Happy Birthday to Depot Artspace

It's been 15 years since the Depot Artspace opened in Devonport. My friend, the darling Ruby Piddington has organised an exhibition there to mark the event, and has asked me to show a piece. Plus she's organised the Depot Dot exhibition, incorporating a small white circle and asking artists to showcase their work on it. So I had a bit of fun with this, created with found objects and lots of PVA. The ballerina is off my childhood jewellrey box, if you keep something long enough it will find a new place in the world. This is the smallest book I've ever made, coptic bound and fits into a pill box.  I have added a milagro for good luck, for the new owner, assuming someone buys it.

I went over the lines.

the smallest book

she's been with me since I were a little girl

Eiffel, je t'aime

Last week it was Luke's birthday, and as usual he received a hand-made present. "What's it going to be this year Karen, a shrine a pot or a book?". I decided on the book, book making is making me happy at the moment. We are planning a trip to Paris again in a couple of years, and so the Eiffel tower was good inspiration for me. I used my own photos, and bought a new packet of lovely shiny water pastels (don't ya just love shopping for art supplies?) to create this concertina book. He loved it, or at least he did a good impression.

Kowhai Journals Exhibition

So every year for the past four years I have been taking photographs of our local Warkworth Kowhai Festival, and I invite other local photographers to join me. Last year, Shirley Vivian took photos and this year both her and I are exhibiting a few of our images at the Tahi Bar. It's a retrospective, but also a work in progress because this year's photographers will exhibit next year. This project is a social documentary in pictures of NZ's second longest running festival. By the time we get to 50 years (in about 8 yrs time) I hope to have enough material to self-publish a coffee table book.

Help, my world is shrinking!

Lots to look at in my garden this morning, small is beautiful. Found these two tiny insects skating in the bromeliads, and then this wasp guarding her larvae. I'm addicted to macro.

I want to come back as a gannet

A beautiful week here in the Mahurangi, with sunshine heralding the arrival of spring. Took a walk down the Whangateau harbour, the gannets were diving and soaring, coming in close to me, not bothered by my presence. Like they were saying "hey, I'm a mighty gannet, what do I care about you?".  And I felt this to be inspirational, gives life to my soul watching them. Last week also I lost a friend to cancer and this poem was read at his funeral. I saw those gannets with this sonnet knocking on my frontal lobe, it just seemed like serendipity.

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

Of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things

You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung

High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,

I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung

My eager craft through footless halls of air. . . .

Up, up the long, delirious burning blue

I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace

Where never lark, or ever eagle flew —

And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod

The high untrespassed sanctity of space,

Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

            

                                                                       John Magee

Expect the expected, for a change...

There is a real satisfaction to be had when you pull that finished piece out of the kiln and it actually looks like you wanted it to be. In pottery, there is always the chance that things don't turn out the way you wanted, in fact it's a bloody miracle when you get it right, and I've learn't over the years to expect the unexpected. But no so the case with this urchin bowl.

I am so happy to have it just as I wanted. This bowl was a trick to make and then lost a spine in the bisque firing, actually I think someone knocked it off but no confessions have been forthcoming (thank goodness for PVA). I used 3 coats of a low fire turquoise glaze. Look at that stunning colour.

I get my inspiration from a potter far better than I am, Heather Knight from 

Element Clay Studio.  Heather, you are a ceramic goddess. I'm not worthy.

How to fake a war

Get a tub of plastic soldiers. Set up a war zone with dirt from your vege patch and a few bits of leaves, lichen and sticks etc. Choose the unlucky man to get hit and stand him in front of the guy with the rifle. Add a few coloured sprinkles, stick them on to your soldiers with a bit of spit (hey these guys are at war, they can handle a bit of spit). Get down and low with the camera. Shoot at f16 to get some depth. Bit of tweaking in photoshop with hue/saturation to give it that old time feel. Then spend hours with the spatter filter making those sprinkles look like runny paint. Wacko, you have yourself a fake paint ball war. Throw away the sprinkles. 

You old bag

Here's an idea given to me by Gill Carlsson, constructing a book out of old paper bags. On the day I made this I could only find 4 paper bags, so I filled the pages with greeting cards, tissue paper all the way from Las Vegas, transparencies and a multitude of other found papers. There's even a leaf skeleton in there to discover amongst the pages. A bit of a challenge to line the papers up for stitching, one night at the kitchen table with a glass of wine, but it came together and took on a life of it's own. I called it 'Old Bag', mean't to be a term of endearment.

Old Bag: paper bags, assorted found papers, dried leaf, transparency. Coptic bound. Unique.

Busy making books...

I am really enjoying creating books lately, using lots of ideas (some plagarised) and trying out different techniques. I will take some time over the next few days to show some of my latest creations. Some are for sale, and will be at the Kowhai Festival in Warkworth, at the Masonic hall. 

Charm it crazy: handmade paste paper, caterpillar stitch, coptic bound. Unique.

This notebook is dedicated to Sam Hunt, my fave poet of all time. This is one of his quotes. I attempted the caterpillar stitch for the first time and am happy with the outcome. I think I might keep this book for myself, so many of my books get given away which is OK but I'm kinda attached to this one.

Feel the steam

It's a buzz standing by the edge of this pool, feeling the steam on your face and knowing that just a metre in front of you is a cauldron with 50,000 cubic metres of boiling geothermal water. Magic!

Just like Arnie says...I'm Back

A whole month going cold-turkey without a camera is pretty hard, I felt deprived not only of the equipment but the ability to shoot... dreadful. But hey, I have a new baby and nothing can stop me now.

Never wish bad things on anyone

unless it was the thieving bastards that took your computer, your camera kit, your TV, and ipod. A plague of syphillis on you all, karma will get you in the end.

Aaargh my brain is exploding!!

Someone asked me today how I fit in all the things I do in my life and I said the trick is to compartmentalise. Make little blocks of time to dedicate to each thing you have to do, and make sure there is time scheduled for the things you want to do. Today I had a focus shift from pottery this morning, followed by bookmaking this afternoon and then suddenly a book arrives in the post. A birthday gift from my mother-in-law - Brian Brake's "Lens on the World" and BAM, mid-line shift in the brain, hemispheres colliding and neurons firing as I get a rush of desire to do some photography, accompanied by a desperate need to travel again. Thanks Mary, thanks Brian.

A day in Book making heaven

Well I just spent the whole day immersed in making a book, in an awesome workshop with Liz Constable. It took a large flat white and a date scone for me to wake up enough to get into it but once I did.....nothing stopping me. My book has wooden covers, painted, jig-sawed, hammered and drilled. I used ochre dyed card, scorched with an iron and then tunnel cut. The book is coptic stitch bound - my first effort at coptic - and I will finish it with a small shrine inside. Then I'll post a photo. Soon.

A good day for this little fish to blow some bubbles

Summer. I love the warm weather, had a delicious swim at Omaha beach and BBQ for dinner.....don't ya just love holidays.....and mine seems to have been a long time coming. And so a good day to start this blog, a little record of my journey with art. Today was the first day of the Summer Exhibition at A Fine Line gallery - the doors opened to the public this morning, and an early customer bought my ceramic installation. Yep, mine! Wooo bloody hoooo. 26 white butterflies flying up the wall, a piece I called Psycke Released. Psyche was the Greek goddess of the soul, and the Greek word for butterflies. This work is a metaphor for the souls I have cared for this year, and seen exit this world to where ever it is they go. 

Psycke Released