Off the Track

Art production has been somewhat slowed this month by various family commitments (eg: helping one son renovate and another remodel his garden), as well as Easter and a short holiday in Hobart, Tasmania.

My husband being my husband the holiday was not a time for relaxing but rather a time to walk and walk and walk and then, just for a little variety, to ride. My thighs were stiff from hours of over-strenuous clambering over rocks and bracing against steep descents.

On the art front, we did however go (ride) to the stunningly positioned Mona gallery in Hobart while on holiday and I took some interesting photographs of the reflection of surrounding landscaping and cars off the stainless steel entrance (see below). I also took close up photos of “leafy” things while walking and clambering at Hartz Mountains and Mt Field National parks outside Hobart, to extend the variety of “photo references” I have stored on my computer for the current theme, and which I will use to provide inspiration for art works in the near future (see below).

Remodelling a garden, if not art  is also enjoyably creative (and hopefully pleasing to the eye) but the renovating, especially the patching and sanding of walls, is just plain hard work. 

Researching the new theme

There has been blessed silence for some time, what with Christmas and summer and involvement in other activities, but I have been busy doing research on the very absorbing subject of “the leaf,” preparatory to beginning my new body of work.

I have taken many photos. I have haunted the nearby park with my visual diary and I have brought home branches of trees that have fallen to the ground in windy weather (smallish) to study both their configuration and their leaves in more detail.

For a while there, my studio had a large pile of greenery sitting on the floor, while I slowly waded my way through it, examining and drawing each variation, magnifying glass at the ready. Being mainly Eucalypt branches the pile gave off a distinctive smell, which permeated the whole house and probably led guests to wonder what manner of strange people lived in this place. Never mind, it is all in the cause of art and I am used to people thinking that I am a little eccentric.

Anyway, I was amazed at the variety of patterns I discovered in the leaves and have now embarked on the new work, combining ideas from the patterns evident in microstructure to broader scale compositions of clusters of different leaf types.

                     (Images from visual diary: 1= casuarina, 2+3= eucalypt and 4= grevillea)

Pictures at an Exhibition

The exhibition has come and gone. I had work in the room that used to house the fire engines (now a gallery) as well as work in the adjoining large studio, dotted with printing presses. Some 70 pieces in all. There was a combination of different versions of 8 printing plates, a series of drawings and several linked paintings.

I must say I always find it a satisfying experience, regardless of the volume of sales. Being able to stand, be surrounded by, and look at all of your work displayed together, whenever you want to, for two and a half weeks is really special and the comments of all of the viewers a welcome boost to morale.

However, the time flies by and before you know it you are packing up and removing all trace of your existence from the space. From being “special” life returns to normal and everything seems a little flat and bland for a while.

The next theme and body of work however beckons and slowly interest, and then the familiar absorption, begins to build and the exploration of a new facet of “detail in nature” gathers momentum.

It's exhibition time

It is time to put all of the work on my current theme “Sea +Land =” together for my biennial solo exhibition which will be on at the Firestation from October 21 to November 7 (see invitation below).

It is strange, but I find exhibiting less daunting than mounting the work. Being congenitally organised I always work out exactly where everything will hang and even have the price list ready before the work is on the wall. Hanging the work is then just a technical exercise; making sure things are regularly spaced, in line, level etc etc. Hanging is time consuming, especially as I like to work in small modules which I then display in groups, much like a patchwork, but it is fairly predictable so I can work at it calmly (unlike the mounting process).

The pieces always looks different when up on the walls. There can be some surprises, usually good and I find it satisfying to see all of my explorations on a particular facet of the details in nature combined together in one place.

Last night by chance I went to a recital of “Pictures at an Exhibition.” Today, while swimming, I was pondering what type of music could be composed about my work. Hopefully it would be about harmony and tranquillity – definitely no witches for me.

The scary part, mounting the work

As I find frames a distraction I have developed a system for exhibiting which involves gluing work onto a painted board, leaving it weighted down with large, heavy, encyclopaedias until “set” and then cutting around the work so that it is flush with the edge of the board. After that I spray the work many times with a matt spray, to protect it from the elements, and attach a hanging wire. I am sure that the work would not suffer if there were fewer applications of the matt spray but, as ever, I err on the side of caution. It would be terrible, after all, to sell work and find that it had been attacked some sort of paper chewing bug in its new home. 

While I have mounted many pieces of work in this way I still find the process rather nerve wracking. After all I don’t want to ruin something that I have slaved over for many hours by finding that there are bubbles in the glue or that the edges of the paper are burred because the cutting knife was not sharp enough. Consequently every new body of work is viewed with trepidation when it comes to the time to put it all together for an exhibition.

Since I have an exhibition coming up in October I am currently in the “mounting” phase. I have mounted about 18, 30 x 30 cm collagraph and lino prints without incident and need to start on the series of smaller monotypes I have done. I meant to do them this week but have been procrastinating, working instead on entries for a group exhibition involving the design of wine labels.