Xi's new room!

After Xi's first birthday, he moved into his own room, (finally - hooray!)

We were a bit concerned that he might freak out (like the books warn) so we'd take him in there all the time and show him his room (full of our junk) and talk about his new dinosaur light shade (which he loved/s) and when we finally got our stuff out of there and his in, it was not a problem at all. In fact, he started to sleep better already (no more daddy snoring, and mummy tossing and turning I guess!)

A beautiful glass mobile by Nick Mount, which is only in the baby room because we were afraid all the other ceilings would collapse.

He likes to pull out all his clothes out of the drawers. That stool next to him has a machine knitted cover - my first big piece!

Sorry for the poor quality of the photos, it's a room that gets basically no natural light, so it's quite hard to photograph in, but here's his special name crossstitch by his Great Aunty Kathy (to prove it's up and appreciated!)

Museum show pre and post!

So.....

Here's some behind the scenes of the works we made, and the finished installations (a small selection of them, we ended up making quite a lot, and I haven't gotten the professional photos back yet, so they are just snappy snaps)

I didn't go with simple, easy to make free-form crochet like I spoke of in March... I went for casting, sculpting, learning and inventing totally new things and combinations of materials that I'd never worked with before.

I have vowed for the next body of work to utilise my skills, not spend all my time figuring out how to make things work......

This is one of the two Hypohued Oculate Anemones I produced with the help of Tom. This one is as yet nude!

Tom is being a great collaborator and casting the base!

This is the finished piece. It's not that great a shot, I feel I'll have to explain it:

The glass polyps have been sheathed in machine knitted tubes which have been knitted from embroidery threads, so each tube is a combination of three to five different coloured fine threads, so it produces subtle (in hot pink) variations of tone, and you are able to glimpse the glass underneath.

In short, the eleven glass pieces that needed dressing, plus the base, plus the gluing and stitching took a long time. It was hard to juggle making all the other work, the writing, travelling for another show and parenting, and to top it all off, I made this piece to go specifically in a vertical drawer, like a hidden treasure surprise, I thought it was a great idea at the time, but with half the people I sent to see the show not finding it, I wish I'd made something out of cardboard that took me no time to put in that drawer!

Each piece has it's own fake museum labels and story attached to it, here's the anemone's:

This anemone colony is remarkable in that the polyps have developed

completely discrete functions that act independently of one another. There are often several eye stalks, feeding mouths and defensive wings that make up the whole anemone.

The Hypohued Oculate Anemone uses colour as a way to

attract small prey and bigger interest. It uses electrical pulses

throughout the polyps to change it’s appearance, being able to

react to various different stimuli and environments.

They are also able to communicate with other colonies

through colour patterns and flashing displays.

Excerpt from Laurosto journal:

….I was diving, and was entranced by this underwater delight,

until I reached out and it bit me.

Now I have two lovely specimens for my collection….

it did take a few attempts to capture a complete colony,

but the polyps look good with my jellyfish…

Location and dates unknown

Donated Laurosto Collection 2010 LSRHTM274

These are the Egyptian/Australian animal mummies. Here's the spiel for them:

An Interesting Connection

There have been a lot of theories about Ancient Egyptian sailors
reaching other continents, yet there has been little evidence to date.

Now, for the first time there is a definitive link between Ancient Egyptians and Australia in the form of a tomb discovered by Sam Laurosto, the intrepid amateur naturalist and collector.

The date of discovery as well as the exact location is shrouded in mystery, though we know it was somewhere in South Australia and some time in the late 1800’s.

Laurosto discovered in the tomb mummified native Australian animals, objects and frescoes that led him to believe that a small population of Ancient Egyptians resided in Australia for some time and integrated the local fauna into their existing pantheon.

He observed the similarities between the animals worshipped as anthropomorphic gods:
The Jackal headed God Anubis and the Kangaroo God (name unknown),
The Falcon headed God Horus and the Parakeet God,
and the Ibis headed God Thoth and the Brolga God.
He also noted that the Ancient Egyptians had a crocodile headed god, Sobek, and Australia is known for its crocodiles.

They gave us a poster on North Terrace (which is the main drag for the Art Gallery, Museum, State Library etc), notice Xi doesn't look that impressed.

Here's Lauren working on some finishing touches to the foyer display. We've a teaser selection of curios: a Spanish Man of Peace, an eye catching mineral Disconite, a blue hypohued anemone, an Egyptian Kangaroo head with sketches and various glassy sea creatures.
Here's a view of the mineral display with Laurosto's minerals added in. Tom made one called Turdite, found in Deep Craek. He was pretty pleased with that one,
and Lauren made Pompomnite which really doesn't look that different from the authentic green gypsum, but a whole bunch of school kids came through as we were checking out the display and had a great time debunking some of our minerals (but not all surprisingly enough!)
Amongst the sharks and deep sea fishes lurks the elusive many eyed Roller Fish.

And here we are finished installing on a project that we first started talking about when I was four months pregnant and lasted until.........well, actually, it's just been installed at the Adelaide Town Hall, so really, it's lasted until after our son's first birthday.

So thanks Lauren and Tom it was a great and interesting experience doing the show with you, (and Xi especially for getting dragged to the Museum so many times when you would have rather been laying on the grass!)

Instantaneous exhibition and auction

Previously.....

I did a zine, I sold it in my comic store, I got invited to be in a show, I did a particularly poignant piece of cross species post apocalyptic love (Dead Dinosaur Love Story) I got invited back again (even though I haven't quite finished my next zine.....)

End of recap!

This is the drawing I ended up doing:

G.I.A.R (Girl In A Robot)

I didn't have much time as I was juggling other things, and then when I had the time, I couldn't think of 'an original or parody comic book cover'. But finally inspiration struck! With Robot arms and a pocket furnace!!!

So it's not as detailed as I'd like it too be, but I feel I made up for it with silver ink - everywhere. I wish I'd had time to tint the background a blue gray, but the inks were at the other studio and I was at home....

I'm not actually that big a fan of drawing for drawing's sake, but I'd like to get over that big whole 'white fright' and all the angst that comes with it. And I do like doing pictures like this, and I have got two little comic zines in the works, so hopefully after the muesum they'll see the light of day!

The exhibition details are here at Pulp Fiction Comics. It's an exhibition and charity auction, so I'm really happy to be a part of it. We caught the exhibition last year, but missed the auction, because I was tired, pregnant and hungry, and now this year we have the results of that, but we might drag him along anyway!

A spot of emergency sewing

Well, another blind finished.

I'd had the top of this completed before christmas, just was delaying the actual putting together of it all, but when we came back from holidays, our neighbour had trimmed the tree adjoining our fences (which I was totally happy for him to do) and we discovered that our bedroom, which has the only window facing that direction, actually does get a lot of sun - it was just the tree making it dark and gloomy.

But dark and gloomy were perfect for settling a baby, so I needed to do something about it quick smart.

The fabric is cottons that my mother in law brought back for me from China (since I couldn't fit any in my luggage). The cotton is a really nice weight, not quite as heavy as a drill, but just nice and sturdy and soft to boot. The shop assistants thought it was pretty funny that we were interested in it, because apparently it's the standard material and patterns for waitress' and shop uniforms.

Happy New Year!

I think I'll do this a bit backwards, but got to start the new year with new year things (then I'll get back to christmas).

I'm at my parents house at the moment, having a holiday, which is great, but away from all my projects (well, I brought a couple up, but they were more work ones and thus not as exciting as play ones (because I have to do some drawings and they are not my favourite things to do...)).

But I do have a new diary and it's getting full of lists!

I love them.

I also love New Years Resolutions. I find them so exciting, but have always had a bit of trouble with them, probably because they don't contain the usual, eat less, exercise more, but rather I just keep adding to them, until it would take ten years, full time to finish them. So this year I am proposing to put them up here, and see how I go, also not get too carried away with all the things I ever want to do in my life!

As this is a finishing/making blog, and not an emo one, I'll leave off on the personal resolutions and stick with things I want to make/start/finish this year.

MAKING

* Five Fabulous Frocks - does not necessarily have to be a dress (just like the alliteration) but has to be something that has taken time, experimentation and is more than just whipping something up because I have nothing to wear. I have not made anything that falls into this category for myself for the last couple of years, and it makes me sad.

* Origami - I really love unit origami and the kind of obsessiveness it takes to make a structure containing 60 parts, each made up of three separate bits of paper. Aim big and conquer!!! (but I also have trouble following and understanding the instructions at times, so I'll start small)

*Zines - finish the one that I've almost finished, I've just got to do the faffing around for the printing and assemblage, but since it's been so long, I probably need to go back and do a re-write. AND continue (and finish) the one I've just started, about the bit of a life change I've had called Xi.

DOING

*Tidy - finish going through the last couple of boxes in my studio and figure out what to do with all my stuff. Hopefully I'll use a bit of fabric in my fff challenge.

* Photos - go through our entire digital library and print out a selection.

* Frames - finish my framing that I started last year and put them up on the wall!

MISCELLANEOUS

* Start (again) The Divine Comedy and actually finish it.

* Paint my toenails, because it's fun.

et voila!

You always need something easy, fast and cheap to do to help you start your list crossing off!

But they can't all be like that, they need to be challenges above and beyond the normal things you do, and special (or so I think) and to quote LKH,

If it was easy I wouldn’t need to be resolved to accomplish it.

Frames

Another thing on the big list of things to finish was take down all the blue-tacked up photos etc and replace it with art that I finally framed up.

I'm getting there.

I've decided the easiest way to do things is to wait until I have a lot framed, and then figure out where they'll live, otherwise they'll go up willy nilly and just look probably as bad as the bluetacked hodgepodge. Is framing a sign of growing up? Or just being sick of photos falling off the walls in summer?

So I'm pretty happy about these two, since I swapped them for my prints in 2000. Finally I'll get to enjoy them everyday! Above is an etching called 'Knitted Planet' by a classmate (who is still printing strong, unlike distractable me!) and below is a wood engraving by a fabulous old Irishman, who while wasn't an official lecturer, was a great mentor.

This is a drawing that my dad started for me.....a long time ago, not as long ago as my embroidery started, but near there, we reckon around 1998. And he never finished it. Got a block, and we decided it was done. The paving stones and the left side are sketched out, and I think it's a nice contrast to the detailed work of the rest of it. It's a picture of my favourite comic character in her various guises, and I bet he rues the day that he ever asked me what I wanted a drawing of! My dad decides every couple of years to tackle a new medium and throws himself into the deep end - currently it's oil painting and a picture for mum.

I can't think of anything worse than taking up oil painting, but then I got a credit and a 'good effort' comment for my requisite painting subject at art college.

So I reckon I'm nearly there with the art, but I've got a few photos to frame, so............soon I might lay them all out to have a look at and figure out which nails go where!

Back!!

Yay! I finished something postbaby!

Well, I actually almost had this skirt done before Xi arrived, just had the hem and buttons to do, and then.......time twisted and flew. Luckily it is now finished and fitted and delivered to a fabulous artist who'll frock up for her exhibition opening soon.

Remember this fabric on the line way back when? Well, it became this:

It's a very bold skirt and I love it - I can't believe it's the first time I've done a scalloped hem - I've always loved them, but have just been too slack to do it for myself, but having now made one for someone else...I want to definitely have my own hem!

This skirt is a first for a number of things - it was requested that it was a multi size skirt, and I'd never made that kind of thing before either, so I developed this unit within the yoke section. I'm really happy with the result, because I've turned something that is usually hidden against the body (and is hard to get to and often awkward to use (I've had some 'travel' pants like that)) into a design feature on the band.

And it's also got a zippered pocket that follows the print. Again, pretty happy with that, especially since I can't see the pocket on the full photo of the skirt.

Darkcloud came around the other night and helped put my studio to rights after it'd been used (and abused) as a dumping room for crap while parents were visiting type of room. Which I'm extremely greatful for, since I had been trying for a fortnight to sneak in and tidy it up so I could have a few moments breathing in lovely (if neglected) studio air and looking at my stuff.

Xi's going to be in our room for the foreseeable future, so I'm going to use his room to go through my remaining boxes. And I will go through them!

I'm also looking forward to making something new to wear since most of my clothing now doesn't not fit due to a certain method of feeding babies..... I'm really sick of the four things that I've been rotating.....

finished another thing

pregnancy that is. This is my last maternity dress - my party frock! As it's chiffon it should fall nicely enough on a non pregnant frame. Haven't tried it out yet.

So I'm onto something else new and terrifying (and pretty cool and currently trying to stuff full of milk so I can have some sleep.)

this is at six days old. he's three weeks now, and tomorrow we're walking down to the shops instead of sending others out to get things!