A Chilly Morning and Strongman Gets a New Scarf....

Possums!

This year is speeding by! 

June already......our little house is like the arctic tundra. 

Procrastination 101: It's so cold I had to knit Strongman a scarf!

A big THANKS to everyone who managed to get along to my exhibition in Summer Hill. 

Here are a few photos from "Creature Cravings" at Sweets Workshop for those who missed it. 

Sweets Workshop, street view, opening afternoon.

Window display featuring Garry Gallah, Frances' Forest, Reginald Badger, Ferdinand Fox & Bunting.
Plant on loan from Miss M.A.W-H.

From left: Wattle Bird (SOLD!), Forest, Tawny Frog Mouth (SOLD!), Eastern Rosella & Kookaburra.

inside looking out.

I spy some Moruyans!
Thanks for coming Kirsti, Marlan & Pickles!

My lovely hosts, John D-C & Emma Simmons.
Who's that dork in the middle? :oP

I've also started a new on-going series of prints, the Book Project. 

A print for every book I read. Because I read so much i thought I'd put it to good use!

I started looking at my favourite books and picked out excerpts that featured birds. They're all etchings using aluminium plate. I used a copper sulphate solution to etch the plates and printed them on Hahnemuhle paper. It's my first proper experimentation using these low toxic materials so it was great to start with a small size. At uni I learnt to use more traditional materials like copper plate and an acid called deutch mordant, a combination of hydrochloric acid and potassium nitrate. Materials good for making bombs so they're a little hard to come by! I think our technical assistant Sasha might even have been on the ASIO terrorist list!!

Here are the first 8 in the series. 

A Guide to the Birds of East Africa

“A Guide to the Birds of East Africa” by Nicholas Drayson

“’Ah Yes’, said Rose Mbikwa, looking up at the large dark bird with elegant tail soaring high above the car park of the Nairobi Museum, ‘a black kite. Which is, of course, not black but brown.’

Mr. Malik smiled. How many times had he heard Rose Mbikwa say those words? Almost as many times as he had been on the Tuesday morning bird walk.”

Page 1.

Bleak House

“Bleak House” by Charles Dickens

“’I cannot admit the air freely’, said the little old lady, the room was close, and would have been the better for it, ‘because the cat you saw downstairs – called Lady Jane – is greedy for their lives. She crouches on the parapet outside for hours and hours. I have discovered’, whispering mysteriously, ‘that her natural cruelty is sharpened by a jealous fear of their regaining their liberty. She is sly, and full of malice. I half believe, sometimes, that she is no cat, but the wolf of the old saying. It is so very difficult to keep her from the door.”

Page 47-48.

The Erl King

“The Erl-King” by Angela Carter

(a short story from "The Bloody Chamber")

“It is growing colder. Scarcely a leaf left on the trees and the birds come to him in great numbers because, in the hard weather, it is lean pickings. The blackbirds and thrushes must hunt the snails from hedge bottoms and crack the shells on stones. But the Erl-King gives them corn and when he whistles to them a moment later you cannot see him for the birds that have covered him like a soft fall of feathered snow.

The Final Solution

“The Final Solution” by Michael Chabon

“It was midsummer, and there was something about the black hair and the pale face of the boy against the green unfurling flag of the downs beyond, the rolling white eye of the daisy, the knobbly knees in their short pants, the self-important air of the handsome gray parrot with its savage red tail feather that charmed the old man as he watched them go by”.

Page 1.

Love in the Time of Cholera

“Love in the Time of Cholera” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

“Soon he stopped reading, placed one book on top of the other and began to rock very slowly in the wicker rocking chair, contemplating with regret the banana plants in the mire of the patio, the stripped mango, the flying ants that came after the rain, the ephemeral splendour of another afternoon that would never return. He had forgotten that he even owned a parrot from Paramaribo whom he loved as if it were a human being, when suddenly he heard him say: ‘Royal Parrot”. His voice sounded close by, almost next to him, and then he saw him in the lowest branch of the mango tree.”

Page 48.

My Family & Other Animals

“My Family & Other Animals” by Gerald Durrell.

MY FAVOURITE BOOK!

“The Magenpies had been through the room as thoroughly as any Secret Service agent searching for missing plans. Piles of manuscript and typing paper lay scattered about the floor like drifts of autumn leaves, most of them with an attractive pattern of holes punched in them. The Magenpies never could resist paper. The typewriter stood stolidly on the table, looking like a disembowelled horse in a bull ring, it’s ribbon coiling out of it’s interior, its keys bespattered with droppings. The carpet, bed, and table were a-glitter with a layer of paper clips like frost. The Magenpies, obviously suspecting Larry of being a dope smuggler, had fought valiantly with the tin of bicarbonate of soda, and had scattered its contents along a line of books, so they looked like a snow covered mountain range. The table, the floor, the manuscript, the bed, and especially the pillow, were decorated with an artistic and unusual chain of footprints in green and red ink. It seemed almost as though each bird had overturned his favourite colour and walked in it. The bottle of blue ink, which would not have been so noticeable, was untouched.”

Page 299.

The Old Man & the Sea

“The Old Man & the Sea” by Ernest Hemingway.

“He was sorry for the birds, especially the small delicate dark terns that were always flying and looking and almost never finding, and he thought, The birds have a harder life than we do except for the robber birds and the heavy strong ones. Why did they make birds so delicate and fine as those sea swallows when the ocean can be so cruel? She is kind and very beautiful. But she can be so cruel and it comes so suddenly and such birds that fly, dipping and hunting, with their small sad voices are made too delicately for the sea.”

Page 19

The Summer Book

 “The Summer Book” by Tove Jansson.

“Grandmother walked up over the bare granite and thought about birds in general. It seemed to her no other creature had the same dramatic capacity to underline and perfect events – the shifts in the seasons and the weather, the changes that run through people themselves. She thought about migratory birds, and the thrush on a summer evening, and the cuckoo – yes, the cuckoo – and the great, old birds that sail and watch, and the very small birds that sweep in for hasty visits in large late-summer parties, chubby, dumb, and unafraid, and about the swallows that only honour houses where the people are happy. It seemed remarkable that the impersonal birds should have become such powerful symbols. Or maybe not. For Grandmother, long-tailed ducks meant anticipation and renewal.”

Page 33.

 So there you go....lots to think about. 

Any books you'd like to see as prints?

I'm always up for a good recommendation!

Oh!

Here's a pretty picture from my lovely frosty morning stroll. 

I think it was warmer outside than it was in our house!

b-b-b-b-b-byebye....!

J 

xo