final' piece, taken quickly at the opening while there was noone in front of it, which wasn't often. What I enjoyed was seeing that people actually stopped and read for a while, instead of floating past it. So if it was difficult to make out the foreground/background areas, that is a good thing.

Here's a couple of crowd shots, taken during the speeches:





It was huge, with all the nice people from the conference, and lots of nice local arty types, and my parents, who seemed to enjoy themselves even though I couldn't hang out with them much.

At one point Colonel Duck was taking people around to the blank wall at the end, gridded up with pencil in preparation for the public monoprint project (that started today) and was telling them that it was his favorite piece in the show, cheeky bugger.

A bit later I turned around to see him in front of my work with Helen Cole, Rare Book Librarian at the State Library of Queensland and Noreen Grahame, Book Artist gallery Owner supremo, regaling them with embarrassing stories about my childhood. GAH! You have to laugh, at least he's taught me that much.

I got home latish and went straight to bed, but woke up extra early to finish my talk for the Print Symposium. I gave that today just before lunch, and it seemed to go down well. My theme (given to me by Head of Print, Roger Butler) was palpability, so I gave a 20 minute account of my passionate love for letterpress in the hope that my enthusiasm was palpable (I almost ran over, but ditched a bit to squeeze in; never mind, it will be published in full on the NGA website soon). It was; I had lots of positive feedback from people who felt the love in the air.

Other highlights (heh, not that I was a highlight :) ) were Luke from Sticky in Melbourne and Mini Graff, poster queen who gave us a lesson in intellectual property from the viewpoint of the victim whose designs were stolen from the web by a big US fashion company.

Oops, have just run out of time (between the last sentence and this I fed Shopping Sherpa's kitty) and have dressed posh for tea. Am waiting for my taxi to the Gallery...