Virtual exhibition

I was fortunate to be an exhibitor in this year's Auckland Festival of Photography, in a signature show called Matakana Images at RD6 in Matakana.

I exhibited a set of contrived and deadpan images, with the intention that the viewer would make up their own narrative. Here are my four images.

Girl in Repose

Before Crosses

Woman with Agapanthus

A Huia Stream

   

Thanks to my family, and my friend Laurel who do things out of the ordinary for me (like sit half naked in a river bed, or submerge themselves in a bath of milk). Exhibitions are great things for making you get some work done, and pushing the boundaries. Looking forward to the next one.

Discover Me

I've recently joined a NZ on-line shopping community called Discover Me and am hoping I might sell a few of my hand-made things. You see, I keep producing stuff, of which some I keep and some I give away as gifts, but often I make more things than I need to keep or giveaway. But yet I still keep producing because, after all folks, it's the journey rather than the destination that is the important thing. And to be honest, financial income doesn't really play a significant part, it's just a bonus. So now I have the option of listing some of my work for the Kiwi market on-line.  Check it out!

I'm honoured....

I was talking to my talented print maker friend Glennys Patterson about whether it was time for me to do another exhibition. And Glennys said "you don't always have to do your own exhibition, you could join someone elses ya know". Which is very sensible advice and a helluva lot less work. So I went home, and lo and behold in my in box is an invitation for the Nelson Camera Club Triptych Salon. So I entered 3 digital images, and they awarded me an honours for this triptych of Queen Anne's Lace.

I was pretty stoked about this, my first honours at Salon level, and one of 4 honours awarded out of 340 digital entries. So thanks Glennys for your direction and inspiration. Unfortunately I won't be able to go to the awards and exhibition opening tomorrow because of course it is in Nelson and I'm a hockey mum this weekend for my daughter. Her Underwater Hockey team is in the Nationals event after receiving gold medal at Regionals - another reason to feel proud and honoured.  It's a good life.

Study is over, time for me to create

Last week I finished my final university paper for a post-grad cert (yahoo). So now no more weekends of study in front of YouTube medical videos on how to find the JVP or what a rhonchi sounds like. I spent an entire 4 days on art work and my psycke is soaring. First up, making two small artworks to donate to a fundraising exhibition for the Matakana-Omaha walkway This is an initiative from ceramacist Mike deHaan and A Fine Line Gallery. Tickets are sold for $40 each, and throughout the evening the artworks are numbered off to match the number on the tickets. So everyone gets to go home with a unique piece of local art. Great idea huh?

The brief was to make a piece around DLE size. This mini shrine is a symphony of diaxozine purple in a tin pencil case. A tiny musical scroll in a little bottle, a light bulb, a mesmerizing photograph of a woman underwater, and lots of luverly super-glue. Not sure what to call her.

My second donated piece is a fine art print of delicate wild-parsley. Quite a contradiction to black skeletons. 

This is a real buzz, first to be asked to contribute, but also to be a part of this amazing community initiative. Tickets are sold out but you can just turn up on Saturday night to be part of the fun, buy a raffle ticket, have a glass of wine and meet some neat people. 

Degas to Dali, and around the city for Richard.

On the weekend I went along to the refurbished Auckland Art Gallery to see the....

exhibition. Now I'm not one of these people who likes to take photos of other peoples artworks as such, but I do love to photograph people as they look at other peoples artworks. I find it fascinating to see their responses. But I got as far as the foyer with my intentions, no photography permitted in the gallery and about a hundred gallery staff making sure we all behave ourselves. Interesting that I can photograph Degas in the Musee d'Orsay

Woman in a Gallery (mine 2005)

but not a Degas in Auckland.  So I resign myself to just looking at the paintings instead, choosing my favourite three to take home with me (again, not allowed!! Who would have thought?).  The works are all relatively minor really, compared to the awesomeness of the big European galleries, but despite that I soaked up the creative vibe and just about melted in awe at the Dada wall. In the end I decided I would (like to) take home a Miro, a Tanguy and a Degas. 

Yves Tanguy

And then this little fish went into the big city and spent the afternoon shooting off the hip as I walked about. Here are some of my shots. This is for you Richard - "I'd fly, a rowdy kaka from my body, if I could". For today Richard, let me be your wings. The city waits for you. 

It's all about ME

and is that so wrong? I realise when reading other peoples blog's that they often showcase the work of others, but I just talk about me. So firstly I say who cares because there's no one out there reading this except maybe you Al (and I do read your blog but sadly I am bad at posting comments). Then secondly, I decided this blogspot would be a way for me to document for myself what I'm doing, like an on-line diary. I make journals, but I very rarely write in them.

So continuing in the theme of ME. I just had some work in a group exhibition with 3 other local artists and showed some of my photographs. Mostly still life macro in recycled antique frames. I sold 3 photos, and took one commission. And I had interest from Rick at Of Hand & Heart Gallery to take some works on consignment. All in all a very successful weekend.

Koru Pepe - limited edition print.

Next time, I'll write about someone else. Maybe.

Art of Seven

So this month I have two exhibitions on, which is stretching myself a bit thin, and am in a framing and book making frenzy and I really need to learn to say NO sometimes..... however all is going well at ART of SEVEN in Warkworth at the home of Marianda Twydell. I've made a couple of sales and had some lovely feedback.  The SEVEN include myself, Marianda, Biz Dempster, Mike de Haan, Judy Wood and her sister Helen Howard. It's been really nice to get back into exhibiting in terms of making me produce something out of my photos instead of keeping them to myself on the screen.

Pohutukawa Leaf and Recycled Frame.

I am also showing to the world, for the first time (oh no wait, for the second time), my assemblage shrines and getting mixed feedback, mostly people saying they find them interesting or even amazing, and a few implying that I am sick and twisted.... maybe they are right but do I care?? This is my latest, titled Epona for the Gallo-Roman goddess and protector of horses. 

Epona, mixed media assemblage shrine.

 Obviously she didn't do a good enough job of protecting these My Little Ponies from my mutations.  Too busy worrying about her belly button bling.

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

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.