String string string string

Anyone who is on Facebook and Twitter and is connected to me will be glutted with this information, but I promised the gallery owner that I'd do my best to promote it, so here goes. (BTW, I'm not being active on Twitter, I just found out that the Facebook Networked Blogs has a syndication option that automatically puts your blog posts on FB and T, so I get to spray the love even further :0 )





I've been playing with some of the offset packing from my latest Book Art Object piece as my contribution. I called my book Skyhooks:



Here they are being tested on a makeshift hanging line in Studio Duck.
If you'd like to know more about them, I've put up a post on my website.

PRINTing BIG

I keep talking obliquely about printing big and my upcoming exhibition with Megalo. I started really getting motivated today, and decided to document my progress in the same way I did for my NZ residency.



So: a bit of context. Megalo, our fabulous, unique, community-enlivening Canberra print access studio, is moving premises, from its current (shared) location in Watson at the old Watson High School site to a very prominent heritage site in Kingston that will enhance its position in the local arts community: a short walk from the National Gallery and right next door to the Canberra Glassworks and the Bus Depot Markets.

On the weekend after next (15/16/17), the National Gallery of Australia is having its annual printmaking symposium, with the theme of MATERIALITY. If you're interested in any kind of printmaking, it's going to be a good thing to attend. Anyhoo, Megalo has the opportunity to use its new building before the actual move, and so is putting on a gala print exhibition in conjunction with the symposium, and it's called PRINTBIG. Artists taking part have had some teaching connection with Megalo: GW Bot, Robert Boynes, Julian Laffan, Mike Parr & John Loane, Annie Trevillian, Minigraff, Surya Bajracharya, Liam Garstang, and myself.



There's a reason why it's called PRINTBIG: we are all producing printworks to be installed, mounted or printed onto walls that are 3.6 x 3.6 metres or 4.8 x 3.6 metres in dimension... eek! When I was invited, I was only a week or so from leaving for New Zealand, and I didn't have much time to think deeply, so my first instinct was to pick up the phone and ring my friend and casual collaborator, byrd, who scales up his work on a daily basis. I asked him if he'd do s formal collaboration with me.

Often my first gut impulses can be wacky, more often they are quite insightful in ways that I hadn't first realised. In this case, I sat down after the first rush of adrenalin and thought about working with byrd on a wallpiece. I also thought about why I was asked to participate in the first place -- I mean, I'm a book artist. I work quite small scale. I had a show at Megalo last year in which I used the space in an interesting way, and maybe that is what gave Alison (head honcho of Megalo) the idea that I could work with a large space here.

I love collaborating with people, whether they are present or absent -- I know that last word sounds strange, but when I work with text I don't just take the text and mould it into my shape; I research the writer, think about what they're saying, and try to enhance it or pair it with something sympatico, and if they have/had strong opinions, I work with them. If it's a full-blown collaboration, with full participation of all parties, there's a dance that you do to give and take your wants and desires with theirs (this is what I'm talking about at the print symposium, amongst other things). In the case of byrd, I need his experience with scale, and I wanted this to be more than just him helping my upscale my work. I wanted a FULL collaboration.

I rang a poet friend who lives in Qld, Angela Gardner (who is also a printmaker) and asked her if she had any spare words about, say, chaos or destruction, or societal breakdown or something similarly chunky and interesting. Angela is constantly writing interesting things, and I knew that she'd be up for a bit of textual wallplay. She sent me a long unpublished series of chunks about architecture, and right at the end there was a fabulous bit called Demolition, which I knew was perfect for gelling the wee scraps of idea in my head. Angela was originally going to come down for the symposium and have a play during the installation, but she's had to cancel, so we're just going to pretend she's standing behind us when we're working.


That's my pile of 'sketches', working out what the text means to me, and rough ideas of what I want to text to do. Byrd is doing his own undoubtedly more artistic sketches, of the imagery he and I will create together alongside and amidst the text.

I'm treating our wall as a page spread of a giant book, like a big textual billboard. I'm taking the words of a poet and using an artist to help me bring them to life. That's what I do with books and broadsides, and that's what I'm doing here, and that's how I'm rationalising working at this scale (so that I don't panic).

I did some printing in Dunedin on the last night of my residency, using their wonderful large woodtype letters, and some of their fabulous brown paper (that is so much better than anything I've found in Australia). I've got various bits of brown paper around the studio, and I posted back to myself all the brown paper lunchbags that the college gave me for lunches during my residency. And now I'm using my wood type to print the words I need.







I'm printing a few copies of everything, and working from the top down. It's a very organic process; I'm squeezing as much onto the paper as I can, and will tear down once they're dry. I'm working with the words in a loosely concrete style, using hand-rolling the paper surface to create meaningful texture, such as in the word breakages.



Angela has, bless her, given us complete creative freedom with the text, so the formatting is totally up to me. I have given byrd complete creative freedom with my layout, and we'll be using collaged overprints, stencilling and graffiti spray to hopefully make it come alive.



The trickiest thing about this project is that we only have one night to install. The cubes (each artist in PRINTBIG has a side of a huge plywood cube to work with) won't be build until the afternoon/evening of the 14th of October, and the media launch of the show is on the morning of the 15th. So we're pre-preparing as much as we can, but it will be a big night, working in situ to get the piece finished. Which in itself is apt, since a chunk of the (visual aspect of the) work is about the scuttle of street artists to get into a fresh site at night before it disappears or gets totally worked over.

More photos (ongoing) here. I will try to keep documenting this, but as you can see, there's a LOT to do. It's scary, but this is to date one of the most exciting projects I've worked on.

PRINTBIG is only up for three days. If you can get to it, do... there will be live projection works, fabulous installed art (cross fingers) and also an audience participation piece, making Australia's largest monoprint, right over the weekend. Doesn't it sound terrific?

nice shiny newness

Such is the miracle of on-linery, you have no way of knowing that I am writing this post on my brand new Macbook Pro laptop, the one that is subtly shiny in a way that only brushed aluminium can be, the one that has subtly drained my bank account of all shininess. You'll just have to take my word for it.

I have resisted the allure of portable computery (are my new words making your teeth ache?) for many years now, but have decided that it's time to be able to take things between studio and home, to have less of an office presence at home (and therefore the big clean-out), and that it's nice to be able to play on-line scrabble in bed.

So aloha to my computer set-up, the most fitting word because apparently it means hello and goodbye; very soon I will be (fruitlessly, I suspect) trying to sell bits of my old set-up on ebay, trying to get something back for the vast amount of money I've spent on it through the years... something, anything.

In other exciting news, I just dropped Bumblebee off at school for his Year 7 camp, and the wave of parental excitement at having THREE WEEKDAY DAYS OFF was palpable. I surfed the wave, then I jumped into it, and am now thinking how nice it will be to hang around tonight at the art school for an opening rather than dash home to argue (yet again) about whether the tv can be on during dinner or not. They are headed to the Snowy Mountains for multicultural tasks like dragonboat racing and gladiator challenges. B looked highly excited this morning, wearing my old red giggle hat that he has always coveted (but since he last saw it, it has faded to a charming shade of rose-pink that none of us were game to point out this morning in case he rejected the use of it outright. Luckily none of his mates seemed to care either, calling it a 'cool hat').

I haven't been in my studio since last week, because I spent the weekend at Megalo with some of the Canberra Bookbinders' Guild learning how to make marbled paper with a wonderful teacher called Joan Ajala. I was particularly interested in the 'Spanish' technique, where the marbling ripples on the page to create a pleated-silk sort of effect, and I'm pleased to say that I managed it by the end of the weekend. I've got them pressing at the moment, then I might remember to scan some and show you...

I'm still in the process of transferring files and preferences and things, and moving furniture and gasping at deadlines that need to be met, so forgive my probable once-a-weekness for a while. Today at work I have the unenviable task of getting all the workshop's teaching notes on to the new ANU intranet thingy (called WATTLE). And I'll meet all the new students, and catch up with all the returning ones. I do like hanging out at the art school.

momigami is not a kitty name

Momigami paper is paper, preferably handmade, that has been coated in tapioca starch and dried, and then painstakingly scrunched by hand (or other methods if the sheets are large) until the sheet feels like soft chamois and can be used like cloth. It is very strong. The Japanese aristocracy used to have clothes made from it. I have gorgeous A4 sheets of cream handmade rag paper that I made it when I was a student and we still had a papermaking studio at the art school, and they're in various states of scrunch. It's very beautiful stuff, I'm really enjoying working with it.

If you make your own paper, here's a momigami recipe:

1. Put 1 cup water to 1 dessertspoon tapioca starch powder in a double boiler.
2. Stir while heating gently. Stir until clear; the consistency should be that of light cream.
3. Apply to both sides of your (preferably handmade) paper with a sponge.
4. Crumple paper well, then flatten and let dry.
5. Sit in front of the tv or radio and scrunch the paper again to soften it. The longer you scrunch, the softer the paper will be.

Remember to breathe

It's been a bit hard to write anything in the face of all that's happening in Victoria.

I'm making myself a small sketchbook to use during a wood engraving workshop this weekend, and I pulled this red & black paper out of my drawer to use for the cover. It's so fluid yet fiery, isn't it? It made me think of the incredible images on the tv. I wish the tv cameras would back off a bit from the 'human tragedy' coverage, though. We've all been embarrassed by the invasive nature of many journalists.

Anyhoo, we send many thoughts and well wishes for those affected by the fires.


PS:


-- Post From My iPhone

in making mode

I got back from the coast on Sunday evening, after a few days of complete restfulness. There really isn't much to do down there (unless you can run around and drive places) apart from reading, eating and watching things. Here I am, sitting on the concrete under the house, watching other things:


Looking to the left. Colonel Duck with trusty hound. Note the army greens hanging on the wall behind the gumboots.


Oh look! Bumblebee has come to ask if he can use the ride-on mower.


Uh oh. Lucky has discovered me while they get the mower out. I have to throw the ball, but it's much more fun holding it until he thinks I've forgotten about it.


Looking to the right. Mr Pooter likes to sit in this cool shady spot where Lady Duck does her plant potting.


Mr Padge walks past. You can see why one of his nicknames is now Curltail. Sometimes, when he's moving fast, he looks like a kind of pug dog, but don't tell him that.


The cats and the dog get on very well. Mr Padge and Lucky are probably looking for the ball I threw when they weren't looking.

And that's it for the photos I took, because I never remembered to take my camera anywhere. Apart from this, as I was sitting in the car waiting to be driven home:


Boooiiiiyyyyy faarrrrrmmmm!

Poor buggers. They hate the travelling, but they love being at either end. At the start of the journey from home, they sort of hold their breath until they get past the point of Turning to the Vet, and then they relax and start moaning half-heartedly. As soon as they get to the farm, they rush around checking out their favourite spots and getting under things and coming out covered in spiderwebs. They're Lady Duck's favourite dusters.

We (the cats and I and anyone who wants to come along) always do a circuit of the house garden, through the orchard and down the hill to the olive grove, then up the hill through the citrus trees and back to the house. This time we saw an echidna that started burrowing as soon as it heard us. Mr Pooter went for a closer look and ended up jumping a mile in shock. It was pretty funny.

I caught up with a couple of friends who dropped by (separately) to see me. I've known them as individuals, but they've recently met each other at a art class in Bega and like each other immensely. I'm completely chuffed, because they're both talented artists who have buried themselves in family and the demands of living in the country, and they will egg each other on to get creative. Those sort of friendships are so valuable, especially when you have things besides art in common. Their silver jewellery work is showing at the Spiral Gallery in Bega as I write, if you're in the area, and it's really good.




I'm getting better and better by the day. I'm at the stage where I can feel the improvement, a bit like a mortgage when you stop paying enormous amounts of interest and start making inroads into the actual debt. Visitors are most welcome.

I've realised that I can't do my usual excuse of 'I'm too busy to send Christmas cards' this year, so today I'm going to sit down and make some cards. Yesterday I made a heap of paper beads; I've admired the ones I've seen others make, including one of the students this year, so I decided to try myself. It's harder than I thought to get a good result, but by the end of the afternoon I'd made a string of paper pearl-like beads out of old sheet music, and my head was spinning with ideas that will stop spinning eventually and I'll come up with something do-able.

Tomorrow I have to make my way over to Bumblebee's school for both his ex-curricular drama performance (The Sneetches) and his end-of-year concert. Annoyingly, there's two hours between them, so I'm going to drive the car for the first time to get to the earlier gig. I have permission to drive but not the inclination, the same with alcohol. I had half a glass of wine on Saturday night with the home-made pizzas we cooked in Colonel Duck's new home-made outdoor pizza oven, but I spent all night nursing it and didn't like the taste. This is VERY unusual for me, as I'm a wine guzzler. Maybe it's an after-effect of the general? And yes, it was a wine I've enjoyed before.

And I hate being a passenger, always have done, but I don't feel in a hurry to drive myself at the moment. I think it's because I'm still slow and get pains when I react fast to anything, and a car sometimes requires fast reactions. Still, it's only across the road and up a bit, I'm sure it will be fine. I have to start sometime.

We've been gathering bits of costume for B's role as Sylvester McMonkey McBean: a blue satin bowtie from Colonel Duck, a fake moustache, a utility belt armed with a wrench and a carrot or two for comic effect. I'm sure he'll ham up the part suitably; he's a big admirer of comedy, and especially slapstick, and has been watching a lot of Peter Sellers as Inspector Clousseau over the past few days. I'm looking forward to watching him reinterpret a few Sellers moves.

So no more procrastinating: card-making awaits. Thank you to SuzeOz, who challenged me to my first game of Wordtwist, which I hadn't let myself play up to now. If you want to start a game with me, go ahead; I SO need the practice!

Stouch of the century

The Canberra Times had its usual share of junk tucked into it today, but layered under the Spotlight sale catalogue was a booklet-shaped advertising feature called Imaginem, 'Your 24-page guide to promoting your brand or business with the help of Canberra's "creatives"'.

Flipping through the pages, glancing at the different pleas for being more creative than the team on the next page, I came across an article called Print is Greener by Rodney Wade, a sustainability consultant. It's a ripper little piece about print reading vs online, and uses The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, a 700-page report, as its example:

Print 85g
The printed version of The Stern Review was validated as 85 grams of CO2 in total for the complete manufacturing process and the paper. Because it is a finished printed book, that is the maximum CO2 it will ever amount to and can be read as many times as you like over the next 100 years.

Online 226g
For every hour that a person reads The Stern Review in PDF format on a typical desktop computer, 226 grams of CO2 are generated. This does not include the CO2 footprint for the IT infrastructure to deliver the PDF via the Internet, nor does it include the footprint to print it out on an inkjet or laser printer. Of course, a typical reader will print out parts or all of the repoprt. Why? Because the majority of people generally prefer to read from hard copy.

CD 300g
A study in 1007 by Australian Dr Tony Wilkins, Group Manager, Environment and Climate Change for News Ltd, has validated that the manufacture of a CD with The Stern Review data generates 300 grams of CO2 per disk or a DVD 350 grams and that is even before it is put into a computer and viewed or printed.

I'm interested in whether he factored into the print version the energy needed to distribute the volume, by post or via bookshops, but even so, they are very impressive figures.

One of the first things I read online this morning (via Editorial Anonymous) was about the declining state of school libraries in Britain, which is an article less about computers taking over books and more about ignorant ideas of staffing needs, but still, in a world where people think children are getting a well-rounded education from computers alone, shouldn't this sort of environmental calculation be taken into account?

Walk with me, tell me what you think. Are books sustainable, really?

7 (working) things

Wow, I forgot about memes. What a perfect way to blog when you're thinking about things to blog about. Christie brought this one around again, and I've been saving a few others up my sleeve, so prepare for some serious meme time over the next few days. Hopefully I can find something fresh to dredge up (that doesn't work, should be 'rank and dripping', shouldn't it?)

And welcome, anyone who has found my blog via the article in the Age on Sunday. I hope you find some amusement on this scrolly thing. If not, follow the links, find your bliss elsewhere and no hard feelings. It's a wide blogosphere out there.

OK. Seven Things Meme.
Rules: Link the person that tagged you and post the rules on your blog. Share 7 random and/or weird facts about yourself. Tag 7 random people at the end of your post and include links. Let each person know that they've been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog (this is the only thing I hate doing with memes. It's so 'name ur frenz').

1. I'm insanely messy. It seems to be one of the fundamental things about my personality. No matter how hard I try, in various ways, to institute a cleaning routine, it always lapses. I tell myself it could be a Buddhist discipline, and if I mastered neatness I could move on to a Tai Chi practice, but I always fall by the wayside and end up beating myself up about it. Luckily I married a messy man, but every now and again we beat ourselves up about it. I still have hopes about the Tai Chi practice (just have to find a class that fits the flight path) but I'm afraid I will always have a floordrobe.

GAHHHHHHH. Apart from KNOWING that I've written something close to that para somewhere on this blog before, I think I need to take a different tack today. I just went out to the lounge, where I patted Mr Pooter for a while (curled up asleep on the airbed, giving me the perfect excuse not to put it away yet) and thought. And I've decided to use this meme to write about seven things about my art/craft practice, if only to remind myself before I can get back to it. Here goes:


Seven things about my working processes:

1. I believe in the power of the hand. Something about everything I make has to be done by hand. I can't see myself designing something and then handing it over to someone else to produce. I do that with my freelance money work and I hate the loss of control. With my own, personal output, it needs to have something personal about it. So, for example, if I make a photocopy zine, it will be hand-stitched, not stapled. Also, in a more direct sense, there's nothing quite like using your hands when making. Using your hand to smooth cloth onto a book cover gives you a control that you can't get with a bonefolder, although you need the bonefolder afterwards to attain a crispness you can't get by hand. But never under-estimate the importance of touch in relation to art and craft. It's primary.

2. I love the notion of the multiple; it is the reason printmaking developed, to be able to make many images out of the one matrix. Over the last few decades, printmakers have been exploring ways to make multiples that are also individual, so that they start with a set matrix but then 'progress' or 'vary', either by varying the inking or printing methods or they are then pushed past the initial print stage by folding, cutting or touching up in some way. This is a way I try to work, and it is very easy with letterpress: you can vary the material upon which you are printing; you can print text and then add hand-printed elements; you can hand-colour the text and print upon the same background, the varieties are endless. Even when I make traditional image prints, I like to vary them somehow. It's never boring.

3. I try to make books and prints that are hard to reproduce photographically. That is, they can reproduce, but the images are nothing compared with holding the original. For example, here is a scan of front cover of my upcoming book (it will be available late Jan/early Feb):


I'll show you more of it and the book later, but for now I just want to talk about its reproducable qualities. This is the front of the dustjacket, and it's printed in two shades of metallic ink on dark blue Wibalin bookpaper, which is a reinforced paper product suitable for bookbinding purposes. Both shades look dreadful here, because they're flattened out and caught in one pose so to speak. When you hold the paper or covered book in your hand, the printed woodtype of the typographical pattern has a grey-blue sheen that shimmers subtly as you turn your hand, and the yellowy-green metal type title pushes itself forward out of the dull navy blue. It's a combination that calls, not shouts, which suits the modus operandi of the poet herself.

4. I like to use materials, tools and processes that give my work secret properties, load it with layers of meaning that sometimes I'll be the only one who knows and cares, or can be unpacked if anyone wants to know. How would anyone know that the metal type used on the cover shown above once belonged to the poet's late husband, unless I told them? Or that the cover (back and front) contains the entire alphabet, because it is an important symbol itself in the poet's work (she has written a number of poems about type and the alphabet, but the whole notion of literacy spools through her oeuvre like a glistening thread), but the letter O shows twice, because it is so present in the title? And that the poet goes by her married name by day, and I have arranged the letters so that her married initials are on the dustjacket and pare down to her working initials on the book's actual cover? There you are. All my work has these physical notions, they appeal to the fiction reader in me.

5. I am a messy worker. It's my biggest fault, and working clean and neat is such a challenge. But I do devote myself to this challenge, and maybe forcing myself to do everything -- paper preparation, design, setting, printing, folding, binding, publicity, accounts -- is akin to the Tai Chi practice I aspire to. It's not efficient (dear Ceiling Cat I wish I had an agent or dealer of some kind) but it's deeply satisfying, and very faithful to my yearning for the slow making life, even though it seems to push me faster and faster.

6. I yearn for a Room of One's Own, because I find trying to do all this making in a very public space quite stressful. I know that when I have a studio, my output will be better, because I will have the mental space to concentrate. Unfortunately, the hints I'd got about getting a space in the next few months turned out to be wrong; I'm back in the realm of Waiting, for who knows how much longer. I found this out the day before 'me op', and I spent a few therapeutic hours sobbing out my anger and fear. I'm ok now, just resigned to another possible 12 months or longer living cheek to jowl with my printing equipment around the house and having to find space and time at the art school to get things done. Sigh.

7. I know that this is a Bad Time for producing luxury goods for the sale of, but money has never been an issue with this endeavour. I contacted the National Folk Festival a few months ago, to see if they were interested in some letterpress demos in return for a free ticket. They were very interested (it's not going ahead, for reasons I can't divulge, but may happen the year after) and said that they were ALWAYS keen to hear from 'tradition bearers'. After the call I sat for a while and thought about that. Australia has a funny relationship with tradition. We like to dispense with it, yet revere it when it manages to survive. I'm very happy to think of what I do as tradition-bearing. Makes up in a way for the failure to bear other things :)


I said I hate tagging, and I do. But I'd like to know seven working things about other people, so I'm going to throw a few blogs in the mix: Poppy Letterpress, Rainy Planet Press, Artnoose's Sitch, Double Elephant, Viminalis, Strange Fruit, and May Day Studio. Tell me/us seven things about your working or creative processes. Please... or not. It's totally your choice.

At last! Something about printing!

I've been woefully negligent about sharing my working time with you lately; I guess it's because I'm trying to do so much at the moment that it's hard to sit down and write about it.

Anyway, yesterday, as some Facebook friends might have noticed, I was feeding paper through my letterpress rollers in order to give it a metallic sheen. Why?

My Transmigration volume (Jan Brown, artist, Nan McDonald, poet) has a tricky little binding quirk that you can see in the picture below:

See the blue panel on the inside front cover? I wanted the endpapers for the book to be the same paper as the textblock (BFK Rives Grey) but I'd only been able to buy a certain quantity of the paper at the time, as the. whole. of. Australia. had. run. out. of. it. We have a really fragile art supply chain in Australia. If the sole importer goes out of business, we have to just deal with it -- even if the rest of the world is swimming in the stuff -- until someone fills the gap and decides to import it.

So I'd bought up the entire stocks of grey BFK that existed on this whole continent, which [a] dictated the size of the edition (90) and [b] forced me to experiment with the style of the binding and [c] pissed off a lot of printmakers until stocks were replenished. I used offcuts of the paper for the endpapers, and supplemented the binding with panels of the same paper used for the cover, but inked up with the metallic ink that I'd used on the cover, which is the same grey-green as the book paper.

I'd stumbled upon this idea because I have a folder full of odd bits of paper that I fling through the press rollers before I clean the press (to reduce the amount of ink on the rollers). I grab backing sheets, old drawings, offcuts around the studio, and often can't throw them away afterwards because the results are really cool. I end up using the papers for bookarts samples, or endpapers for my diaries, etc.

So yesterday I discovered that I'd run out of these little panels, and I had to produce more. I'd known this day was coming, had all the materials around, just had to do it. So this was what I had to do:



FAQ notes for those who have never done this but would like to try:
-- it works best with a thicker stock of paper
-- you have to catch it fast or it ends up wrapped around the rollers (although in this case the curl in the paper helped prevent that)
-- make sure you know which side is the side you want to use and keep that side facing the rest of the rollers (the side closest to the roller you're using gets a bit patchy)
-- you do get a few fingerprints, which is why I do larger pieces of paper and trim down to the size I want
-- BE CAREFUL! it's a moving machine and you're sticking your fingers in it. Also, do not hold me responsible if you have an accident. Serving suggestion only.
-- and yes, that's the new Glen Campbell album playing in the background. I refrained from singing along as I don't think you would have enjoyed it.

This is the pile of freshly-printed bookpaper. Each of these sheets makes three panels.

On the right, you can see the plain navy-blue faux-Buckram-texture paper. On the left, glammed up with a bit of grey-green metallic ink.

So now that I have the bits, all nice and dry today, it's time I used them!

This is what the final book looks like: 

Words and Music

Well, I can only apologise for the photography that follows, but I did promise a virtual exhibition, so here goes:

With these fracking 10-week/3-week terms we're given now, I devised a cunning plan for my students. I proposed that we spend 6 weeks playing loosely with letterpress, just printing stuff that took our fancy (mostly woodtype, because there's no real time to set chunks of small type with four-hour classes), and then 4 weeks playing with the results. After the hols (i.e. now), they were to come up with the goods, which would be publicly displayed until assessment time, and the leftover few weeks would be spent just skillin' up on a few bookbinding techniques in class, so that they could spend their out-of-class time finishing those essays and major projects that the other people in their learning lives were demanding (I remember this time of year well from my student days).

And they did it. I lost a couple of people along the way, some for good and some who just wandered back in when they were ready, and who came with their work ready to mount. The theme of the project was MUSIC. Remember that these are students from all over the school, who are doing the class as an elective, so they range from Ceramics major, to Textiles, to Photomedia, etc. Here's what came out of it:


This is the overview shot. The case is in the school library, which is a great spot to be in this time of year for obvious reasons. I'll walk you through from left to right.


Window 1: Jenny (top), Angela (bottom left), Trillian (bottom right -- I really love saying that girl's name. She's just happy she wasn't born a boy. She handles the reaction from HGG fans like me really well).


Jenny discovered that letterpress works on fabric (although a warning -- the fabric has to be absolutely flat, and sometimes the grain of the fabric can mark the woodtype), and ran this chiffon scarf over her set type. It looks fabulous. You can see in the overview shot above that she printed a singlet, too.


She also made these CD 'chapters' that combine her printing with fantastic industrial fabric swatches that we were given. She also bound a hardback book with a lot more of her printing inside. She's fallen in love with traditional bookbinding.


Angela loves origami, and the way she can make books that move. She's a ceramicist; I don't think ceramics get to move very much, although I think the bookmaking has made her think about that issue. These are her 'musical chairs'. The chair on the left is a 'title' chair; the middle chairs are attached to each other in a chain, and the two on the right are separate individuals.


Trillian is a very capable person generally. She hasn't finished her piece, only because she wanted to make something I hadn't taught her yet (cased bindings), so she's going to make it next week, and in the meantime we chose one of her lovely page spreads to hold the spot. She's working with her letterpress and mixing it with digital text and images, plus making a binding that from the start will be falling apart, like so many hearts in songs. Should be fun.


Window 2: Suse (behind), J (in front).


A detail of Suse's 'Rhythm' piece. You can see the whole thing above. She's a musician herself, and takes music very seriously, so this was an exploration of actual rhythms and how they correspond to word length and size.


I took photos of all three of J's 'guitara' pieces, but the middle one didn't come out -- you can see it above.


Each one uses a found box, with a hole cut in the lid and rubberband 'strings', and then he's played with his printed matter, folding and cutting it to interact with the boxes.


Window 3: Poppy Malik (top left), Libby (top right), Beatrix Cottonmouth (bottom left), D. Carnac Edwards (bottom left). As you can see, I have a number of students already working on their artistic identities (not that I can talk).


Poppy did some lovely letterpress, using sentences that were like little short stories, but she didn't use any of it here. She likes making her 'little pretties' as she calls them. These LPs are paper diamonds of typed drafting film. Each diamond is a typed dream. And glitter. This year the print workshop is full of glitter and the sound of typewriters :)


I haven't done this one justice. It's a hard one to reproduce, because there are layers of text in amongst the sheer curtain fabric. Libby calls this 'It hurts my ears'; other lines include 'squawk squawk' and 'it would not stop'. The fabric is held together with a piece of retro gold crochet thread, and the whole lot is suspended from a hook on the side of the cabinet. It makes me think of a hanged parrot created from the remnants of some granny's sitting room.


Something about this one really appeals to me. The text inside this book object, printed on white cotton quilting fabric, says 'Inside a bed of bone' and the inside ball says 'soft red muscle thumps'. Letterpress on cloth with red wool and thread. The things Beatrix makes are often very sweet with that edge of macabre.


And lastly, this one is called 'Moustache Remnants'. I love the way he's made 'rooms' from his book, which is bound with a figure-of-eight stitch so that it can bend in all sorts of configurations. He's added some textile pieces, which seem to act like prayer rugs in the rooms. I don't know if he thought of it this way; I hope he has or will. Each line is a line of a song, and they were originally set and printed as letterpress, but he's then photocopied the words and reprinted them...



So there you go. Lots of interesting thoughts and deeds. Next week we're making a cased-in binding (a hardback book) and the week after, a clamshell box, and then the teaching year is over again. Where does it all go?

Enjoying Jeff

Jeff Peachey's bookbinding blog is a fantastic way to spend a while. His latest post comments upon the above window installation in New York, where books have been opened, wet, and rolled into trunk-like configurations (which, looking at them again are probably more likely to be an arrangement of blowsy roses, which fits the kind of shop it's decorating). I like Jeff's air of offence and the reasons for it; I'm more ambivalent, but probably would have preferred this to be in a more 'intellectual' spot than just decorating a shopfront. I'd like to hear from the designer, and how much they'd thought it through. Still, it stirs my altered book juices.

Another fabulous read on Jeff's blog is his page on treating a part of a Gutenberg Bible. The irony of someone hand-writing part of a printed document that was meant to be counterfeiting a hand-written document is delicious.

Postscript, about a week later: I seriously like JP -- blindfolded bookbinding! Crazy.

Noise, and other things

A confession: I took the weekend off. I ran away. It was lovely.

I pulled the Bumblebee out of school at lunchtime, flung him out of the car at The Big Merino in Goulburn, then scooted to Sydney, where I started by exploring the delightful shop that is Artwise Amazing Paper (pretty much your best option for buying a variety of decent bookcloth in small amounts in Australia these days. If you know of any others, please tell me.) and then wandered down City Road to attend the new-look Meanjin launch at Gleebooks.

I had a lovely time, listening to some damn good writing, meeting poets, filmmakers and journalists, and ended up in a pub somewhere near Sydney Uni comparing fertility stories with amazing women and admiring Sophie Cunningham's intense sunburn.

My hostess, who lives in a stunning townhouse in Enmore, had been meanwhile attending a family funeral, and so I hadn't clapped eyes on her yet. She had assured me by text message that she'd left me a key and turned the alarm off, but unbeknownst to her, her partner had come home in the meantime and re-alarmed the house out of habit before he went away for the night. So I got back, well-lubricated, opened the door and got fully upstairs before I became aware of a high-pitched squeal that made me pause mid-step. Could it be? I started downstairs immediately, and only got halfway before the alarm started, a noise that assaulted every cell in my body, vibrated through my teeth and seemed to put a hot needle through my ears. Ay yay yay!

Luckily I'd been told the code last time I visited, and although I am numerically dyslexic and dreadful with names and dates, I rarely lose a pin or code (something to do with the body memory of the movements on the keypad). Within seconds I'd turned it off, and the silence that resulted was almost as loud as the alarm. Wow. If I'd really been an intruder that noise would have physically pushed me out of the building. Even earplugs wouldn't have helped. I guess it works as a security measure. And a sobering one. Heh.

Saturday, as anyone who lives in Sydney would know, was a scorcher. 33 degrees! It's Spring, that's crazy. This is why I would never live again in Sydney. G (my hostess) and I cruised Enmore and Newtown, eating breakfast and exploring shops. I found another good paper shop and an excellent button shop. Then we picked up Best Beloved from the airport (flying in from a air security conference at the Sunshine Coast in Qld -- tuh) and kept moving down towards Brighton le Sands.

Sophie seemed to have spent Friday lying on a beach, forgetting to turn with the sun (she had a very directional sunburn!). Our time at the beach was quite different. All of us pale and wimpy -- G especially so, since she favours the white Victoriana pseudo-goth look -- we preferred to sit in the shade and enjoy the sea-breeze and watch the weirdness that is the Eastern Sydney Jet-ski Gangs cavorting on the beach. It smacked of Puberty Blues, with jet-skis substituting for surf-boards, right down to the pairs of mismatched girlfriends in bikinis, sitting amongst but separate from the tanned, beefy, strutting blokes in groups flinging footballs around the girls for extra attention between bouts of jetskiing.

We stayed there for a while, eating fish & chips, fascinated. Or at least, I was. I love people watching. At one point I said 'What do you think these blokes do after a day on the beach -- do they stay in a pack & have a BBQ? Go to a pub? Go home to their mothers? What do you reckon?' And G and BB stared at me and couldn't believe that I bother thinking these things. But I do. One of my personal fascinations with life is that there is only 24 hours in a day for everyone, but we all make completely different choices about how to spend that time.

The other thing that struck me was the amount of noise. There we were, sitting beside a beach, and there were planes landing across the water from us, jet skis and boats churning around in between, cars and motorbikes roaring behind us, and yet I could still hear the waves coming in and out. But I couldn't hear much else...

That afternoon we went from the ridiculous to the sublime. We dropped G off at home, and then headed to the Southern Highlands to spend a night with Bernice Balconey. She lives on a humble piece of land owned by someone else, in a lovely little house surrounded by garden and bush. Apart from the trains that rumble past infrequently, it's serene. We did little but eat and read and talk. And go to a market where I found a vinyl copy of ABBA Arrival to replace the one I'd STUPIDLY sold when I was 16 to raise enough money to buy a packet of cigarettes. Talk about great regrets. I feel like a part of my soul is restored. Even if I never play it again (which is unlikely, I love my turntable), it is good to know I can look at it and remember things, like how dumb I was at 16.

Of course, when I got home on Sunday afternoon I had to jump straight on the computer and meet a couple of deadlines that were looming so close I could feel their hot breath on the back of my neck. But I still managed to watch Dr Who, on the edge of my chair. PFFWWORR. Can't wait for next week, even if I have qualms about the next Doctor (ok, I googled him. I'm a curious cat). I just have to have faith in Russell. He hasn't let us down yet.

And this morning I decided to catch up on the weekend edition of the Canberra Times and discovered a death notice for a nice old man I've known slightly for the last ten years. He's a classic WWII veteran, overlooked by the young, appreciated by his peers who, as he left the room, would say in hushed tones, 'He was interred, you know, by the Japanese. Never talks about it.' He was always dressed beautifully, with freshly bryl-creamed hair and ironed shirts. He had a great sense of humour, and even when diagnosed with demensia, wore it with dignity. The last time I saw him, I sat next to him in a doctor's surgery, and we had a wonderful conversation about life, the universe, etc and the Legacy Ladies he looked after. He won honours in the war, and is being given full Air Force Honours at his funeral, tomorrow. I don't know his family well enough to go to the funeral, but I wish them well. He was a lovely man.

Speaking of lovely people, did I mention that while I 'wasn't blogging', I lost another auntie? It's been a year for that sort of thing. She lost a battle with cancers and other lurgies. She was a lovely person, married to the uncle that flew over from Fiji when my brother died and consoled me with my first plate of Oysters Kilpatrick. Gawd, the things you remember. I would have like to get over to WA for the funeral, but it just wasn't possible. Colonel and Lady Duck went instead, and caught up with extended family (hello!).

I believe in the power of threes; you know, that bad things come in threes. I know it's a superstition, but it seems to work for me. I was worrying about this the other day, about the aunties, when a great-aunt of BB's died. I've relaxed now. That's enough aunties for the universe, methinks.

Time for work. I've decided to make book covers today. A nice, big batch of them.

The Toymaker

When I was researching my origami and pop-up class, I stumbled upon the delightful world of The Toymaker. This person loves to draw, and loves to make, and has built a website to delight even the hardest cynic.

If you click her link above, you'll find the page of free downloadable paper toys, to be printed in colour and constructed. I'm going to make the Tyrannosaurus Rex one for Bumblebee for his birthday tomorrow (not enough time to make an original card, am still wrapping presents and constructing party bags -- paper bags, very sick of plastic bags chucked the instant the lollies are eaten). He's having a LASERZONE party, ten boys running around a darkened maze with all manneer of weaponry, pretending to slaughter each other. Sigh. I hope he's not too old for a dinosaur card.

Apparently The -- American -- Toymaker is travelling or has travelled around Australia recently. She has a charming map that she's drawn to show her destinations. I've included it because I love 'Glandstone', a very sweet typo.




Bumblebee got his first salon haircut yesterday. He picked out a photo in a men's hair magazine and the hairdresser made him look EXACTLY like it. Today, of course, it looks utterly different, and he was a bit disappointed. Welcome to my world, I said to him. Mind you, it still looked fabulous. Can't go wrong with a bone structure like his...

Ahh, birthdays. I never knew until I had a child that children's birthdays involve a certain amount of the parents reminiscing about the birth. Have I ever blogged B's birth? hmm... I'll have to check the archives.