Books...and magic in the mail.

I know that some of you reading this will know all about the marvellous project that is Hedgespoken. A travelling circus, puppet show, gypsy storyteller caravan, magic wagon, tall tales traverser and more, it is the heartchild (because brainchild sounds too clinical) of Tom Hirons and Rima Staines.  If you want to be logical about it, then it's an old Bedford truck, revamped and re-membered as a travelling home and performance space.  But Tom and Rima ran a crowdfunding campaign last year to get it up and running, and one of the perks of adding a few drops into the ocean of generosity that surged their way, was to receive a copy of this.

I first read Tom's poem in 2012 (read it here), and it's one of those pieces of writing that stops you in your tracks and knocks you sideways.  A poem you read for the first time and it is full of things you know, somehow, though you don't know how you know them.  And it makes you weep because you wonder how you could have forgotten that you knew.

My beautiful copy arrived safely in the mail a week or so ago, and it is a covetable little piece of pure art.  Gorgeous illustrations by Rima, and Tom's magic words.  It is like a talisman, a small pocket sized treasure, and even better, a small affordable treasure.  A little rough magic born from hedgerows and overgrown tracks not often travelled.

Holding this little, precious thing in my hand, made me dare to wonder if I could make something like it.  If maybe some of my little stories and scribbles might be worthy of such treatment.  After all, I DO love books, I love making them, and I've always dreamed of making beautiful, magical books.  That's where my Map Book began, in those dreams.

So the last week has seen me busy with a little book of my own.  True to form though, I cannot seem to create something that would ever pay me back (financially anyway) the time I've spent on it, each one hand stitched and individually embellished with white, red and gold ink.  But there is joy in it.  I'm not sure what I'm going to do with these, perhaps I'll open my Esty shop again, though with an internet connection as flighty and as unreliable as the weather, that might not be terribly wise.  There is a light at the end of the tunnel in that regard though.  We have finally got our 'shed' approval, and can begin building what will be, for a couple years anyway, our new home, and the internet reception there is, strange as it is being further from town, much better than where we are now.

Front cover illustration, printed separately, glued to card cover and embellished with gold ink.

My new logo.

The illustrations on each page are embellished with white ink, hand painted.

Final page hand painted embellishments with red and white ink.

When I get bored, and need to make something just because I need to MAKE something, I make these.  

Tiny Business Card sized paintings

Decorating my Frame Drumstick

Trying out the wood burning tool on a charred kangaroo skull, found after a bush fire.

Same problem again, of course.  What am I going to do with them, who is going to buy them, and what’s the point of making a notebook that might sell for a couple of dollars, when it takes me half an hour to make, or painstakingly burning patterns into a stick?  I don’t know.  I had a conversation with a neighbour who is a serious artist... and I mean SERIOUS; international exhibitions, Government tenders, big corporate commissions, little frivolities such as being the Art Director for opening ceremonies for the Commonwealth games.  That kind of SERIOUS.  He was talking about the kind of people who like to be able to walk into a big fancy gallery and flash a lot of cash around, and buy something because it happens to take their fancy on the day, or maybe it matches the new curtains in their mansion, or just so they can show off that they have so much money they can send big bucks on little (unnecessary?) luxuries like art.  And it occurred to me that I don’t want to sell to people like that.  Am I being snobbish?  I don’t think so.  I don’t want my work to be in a fancy gallery, going for thousands of dollars.  Sure, it would make life a lot easier, and I probably wouldn’t feel quite so guilty whenever I sit down at my desk to do what feels like playwork.  I mean, you can justify everything if it’s bringing in an income, can’t you?! But most often the people who like what I create are creators themselves, and their opinion means a great deal to me, and if they buy something then I know they REALLY want it, really think it’s something special because mostly, they don’t have much spare cash to wave about.  If I’ve put my heart and soul into creating something, I want it to be bought by someone who understands that, not someone who thinks it will match their couch.  Someone who buys art just because they CAN.  I want my work to be bought by the people who CAN’T, but still do, somehow, because it means something to them.  I know I’m resorting to terrible stereotypes here, perhaps it’s just my friend’s thirty years in the business have caused him to become very cynical about the ‘art industry’ and I’m letting it rub off on me too much. 

But, when I really think about it, I don't believe art is something that belongs in a rarified atmosphere, it doesn't really belong hanging on pristine gallery walls in air-conditioned buildings.  Art is something that should be a bit grubby, knocked about at the edges, it should be worn (in both meanings of the word), carried around from day to day, it should be in the hands of children and the poor, and the sick and the elderly and it should DO something.  Tell stories, give hope and healing, make you laugh, make you cry, make you think, make you think differently.  It should be part of everyday life, because it is NOT an unnecessary luxury.

But my artist friend did tell me a story.  Years ago, he had work in a gallery up in the city, and a homeless man used to come in regularly and wander around, but there was one painting this man especially loved, and he'd come in just to spend time looking at it.  And he told my friend that he was going to buy it.  Which my friend took with a grain of salt.  Until, months later, the old guy came in with the cash in his hand and, despite attempts by my friend to make him at least accept a discount, he insisted on paying the full price.  The catch was that he had nowhere to keep the painting because he had nowhere to live himself, so he asked if it could stay in the gallery and he would visit it.  And he did.  

I suppose there are many other things that old man should have spent his money on, and who knows where he got it from.  Perhaps he'd been saving it up for years.  Perhaps he was really a millionaire slumming it on the streets.  But perhaps it's just that a painting that he didn't even have a place to keep safe made him feel happy, maybe it spoke to him, whispered stories that he needed, wove magic that only he could see, gave him back memories he thought he'd forgotten.  Maybe it made the world right again, at least while he looked at it.  

And so I tell myself, if I could paint like that, then THAT'S what would make me an artist.  What the price tag says is irrelevant.

Been a while...bits and bobs, music and a new painting.

It's hard to get to my blog these days.  It's partly because, well, ok, MOSTLY because, our internet connection here is flighty and temperamental.  And it does not like me...seriously, hubby can sit in front of glowing screen working all day, and it will behave itself nicely, but the moment I sit down, nope, little green light goes round and round and then goes red and that's it...no internet for you, my pretty!  And being in a rural area means you pay big bucks for small download capacity, so we are all on a digital diet.  But it's not the only reason.  It's also because sometimes I feel a bit overwhelmed because there's so much I want to post about, and yet, conversely, not so much about my artwork which was the main reason for starting a blog in the first place.  I'm busy, but I haven't done much painting, drawing or craft since I finished the map book last year.  I'm feeling the lack, I really am, but my space to work at home is limited, and I've been involved in music study and group projects and other things.  Which is actually marvellous, but I feel little out of balance.  So...I'll pop up some photos with some quick captions, to try and give you a whirlwind tour of what we've been up to in this corner of the world.

Well, I finished up my Certificate IV in Music in June, and our class were given the opportunity to appear (not quite the right word for radio, but anyway...) on our local Albany community radio station, 4ufm, and play some of our songs live.  So this is my song 'Ulysses', with moi on vocals and guitar, and I'm being accompanied by my lecturer Tony King on lead guitar, my friend and fellow student Ruby Moon on bass, and both on harmony vocals.  If you can hear squeaks and bumps, that probably me hitting my knee on the desk, as my chair swings around!  But not too bad!

I thought it was time to consider creating a 'mermaid in the attic' logo thingy.  So far this is my favourite design.  I like that it works as a black and white line drawing, but I can also imagine it painted up on wood in faded colours, like an old English pub sign, swinging above the pub door.  If I ever get my dream of a separate purpose built studio, I'll make myself one!

The first painting I've done in months!  I'm working on a little book of my poem "Snow White to the Woodsman".  It will have some very simple line drawings inside (possible to be individually embellished after they're printed), and this will be the front cover.

This is one of the internal illustrations.

I've become slightly obsessed with this Rhubarb Crumble recipe.  With fresh, spray free locally grown Rhubarb, how could I refuse?  Also good as Apple and Rhubarb, Pear and Rhubarb, or go for the Trifecta and have all three!

Weed Mat Day!  In August, we rolled out 40 metres x 5 metres of old rotted silage and covered it with weed mat.  Fingers crossed in a few months, we'll have lovely soil ready for vegies and fruit trees, and NO KIKUYU!

Me getting down and dirty spreading silage...Peyooo, it was pretty stinky!

Hubby surveying his realm.

A long walk down at Greens Pool.  I took so many pics, I'll have to do a separate blog post.  I still can't quite believe this is practically on our doorstep.

We have a 14 year old now, all blurry in motion!

And an 11 year old.

We went to the Winter festival at littlest munchkin's school.

Dads are funny, aren't they?!  The bonfire wouldn't take, so it wasn't long before about 8 dads were in there, making suggestions, doing dad stuff.  It took off eventually, but I suspect it would have anyway without all the fiddling and tweaking!

Sigh, every year I want to be able to share the wonder of the Lantern Walk, but this is the best I can get.  Down along the creek in the bush at night, by candlelight, admiring the beautiful fairy houses built by munchkin's class.

The fairy houses were so wonderful, I went back the next morning and took a few pics of the ones made by munchkin and her friends.

I've been baking bread.  I don't know why it took me so long to give it a go, I think I was scared off by the seemingly complicated 'chemistry' side of it, which isn't at all!

Fishing for Herring.  Yum!  You know you live in paradise when you can head down to the beach at 4pm and be home with dinner before the sun sets, and eating it within an hour of being caught.

It wasn't until well after we actually bought our block that we discovered this view.  Yes, that is the Great Southern Ocean!

In March I went to a 'Bush Tucker' workshop.  I'd really like to learn so much more.

And...the long and continuing saga of the shed, and the house.  So many restrictions, so many regulations, so many things you are not allowed to do yourself, no, you must pay lots of money for other people to do things that you know you are entirely capable of doing, but you're not legally allowed to because you're 'not qualified'.  We have the peculiar and illogical situation where we cannot even put a shed up on our land (let alone live in it), until the local council has seen and approved house plans.  Which puts us in a frustrating 'Catch 22' situation.  We wanted to live in our shed while we build our house (saving on rent), but we also wanted to live in the shed on our land while we DESIGN the house so we can get to know, and thus build to suit, the land, the aspect, the weather conditions, the prevailing winds, the lie of the land...and so on.  But no can do.  So we must, and now have, designed a house that might be ok, and might not, so that we can get building approval, so that we will be allowed to build our shed and move into it.  Then, finally when we actually are living ON our land, we will have to play for time so that we can get to know the land well enough so we can make any design changes that we think are needed to best fit what we learn from living there.  Does this make sense so far?  And it seems every little thing requires a 'permit' which must be applied for and a fee paid.  Our 'temporary accommodation' shed is shaping up to be so expensive as to be pointless, even if it saves us 2 or 3 years in rent and ultimately becomes hubby's 'man-cave' and handy man domain.

But, the good news is we now have Planning Approval (first flaming hoop to jump through), Building Approval (second hoop) and are now just waiting for the shed approval, so we can build it and move in.  The main things I'm worried about at the moment are...how are we going to all fit (with all our stuff)?!  And will we get the shed up and water tank connected in time to catch the last of the rains?  Because if we don't we will have to buy water, thousands of litres of it, to get us through the summer.  Keep your fingers crossed for us for a long, wet Spring!