Art Therapy

I recently spent the day at the Gallery of Modern Art and the Queensland Art Gallery.  It was wonderful to be immersed in so many amazing images and ideas.  (Click on the photos to go through to the entire set on flickr.)

Home, with No House

I've had a few requests for a photo of our demolished house.  How does one photograph something that's not there?  Here is a shot of the cleared land -- we've visited it a few times to marvel at the emptiness.  David took some photos while it was disappearing in the week of demolition, but I was out of town and missed the whole thing.

On a different note, I created something recently -- a crocheted slipcover for my Sony Reader, combining my two latest interests.  It's fantastic that it's exactly what I want, in colors that I chose, and was so fast to make. (I can attest that crochet is way faster than knitting!)

School's Out, Summer's In

This week is the first week of holidays -- Anya has finished her first year of school.  Anya and Callum have still been going off each day, Anya to vacation care (a whole day at the pool! another day at the movies!) and Callum to his daycare (same old same old, but with tinsel on top).  This being Thursday, it's "Grandma Day," when my mother-in-law looks after Callum.  It's been a long time since Anya has stayed home for a Grandma Day, so both kids have been looking forward to it a lot.

This morning I heard Callum running down the hall, yelling joyfully, "Yay!  It's Grandma Day!"

Yes, Grandma Day is celebrated with as much enthusiasm as birthdays and Easter and Christmas, round these parts.  Meanwhile, here are some exciting bits that happened from an adult viewpoint:

• Our old house was knocked down in early November.  It was sad to see it go, but we'll have a bigger house in a great location as a result (and custom designed by yours truly!)  We had hoped to see construction start before Christmas, but apparently the plans have still not been approved by council.
• We had our first summery beach weekend a while ago, and our friends Wayne & Jacqui came up to join in.  Finally, sun and sand!  The weather has stayed unusually cool for this time of year until recently.
• Bronwyn & I won Runner-up in the Overall Winner category, at the Annual Artforce Awards for the traffic signal box we painted this year.  I made sure to acknowledge Anya's contribution to the TSB design (the little creatures by the dreaming woman's head).  She was quite pleased that I got her to stand up for the audience, I think.
• I attended a conference dinner by the dolphin enclosure at Sea World -- not only did we have dolphins swimming next to us all through dinner, they performed before and after the meal!  It was magical...  I was rapt for days afterward.
• My company's tenth anniversary luncheon was held at the Sydney Opera House -- our global HQ is in Denmark, the Opera House was designed by a Dane, and the Danish ambassador came to the luncheon to celebrate with us.  I believe even Oprah (who apparently is now in Australia) didn't stage her event at the Opera House, but at a nearby location.  However, she did have Russell Crowe swing in... as well as Hugh Jackman... (I would have liked that!)

Edible (Almost) T-shirt

Anya and I made this the T-shirt yesterday, combining my ideas and Anya's concept drawing. Below is Anya's original drawing. I asked her for it, when I was thinking about making an ice cream cone T-shirt. I'm glad she did this because it changed my concept of how the scoops should look, and also intrigued me with the heart-shaped cone. I really loved her heart-shaped cone but wanted a waffle cone effect, so we decided to make a heart-shaped cherry on top instead.  It's interesting, too, that although she drew this a month ago, she picked out the same colors for the ice cream scoops (without reference to the drawing) when I showed her my set of screen printing paints.

Gallery of Modern Art

I went to the Gallery of Modern Art to see the Douglas Kirkland exhibit with my good friend Mel.  It was also a chance to catch up and see how much her daughter Jessie has grown.  Raema and the kids came along as well, and Mel's husband Craig joined us at lunchtime.





I tried in vain to capture a good candid shot of the kids wandering around the Takashi Murakami exhibit.  I have no idea why Callum looks to be getting ready to open a can of whup-ass... I do like this shot of Anya looking out the window next to the Valentino window poster, although it doesn't look anything like the image I had in mind.

Arty Partying

So much to tell, so little time.  Do I give a ginormous report, or throw together a tossed salad of amusing anecdotes?  It's very daunting to think of trying to catch up to where we are now, but for you, my loyal readers (I know there are at least two of you), it's my duty to try.

The Wow Moment

I made a new friend at the annual Artforce awards where she was nominated for one of the award categories. (I wasn't -- just attended out of interest to see the leading designs.) We decided to collaborate on a new traffic signal box (TSB) design. This is really exciting and fun as I've never collaborated with someone before. It's a different way to work, bouncing ideas off each other and changing things around like a sliding Chinese puzzle.

I've learned some new ways of composition from her such as tracing, photocopying, cutting and gluing. I typically do things the hard way -- freehand sketching with old-school erasing and starting over if I don't get it right. Last night we even used whiteout to "do over" some areas and cut apart white paper and a spare color copy of the image to do over other parts.

We've gotten together several times now -- usually I head over to her place after the kids are in bed. Last night I went over to help finalise the design, thinking that we just had a few things to firm up, and we ended up changing the design some more... and I stayed until one in the morning. The design is now finally ready for submission -- it already looks different from these photos -- keep your eyes peeled for the final result!

Last Friday I also brought a pile of the working materials and the mock-up to Anya's class and gave a short talk (after morning tea and before the teddy bear's picnic... but that's another story...) The aim of the talk was to illustrate how you go from imagining a design, to planning it and working it out. I'd downloaded Hokusai's The Great Wave and a swath of paintings by other artists who inspired us, like Lin Onus and Friedensreich Hundertwasser. It was the best moment when the first image flashed up (projected on the wall from the teacher's laptop) and all the kids gasped, "Wow!" They continued to "Wow" each successive image as if watching fireworks and I felt thrilled to be connecting them to the wonders of art. Anya had a proud moment as well, when I mentioned that some of the animals in the design were from her drawings.

APT6

Liminal Air – descend – 2007-09 by Shinji Ohmaki

I was lucky enough to have a spare hour yesterday and spent it speed-walking through the 6th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT6). I love the APT, as there are always stunning and exciting works, although this time around I have really struggled to find time. At the 2002 APT, I was thrilled to discover Yayoi Kusama (originally one of Andy Warhol's contemporaries). This time, the Liminal Air installation, pictured above, was another thriller. Another gallery-goer agreed with me that it felt like water, upside-down. Now I'm dreaming of how I could install something like this at home... complete with a reflecting pool featuring some Yayoi Kusama silver balls...

Check out my snapshots here and the Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art photos here.

Photo Theme: Liking Brisbane

What do I like around Brisbane today?

Art on the Streets

Architectural Juxtapositions

Drawing from Life

Anya loves to draw – this week even her new teacher remarked on it, after knowing Anya for just three days. Lately she has begun drawing "real" pictures – sometimes from memory, sometimes by looking at what she’s drawing. I find this so exciting – that she doesn’t just draw a figure and call it a girl, or a particular shape and call it a box -- but rather, really observes what the features are, and includes them in her drawing.

Last week she amazed us with drawings of Wall-E and Eva, complete with the right body shapes and hands correctly including just two fingers per hand. This week, she drew Totoro, with the right body shape and v-shaped markings on his chest, and the bear claws on his paws – and she wrote his name next to him, as well. She told me that she wrote his name herself without asking anyone how to spell it. This just blows me away!

Photo Theme: Curves

More experimentation with my little camera phone. It is terrible at long shots but fun for close up work.

Photo Theme: Red Light Green Light

This morning I decided to experiment and took a photo every time I was stopped at a red light on my route to work. The images below are cropped from the originals. Not sure if the result is interesting but it was fun fooling around.

Woodford 2009

I was lucky to go along to the Woodford Folk Festival again this year and enjoyed it very much, only wishing that there were some way that Anya and Callum and David could also come and enjoy it. Unfortunately the cost (almost $100) means that it's not worth going for only part of the day.

Some cool moments/events were: Men Wot Sing conducting an a capella singing workshop; Circus Cabaret (I also caught "Oni the Haitian Sensation" again by chance later and she was the most amazing hula hooper I have ever seen -- which is saying a lot, because generally I think hoops are just difficult to do, without actually being that impressive to watch); Daniel Champagne followed by Kim Churchill ending with a blues jam with both of them (is it still a jam with just two?) including a moment with stilt walkers joining the mosh pit; Angie Hart (ex-Frente lead singer)...

...and a completely nonsensical ending to my festival day wherein I got lost trying to leave the site, realised I was on "Ridiculously Close" (yes that's the name of the street), and caught the tail end of an aerialist on a lyra, followed by a gruff entertainer who didn't do a whole lot but had the street audience of kids lapping up his act. Why do kids so love obnoxious characters (eg. Oscar the Grouch)? This guy - for example - said, "I need someone to hold this tray," and as all the kids in front clamored, "Me! Me!" he looked at one boy and said brusquely, "Not you. I need a cute one." Which only made the boy laugh all the harder and press in to see what would happen next.

Merry Christmas

To all my friends and family out there, I miss you and hope to see you again soon.

Traffic Signal Box (TSB): finished!

I finished most of this painting before Christmas, except the gravel around the bottom of the aquarium. This weekend, I finally found some time when the weather cooperated (not raining and not too hot) and did the last part . I also went over all the rest of the box checking for touch ups -- for example, by some incredible oversight, I had left out the white stripe next to the tail, on both clownfish. Shocking!

David is still voting for painting a black border around all the fish, but I decided not to do it, as that is a complete change of painting technique. Besides, this whole effort was done "rustically" using Anya's paintbrushes. Next time (assuming I get the chance to do this again) I think I will opt for a non-rustic approach, as I found it frustrating to have all the random feathering of edges. Maybe I will apply my t-shirt screening techniques and use a stencilling approach.

If you click on the photo here, you can go through to flickr and see all the other photos of the TSB including progress photos. You can also see my listing (with this same photo) and rate it (for the annual prize!) on the Artforce website at: http://svc189.bne146v.server-web.com/artforce/rating.asp?id=1034

Sydney Opera House Graphic

I made up this graphic yesterday, because I was not happy with the graphics out there (that I could find, anyway). So, just thought I'd share...

When I had the logo made which was meant to incorporate this, we ended up doing something totally different (to my disappointment, but I don't really have time to mess around):

http://www.dhigroup.com.au/Training/TWeek09.aspx

Jacaranda Season

The jacaranda trees are blooming all over Brisbane at the moment, coloring the skyline purple and lacing the ground with beauty as well. I took all sorts of photos this morning while walking to work because the University of Queensland lakes are a particularly stunning setting -- they have masses of yellow water lilies blooming as well -- unfortunately I couldn't seem to get the right composition to capture the effect. As well, this camera doesn't seem to do purple very well, as if it's automatically adjusting it to a less surreal color or something. I shall have to go try again at lunchtime.

Secrets

I read PostSecret regularly and quite enjoy it, but often what goes through my head during the viewing experience is, "I wish I had a secret worth posting," followed closely and indignantly by, "these aren't SECRETS" (while looking at someone's arty farty made-up secret or not even secret, just some sentiment). It seems to me that quite a few people send in "secrets" just so their art can appear on the site. Not cool.

Jack and the Beanstalk

For fun yesterday I downloaded the words for "Jack and the Beanstalk" from Sur La Lune and printed it out with spaces inserted for me to do my own drawings. This is pretty rough as I did it in a hurry, but I might do a more polished version if everything turns out well. (I've also been doing a similar project with Puss 'n Boots but much more carefully and slowly.) Below are just some of the sketches.


Jack meets a stranger who, curiously, knows his name and offers him five magic beans.


Jack wakes up the next morning to a shady bedroom and finds a giant beanstalk outside his window.



The ogre throws down three calves from his belt and says, "Here, wife, broil me a couple of these for breakfast." (I wish I had drawn the table a bit lower, but I love how Jack is peeking out of the oven, where the ogre's wife hid him. I had trouble not thinking about Shrek when sketching up the ogre!)

Silver Clouds

warhol4
Originally uploaded by jaguarish

Took Anya to the Gallery Of Modern Art today to enjoy the kids' area. My favorite part is a high-ceilinged room with fans blowing around bouyant Mylar pillows (the silver clouds). I had a hard time convincing Anya to pose at all for this "celebrity portrait" as she was more interested in using the controls in the photo booth -- hence the odd expression.

For some reason this photo reminds me of the Frieda Kahlo self-portrait with herself repeated three times as goddess, mother and child sitting inside successive embraces.