Bit of india ink, bit of pen, bit of brush, and a bunch of this new grey watercolor ink …
10
Feb 10
The All-New Adelaide Art Festibal
It’s Festival/Fringe time in Adelaide, and somewhere the ads must be targeting the primary school set.
My daughter announced this evening as I untied her new ballet skirt from the foot of her bed (where it had been hanging like a big pink flag): “I need that for an art festibal I’m having. Also, can I have back that fireworks painting I made you? I need that for the festibal too.”
I got her to put it off until tomorrow at least, or possibly the week-end — I think we’ll need a little time to pull off a one-family festival. Stay tuned.
08
Feb 10
Jumping the gap
Sometimes it’s really annoying seeing all the exciting things going on overseas and not being able to access the info, materials or workshops you might need to get you going.
Last year when I was looking for interesting art goings-on in Southern California, I met artist Chris Cozen. The timing was wrong to attend any of her workshops, but I wound up catching her at her studio for a visit between her teaching gigs. She was astoundingly generous, showing me examples of her artwork and delivering an inspiring mini-tutorial with her arsenal of Golden acrylic media, complete with a bag o’ swag.
I’m still playing with the goodies, have bought more, and am processing the inspiration I picked up during my visit. Well, I’ve just discovered that Chris is now teaching online workshops with her collaborator Julie Pritchard. If you’re interested in collage, transfer, layering and colour, have a look — this is a great way to narrow the international knowledge gap!
03
Feb 10
End of the backyard bounty
Peaches, grapes and figs
Late summer, last of the backyard harvest (Diana mini, Kodak CN 400)
03
Feb 10
Ce n’est pas possible
I was at a friend’s shed tonight — she gets the girls together every so often to make crafty stuff and drink wine and chit chat—and the woman sitting next to me said the most extraordinary thing.
She said, “I’m so sick of that song on the radio, that 100 Million Fireflies or whatever it is, have you heard that?”
I blinked a couple of times. “100,000?” I asked her. She nodded. “Fireflies?” Nodding.
“Magnetic Fields?”
Now she looked a little blank. “I don’t know who it’s by. The kids love it.”
“Twee voice?” I asked, warbling winily. “I went uuuup to the forest and caaaaawt 100,000 fireflies—”
“Yes!” she spat. “That’s the song! I’m sick of it.”
“It’s…on the radio? Often? Surely not.”
“All. The. Time.”
I had to come home and do some Googling, and no, it’s not Magnetic Fields. It’s some guy going by the name Owl City, and it’s not 100,000 fireflies, it’s 10 million of them. And it’s twee all right, very very twee, and not in a good way. (And I’m sure there’s a punchline in here somewhere about my singing something almost completely unrelated sounding exactly like it, but I’ll plead self-incrimination and just go to bed.)
30
Jan 10
Of comic significance
I experienced a lovely incidence of happenstance on Friday during my lunch break, while I was browsing at an arts bookshop. The assistant asked if I needed help, and on a whim, I asked for books on comics. I used to draw/write comics and have been thinking about them lately. “This one’s good but it’s a little wordy”, said the assistant, pointing at Douglas Wolk’s Reading Comics. I had to laugh cause I knew the author back when I lived in New York, and this was pretty much my experience: good, wordy.
We were talking on the phone one evening and since I was cooking some chili, I said, hey, why not come on by and we’ll talk while we eat. The conversational agenda was pretty much entirely indie rock (it was the early ’90s after all, and we were both working at music magazines). But by the end of the evening, my head was absolutely overflowing. He is one smart cookie and his mind runs waaaay faster than mine. I mean, I was and remain a big ol music fan, but I distinctly recall wondering that night if I was in the wrong line of work.
But you know what, if I found out he wrote a book about indie rock, I’d buy it in a minute, and so I didn’t hesitate to buy his book on comics. I figured if he knows as much about comics as he did about music, it will be a good read. And he does (no surprise), and it is. I am enjoying it hugely — it is delightfully opinionated, completely readable, and just plain fun. (I find myself wondering why art criticism can’t be like this? Why must it inevitably be surrounded with such dastardly abuses of language?)
Anyway, I am thinking about something Douglas wrote: that while comics culture may seem weird and unknowable, this is (in a nutshell) pretty much just defensive behaviour; the community of comics readers is by and large welcoming if you just show the medium a little love. I found this true: I knew nothing much of comics when I started creating them, but this was enough to make others who were more knowledgeable want to share with me what they knew. (How else would I have found Gregory?) And, it is plain to me now, this was true of indie rock back in the day. I was just too busy being youthfully insecure to publicly express my enthusiasm. That would have been, y’know, unkewl.
This book also tells me something about the author that I couldn’t have appreciated back in the 90s: his mind is overflowing with ideas, and what I mistook for I-don’t-know-what over a tiny kitchen table in Queens was actually generosity. I’m glad I at least had chili to share.
(Forgive me while I repost the following — it just seems appropriate.)
How to make chili
23
Jan 10
Drawing gear
Recently I needed to find an old sketch, and it took me a while. Here’s 20+ years worth of sketchbooks. Which makes me sound either very old or very experienced, or both. And neither is really the case. In my opinion. Moderately aged and experienced will do.
20+ years of journals
I waver between drawing and writing but the majority of my blank books are unlined, and contain drawings. The earliest journals I’ve kept are written; I didn’t start keeping a sketchbook until I was at art school in the late 80s. Some of my dip pen nibs date back that far.
Her nibs
In my early years of editorial assistantship in the magazine industry in New York, I wrote and wrote, probably to keep myself sane. The odd sketch pops up. I think I liked to reassure myself that I could still draw.
I stopped writing and drawing altogether when my kids were babies. Recently I found a journal that went from written entries entirely to a list of daily entries recording my premature son’s feeding schedule. This actually shows exactly where my head was.
Now I have too many blank books on the go. There’s some moleskines, both blank and lined pages (and one with watercolour paper) and a couple of generic blank books. And of course the online writing…
But here’s a fair selection of what I use on the desk at home. The tech pens are mostly a nostalgic throwback. I love the idea of them (and used pens like this contantly in high school) but they’re buggers for clogging and leaking. Soluble graphite is something newer — the giant crayon-looking things are lovely new additions to the drawing arsenal.
Drawing gear
18
Jan 10
Peaches for free
Our white peach tree is one of the best things about our back yard. But it’s a variable thing. Some years good, with lots of peaches, some years bad, not many at all. Sometimes the rainbow lorikeets sample them while they’re still green (which means peach jam, but not many fresh peaches).
This year is a bad summer for peaches. Lots of blossoms set fruit, but a heatwave in November made all the green almond-like baby peaches drop off the branches. Or that’s what I thought. Today I found a few survivors lurking deep under the leaves. Hooray! Peaches for me.
16
Jan 10
beginning anew
I’m ready to begin blogging again. I miss it. Sort of. I also spend too much time on social sites, which is fun, but it’s not My Site.
I’ll begin with the obvious: changes for the New Year. Only three lil resolutions. Read daily, draw weekly, carry camera wherever I go. (I’ve become a big fan of my small Nokia’s visual recording capability, and have acquired a new Crap Camera as well—see below.)
8pm Rundle Street: long-legged projections of a small girl
13
Oct 09
Art v craft?
There’s always a discussion, somewhere, about the nature of craft, and what makes something a craft or an art…it can boggle the brain a bit. What if craft (glass, clay, wood, fibre, metal, other) is an art form, like painting or sculpture? Craft under art? Art the umbrella? Why not?
The idea comes from the opening lines of the PBS documentary Craft in America. Got a freelance deadline on at the moment but I’ll be setting aside some time to watch online…
