gooseflesh

Remember the Xerox Drawings

Have a look at these.......

 David Hockney's iPhone drawings

Found via Lucinda at Cobalt Violet

Prussian Blue and interesting accidents

Using preloved tapestry wools can mean a limited palette. When I'm restricted in the colours I have available to use........interesting accidents happen. Colours I would not normally put together sing out to be part of the composition.

Linnaeus Project wip and quandong fruit (Elaeocarpus grandis).

Photo taken on my very dry bird bath with fleshy leaves of tumeric sprouting in the background.

Quandong fruit and its red leaves. That reminds me of a lecture I'm going to on Thursday..... Andy Goldsworthy  (the master of leaf arrangement) at the Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane. Yippee!!!

Linnaeus Project wip.

Bench Monday and woolly polyps between the toes.

Linnaeus Project

Branching has been taken down and will be moving to Melbourne in January, 2010. It was a great opening night and all the work from the different artists complemented each other. 

Now I can concentrate on finishing the Linnaeus project. Phew!! So much to do and so little time.

I took photos of some of the various components....

How they all come together will be a puzzle.

Thanks to everyone for leaving comments. Typepad has a technical problem of some sort meaning I don't get any notification when visitors add a comment. Please know that Iove your feedback. 

The fungus of immortality

靈芝 

Ling zhi, in Chinese, means "herb of spiritual potency". It's also a Chinese symbol of longevity. Also known as Ganoderma lucidus in taxonomy.

  

This little crocheted experiment reminds me of a mushroom.

Coloured Figures of English Fungi or Mushrooms, James Sowerby, 1797, London.

Branching

All welcome. Please come and have a look and say hello!

Life in a rotten log

A favourite book title!

Fungi and other microorganisms break down the rotten logs. A giant web, branching in all directions, like mycelium. Cellulose...... a long chain made by nature.

 

Orange polypore.

The first clumsy attempt at making rope, from a weedy looking plant. It got thinner and thinner. A bracket fungi found on a rotten log. It's tough and leathery.

Beautiful Japanese rope used in bamboo fencing.

Water hyacinth cord.

Hemp cord.

Thoughts of branching of algae and coral have changed to thoughts of branching mycelium.

Morelia spilota, the carpet python

It's very hot, dry and windy. No rain for three and half months...... no words today, just images!!!

My new scythe. 

So much grass everywhere.

 

My new skirt.

Yesterday's harvest.

Mounting components onto fabric. 

Highlight........ 2m carpet python Morelia Spilota  in the grass. Stunning!!!!!

A Vibrant Palette

A vibrant palette in the colours of the rainbow. Glorious! A wonderful new commission has come to me. It will be big and bold.

 

  

I'm naming it the Linnaeus project. It will be big, approximately 60 x 60 cm and made entirely from preloved tapestry wool.

The hook is sizzling at the moment. I'm also trying to consolidate years of little experiments into whole larger pieces. Much of the challenge is working out how to mount and display them. I hope to include these pieces in an exhibition by the name of "Branching" at the Gaffa Gallery in Sydney in October.

So it's head down and tail up for the next few months!

Inspired, frog, boulder

I have been visiting all the local libraries and have found some interesting books. One especially.........

Inspired. How creative people think, work and find inspiration. 

Dorthe Nielsen and Kikki Hartmann. BIS Publishers. Amsterdam 2006.

ISBN 90-6369-110-6

36 creative people each talk about: 

Inspiration

Working environment

Working process

Motivation

Reading 

Most inspiring person

You can flick through it here  

Reading this makes me ponder why and how I make stuff. A little cluster coral came off the hook yesterday.

Cluster Coral, 2009

Preloved tapestry wool.

8 cm diameter, 2.5cm high

Lots of incomplete little experiments came out of boxes and I sorted them and played with them for a while. It would be good to try and tie them all together somehow. They are all part of the same frenzy. They belong together.

Revisiting old friends.

It's about collecting and sorting..... mmmhhh!!!!!

This little green guy is less than an inch. I spotted him whilst watering my newly planted rainforest trees (about 250 of them). From paddock to rainforest... yes, in my lifetime I hope.

Found time to stand on a volcanic boulder too.

Ha!!

A little bit of progress has been made on this piece. 

Last week I went back down to Sydney to appear on "Mornings with Deborah Cameron", 702 Local ABC Radio. She was hosting the "Knit-in" and I did a demonstration showing how to make plastic bag yarn and talked about my work. 

I'm back and itching to finish a myriad of projects.

New tools and a nest

The newest piece is beginning to take shape. The final form it takes is not apparent at this stage but the same archetypal shapes come back to me again and again. Are they hard-wired or have they been imprinted on my brain after years of looking at cell structure through a microscope? The plastic bag yarn is becoming finer and the stitches more uniform. Lots of practise and increased neuromuscular wiring has made the medium and technique very familiar and the fingers are dancing quicker than ever.

Tentacles perhaps?

A little nest, the first found here. The eyes are rehearsed in spotting this delicate structure,

and dear Lucy (a sight hound) has spotted YOU! 

At the local market I found some old tools.......... 

a net making needle,

and a drawknife.

I want to learn how to make rope/cord from the abundant plant material here. How to lash sticks together and how to thatch. What shape the new projects take is anyone's guess.

臥虎藏龍

We went for a drive on Sunday and passed this massive grove of bamboo. I stood in front of it to show the scale of it. It reminded me of the wonderful fighting sequence in Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (臥虎藏龍).

 

On the topic of things Chinese, the special "Ocean" issue of little thing  magazine arrived from China today. It features an interview I did with Jie Zhou. I'm thrilled to bits. The images look very beautiful on the white background. I just wish I could read Mandarin. 

Living on the edge.........of a crater

The portal to the universe has returned and there's so much to report. I've missed my connection with everyone. It's good to be back. The move was smooth but long and exhausting. Now that I have more or less settled in, my camera and plastic bags are resurfacing from a box.

 

I've left a temperate climate and now live in a subtropical climate. It's bright and sunny and warm during the day but very chilly at night. Sunflowers grow here in the middle of winter.

A friend, from a local sugarcane farm, brought me some beautiful orange plastic bags back from a trip to Berlin, as well as tangellos from his garden. Such sunny colours. 

Also new creatures....... strange calls at night and a certain amount of destruction after a nocturnal feeding frency!

This snoozy, baby red-belly black snake was in the compost heap. Yikes! I wonder where it's mother is. Note to self: start wearing gloves when gardening.

 

So much rain has fallen here in the last couple of years and the staghorn ferns are thriving. Two of my favourites survived the drought. I used to cart buckets of shower-water out to them when the water was scarce. Now the tanks are full.... and the showers luxuriously long. This one is growing on a big basalt boulder, shot out of the old volcano millions of years ago. The branching fertile fronds are full of brown spores.

 

In an attempt to retain the gene pool of the surrounding rainforest and revegetate the land, I have been madly collecting seeds and hope to be able to germinate them. 

These black seeds came from the loofas (in the vegie patch) I harvested last week.

Straight off the withering vine......

 

.....peeled and seeds removed. Ready for scrubbing!!

The kookaburras are laughing and the horses are being led out of the stable across the road. The sun will be up soon. I'd better catch a bit of sleep so that I'll be ready for another glorious day. It's good to be back here. 

Bleached Coral Garden

The preparation and packing for the big move to Northern NSW is taking up a lot of my time and energy. I have managed to do some work on my Bleached Coral Garden. It's made from paper yarn. The yarn is lovely to work with having very different properties to the plastic bag yarn. One interesting quality is that it can be shaped using a little pressure from the fingers. I like the ivory white too. Note to self..... pieces made from paper in the future, when the dust has settled.

 

                                                     Photo: Tigger Newling

Bleached Coral Garden, 2009

Helle Jorgensen

Paper

17 x 21 cm

Happening simultaneously:

An interview with Little Thing a Chinese magazine. To be published in July, in a special issue focusing on the ocean. Thank you Jie Zhou for your interest.

Trash Menagerie, an exhibition of 30 improbable works of art created from trash, including my plastic sea creatures. At the Peabody Essex Museum's interactive Art & Nature Center, Salem, Massachusetts, USA. June 20, 2009 through May 2010. 

Plastic Detritus III , has been included in the CPM National Print Award at the Tweed River Regional Gallery, Murwillumbah. May 15 to June 21, 2009.

Packing up my studio has been (sort of) fun. I flicked through some old sketchbooks and had a little giggle. My collections of driftwood, sponges, shells, bones, bird's nests and plastic detritus is massive and safely packed into boxes and boxes and more boxes. 

Back to packing.......... 

Oh I'm feeling good

Utopia beckons.........

A dream I've had since I was a small girl is coming to fruition. The boxes are being packed and are on their way to my slice of paradise. The little red house will soon be my permanent home. Oh! I'm feeling good.......

Joanne Woodward

An image from one of my favourite books which I found tossed on the side of the street during council clear-out many years ago. Jump Book, Philippe Halsman, Andre Deutsch, London, 1959. Available here

Feeling Good, Nina Simone

Found at dear dearada .

Work in Progress on Location

As usual many projects have been started and few have been finished. That's the way I like to work. Bouncing around from project to project, hoping somehow they are all connected because they originate from the same brain. It's difficult and overwhelming sometimes to keep track and meet deadlines. It feels as if the projects are swirling around and it requires a moment of focus to pull them together. There is a clear path in the chaos. The following images are pieces which will be part of a bigger piece which I'm entering into an art prize.... deadline looming!

 

Shot on location on my favourite magazine World of Interiors. I have been collecting this journal for more than 25 years and every issue continues to inspire.

Collecting, this compulsion for multiples has been on my mind lately. Another post......later

The Incredible Print Show

Some framed and unframed prints from the Plastic Detritus series. They are part of The Incredible Print Show at the Artstream Gallery, Rochester, New Hampshire, USA. The Exhibition runs from May 1 - June 27. 

50 artists 100s of prints.

I wish I could be there for opening night. 

Thanks Susan for including me in the show.

Lucy Lubilator

Lucy and I at wonderful Culburra. 

Her coat is shiny because she eats sardines a lot!

Accidental Art

Lint...... what can I say?

Lisa Hannigan performing "Pistachio"