Missing inside the action

The problem with not writing on the blog for AGES and AGES and AGES -- but I don't need to tell you how long it's been -- is that I don't know what to do next. Do I try to make up for lost time? Or do I just blithely go on?  Hmmm.

Maybe a little of both.

I finished Henry Lawson (to be published 2013) and this afternoon I came out of the bubble of trying to keep my head in a state of Deep Thinking while I wrote a PhD application. It's all over now bar pressing the button that says SUBMIT because I'm waiting on one letter from an ex-teacher and employer to upload and then I can press SUBMIT. Right now I have given myself permission to not think too deeply again until I get a message saying that my application has been successful. If it hasn't, I will try again next year and just keep those thoughts ticking along in the background a bit. I won't cry too much, there's so much on my list of alternative options.

So let's decompress a bit:

Here I am, covered in cats. This happens nearly every morning unless I have to jump up early to get to the university to teach. I would like to think that I am reading something about bibliographic notions of textual activity, but odds are that I'm reading Georgette Heyer, which is all I had space in my brain to read for the last month or so.

Let's catch up.

I had my exhibition at UNSW Canberra (aka ADFA) which seemed to go well, everyone who popped into it had good things to say, including a few really wonderful comments about how poetry really comes alive when it's actively engaged typographically and up on the wall in front of your eyes.

Then I went to Western Australia, ostensibly wearing my Print Council of Australia committee member hat but also working in bit of a holiday, taking Bumblebee and Colonel Duck with me. We hired a car and did the Epic Nostalgia/Rediscovery/Discovery (depending on your generation) Driving Tour of South-Western WA. From the Saturday to the next Thursday we drove from Perth to Kalgoorlie, then down to Esperence, across to Ravensthorpe and up to Lake King, then wobbled across to Bunbury and then up again to Perth where I donned my PCA hat and got to work.

We stayed in Kalgoorlie a few days and went to the Kalgoorlie Cup (or was it the Coolgardie Cup?) which was cancelled five minutes before the first race but because we were in the Members' Stand (thanks to my Auntie & Uncle) we stayed & partied and afternoon tea'd and had a lovely time with no horses. No end of scandal though, and we did meet a couple of horses at a big fry-up breakfast at one of the stables next day, so that was nice.

If I show you a few snaps you'll get the drift:

The saddest part for Colonel Duck, even though he'd been there before, was thinking about how much of his youth was erased by the Superpit. It covers the whole of what used to be the Golden Mile of Kalgoorlie-Boulder.

Because I was heading that way, and one of my official duties would be to attend the opening of the Fremantle Arts Centre Print Awards (supported by Little Creatures Brewing), I thought it would be jolly to enter a print, in case it was selected for hanging. Then it would be extra fun to be there. So I entered Discontent, the print I made for the Transit of Venus show earlier in the year.

Well, guess what. It won second prize. And I was told two weeks before we left, and I had to keep it secret (apart from my family, of course). What a task! So going to the opening was even more fun, even thought it was crappy, crappy weather, the worst weather of our whole trip.

Here I am, clutching my Big Bunch of Flowers, next to winner Lucas Ihlein of Big Fag Press with his Big Big Cheque (photo from Lucas's Flickr site). You can see more photos, mostly with me cropped out, at the Fremantle Arts Centre site. I was stoked to see Lucas (and his collaborator Ian Milless) win, because he uses a four-plate litho offset press (the Big Fag), which is only a couple of steps forward from letterpress, so as we both joked on the night, the winner was Obsolete Technology!

First prize is $15,000 and it was acquisitional, and second prize is $5,000 non-acquisitional, but they bought the work anyway, which is marvellous. I have bought myself an iPad with some of the money, and the rest goes back into the Press Pit.

It was wonderful to catch up with family that I haven't seen for years, especially new members who were born or wooed since my last visit. I don't know when I'll get back again, but when I do it will hopefully be the same time of year, which is so much nicer than Summer, with all the roadside wildflowers to boot.

I had a birthday, and a wee party to reconnect with live bodies, and forgot to write 'no presents' on the invite, so I got some lovely presents. You all know who you are, I think you're wonderful.

I've been teaching a bit, not just my art school class, but some childrens' workshops. One was at Canberra Museum & Gallery, for Book Week, and the other was at Belconnen Art Centre, for the school holidays.

 

These are two of the books made in the latter class, called 'Hey, don't fall into that tunnel... book!', where we made tunnel books and puppets to go with them. Aren't they cool?

OK, I have to pack up now because Best Beloved is cooking a huge curry fest and he needs me to clean up all my gumph. Some of the gumph involves an exhibition I'm helping to curate for the Canberra Bookbinders' Guild that opens on Friday. Here's the invite in case you're interested:

If you can't read it, or access any images, it says Handwritten, Handbound: Canberra Bookbinders and the Canberra Calligraphers Society exhibition, opening Friday night 19 Octoberat 6pm at the Belconnen Art Centre Gallery. It runs to the 11th of November. I'm on the local ABC radio station (666am) that same Friday talking about it at about 4:20 if you want to tune in.

 Can you feel the busy? Boring, isn't it. More cats, that's what we need.

Naughty little muffins, you see the kinds of ways they struggle to get my attention?

Ta ta for now, hopefully not for so long this time.

P.S., a reminder that if you want me to send you one of my e-newsletters, which should come out more regularly than these blogposts, subscribe by clicking here.

Time and concentration in Melbourne

Phew, it took me three full days to start feeling 'normal' again after my Melbourne trip. So tired! And a weird fuzziness like I'd had a migraine, without the migraine. Maybe I do have something lurking in my system, or maybe I'm getting old and just pushed myself too hard after the gastro. Either way, ageing sucks, doesn't it?

Anyway, I spent those three days submerged in Lev Grossman's The Magicians and The Magician King (not finished that one yet). AWESOME! Hipsters with magic using heavy and playful references to Narnia, Potter, Earthsea, LOTR, and other fantasy novels. Fabulous way to flop around.

So: Melbourne. I'm off the tram (obviously), had a lovely time. I always wish I could split myself into parts when I'm travelling on public transport in Melbourne, so that I could jump off at different spots and do all the things I see, and then meet up that evening and compare notes. It didn't help that it was Moomba weekend, lots going on between Carlton and St Kilda on that particular trip.

Adventure and Art was a fantastic afternoon, organised by the Baillieu Library's Susan Millard and her team. The exhibition lingers until May, so do go and have a look if you're hanging around the Uni of Melbourne. You won't see any of my work in the exhibition; in fact the only woman in the show is (rightfully, if there had to only be one) Carolyn Fraser of Idlewild Press. A shame, but there you go. As compensation, I suspect, I was given a whole half an hour to talk about myself, how I got into printing, and how the fine press book fits into all of my other activities, such as teaching book arts, etc.

I managed to fill the time easily, talking about my Summer School class and the various reasons why people, in my experience, want to play with letterpress these days. I also talked about my journey into printing, which gave me the chance to sing the praises of Alec Bolton (Brindabella Press) and Petr Herel (Graphic Investigations Workshop, Canberra School of Art) and talk about the way one was a fine printer who focused on Australian art & writing and the other was an artist who taught fine printing in his curriculum. Alec, unfortunately, is dead, but Petr is very much alive and was in the audience and was very happy to be remembered.

As far as the last bit goes, I unpacked the 'etc' a bit and bluntly stated that for most people (including me for the last few years) the fine press book doesn't fit into their activities, because fine printing in book form takes time and concentration, which is a luxury in a working life, and this is why I've been printing broadsides and making less intense books. While I was saying these things, though, I walked them through the pages of the one fine press book I've made that I really, really love (because it was totally mine to design and produce, without outside pressures): Transmigration.

It seemed to go down well. Peter Vangioni from the Kowhai Press in Christchurch was the only other speaker with 30 minutes up his sleeve, and he said wonderful things and tragic things about being a printer, and being a printer and gallery curator in an earthquake zone.

There was also a panel made up of Carolyn Fraser, Andrew Schuller and Alan Loney. I'd been to visit Carolyn and her studio that morning, and we'd had a fantastic catch-up, talking about life, the universe and letterpress. When she stood up and gave her ten minute's worth of opinion, it was sharp and pointy and dense with things that I hope the audience took away to mull over and digest, including the notion that Melbourne needs a public access printing space, based on the model of the NY Centre for the book. Not like the Melbourne Museum of Printing, where the facilities are barely held together with string and chewing gum, but a solid, well-organised, supported space where people can do courses to gain competency and then can use the space on a time-share basis to produce their own work. Come to think of it, we have a role model in Australia already : Megalo, here in Canberra. So let's get that thought in action: Melbourne Centre for Printing & the Book (or something like). Pity the Wheeler Centre missed the ball in that respect.

Andrew, an ex-Oxford University Press man, discussed the blurred margins of fine press printing: that it's hard to distinguish is something is finely printed as a fine press book or as an artist's book, but it's easy to tell when something isn't. And perhaps that's the only distinction that should be made? Why do we need lines drawn in sand? The artists in the room nodded.

Alan is the curator of the show, a master printer in his own right, and one who is unashamed of drawing those lines, even though many of his own poems have been finely printed as artists' books by other people. He spoke eloquently about his passion for the craft and his hopes for its future.




Afterwards there was time to look at the books, complete with nibbles and drinks before the next batch of words, speeches by Andrew and Alan again (but not repetitive, which was lovely). I got the chance to talk to many, many people about many, many things, and I'm sure a lot of it will return to me in time.

After that those who spoke or organised had dinner together at University House in an amazing room:



Surrounded by faces like these in the wall panels:



Aren't they beautiful? Apparently some man skinned his room in Paris & brought it all over to Australia, where it now resides in this room. Amazing. I should be able give you more details, we were all talking about it, but by that part of the day I wasn't really able to hold any more information. I do know that Peter V and I were sitting with our backs to a Breughel painting, which blew him away. He kept turning around and exclaiming. I was watching the faces, there were a lot of them.

Other things I did during my stay: I spent just under 3 hours with the work of William Kentridge, which was stupendous. I was there on the first morning of the exhibition, so I was maybe the 50th person in? I know that I was never in any room with more than 4 people, and most-times I was by myself in a space, and I know that will never happen again in the run of the exhibition.

I also, on the way to the airport on Saturday, spent time in the State Library's new show, Love & Devotion: From Persia and Beyond, an exhibition of Persian illuminated books and Persian-influenced books sourced from the Bodleian Library and the SLV. It is stunning, absolutely sumptuous.

So now it's (slowly) back to the grind, getting Material World together and making some books. Time and concentration, that's what it's all about.

Daily life begins

Phew, what a week that was!

I've just written my website account of Impact7, here's where I get to be extra-curricular.

I'm sitting in my studio with the far-side rollerdoor up, waiting for my new (old) wooden map drawers to be delivered. They were supposed to come yesterday, then 10:30 today, then 12:00 today... hopefully soon, anyway. I can't do any print work until they come, because all the flat spaces are covered in the stuff that was in my metal map drawers and they're being taken away for sale at the same time. So I'm catching up on my online writing in the meantime.

It's the first day of my new life, the one where I'm only working at the uni one day a week, and the rest of the week is for my studio. A bit scary, and I'm not sure how it will go financially, but for a short time I have the pay from my recent primary school residency and that should keep me going for a little while once I stop fitting out the studio!



Here's Padge, sitting in the shadows of my new/old double glass doors; they're ready to be installed by my friend Mark in front of the existing rollerdoors so that I can have light and air and not wind and leaves.

AH! Finally, at 1:15, the cabinets come. Dammit, they put the more solid one on top of the wobbly one; I'll have to do some argy-bargy with them once Best Beloved comes back from his business trip (the next 3 weeks in this house are like revolving doors, with each of us coming in & out and always missing each other!).

Here they are, being carried in by the two roughnuts hired by the auction-house. I observed that the guy at the back might lose a toe if he wasn't careful, and he said 'yeah, I've got me Taiwanese Working Boots on'. Ah, yes, well.

So now I have lots of drawers! Huzzar, watch me fill them up.

And lots of photos of my Melbourne jaunt, over at Flickr.

I had a lovely conference, helped by the fact that a friend had let me stay in her empty Melbourne flat for the week, and it was only one tram and one train stop from the venue.

Here's the best thing that happened to me during the week (closely followed by dinners and lunches with other friends):



Isn't he gorgeous? This is the little bundle of joy belonging to Laura (Lucy Tartan) and Dorian (Arty Fufkin), Leonard. I skipped a session so that I could cuddle him and he drooled all over my hand, and I treasured that drool all afternoon when I got back to the grind. He's a dear old soul,.



Here's his more serious side.

After the conference I stayed on for a couple of days.



This is the closest I got to the Grand Final: cupcakes in a show window. The whole day I was in denial about the football, which I figured was my birthday prerogative, it being my birthday that Saturday (all the fours, 44. I think my years are finally outnumbering my chin hairs). I went to a meeting of the Print Council of Australia, and after the meeting we drove around to a few exhibitions and had lunch at the gorgeous Abbotsford Convent. The city was eerily quiet; the last gallery was close by the MCG and I could hear the crowds and the whistles. At one point we were trying to find a taxi for someone to get to the airport. We found what we thought was a taxi rank, but it turned out to be a row of parked empty cabs outside a pub!

After all that I caught a tram up Nicholson Street and went to Gerald's Bar in North Carlton to meet up with a few blogging types.* The blogcall was: Elsewhere, Another Outspoken Female, Will Type for Food and Lexicon Harlot. Also joining us was an old lovey I'd lost from my past until we discovered each other on Facebook, which surprised the hell out of me (the FB bit, not the meet-up) because he's not a computery type. He happens to be a friend of WTFF Tim, and this fact pleases the hell out of me in a very Douglas Adams probability factor way. He brought his children along, and a good time was mostly had by all, I hope. Pol and the kidlings couldn't stay for dinner; AOF took us to a fab little Asian place down the road (it being her locale) and true to a foodie, the food was excellent. (Phew, you passed that test, G :) )

The next morning (Sunday) I was determined to go to the Camberwell Markets. Lucky that I was so detemined, because it was the daylight savings changeover, and I would normally stay in bed. I forced myself up, got out to the road, and lo, the trams weren't running for another hour. Bugger it, I thought, I'll walk. So I did. It was the first rain-free day for ages, and it was only 2 km.

The reason why I wanted to go so much is because of Michelle de Kretser and The Lost Dog. The markets are something Michelle would talk about both in the book and in her phonecalls to me. It's been years since then, but I got talking to Deborah Williams at the conference (one of her dog prints is on the cover) and that got me thinking about the book, and the markets, and I really wanted to go.

I wasn't disappointed. They are great markets, and I found all sorts of things. I came away with little funky hair clips, a magnifying glass, some postcards (of Canberra in the 1960s!)... yes, lots of LITTLE things that will slip easily into an already overstuffed bag for the plane. And then I found these.



OOOOHHHHHHHHHHHH. I loved the one on the left, mainly for the liquid-paper splatters all over the top ribbon cover. Then I saw that the right-hand one had a lovely hard case. I walked past them, and five minutes later came back. How much for the right-hand one?

$35.

I went all wobbly. It didn't seem dodgy, just didn't have a ribbon, but that's easily fixed (scroll down that link). So I bought it, gentle reader, and lugged it back on the tram to the flat. And then proceeded to rearrange EVERYTHING so that I could carry it in on with me on the plane. Hold that thought.

On the way out of the market, I stopped and talked to one of the stallkeepers about something and noticed his dog, who is obviously a seasoned vet at these markets:



When I found out his name is Gus, I went all wobbly again. You see, Michelle's dog, who was the inspiration for the story, and who is featured on the cover of the book, was called Gus. And that's why I was at the market. Man, some days are just like novels.

I need to stop, only because I've spent most of the day on this computer and my new drawers are calling out to me... but I just wanted to bring you back to my typewriter. I now have 5 typewriters, all with their own charms. This newest one gave me a big surprise when I got home. I opened the lovely hard case, and in the little pocket inside the top lid, was the ribbon, nicely wrapped in a freezer bag, and THE MANUAL AND THE 1984 RECEIPT OF PURCHASE. I am very fond of 1984, it was a year to remember, not always for good reasons. But I do find that most of my significant objects were made or marked for years that have personal significance for me, and I guess this one joins the club. And was a bargain to boot. I haven't seen a working typewriter under $100 for a couple of years now. Yay! Must have been the birthday germs.









*I have to apologise formally to anyone I didn't contact while I was in Melbourne. It was a very intense week, and energy levels fluctuated. I knew it would be so, which is why I issued such a lame blogmeet callout. I also meant to ring people, that didn't happen. I'm back in February, so let's do something then!

wot i dun lately

I've been a bit busy. I really, really miss having a decent camera, and I haven't really made enough money to warrant buying a new one. Want to help me buy a new camera? Visit the Duckshop! Sigh.

Anyway, what follows is from my iPhone camera. It doesn't have a flash.



Breathing, on the front step late one afternoon, sucking back a cold one with a mate. Cockies flew raucously overhead. Good times.



Watching and listening as legend Professor Jack Golson talked up legend Professor John Mulvaney at the launch of Prof Mulvaney's new book of memoirs. I used to be Prof M's secretary, and am very proud to be excellent friends with him and his lovely wife, Liz. It was a launch stuffed to the gills with interesting people, and the stoopid Coop Bookshop only brought one box of books along, which sold out within minutes. Prof rang them the next day, enraged, and demanded that anyone who requested one in the next couple of days got them at the Launch discount price ($10 off). I went in to order one and lo! they did so. Heh.



I've been working on a catalogue design for Thomas Middlemost of the Charles Sturt University Wagga art collection, for a print folio exhibition called Fair & Square. Due to all sorts of printing house bumbles, the printing & binding was completed on the morning of the opening, so I had to spend Friday morning sticking on enough of the custom-printed letterpress ampersand stickers to get through the opening & initial mailout, then I picked up the boys and we personally delivered the catalogues to Wagga CSU (we were going to the opening anyway, but hadn't planned to be couriering the boxes!)



There were 14 different ampersands used for the stickers, so choosing a copy was a bit like a personality test, great fun at the opening itself.



All the boxes in the boot of my car. And that's the last photo of the event that I took! I forgot to get my camera out the rest of the evening... It was a Rona Green-organised print folio involving at least 30 printmakers, with some of them at the opening, and then a lovely dinner at a restaurant called Magpie Nest. Rona gave us all badges at the opening, so we felt like a real gang.



Next day I visited the Wagga Regional Gallery where I saw the excellent Recycled Books travelling exhibition (not to be missed! Probably coming to a regional gallery near you) and then was shown the aftermath of their flood damage. They have to replace the floor of the entire main gallery... ay ay ay!



And then we did some op and antique shopping. Bumblebee found a dinner suit that fitted, I found a few old books and tins, and Best Beloved bought a vintage apple peeler and corer.

We only stayed the one night. Apart from the few days I spent being born there, that's the longest time I've ever spent in Wagga. It's a nice town. It has almost as many roundabouts as Canberra!







Today, Bumblebee and I learned how to make rice balls, thanks to this post. We fell in love with them in NZ, and you can't get them at Canberra sushi shops. They are such handy lunches.



At the same time, the cats helped BB with the washing.

I went to the studio and caught up with a printing fellow I met in Dunedin, John Holmes of the Frayed Frisket Press (in town for a medical conference), and then played with the wonderful wood type that I asked printmaker Ros Atkins to engrave for me:





Apologies for the quality of those last shots. I really miss the macro bit of my camera.

I also rearranged some of my type from large loose cheap typecases to nice condensed cases within cabinets, in a desperate bid to declutter:





Tomorrow I'm teaching my book class how to make a hardback sketchbook in one four-hour class. Normally it's a tight but do-able class, but I've got a very large class, with a few dreamers, so wish me luck...

Akaroa at the end

Hello from lovely Akaroa, on the Banks Peninsula just out of Christchurch.

Best Beloved has flown home to attend his Big School (he's doing a degree in Social Governance or some such ponciness) and Bumblebee and I are having three lovely days just hanging, based at a purple-painted 1865-built backpackers hostel called Chez La Mer. It's the nicest place we've stayed to date: big comfy beds with hot water bottles, not electric blankets (we hates them, preciouses), fully-stocked kitchens, games, books, no tv, free bikes to ride, free wireless and best of all, a pub right next door with a pool table (Bumblebee is ecstatic).


Here I am, sitting with my laptop, in the little courtyard that comes with our room at the front of the hostel, watching the people in the street, while inside B does some homework (it's amazing what you can get out of him when bribed with games of pool).

We've had two earthquake aftershocks: yesterday at 6.30am, which apparently I slept through but B didn't, and one at 3.40am today, which I felt but he slept through, so we're even. Everyone here is over them, and can't wait for them to stop, and I can't say I blame them. Christchurch is looking quite orderly again, but every now and again there are cordoned off areas with piles of rubble, or shops with half their walls gone. It's quite dramatic (and byrd, if you're reading, I'm taking lots of photos and have lots of Demolition ideas...)

Otherwise, we've been in complete rest mode. We got here late in the afternoon on Wednesday, after I completed my last commitment for the residency: an interview with Radio New Zealand for their Arts on Sunday program (will be aired sometime soon, they'll let me know when, and also the podcast link). After that, with BB gone and all done, I switched off completely. We put our bags in our room and went for a walk down to the harbour (took all of five minutes) and took in the serenity, watched over by a full moon. Bumblebee was overwhelmed by the beauty of it all and had a surge of energy and joy -- he started leaping around like a spring lamb and expounding loudly about the loveliness and peacefulness until I reminded him that he was actually destroying it all and maybe he should leap joyfully around quietly? Heh.

We've seen a LOT of spring lambs, which is the best thing about travelling in NZ at this time of year. The freaky weather is balanced by the gorgeousness of lambs either lying peacefully on the grass with their mothers, covorting in twos and threes around the paddock, or suckling, tails spinning happily as they drink. It's so life-affirming to watch them.

There is an abundance of nice shops and galleries around Akaroa, probably because it's an easy daytrip from Christchurch, and people come here to buy nice things and eat good food and then go home again. When the locals hear that you're staying a few days, they love you. In my case, when I tell them that I came here for less than a day 20 years ago and was determined to spend more time here, well, I'm being treated like royalty. If you get here, don't miss LAVA Gallery, full of fun quirky locally-made things. I found myself a wonderful pendant carved from the base of a beer bottle. Very NZ-looking and personally less problematic than buying a piece of Maori greenstone or bone (I don't feel comfortable wearing them, it's not my culture, although B bought himself a lovely piece to wear and loves it).

The food is good too; I had a chicken, cranberry and brie pizza at the pub the other night, and it was great, although NOTHING beats the blue cod fish pie I had at Stewart Island. I can still smell and taste it in my head, and the memory will sustain me for years. last night we cooked for ourselves and ate it while playing Scrabble. I've almost whipped Bumblebee into a worthy opponent, although he needs a lot of help with word ideas and spelling. We're pretty even opponents at Chess, which makes games fun. No tv (and an additional Gameboy ban) means that we're taking the time to read and play together, and we're having a lot of fun.

Today we're going on a harbour cruise to see the local attraction: rare Hector's Dolphins, which are very little dolphins that love to play around the boats and check out the hoomins. Hopefully we'll see some penguins too.

Tomorrow we head back to Christchurch, where we're going to stay in a hostel that used to be the jail, sharing a cell together! Should be fun. I'm also going to visit a fellow letterpress printer, see how his equipment fared in the quake, and also pop in to see one of the Aged Poet's sons, who plays in the orchestra there.

Then we'll do some creative packing and fly home on Sunday. That's unless I chicken out and stay here. Sigh. It's tempting, but the government is crap (have you heard the latest scandal?) and I like my Canberra life quite a bit, I suppose. :)

Unless I get the chance on Saturday night (although B wants me to take him to a movie), I think the next chance or inclination to post will be when I get home. We've got one of those flights that means we'll have to move fast between the international leg and the domestic one, so there won't be much sitting around except for at the beginning when we're waiting for our first flight.

So, o my goodness, it's all winding up. What a fun time it's been. Must do it again sometime!

(I'll post more photos sometime soon, just haven't had a chance to do the latest batch!)

POSTSCRIPT

The cruise was WONDERFUL. We saw rare white-flippered penguins (very little penguins), and lots of lovely fat basking fur seals, and right at the end (just when the guide was starting his 'oh well, that's wild animals for ya' apology speech, we saw the Hector's Dolphins. Beautiful little lithe and slightly frilly dolphins, playing coy at first, then getting into the swing of things and playing up for us, leaping and doing backflips.

And -- I made a joke a few weeks ago about the likelihood of running into people we know in NZ, but it was only half a joke -- we were on the boat with an old friend from uni, whose son is in Bumblebee's year at his high school (they know each other, but don't 'hang out', so to speak). She and her partner and their three kids are doing NZ in a campervan, and, as with us, the weather hasn't been very kind to them. Mind you, today was perfect -- blue sky, warm sun, wind not too windy (although it's picking up and greying off now, a few hours later).

Finally, the boat, which was a catamaran, put on a big burst of speed to get back on time, and we charged through wind speeds of about 100km. I was right at the front of the boat, with my sunnies on -- and B was inside the boat looking bemusedly on as only a patronising teenage son can do -- and my hair streaming back, holding on for dear life and loving it. It was like having a facial with Vicks Vaporub. Actually, it was every (grown-up) kid's fantasy, like hanging your head out of the car window on the freeway and not having a parent shout at you to put your head back in before it gets knocked off by a roadside sign. My hair's now a tangled knotty mess, but my cheeks are pink and I feel like a million dollars.

Awwww... do I have to come home?

Fiordland

I'm sitting in a backpackers lodge in Te Anau (and the only way I remember how to pronounce it is by activating my Laura Branigan Te Amo earworm, which has been extremely annoying), using very slow wireless, and feeling a bit disappointed.

We just went to the Info Centre to book a glowworm caves cruise for tonight, and found out that the Milford Sound road is closing tonight and won't be reopened until the weather settles out... maybe tomorrow, maybe in three days. So we might not get to see Milford Sound, which is such a shame for the boys (I've been there before) but I guess this is just one of those things when you travel to wintery places in Winter.

We're all a bit tired and snappish, but it's a result of having fun. For the last two days we've been at Stewart Island, the third Island of New Zealand, and yesterday spent the afternoon at Ulva Island, a small bird sanctuary in the inlet of the island. We've seen so many fabulous birds, including Kakas, Robins, Tui, and a large flightless beach-foraging bird (not a Kiwi) that I can't remember the name for: Weka? Weba? Something like that. I have a bird book, but it's over in the other building, and I'm just happy to be sitting right now.

We stayed at the most wonderful Bed & Breakfast, called Jo & Andy's B&B. Jo & Andy are two older people with oodles of life experience who set up a B&B to give themselves better entertainment than the TV, by the looks of it. The house is charming and stuffed to the gills with books and places to read them, and is clean but not overly clean (dusty ornaments but clean floors, which to me says conscientious but too busy to be constantly dusting). Jo is more business-like, and is obviously The Boss in an understated way, and Andy is the handy dreamer, who builds his own fish-smoker in the back yard (I can still taste his home-made smoked salmon) and adores talking to the visitors as he rolls a cigarette (smoked outside) about anything from world politics through to last month's hit movies, all with a big grin on his face, and frequent and joyful use of the word COOL. Once we got talking, we kept talking. It was great. He also makes his own bread, and provides a hearty breakfast every morning of oatmeal & muesli and yogurt mixed with banana and blueberries, followed by a poached egg on his homemade toast. Yum.

Andy is also a masseur, and yesterday afternoon I got one of the best massages I've ever had. That was after Ulva Island, which I'd been thinking of giving a miss because the morning had been a sheet of rain, but Andy told me that the weather there is so variable that I should 'just do what you want to do and let the weather follow you'. So we went to Ulva by watertaxi -- seeing penguins swimming in the water next to the boat -- and once we got to Ulva, the sun came out. Good old Andy.

That's it for now. I've got lots of beautiful photos, but will wait until I get to more stable internet before I upload them. Hope you're all having a fun time where you are too!

The earth moved for me

I woke at 4.30 this morning with the bed moving as if I were very, very drunk. I had been to the pub the night before, and I had consumed a fair bit of cider, but not enough to give me bed-spins. Then I noticed the wardrobe swaying, and I realised that I was experiencing an earthquake. Just a wee one, although it was a bit scary.

This morning the town is abuzz and Christchurch is trashed. On the day that Best Beloved and Bumblebee are flying to it. Oh crap.

They haven't left home yet, and they haven't heard if their flight is cancelled. They won't until later in the day, because Christchurch Airport have only cancelled flights until midday until further notice. Still, CRAP.

All I can do is wait. And same for them. I hope Christchurch will be ok, too. It's a bit too much excitement for this duck.

Dunedins must have calves like watermelons

I'm still alive... I've been printing up a storm, plus planning and setting. I'm now working on two posters simultaneously, letting one layer dry while I print the other, and vice versa.

Donald-the-Special-Collections-Librarian has been contacting lots of people and telling them about me and my work, so I thought it would be a good idea to put a more formal post about my project up on my website. That way, he can send them that link and they don't have to trawl through my personal shite to read about my printing.

Like this:



That's a happy used massage table, taken by a happy massaged me. An hour for NZ$30! Never underestimate the goodness of student masseurs. I'm going back again next week.

Also, this is the view from the 6th floor of the Dunedin Polytechnic (like our TAFE):



Note the low-lying cloud. This was a day that was supposed to be 18 degrees, but never got there. Being a smallish island, and being a coastal city, this area gets the most variable weather, and at the moment it seems to rain nearly every day. Isn't it pretty, though? This is looking back at the uni, and you can probably see the back of my college, next to the two high buildings on the left. Nearly all the houses you can see are student 'flats' (they don't call them group houses).

Speaking of views, check out this one:



When Dunedin people say 'I live just up the hill', they say 'just' to get you up there. Sue Wootton invited me to a night of pizza and wine at her place, but I had to walk there because her car is bung. She lives up past this amazing-looking boy's school, up and up and up. It nearly killed me, because while I've been walking all over the place, I've only been walking, I realise, on the flat bits. Dun is like a big cone, hills all around funnelling down to the flat city area, which is why the Waters of Leith rise so fast when it rains. So I walked up and got there very hot and sweaty and damp, because of course it was raining. Thank goodness for my new raincoat!

Once I was there the evening was wonderful, all homemade pizza and lovely wine and good people to talk to and amazingly beautiful house and a CAT to stroke. Absolute bliss. And a lift home.

On Saturday night I went to another gorgeous house for dinner, the home of a senior librarian who is a fabulous cook as well. More good people to talk to, and the hint of a cat but she didn't show :(

That was meant to be 'just' a walk up another hill too, and after friday night's experience I was getting a bit nervous about it, but Gillian, Donald-TSCL's best friend, dropped by the library and picked me up at the last minute, and for that she gets my utmost blessings.

So I'm being looked after admirably. I also rang Best Beloved and said

If we sold our crappy shoebox house in Canberra, we could buy a gorgeous Victorian villa in Dunedin and still have change for renovations...

And he said he'd look at the employment pages when he got here! It won't happen (don't have a heart attack, Colonel Duck) but the fact that he said it without hesitation made me fall for him all over again. I'm thinking this is a better place to come when we're old than Tasmania. At least there are good health services here, being a medical university town and all. Sigh.

I keep thinking of things to write but not when I'm writing them. It's time to go to work now, I have to print a sunset-pink underlayer today. I got blisters on my hands on Sunday from doing a grey-green underlayer using one heavy roller at high speed, so I'm going to be kinder on my hands today.

Wow, I can hear a flock of seagulls from my window, the real kind, not the ones who ran. Boom-tish! Also, disconcertingly, I think the student upstairs is having sex with someone, from the sound of the bedsprings through the ceiling. It's 8:40am. Lucky them!

Ok, must go. Things to be getting on with. Ciao.

Kia ora

Hey ho, sorry for the silence. This is the first day of wireless access for me, having jumped through many hoops and filled out one of the very first applications for access (sorry, excess) as an external visitor staying longer than 2 weeks. The university has, of course, had other medium-stay visitors, but they've never had a formal process for them. Until now. Excuse me whilst I remove my guinea-pig costume.

I wrote a post on Sunday night, on the evening of my first full Dunedin day, but haven't had the ability to upload it. So, while I'm organising my photos from the last few days, here it is:

Kia ora from Dunedin!



After experiencing my special cat alarm service (the one that wakes you half an hour before the alarm you actually set), I spent all day yesterday wrangling earcraft and earports, with my first plane at 6:40am and arriving at DUD (AirNZ’s acronym, not mine) at 7pm their time (5pm Canberra time). I was a bit knackered by the time I arrived.

My host, Donald the Rare Books Librarian of Otago University Library (say it all in one breath, please), took me to his amazingly beautiful Victorian villa on a hill overlooking the bay to have a lovely home-cooked roast dinner with his family and friends, and I managed to muster enough energy to be articulate and witty for a while, before needing desperately to go and have a lie down.



I always knew that I would be staying at one of the university’s colleges, and assumed that I would be getting just a basic student room. But no! I am in a guest room at St Margaret’s College (above), which is a posh college that has formal dress-up Sunday dinners (except this weekend, when most of the students are off on a ski trip) and gorgeous landscaping and facilities like a lush common room with a piano (that someone is playing to a small but rapt audience as I type). My room is off to one side, near the dining room, and it has its own loungeroom, small kitchenette, bathroom and bedroom with double bed! LUXURY! Am very happy.



I spent today getting to know Dunedin a little, walking in huge loops and taking photos of all the beautiful things I found, which seem to fall into some distinct categories: street art (thanks to Byrd’s influence, I notice these things now); the textures of things, such as peeling paint and flaky metal; and hand-painted typography on walls. Also the usual: nice architecture, funny signs, etc. I’m putting some photos up here, but the rest will be at flickr.



The University of Otago is beautiful, with new and fancy architecture butt-cheeked next to Scottish-influenced Victorian gems and through the whole thing flows the nostalgically-named Waters of Leith, which is running fast but low at the moment, but quite obviously (from the manmade barriers and desperate student-installed sandbank walls) when the snows melt the river rises very high. I hope I get to see that!



Tomorrow I start work in the university library, in their print studio. At first I’ll just be exploring their type collection, learning to work their presses and marshalling my army of volunteers to help me tear paper, but once I get a grip on things I’ll be designing my 7 broadsides and title page & colophon, and then working hard and fast to print an edition of 100 each while not wasting too much paper. I’m also giving a talk, maybe running a small workshop and, I was told last night, I’m being interviewed by the local paper soon.

So tonight I’m going to have a quiet one…

Heh. Turns out most nights are quiet ones, as dinner is at 5.30pm (and I've not quite caught up with being two hours in front of myself, so in my head I'm still waking at 5am and eating dinner at 3.30pm). I found out that Thursdays and Saturdays are the Big Nights Out and indeed tonight there is more student nocturnal movement than usual. The tv stations are abysmal, with no state-run station like the ABC, so they're all commercial channels, and people avoid them by getting cable. I just joined the local video store, and it has a really good range of foreign and alternative titles, so I'm now happy. Plus I can blog again, which makes me even happier.

Next time: Starting at the Print Room.

Fare thee well

OK, I'm pretty much packed and ready to go. I've finished all the little jobs I had to do, and cleaned my studio up so that my friend Nicci can sublet it from me. Now I just have to sort out my daypack, and I'm ready to fly to New Zealand first thing in the morning. My plane leaves at 6:40am, and I don't get to my destination until about 7pm. It's not a huge distance, it's just a lot of sitting around at airports.

Here's my lovely clean studio:



And here, just for the halibut, is the picture that inspired my working name:



It's a flock of flying ampersand ducks, printed in the year 2000 for an entry in the Noma Concours Illustration prize. I made a series of prints that made scenes and animals from wood and metal type. It was a proposal for a children's book, aimed at 3-4 year olds. It got an encouragement award, but it's never been published.

So, unless I get very bored at the airport tomorrow, next time I write I should be in New Zealand, learning how to compress my vowels.

See you in the soup!

The weekend that was

It's Wednesday, isn't it? I get a bit lost after long weekends. Mind you, it's been business as usual, with only my Monday class missing. Yesterday I spent all day in the studio printing a special birthday present for the Aged Poet -- she is turning 90 on Friday, and I wanted to make her a letterpress print of some of her haiku to be able to hand to anyone who comes to wish her well. When you're 90 you don't need more stuff, but you do want to give things to people. It's a present strategy I've been using with her since she turned 80!

I've also been finishing Wolf Hall, which I really enjoyed, and would feel bereft about finishing except that it is to be continued and I'll reread it again when the next one comes out. I think bereftness is felt (for me, anyway) when there is no more of that story, ever.

So. The weekend.

Cutting

Saturday was spent learning how to do woodcuts in a workshop at Megalo taught by Tasmanian printmaker Michael Schlitz, who is generous and charming and funny with his teaching, so it was a fun day.

You might be suffering the same delusion as other people that I knew at Megalo: that I know how to do all kinds of printmaking. Not so! I went through the very marvellous but thoroughly eclectic Graphic Investigations Workshop until my third year of art school, at which point the workshop was dissolved (it was very dependent upon the Head of the Workshop for direction, and when he retired, so did the workshop) and I was rudely thrust into the Printmedia & Drawing Workshop, a completely different animal. In GIW we were taught skills if the project needed them and/or the visiting artist du jour knew them. It was really the luck of the draw unless you had a definite personal agenda. You came out well versed in poetry and odd Czech filmmakers, but with whatever skills had been passed under your nose during your stay. In my case they were etching (which I loathe), drawing, monoprinting and letterpress.

So I've been trying to pick up new printing skills, hence the excursion into wood engraving last year, and the chance to do wood cuts on Saturday. for those who don't know an engraving from a cut: the former is done on the end grain, which is smooth and gives a rich, deep black, and you can cut in any direction with very fine tools; the latter is done using side planks, with coarser tools, and your cutting is strongly influenced by the grain of the wood, plus the grain is usually visible within any solid printing area.



Here is Michael, showing us his spectacular woodcuts, finding it hard to explain their meaning but happy to share how he cut and printed them, and then offering them to us at half price, but unfortunately we were all skint after paying for the course...



Here he is, sitting next to resident Megalo octogenarian Patty, who is never too old to attend a course, showing us the various ways to sharpen the tools. His tools are mouthwateringly beautiful, bought in Japan whilst learning the craft direct from the masters.



Having been busy almost to the moment I walked into the print studio, I hadn't really thought through what I would be printing. I had no s or ideas. So I laid my arm on the block and traced it a few times and then made a lot of different marks with all the tools to give myself a kind of mark sampler. Here I am, using the baren to rub the paper onto the print. The fact that you can see the print clearly through the paper is owed to the paper being Japanese, and that I have been burnishing it under newsprint for a while so that it is almost ready to peel the paper back & look at the print.

Mmm, black ink on white paper. The smell is great, and it glistens. Wet ink is so nice, and then it dries. Sigh.

Biennale Blitz

Sunday morning I got up at dawn's crack, helped by stomping Padge who KNEW I was getting up, he was just helping, and got into the car and drove to Sydney.

I'd booked a feral little room at a cheap hostel in Wooloomooloo, which turned out to be odd in the best ways (contained a shower but no loo, which was down the hall, also had a fridge and a tv, but they shared the only power point, so you had to choose whether you wanted a cold thing or a tv show or to recharge your phone) and brilliant in other ways (for a bit extra, they had parking, and the entrance back to the M5 to Canberra was only a block away and I could walk everywhere I wanted to go).

I had planned to start with Pier 2/3 then catch the free ferry to Cockatoo Island, but someone (can't remember who) in Canberra told me that the ferry ran widdershins to my plans, so I walked around to Circular Quay and joined a loooonnnnnnggg queue for the ferry. Apparently, so a nice photographer lady on the ferry we caught an hour later told me, this was the first bit of nice weather in Sydney for ages, and it was a long weekend, so expect such lines everywhere I went.

And then I got to the front of the queue and it turned out that the people who were already on the ferry each time it arrived (thus making the CQ line slower) had actually got on at Pier 2/3! GAH! I should have stuck to my original plan, I would have seen the art and then probably caught the same ferry I'd queued for all that time. I did get to see Rachel Ward walk past me (I mentioned this to Lia at the art school reception this morning and she trumped me with Ewan McGregor) and join the line, nice lady that she is, not like all the dudes who got bored and flung money at water taxis.



I've found an app for my iphone that makes my photos look like Polaroids. I loves it, I do. it made my trip lots of fun and already looking like it happened 30 years ago.

It was a beautiful day. The ferry was full of people who were all heading to one place to see art, which made for impromptu conversations that might not have happened on normal public transport. I met someone who helps organise Sculpture by the Sea, and another person, aforementioned, who is a photographer.

Cockatoo Island is, in it's own way, also beautiful. I spent as much time looking at old signs and peeling paint as I did looking at the art.





I'm going to mention the art a bit later, because I think there's a lot of dross to wade through in this Biennale, and I'd like to compile a shortlist of favs.

I walked around for most of the afternoon; I didn't bother lining up with the masses for another hour to get the free ferry back. I paid $5 and caught the rivercat and had time to wander around the Quay and through the Botanic Gardens to see the Fiona Hall and Janet Lawrence pieces before it got dark.

The Quay wasn't looking its best:



Every bin for miles looked like this, which looked very colourful next to the buskers and dancers and other tourist sites.

And the bats were ready to wake up towards the end of my walk:



That night I wandered down to the Rocks to catch a bit of Vivid:



Great stuff, except for the horrendous crowds. I fled to Chinatown, wandered around for a while, and decided that I didn't want Asian, I wanted Indian food, so I tramped up to Oxford St and fell upon a Chinese masseur who pummelled me for an hour before I ate yummy and cheap North Indian. And so to bed.

On Monday I checked out and meandered down through Wollomooloo, past a long row of homeless men basking against a sunny wall across the road from the Police station, and down a charming plaza area (probably used to be a road that was closed off) with terrace housing on either side, full of little park bits and shy cats.

I slapped my forehead with a silent DOH when I realised that Artspace wouldn't be open because it was a Monday, even though it was a holiday Monday. So I didn't get to see anything at Artspace. I did sit by the water and ate a pie with mushy peas from Harry's Cafe de Wheels for brunch. I listened to the chat around me and noticed that many people would eat and then leave their wrappers on the ground or the pylons used as seats, even though there was a fresh seaside breeze and a bin right next to them.



Consequently, the beautiful clear water next to where they sit is full of plastic forks and paper plates and eerily suspended paper napkins. Sigh.

Ok. Next I walked up to the NSW Gallery, where I never fail to see masses of artfully arranged children who betray the preoccupations of the artlessly arranged parents.

At one point I was looking at a group of people standing around a Biennale painting (there are only about 8 Biennale works at that venue) with one woman standing at the side reading the label out loud. I thought they were a tour group listening to a guide until about halfway through when the woman suddenly snapped, mid-sentence, 'YOU'RE NOT LISTENING', and all eyes whipped down to a small boy I hadn't noticed, standing next to her. Poor mite, he was trying hard to understand what Shaw's beautiful treatment of trans/mog/ri/fic/a/tion in erotic desire meant, but the painting was just so lovely, all sparkly and colourful.

And then over to the Museum of Contemporary Art, where I spent the rest of the day, and then caught a bus back to my car and drove back to Canberra.

The Art Shortlists

Don't trust my taste in art if you're heading to the Biennale, but if you want to, here's my thoughts. Bear in mind that I didn't see Artspace and Pier 2/3, and I didn't see absolutely everything at Cockatoo Island (but I gave everything a red hot go).

The buzz that is going around says that Cockatoo Island isn't as good as last time, and that the MCA is fantastic. I think the buzz is spot on.

Cockatoo Island shortlist:

AES&F, The Feast of Trimalco, building 67. Stunningly beautiful and ascerbic in its message, which is we've all gone soft.

Cao Fei, People's Limbo, building 4. Second Life with political humour. Hilarious in parts.

Amal Kenawy: My Lord is Eating his Tail, building 4. Fantastic use of contemporary dance in a fantasy about a wheelchair-bound person 'borrowing' the body of someone else. At one point the sight of a stunningly healthy physical body moving sinuously next to an empty wheelchair made my heart thump wildly.

Shen Shaomin: Summit, building 6, plus his amazing display of bonsai plants at the MCA. Waxworks of dead political idealists, with a 'dying' Fidel Castro, barely breathing, but just breathing enough to spook. The bonsai have had nothing artistic done to them, they are merely shown in the torturous contraptions that force them into desired shapes. Gobsmackingly eloquent on numerous levels.

Jemima Wyman, Combat Drag, building 3. Mandala-like collages using photos of people dressed as guerrillas, but their uniforms/costumes are devised from flannelette shirts and other Australian cultural identifiers.

FWIW, yawn:
Enough of the video-of-someone-singing-alternative-or-even-mainstream-texts-opera-style genre. There are at least four of these scattered around the Biennale. It's an interesting idea once... in a lifetime.

MCA shortlist:

I was charmed by the woman who turned up to the MCA in a full-length wedding gown, combined with short hair and multiple piercings. She enjoyed the confusion over whether she was an exhibit or not. Judging by the notebook in her hand, and the attention she paid to lots of the videos, I'd say she's an art student.



Here she is, watching John Bock's curious piece (here goes, apologies if I type it incorrectly) Fischgratenmelkstand kippt ins Hohlengleichnis Refugium (I'm not going to even attempt the accent marks).

Every single art student in the world should watch Christian Jankowski's video Live from the Inside as a theoretical text. It's a wonderful study of how artists can (or should) use the media to disseminate their ideas and how contemporary art works. He even has Kylie Kwong doing a cameo to discuss similarities between combining flavours and video editing!

Enrique Chagoya was fantastic, not so much for his paintings, but for the couple of artist's books on display.

Louise Bourgeois has a number of works in the show, the best of which, for me, were the bronze jumper sculptures.

Angela Ellworth's pioneer women's bonnets, with their beautiful but painful sheen of corsage pins are well worth seeing, as are Annie Pootoogook's sledgehammer-in-the-forehead deceptively naive drawings of contemporary Inuit life, complete with domestic violence and drinking problems.

Don't miss Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook's amazing video where she plopped three nineteenth-century high art French paintings by Manet, van Gogh and Millet in front of groups of Thai farmers and then documented their conversations about the paintings. They are so interesting and funny, and grounding.

The first work I saw as I walked into the MCA sticks in my mind: Sun Yuan and Peng Yu, with their photographic series that completely covers the walls of that first space. The artists invited 100 Filipino domestic workers in Hong Kong to take a toy grenade and photograph it in their favorite spot at their place of work, and then took a photo of each worker (from behind) and placed it next to the grenade photo. The result is awesome. I'm not sure if they really are their favorite places, or the places they'd actually like to see blown up...

There are more that I liked, and many I just thought 'meh' about; I'd love to hear if you have any of your own stand-outs.

I bought a few books on sale (one lovely one about Jan Tschishold's Penguin years), and a Biennale bag, because I love the typography design of the artwork by Jonathon Barnbrook, and some nice Haigh's chocolate from The Strand arcade for the boys.

The cats were pleased when I got home.