Greedy reading

I've been feeling a bit frail over the last few days, nothing major, just sore and tired, and pissed off with not being able to walk any faster than a steady hobble. Still, I must be grateful that I can walk at all, and get off the whinge wagon. It's still a treat to not have to do anything, and yesterday and today I decided to do what I've always loved doing -- lie in bed and read.

The book I chose was Wendy James's The Steele Diaries, a book that, I should openly state, was sent to me by the author, *not* as a review copy, but rather that if I liked it, could I tell my friends about it, as a kind of viral campaign. Of course! I love telling my friends about books I read, and if I liked it enough, I thought at the time, I'll blog about it.

I loved it. The link I gave above gives a great precis of the story, and is worth clicking. It's one of those books that sucks you in and doesn't want you to put it down. I read it in two big greedy sessions, only broken by sleep and a quick (and well-needed to escape cabin fever) hobble from car to seat excursion to the cinema to catch Brideshead Revisited before it finished.

Apart from the well-constructed plot, there are lovely references to figures from Australian art, shape-shifted just enough to be recognisable but refreshed, moved geographically and their familiarity used to add depth to the central premise -- the quandary that all creative women have to face regarding work vs family choices. It's a theme that has both local and international flavour in this book, but the most recognisable historical thread is that of the lives of John and Sunday Reed, Joy Hester and others of the Antipodean scene of the '30s, '40s and '50s. If you know their stories, this novel is rich with layers.

As far as Zelda's art was concerned, I could not help thinking of one of my favorite artist/illustrators, Wanda Ga'g, whose biography, Growing Pains, a lovely old hardback, was given to me years ago by a friend. Wandy wrote and illustrated 'Millions of Cats', which is a book no cat-lover should be without. I'm not sure if Wendy meant to evoke Wanda (who also did her own versions of Grimm Fairy Tales), but it was nice to be reminded.



Wendy also deals with one of my pet issues with modern literature and film and Hollywood in general, which is the nonsensical idea so beloved of creative/ beautiful types that two brains make a brainier or two people altered by plastic surgery will create a perfect looking child. It's the thing that made me throw The Time Traveler's Wife across the room and against the wall when [SPOILER ALERT - BUT YOU SHOULD HAVE READ IT BY NOW] they have a child and she's brilliant and has all the best of both parents and is able to manage time travel much better than her father did. GAH. DOUBLE GAH. And then I picked up the damn book and finished it because I just can't leave books unfinished.

Wendy spends a lot of the book exploring the pressures placed upon the child of two brilliant parents. Granted, Zelda turns out to be pretty special too, but in her own way. And that is not a spoiler. That is as it should be.

And since you and I have always been interested in book covers, it is worth waggling a finger here at Wendy's publishers, who gave The Steele Diaries a cover that visually slots it beside Colleen McCulloch novels in the Chicklit section. NO! Boo! There's a wealth of fabulous Australian art -- particularly prints -- out there that could have been used, or simulated, to create a rich, evocative cover that could have attracted quite a different readership. Never mind. Truth will out, as someone cool once said.

So yes, I'm recommending Wendy's book to my friends. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.


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On another note, I had a abdomen-wrenching-but-worth-it guffaw this morning listening to the Radio National News. I'll type it as I heard it:

Tributes are pouring in this morning for Joern Utzon, the man who designed the Sydney Opera House after his death at the age of 90.

Wasn't he clever!

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?

Happy anniversary, baby...

I woke up this morning at about 4.30am and couldn't get back to sleep again for hours. I eventually did sleep, and awoke to find the boys had tip-toed around me and gone to school etc. Best Beloved was glued to CNN watching the Mumbai situation unfolding, and so it wasn't until about 11am that he came in to the bedroom where I was being a Roman snotting the Greeks in Civilisation on the gameboy and said

'I just realised -- it's our anniversary!'

We looked at each other and laughed, because neither of us had done or planned anything, and I certainly didn't feel up to doing anything. So we just held hands for a while and made sure neither felt like breaking up with the other and then got on with our day, me lolling around feeling fragile and him cooking a batch of Christmas Pudding.

I'm still pinching myself about the studio turn-around; I'll give out more details about the space when I've signed the dotted line and actually held the key. Suffice to say that my going-to-sleep routine over the last few months has been to lie and imagine a phone call telling me that the space is mine, and then mentally working out where to put all my equipment; by the time I think about opening the garage door and showing the removalists where the press is, I'm asleep. The weird thing about the other day is that the phone call was so close to my dream conversation that I'm afraid that I'll fall asleep halfway through the lease signing! Heh.

So tonight, as it rains (which it, thankfully, didn't on our wedding day), we toasted four happy years, him with champagne and me with a Nudie, which is the most luxurious drink I can think of drinking at the moment, because alcohol is out and I won't touch anything bubbly (believe me, anything gas-filling or producing is torture!).

Have to go. Bumblebee is hassling me to read another chapter of The Pinhoe Egg. Ah! Domestic bliss.

Gobsmacked

Talk about putting things out to the universe...

I just got a phone call from the local government-subsidised art studios who had broken my heart a couple of weeks ago (see point 6 of the last post)... Studio Duck is GO! Some circumstances have changed, and the space is now offered to me. I think I laid an egg during the call.

Best Beloved was out picking up the boychild, as were most of my local friends, and I had to talk to someone before I popped, so I rang Bernice and hyperventilated while she told me to breathe. And shrieked along with me when I did.

Holy shit! My whole universe just revolved around me and suddenly the world is a completely different place. I've had it happen to me plenty of times with bad news, but this beats all.

I wish I could drink, I'd be having a few tonight. I'm just going to have to eat chocolate until I burst my stitches. WOOT!

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.

A post that Colonel Duck will appreciate

I wondered, before I was housebound, how I would cope with spending the time in the house looking at all the things that have needed doing for so long and not able to do anything about them. I'm the 'home handy' person in our household; BB is more the 'homemaker' type, into providing routine and nourishment. I didn't worry too much about BB's two weeks off, because he's very adept at lolling about, cooking, watching, reading and listening to the radio. But maybe I've had him wrong; maybe the lolling is legitimate tools-down time from his high-stress office lifestyle. You see, we've never had more than a week stuck at home together, we've only had time off when we've been able to do things to stave off boredom.

So imagine my excitement today when he got up, looking way better than he has for days, and started getting busy in a way I've never seen before. He didn't, as I expected, roll his sleeves up to make Dr Sista Outlaw's excellent pudding now that she's divulged the recipe, no, he went to the hardware store, and came back with stuff that fixes stuff.

Are you sitting down, Colonel Duck?

Since breakfast, he's fixed the leaking toilet that has been leaking for months, and -- gasp -- got my whippersnipper working, the one I got for my birthday back in October and was still in the box thanks to a combination of my busy-ness and inconvenient weekend rains. I can hear the buzzing out there now as he's slashing the backyard jungle. He's also weeded a huge patch of the neglected veggie garden. And now he's gone off to pick up the boy from school.

I cannot begin to tell you how joyful this makes me. There are burdens lifting from my chest! My to-do list is shrinking slightly! I'm writing this because I'm afraid that if I make too much fuss over it to BB he'll stop. He's not big on fuss. So if any of you are talking to him, don't make a fuss either. He really doesn't read this blog :)

But I just HAD to share. It's an amazing day. Colonel Duck is one of the few who will really know why.

patients, always a virtue

I'm bored. I don't feel like reading, and sitting at the computer makes me stiff and grumpy so far. I've knitted a scarf, and I'm well into the Blue Poles jigsaw. This is the third time I've done it (1: pregnant, 2: after I finished art school), and it's fulfilling the side of my brain that wants to be at the Book Stud, working. Sifting and sorting jigsaw pieces of blobs of paint is quite similar to dissing* hell type.**

A couple of days ago, Best Beloved started coughing. I made a joke that he was an illness diva, unable to watch me suffer without joining in and topping my pain. We laughed, but OH NOES! He has developed a man-flu cough. I think at least half the world knows what that means...

He is doing his best to stay nice, but he is naturally grumpy when ill (you do know, don't you?) and the best we have come up with is circling each other around our tiny house and trying not to cross paths too often. He is very worried that I might get the cough, and I'm grateful that he's thinking like this, as I sneezed for the first time a day or so ago and discovered the pain of abdominal paroxysm. A cough would indeed be hell.

I have, for a long time, been saying that when (when! I'm refusing to say IF) we expand our house, we should have separate bedrooms. It's always troubled BB, who seems to think that if we don't share our bed our marriage will crumble, unlike me, who thinks that, along with the dishwasher we bought as a wedding present, it can only strengthen our relationship. Well, last night we -- he -- pulled out the queen-size airbed from the garage, moved the loungeroom around, and we set up an alternate bed. I took the airbed for various reasons, one being that it's much more comfortable than our bed (and, I discovered last night, I can sleep sideways on it and it supports my stitches beautifully), and another being that I could watch tv in bed and go to bed as late as I wanted without huffs of nagging tiredness from the sleep nazi usually next to me. I love that man, I do, but he's dreadful in bed (on one level, anyway).

So both of us had a lovely sleep last night, and I greeted him this morning to find a man halfway on the road to Damask-us, much more willing to think upon the separate rooms debate. Hooray! One small step for me, etc. I'm thinking of staying on the airbed for a while, because of that nice support it gives me.

And he's still doing a good job of looking after me, as well as himself. Bumblebee is pretty much doing his own thing, playing with his stuff and chatting (loudly) to his friends on the phone.

This afternoon we all lolled around the lounge and watched Mon Oncle, a film that delights us all nearly as much as Tati's Monsieur Hulot's Holiday. I especially like the trip-traps of every female's high heels, which add to the film in a vaguely similar way that the sound of a typewriter adds to the film Atonement.

Afterwards Bumblebee and I watched Classic Albums on ABC2 which was exploring Stevie Wonder's Songs in the Key of Life, certainly one of my favorite albums. SW has always intrigued me; how can someone who can reach such heights of brilliance also get down to such depths of mediocrity? I mean, take someone like Billy Joel: you can draw a distinct line at the point in which his career turns to mush -- Christie Brinkley. With Michael Jackson, his career deteriorates as his face does, in a steady curve. What's Stevie's excuse? Meeting Paul McCartney? Hanging with Michael Jackson? Any opinions?

Hmm. Anyhoo, back to the jigsaw. I'm certain I'll be bored enough to start doing something creative soon, but so far the braincells just haven't regenerated enough after the big sleep at the hospital. I am enjoying this cold snap we're having, because it's always nicer feeling housebound in a fluffy dressing gown and slippers, don't you think?






* putting back into the type cases: DISTRIBUTE, not DISRESPECT.
** letterpress that has been set and forgotten, often for years, sometimes jumbled up or bumped, sometimes of different fonts.