Seeing Australia

I fell in love a little last night with a painting.  Tom Roberts's Mosman's Bay.

I saw this painting last night on the first episode of a TV show called The Art of Australia (you can watch it here on iView for a couple of weeks). 

The show was an interesting example of how where you come from colours where you are.  So many of the early painters in Australia painted it as if it was England, whereas Tom Roberts and Arthur Streeton were two artists who had grown up in the country, and who could see its beauty.

It's true that after the deep greens of England, parts of Australia would have appeared washed out in their colours ... unless you were in the deep rusty orange-reds and sky blues of the outback, with its backdrop of trees and shrubs whose greens verged from olive to lime.  Australia's light must have been excessively harsh to northeners.  Hard to see anything beyond the harshness of a landscape they had yet to learn to read.

To be able to see what is in front of you is like a turning of the lens.  Bring the land itself into focus and the colour starts appearing everywhere.  Like Vegemite, some of the land is an acquired taste.  It hides itself away until suddenly its beauty springs into view.

The Pit of the Pretentious Prat

The Luncheon on the Grass - Edouard Manet

I don't know about you, but despite the fact that I don't know a whole lot about art, I love it ~ I love looking at it and the jolt that (sometimes) comes when I get a feel for what I'm looking at.  And I also don't know about you, but I am forever fascinated by the back-story ~ what it was that drove the artist to spend all of those hours making that particular object.  I suspect lots of us are fascinated by that mysterious space where everyday people make stuff out of nothing.   That's why we pedestal artists, creators and mothers to high spaces (and why we cannot define our society as "civilised" until they are all getting paid higher than laywers).  'Tis a bit magic making something out of nothing ... but really actually very mundane, when you think about it!

If you wish to learn more about what the artist might have intended or what a piece of art might mean, then that's where art experts might come in, if you dare.  But that's also where the anxiety comes in too.  Because art experts sound pretentious often enough that it's a cliche.  And they make me feel like I shouldn't talk about art if I don't know a whole lot about it because they've done the hard yards and what do I know if I haven't studied art for 916 years like they have?  But raspberries to that, and raspberries to their formal education.  Because the problem with formal education is that it crusts up your edges and makes you unable to see other options.  And because of that, I take what resonates and leave the rest.

Learning about art can easily make you feel like you're in a classroom where all the mystery and fun about something is deconstructed into 187 different pieces so that the thing that you loved a little before you analysed it now resembles the texture of last night's used condom (sorry about that visual).  One more interesting thing whose essence is splattered by TMI.

That's why I was a little uneasy about going to see Exhibition: Great Art on Screen last night at the Nova.  This was a movie about an art exhibition - Manet: Portraying Life, which recently finished after playing  for three months at the Royal Academy in London.  But it was really ultimately just a documentary about Manet with the fact that it was filmed as part of the exhibition being a bit of a redundancy.  But that's okay.  I'm willing to give the other films in the series a shot too (especially if Weekend Notes gives me tix for nix).

And so I was worried about seeing this movie that there would be a lot of prattery and twattery but in the end there were only a couple of times in the movie that I wanted to whisper "Wanker" under my breath.  So that's a pretty good outcome in the end, I think.

Image by Sethlamden

But what does that say?  If you got 100 people in a room and said, "How many times did those people sound pompus and assey?" what would happen if 99 people said, "Twenty-six times" and I say, "Three"?  What happens if the world is getting so damn stupid on GMO food that soon we won't be able to talk about anything other than Beyonce's rack without sounding like we're up ourselves?  I don't like that idea either!

But really, I don't like pretentious prattishness.  It's vulgar.  The thought that I might come across like that to some people is ... well, it hurts a bit because what if it's true?  After all, I am the owner of an ego which wants me to look awesome to everyone at all times.  I also want to demonstrate my knowledge and my opinions about something.  And being human, that can easily translate to being a knob.  That is the sort of class they should have at school - how, if you are passionate about something, some people will think you are a twat, and how to learn to not appear like a knob.  I would sign up for that class.

I had my astrological birth profile done a few weeks ago.  For a bit of fun and out of curiosity.  But wow, you know what?  It's actually surprisingly accurate.  Like this bit, for example, apparently all because my Moon is in Capricorn:

The Capricornian part of you needs to begin by asking itself one critical question:  In the part of my life touched by the Sea-Goat, what is the highest truth I know?  The rest is simple ... at least simple to understand.  Just live it.  Keep a stiff upper lip and do what's right.  But be careful.  There's nothing wrong with expressing feelings as long as they're not doing your decision-making for you.  If you're tempted to do something wicked, don't be afraid to mention it.  Otherwise, half the world will think you're a saint while the other half thinks you're a pompous ass.  And neither half will get within a light-year of your human heart."

 So there you go.  I claim the moon as my defence.  You might think I'm a pretentious prat - but that's not within a light-year of my human heart.  My ego though, that's another story :)

The Art Gallery

I went and saw some Aboriginal art in a small gallery space in South Yarra yesterday. 

Disconnect 1 = Aboriginal art on South Yarra gallery walls. 

Disconnect 2 = any art on any gallery walls. 


Gallery spaces sometimes jangle so hard in my head that I have to remind myself that

the art (like dreams)  climbs off the walls

and walks out the door

with you.

I love sculpture

Lou Lou by Joanna Rhodes

Joiz Looize, but I do love me some sculpture.


I love how it is a perfect bringing together for me of heart and mind.  Of someone else's heart and mind, that I get to see out in 3D.


I often have a list of Things To Do When I Have More Energy and lately is no exception.  Included in those are the most important:

• play in sculpture land (whatever that may mean.  This land is vast and I have only entered its clayroom)
• clean the bathroom
• walk
• have more sex

Bell by Michael Sibel, is "a visual representation of the
lyrical arrangement of music and sound."

I went last week to the Montalto Vineyard & Olive Grove in Red Hill South, which is about an hour's drive from the centre of Melbourne.  In rolling hills of grapevines and olives, interspersed with veggie gardens, fruit and nut orchards (as if that wasn't fertile enough) are a group of sculptures.  Dotted here and there, round corners, in the middle of open fields.  Shame I was feeling horrid at the time, but the memory and the photos make up for it now.

I also wrote about Montalto's 2013 Sculpture Prize and the allure of sculpture on Weekend Notes.  You can see some more photos of sculptures there as well.

Abstractor by Jessie Cacchillo and Craig Waddell, who say this about it:  "For many Australians the 'bush' is actually the man-made landscape of a farm, not the harsh landscape of Uluru.  Discarded machinery in a field can emote as vivid  a personal response as the sighting of Spinifex in a desert.

In Abstractor, the surface of the tractor mimics the look of thick layers of paint which accumulates on an artist's floor as a by-product of the painting process.

Visually, this studio accretion often creates a landscape in its own right.  By covering the abandoned vehicle in what appears to be discarded paint, the combination of the two 'waste materials' creates another transformation.

Under a mass of organic melting colour, the familiar tractor becomes strange, allowing the viewer to 'see it' afresh."

Bryozoa I, II and III by Brigit Heller.  Man-made and natural ...
fragile-looking pieces fashioned from rusted steel wire.

Fan Mail

Dear Michael,

I was worried that if I summoned the guts to get up to ask a question at the Capitol Theatre last night I would have gone all American Awards Night and gushed, "I luuurrrve you, Mr Leunig" and then looked like a right dick afterwards. 

But it's true.  Out of all of the People That I Don't Know, I love you the very mostest.

In the best of all possible worlds, you and Helen Garner would come to me wearing giant chicken wings, and would enfold me into your collective chickeny breasts for an entire year, where I would have space and silence and write and daydream all day while the bills paid themselves.

What I love most about your work is the journey that it takes to get there.  And then there is a present to unwrap at the end.  I don't need to make myself shiny to start off walking.  In fact, the way into the middle of your stuff is right through the guts of the Leonard Cohen crack.  I get to bring all my shit with me, and then when I arrive, that shit is soothed.

Which is a particularly unromantic visual, really, but there you have it, that's the life mess, right? 

And so I think that's what makes experiencing your work so heartfelt to me and steers me towards the inclination to gush.  I think that whole experience might be called redemption. 

I've been struggling a lot with health issues in recent years, and combined with a personality trait that makes me a thinker who wants to see and not be asleep, staying upright in a world where a small bunch of Elite Psychopaths are in charge is a hard deal.  Your stuff heartens me and props me up.  And that's a pretty damn near amazing thing to be able to do for people.  It's just, like, the best.  I mean, what else is more important right now than giving people courage and reminding them of the humanity they have and that the feelings they have about how different the world could me (can be?  will be?) are not naivety but are visioning?

And that's all she gushed.  Thanks, Michael.  Very muchly  xoxo

Sue

Riding the Wave

It's a funny feeling when you discover that you are sort of excited and passionate about something that you never thought you'd ever feel excited and passionate about.  Those things that you come upon occasionally that open up the child in you.  Little Susie loves messing about with paint.  Who woulda thunk it?  I certainly never knew I wanted to play with paint, although why it's such a mystery to me that I should feel this way is another mystery in itself. 

I know hardly anything about painting.  I love doing it.  However, I'm not very good at it, and I have no technique to speak of.  Here, I'll show you what I mean ~ here's one I prepared earlier :)

There's a lot of things to trip us up from creating.  A scan at the interwebs and all those professionals who seem to know what they're doing, producing beautiful things with their eyes closed (apparently), while you're bumbling about in the dark.  The starkness of the blank page or the blank screen.  But there are various innovative and creative ways to dirty up the situation and take the pressure off yourself so that you can just get onto it and make a start, dammit!

Of course, the picture in your head is never, ever what ends up being the picture on the page, or the sentence.  As if there isn't enough to trip you up and stop you painting or writing, even that one simple element, the difference between what you have in your head and what comes out of your fingers, can stall you if you let it.

But the thing is, nothing is as you imagine it is from your head.  And sometimes you can get so caught up on what's in your head and how it hasn't transferred that you can't actually see what's in front of you.  And then you're done for ~ away from the is, trolling round and round in your tedious mindruts till you remember, again, to climb out. 

I'm really quite happy with this thing I've painted.  Even though it's nothing like what I wanted to represent (ghost gums at dusk).  Even though I've never seen ghost gums like that and those leaves are really sorta crappy.  Even though 17 other things I might pick out to not like about it, despite all of those flaws, I still really like this painting.  Because I painted it.

I like this painting more than anybody else will like it because of its very flaws.  Because it hasn't reached any heights.  Because it's not all that good, but I am still impressed with the endeavour I made.  Something came from my imagination, out of my fingers and onto the page.

This way of seeing things is a shelf that I climb up onto.  I can't always find it, though;  sometimes the ledge is hidden from my view.  But it sits just above my perfectionism, and from here the world expands outwards and once again, you're riding the wave.

Projected Desires

I thought I would check in here while I'm feeling good, because poor ole Discombobula has been rather a mopey place to be, lately, eh?  The niacin I was talking about the other day seems to be helping to stabilise my mood so I'm not all paranoid and uber-almost-schizophrenic/catatonic ~ that and the fact that I haven't eaten any wheat for several days.  I find it so difficult to believe that such an innocuous thing as a loaf of wheat bread could cause such havoc.  It's hard to believe too because though my body obviously doesn't want to eat it, I'm also craving it.  Which is the way of these sorts of things.  It's why so many food allergies and intolerances are so hard to pinpoint.  And I think that's why I keep going back to it, in disbelief that it could be this ole thing I've been eating all my life that hurls me down a particularly bad mood road.  But then, all of the poisons we encounter these days are invisible ones, so it stands to reason.

I have begun routinely scrutinising myself to find out what it is that I'm really desiring to do but am feeling held back from doing in some way.  The way I discover what I'm desiring is via how jealous and admiring I feel of others who are doing what it is that in actual fact I want to do.  And that, consistently, is growing food, and making art.

And so last week I broke out the paints and started just painting whatever, a vague image I had in my head.  And I kept playing around with it until I was happy with it, and lo, a few hours did pass so that when I looked at the clock I was surprised at the time.  And I realised that that getting lost in something hasn't happened much lately.  Being creative and making stuff, even if it's things you put on your wall but don't post on the internet, let alone give or sell to anyone else, is as empowering and inspiring for me as eating food.  It's just that it feels disconnected from me.  Sometimes, if I have been away from being creative for a little stretch, the only way I can discern how much I actually really want to come back in is to find my projection.  And from there I can see just how much I want to do it.  My desire has been extrapolated out onto other people who are able to do this thing that I feel for some reason I'm not able to do.  It's a curious way of gauging your desire, that's for sure.  But it works.

Sitting down and messing about with colour and shape, I feel that that disassociated part flipping back into my own body.  It feels heavenly.  It makes me feel happy.  I think every single one of us on the planet has our own personal desires, things that take us to this space.  But so often we're too busy and we're too tired.  Both valid arguments, both of which keep me from doing what I really want to do, which is be creative for big stretches of every single day instead of typing like a drone.  But what can you do?

But then there's a grace, that the small start and the tiny step often balloon out into something bigger.  The deciding that even though I can't quite see how I'm going to be able to do this every day with time and energy limitations, that I will just do it for half an hour today then.  And often that half an hour is what stretches out into losing track of time, and then I'm back on track again.


I have begun gessoing a sheet from my canvas pad and drawn a rough outline on it, and am feeling excited about what it might turn into once I start.  The layering and layering, and building on what has gone before, and taking shortcuts because you've fucked up with this blotch over here and so you need to incorporate it when you had no plans of having something like that ... and sometimes those things end up taking it in a direction you never would have gone but which ends up feeling like it was always meant to be, in hindsight.  Kind of the way lives are.  They look planned at the end, but in the middle, they often feel like chaos.

The Unchill

Out of the unchill, what was a chasm becomes, once again,
a step.
What was something someone else did becomes, once again,
something I can do
(I thirst).

Somewhere, beyond the range of my ears, there is
an audible click as I snap back in to Myself.

The clay has been in the corner for so long I can't count the months.
I couldn't reach it, though it's been right there. Suddenly there is
a path ~ again ~ where there wasn't one before.  It is wise to
keep an eye out for disappeared paths.
They appear and disappear in accordance with how close I am to the
vat of congealed fear and how easily I forget that I can look in without falling.

In the dark I have faith and forget that the paths are there at all, and that I will return.

Knowing how little I see is beautiful, smells like chocolate, feels like fucking, like
rolling around in the dark dank of the forest floor, and I am free
~ free
free ~
~ free ~
and once again I am released from the prison nobody else has
sentenced me to but myself and the body I must stuff myself down into,
as if it was ever big enough for the likes of Me.

I measure the roadblocks that sometimes pop up in front of my desires by how
jealous I feel of other people who are doing the thing that I want to do myself but can't get to.
Though one part of me is numb to what I want to do most, another part of me
unhampered is thirsty, delirious, at the return to play,
at the coming of the spring. 

Good Food

What food brings me intense joy to eat?, NaBloPoMo asks me today, on this fine and gently sunny winter Friday that I can enjoy a little better now that I am feeling less ill than I was earlier in the week.  I am still feeling crappy today, and so distracting myself by writing about good things to eat is an extremely good medicine to take alongside the nettle tea, the litres of water, and the sauna.

Cheese.  Oh, cheese.  Very little tastes as good to me as a good quality vintage tasty cheese.  Oh.  Cheese.  But me and dairy do not appear to coexist well, and while cheese may taste so good in my mouth, it rankles in my guts.  I am beginning to think it tastes better than it ever has before, simply because I know I shouldn't have it.

Which is sometimes the best reason to partake ;)  Just a little.

If quitting dairy is an ongoing thing, removing black and white thinking from the equation (ie, not eating dairy equals, well, not ever eating dairy from the day you decide it's to be so) then things are going reasonably well.  I have taken to black tea pretty easily.  But then quitting milk was never going to be an issue - the thought of it makes me feel a little ill, and has done so for a long time.  Rice milk, oat milk, especially almond milk, are very yummy and I don't miss cow's milk at all.  But take that very same substance and whip it into a frenzy and I'll love some of that, thanks.  Keep whipping it and I'll smother it on toast.  Mix it in with some other bits and mature it and do whatever else you do to make cheese, and you have one of the finest substances to grace God's green earth.

That's weird, isn't it?  The same substance, and it assumes so many different forms.  How creative we people have been over the millennia, experimenting with one particular substance and coming up with so many alchemical alternatives.

~ . ~

The other food is invisible, doesn't live in the fridge or the pantry, but fills me up with nutrients as if it was chlorella.  When I was feeling really bad the other day I got out a charcoal pencil and did some sketches of a picture that had come to me while in the shower (where else?)  And so now, with the aid of this man here, I am going to make a few changes of my own while I play along with him and see if I can paint it.  Eek!

This other sort of food is more satisfying even than cheese.  But it's harder to eat than cheese.  I wish that I was forced to do it every day, even when I'm feeling really bad, the way I am forced to eat.  But not every day can be a creative day when you are ill.  But what about the days when you are well, and you still don't do it?  I think you have to actually learn that what you are starving for is it.  Self-expression, creatively messing about for the fun and the food of it.  And then go do it.  There is resistance to be overcome to being creative, which is always a curious thing to me even while I understand it.  What fear (of failure, of achievement, of clarity) can ever hope to override the satisfaction that comes when you see something you have made?  (And the satisfaction lies not in the dexterity or technique, of which I have little, but in the pure doing itself;  being creative is the closest thing to being a child again as I can imagine).

Being creative is like the reverse of eating cheese.  Sometimes it rankles in your mouth while you're doing it, a metallic taste, with your critic maybe sitting on your right shoulder whispering sour everythings into your ear.  But afterwards, when you've gone away for a day and come back and looked at it again, even with the smudge in its corner and the blobs of stuff over here, and the fact that it is nowhere near the picture you had in your head, regardless of how it actually looks, the fact that it is in front of you is like medicine, tastes as good and intensely joyful in your guts as a big slab of Margaret River.  Minus the guilt, the calories and the decrease in kidney function.

Chronologically Challenged

I am, it has to be said, a little challenged when it comes to lying.  Oh, of course I do it - everybody lies.  Everybody lies and if they tell you they don't ... etc.  I generally lie when my back is against the wall and there is something someone wants to know and I'm either not ready or able to tell them about it, or I don't know how to tell them about it without hurting their feelings.  But I can't say I even do that very often (unless, of course, I do it all the time, and the real lying is the sort going on from myself to myself, but for all that I can see, that's not the case).

In the grand scheme of things, keeping it honest is for me the best kind of personal policy.  Some of that has to do with the fact that my memory is basically kinda shithouse, and if I lie about stuff then I have to remember I've lied about it, and all sorts of complications start happening then in a world that already smacks me about the head with its over-complication every morning before brekky.

I like the feel of honesty.  I'm too honest sometimes - I have been known in past incarnations to suffer foot in mouth disease.  The face in front of me drops after I've said something.  Sometimes I say something and realise, after it hits the air, that no, no, no, that's not what I meant.  It sounds much worse than it did in my head, and I wish I could take it back and say it better, in another way that more accurately reflects what I am really trying to get at.  I can say though, thankfully, that I have improved on this in recent years, so whoever said miracles are not possible doesn't know me :)

I like the feel of honesty because it feels like a big spacious field full of grass and trees and cows and me and nothing else.  Whirling-around space.  That's how being honest feels to me, and chuck in a semi-trailer full of conscientiousness and it means that if you come to me with a question and a desire for feedback about yourself, and it's the kind of question that is delicate and could hurt your ego but you want to know, I'll tell you.  'Cause sometimes you want feedback and everybody around you is too scared to tell you.  I reckon that's some sort of sacred ground, really.  Those situations make my stomach clench, but they also make me feel honoured that someone would trust me enough to come with their hands full up with vulnerable and ask for my help.

I've just been watching Neil Gaiman address a gang of newly-graduated American university students.  In it he talks about how he got his first journalistic breaks - by lying, basically.  To score writing gigs, he told potential editors that he had been published in several different sources that he had not, thus scoring said gigs.  This is the sort of lying I like - chutzpah lying.  But even if technology didn't nowadays prohibit the telling of such porkie pies, I just don't think I'd have the guts.  But I kinda like that he did.

Even better, I like the fact that after he scored that first publishing gig, he set about putting his conscience to rights by proceeding to go about trying to be published in all of those sources.  This ensured, he said, that "I hadn't actually lied;  I'd just been chronologically challenged."

The Way I See It ...

Fallen completely, utterly and irrevocably in love with Slinkachu's street art

"I believe in everything until it's disproved.
So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons.
It all exists, even if it's in your mind.
Who's to say that dreams and nightmares aren't as real as the here and now?"

~ John Lennon

Memory and Memorial

At the age of 41, I have finally come to admit the obvious - writing a journal or a diary is not my bag.  In hindsight, it seems pretty obvious.

My first diary, began when I was 12 or 13 years old, records small snippets of where I went, with whom, and who "got on" with whom, and who was a bitch (and, for some strange reason, every time I got my period and how long it went for).  And it never really got any better.  Later journals collectively make my toes curl.

There is something about the way I feel when I go to journal which makes for tedium.  It cramps me up, makes me feel tied and constrained, so that what I write is like a dull new version of "Dear Grandma, I am at Wilson's Prom.  It is really good.  We went to the beach yesterday.  Love Susan" type of letter my Grandmother must have choked on her false teeth with excitement about.  Or else it's a bucket into which I pour all of my emotions.  And how hard it is to write emotions well - reading it back I feel so sickened that I, who does not like schmaltz, writes page after page of it.  I sound so Pollyanna in my journals that reading them makes me want to go out and set fire to people's letterboxes and get a mohawk.

I tried to remedy this constraint by writing on unlined pages, so as to free myself up.  But that is a case of not-good workpeople blaming their tools.  It didn't help.

Part of the problem has been the feeling that someone is reading over my shoulder as I write.  A paranoid feeling that it is going to be read by prying eyes.  It means that if you were to go to my journal when, say, my marriage was beginning to falter (or, more truthfully, I was beginning to falter ... or falter even more than usual) there is nothing juicy there to find at all.  No confidence in sharing confidences with Dear Diary to be found.

I tried to remedy this by writing a journal on the computer, on Word, with a password protection.  That's a cool idea in a way except that it still feels tedious.  Add to that the fact that I can't remember what the password was I used to password-protect them and I think you'll agree I'm flogging a jar of Clag when it comes to journalling.

I remember one day when I was about 12 years old.  My father in his wisdom went to the tip ... and, as was his style, took a whole lot of everybody else’s stuff with him without asking them.  No discussion, no apology afterwards.  His decision, and that's how it was.  It infuriated me.

I think I've been fighting against that memory ever since.  I think it's partially why when I began writing morning pages six or seven years ago, I kept them.  Now I have folders and folders and folders of morning pages.  (For those who don't know, morning pages are a tool used in The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron - three pages, preferably done first thing after you get up, of handwritten stream-of-consciousness whatever-comes-outness.  The point of them is to get all of that crap out of your head and onto the page, so it's not running round in there all day taking up valuable space that your poem would rather take up.  And they work, too.  I stopped doing them for about a year and a half and have only started up again.  And after a few days of "What is the bloody point of this?" I have realised again how helpful they are.  They're like a meditation, a space cleared in my head at the start of the day. They work).

The good part about having kept my morning pages is that so many of them were written on different coloured paper so that I, in my desire to recycle wherever possible, am able to write my current pages on the blank undersides.  There is something comforting and expansive about reading what I wrote back in 2005 or 2007 or 2009, and then turning it around and writing on it in 2012, most likely the same boring dreariness, except that after I finish I don't even read them anymore.  In they go to Anthony's paper shredder.  Gone forever.  Writing them opens up a space.  Shredding them creates even more - throwing them to the tiles.

Some of that shredded paper is currently becoming part of a page of the latest incarnatiion of journal writing, one which I actually think I am going to get pleasure out of re-reading - an altered book journal.    A new life for an old children's book bought from the library for 50 cents, which has become the place where I am beginning to paint, stick down bits and pieces, collage bits and pieces from magazines, draw, stick down shiny Magpie bits I've found and want to keep, etc etc.

I've joined an online group (along with Kel from XFacta), run by a generous woman named Effy who creates her pages and films them in real time.  Alongside is a Facebook group where everybody shares what they have created.  I think it going to prove to be much, much more my style.

I'm a total beginner.  Some of my pages make me cringe in a different way to my old journals.  But it's fun in a way that diaries never were.

Here's one I prepared earlier.

Susie's Amazing Technicolour ...

Why does so much of what I draw end up being  ... well, vaginal, when it's not being treelike?

:P

Where They Create

Came across this website, Where They Create.  Photographer Paul Barbera documents the creative environments of artists and creatives.  Fascinating!


www.wheretheycreate.com

Bruno's

I wish I'd been to Bruno's Sculpture Garden before the fires that almost wiped it out. I would have loved to have seen these pieces amongst the beauty of his rainforest garden. And yet, even with a depleted garden the pieces had lost none of their charm and whimsy. Apologies for not-the-best shots - my camera was behaving badly along with my unsteady hands.

Bagging Stuff and Procrastination

In the past week I have bagged certain paranoid elements of American Christendom (presumably). I've bagged the Christian Television Association for their awful 80s ads (and, haha, the joke's on me 'cos ever since I posted that I can't get that horrible ad out of my head. "And they sang, 'I'm in the way. In the bright, shiny way. I'm in the gloryland way!") I've bagged current mannequin fashion in South Yarra and I've bagged Facebook morons.

So I might as well round out the week of bagging my fellow humans both skin and plastic by bagging this crappy piece of art that has shown up recently in the foyer of the office building where I work. It's bright shiny inoffensiveness is offensive to me. The only way I can feel good about it is to think that whoever made it has probably made enough money now to spend the next six months making stuff they really want to make.

What does it say? It says nothing, like all the other inoffensive art I see hanging in the foyers of offices around the city. It says that it's art and it doesn't say anything more than that. It says the companies the work in this building are cool 'cos they have big Lego piece of art in their foyer. Apparently.

Well, I say, the body corporate should have bought an inoffensive print of a large pastoral scene, and shoved that in the foyer, and with the money they saved bought a new bloody heating and aircon system that works properly :) Or had some windows installed that open. We promise we won't hurl ourselves out below because of the foyer art. We promise. Just give us the responsibility to open our own windows. Please.

Alrighty then. I think I've had my say now, at least for a coupla hours. I have had fun manically writing here over the past few days. Part of that mania is fuelled by procrastination of course. I do, however, refuse to let this current story I'm writing get away from me without a concerted fight, no matter how many hundreds of blog posts I may write in-between :)

But hopefully I've stopped bagging people for the moment. It's fun, but it sort of leaves a bad taste in my mouth, the way this foyer art does :)

Sonia Gregorii

Meet Sonia Gregorii. Her father was a boab, her mother was a weirdo :) Not sure about the branches yet, I'm not convinced they are right. I like the idea though, and may continue playing with it. Can't seem to ditch this tree/person with cool fat feet thing :)

I had a funny intersection with food and this sculpture last week. I bought some chia seeds. Never heard of them before but they are one of the superfoods the Aztecs were adept at growing. These tiny little seeds pack a punch. Full of omega 3's (the good fats), vitamins, proteins. Good to help regulate your blood sugar. Give you energy. Mixed with water they go all gelatinous and the resulting gel can be used in place of oil or butter in cooking. Pretty nifty and handy little things and I shall be buying them again.

When I was looking up info about the seeds after I bought them, I had just begun adding branches to this sculpture. When I saw that the seeds can be sprouted in all sorts of weird and wonderful places, I just knew with a jolt that after I get this girl fired, I'm gonna be spreading me chia seeds all along her boughs and have myself my own chia tree :)

Funny how things intersect, sometimes. Food and sculpture.

Too Slippery for Words

I went to the big Salvador Dali exhibition at the gallery last night, which was pretty interesting. Some of his stuff was brilliant, or funny, or way too deep and subjective to know what the hell he was talking about without a long explanation. Some was beautiful and scary all at once. Just how I like it. I didn't realise that Dali was involved in film, in jewellery making even. He sure had his finger in a lot of different pies.

I see Dali was fascinated with and devoured Freud's Interpretation of Dreams. I'm still pissed off at Freud for some of his stupider ideas about women, but I guess if you're gonna wait to read someone you agree 100 per cent with, you're gonna be waiting a long time. We all deserve our stupidities and our neroses. I do think I shall have to turn my eyes on Mr Freud for a while, even though I'm far more enamoured with his nutjob protege, Mr Jung.

Dreamscape territory fascinates me more and more these days. I keep dreaming about little children, boy children. Twice in the past week I have dreamt of scooping them up and holding them close. One was a boy I came upon whose feet were covered in poo. Yum!! I cleaned them off with a box of wipes sitting handy before I allowed that one to sit on my knee. I don't believe these dreams are about wish fulfilment as much as they are about my soul, the little boy part of my soul. That sounds a bit wanky, right, haha. I guess this inner terrain, the private inner terrain, is as delicious and fascinating to me, cavernous and mysterious and yet as closely held as ... well, myself, duh - as it is probably boring to you. Hooray for that. I think it's called the boundary at which you do not have anything to write about that is for other people's eyes :)

The gallery was packed. Which pissed me off. I'm not good with crowds, really. Having to stand there and wait while people take ages looking at something that I end up not being interested in and move on after 10 seconds, agggh. I ended up just weaving in and out of people, trying to pretend I was made of smoke.

What strikes me about large exhibitions in art galleries where people go to look at what has been generally labelled by the culture as Art, is how solemn and serious people are. It's just art, you know? It's great and it's important but it's not like you're going into a cathedral. You shouldn't be solemn going into a cathedral either. It's just art that someone like you made. The fact it's hanging on a wall doesn't change that.

Been thinking how interesting a phenomenon it is that the more individualistic a group of people believe themselves to be, the more they end up seeming the same. I would say most of us in our current culture are individualistic to the point of narcissism but it's not often that I see outward public personal expressions, where you see the spirit of someone pouring out something uncontainable. You know those times when you see things or experience things that touch you so deeply, it's like they ping something in your soul and you have to sigh it out into the air, exclaim, comment? I don't see much of that sort of stuff in public, not even in an art gallery. So weird that in a culture where we're all so individualistic and narcissistic there is something that restrains people from being themselves.

Weird, huh? I think there are deep reasons for that, and that Rene Girard would have a lot to say about that sort of thing. Unfortunately, I'm finding that the things that fascinate me the most lately are the things that I cannot easily at all translate out into writing, like some of the thoughts of Girard I'm coming across. Some things are just too swirly and internal to slap letters on them and string them out into sentences, aren't they? Which is cool and mysterious and how it should be :)

One of these things is not like the others ...

... one of these things just doesn't belong
Can you tell which thing is not like the others
By the time I finish my song?

It was chilly at the Olinda Arboretum today. I'm talking spencer and long johns (sexy), long-sleeved top, windcheater, thick jacket, hat and gloves. After taking the little path wending its way off into the trees, I sure warmed up quick though. Heart attack walking. I need more of it.

I want to live in Olinda. I'm going to see if the mountain is there after this next firebomb summer. If it is, I seriously want to think about it.

It smelled so fine amongst all those trees. We saw nobody else on our walk. Heard nothing except the birds. It was rejuvenating.

Goodness me, look at those wrinkles :\

This below is Blob. He is my inner critic. As you can see, he is a surly bastard. It's funny, but externalising this part of myself has allowed me to have more compassion towards it somehow. Blob is scared. I can see it underneath his horrid ugly surliness :) I am hesitating about whether to smash him to pieces with a hammer. If I do, I am going to do it at Spring equinox. My inner perfectionist, which Blob fuels, however, feels much more inclined to smash him now that I have ruined him. This morning, while hollowing out his base, I inadvertently gouged a hole in Blob's throat. Which is ironic, really, considering that he's the bastard that gives me such struggle with speaking my own truth. Ha. See how you like it.

I could yell it at him but it wouldn't make any difference because while I was hollowing him out both his ears also fell off. I tell ya, my inner perfectionist screams seeing this thing with a hole in its neck and no ears. It maketh me to laugh.

I went to the Counihan Gallery yesterday afternoon specifically to see this. There were two of them, stuck up on the wall like deer heads. Amazing. And very confronting (as is much of the work by amazing artist Sam Jinks). Amazing, so unbelievably lifelike. A most disconcerting experience too because the heads are about half the size bigger again than a human head. So you're standing in front of this bloke looking at his nose hairs, literally, and feeling almost like he's going to open his eyes, this larger than life tattooed human with no body. Made me ponder and think lots about different sorts of things which I wont go in here because I don't want to sound like a wanker :)


Pic: Most likely copyright violations going on all over the place here, but you can see them at their rightful place at www.samjinks.com.

Theorist or Practitioner

My blog bud Kel has a ripper post going on. I encourage you to head over and read it for yourself, but here is a snippet:

Recently I started a new job in arts administration at a regional gallery. To be honest, I wasn’t expecting to find such similarities between the art world and the church world.

The first thing everyone asks me on the job is, "What is your background in the arts?" or, "Are you an artist?" Because people like to pigeon-hole with definitions, I like to throw a spanner in their works. The conversation goes a little like this:

But you'll have to head over there to read the rest :)