Artist Residency at Canaipa

I was recently invited to participate in a group artist residency for the Canaipa Mudlines Art + Environment program, facilitated by artist Sharon Jewell.  14 artists from the Moreton Bay islands and South-East Queensland came together for a week to respond to a special wetlands area on Russell Island (Canaipa) called Turtle Swamp.  Russell Island is located a ferry ride away from bayside Brisbane, sheltered within Moreton Bay by North Stradbroke Island.  Like a lot of the islands in the area, it has a lot of human residents as well as a healthy population of Bush Stone-curlews.

There were two major components to the residency - a 24 hour studio exhibition of small works and a public walk-through of ephemeral responses created onsite at the Turtle Swamp wetlands and forest.  Its a coastal wetland, with plenty of casuarinas, grass trees and forest gums.  There were also quite a few ticks and sandflies, which luckily I managed to mostly avoid.

On her blog, Sharon has written some beautiful words about the residency with photographs of most of the forest artworks as well - click  HERE to view her blog post.

Below are photos and narratives of my residency experiences:

Before the artwork...

After...."Funeral Bouquet",
acknowledging the violence that tore
the tree in two.
Found plant material wedged between
bark and trunk.

"Funeral Bouquet"

Installation of my work "Letting go"
Text on kozo paper,
installed on Casuarina branches.
I wrote this poem a couple of months ago
as a self-reflection on the busy-ness of my life.
Bringing it into the forest seemed to be
the right response to complete the work
in a physical sense.

letting go

of waiting 

of future me - broken, bent

body

mind

of defects with no warranty.

letting go

of dependency

of independency -

I am not my mother.

Or am I?

letting go exhale

of impenetrable processes 

thoughts

excuses

of a body growing in all directions.

letting go

of opening 

openness

of caveats.

letting go

of empty-bellied mind shafts

dank

dark

of knowing

touching not knowing.

letting go

of myself, then.

letting go

of you, tomorrow. exhale

inhale finding 

finding the lightness

counting the spools of golden thread 

of living in a collage

without the sharpness of straight lines.

Here I am reading the poem next to my installation
at the public walk-through of the forest.
It was my first poetry performance.

This work is titled "SOS from the forest".
Gouache on wood and Casuarina seedpods.

Banksia Artist Book.
Handmade paper, banksia leaves and thread.
Sometimes the leaves are more beautiful than any
replication via print or drawing.

Here I am playing with rubbing paper on trees,
and doing a bit of tree-hugging at the same time!

The residency allowed me the time and space to play within

art practice within a forest setting. So good!

Advice from a Dung Beetle - a new Artist Book

I'm continuing on my pledge to reduce my stash of paper and reject prints (as seen in my previous posts).

My latest artist book was inspired by a 2019 BioBlitz that I was selected to participate at as a creative researcher. This is where I met Entomologists who were studying dung beetles.  Previously I only thought dung beetles existed in Africa (I saw it on TV once) but I soon learnt that Australia has its own native dung beetles, and they are so fascinating!

Dr Kathy Ebert (an Entomologist) working in the lab
analysing beetles collected in the field studies

Out in the rainforest with the Entomologists.
It was a bit wet, lots of leeches, but
I'm still smiling!

Here I am drawing insects collected, using
a magnifying lamp to see the detail.

The artist book I have made is titled "Advice from a Dung Beetle".  The idea started with a poem that I wrote and a lithographic drawing of a dung beetle based on some sketches I did at the BioBlitz.

The design for the book started with an online video tutorial by Helen Hiebert.  Its a simple design for a tunnel effect in a concertina format.   The idea of the book is that you have to look through the layers of foliage to see the dung beetle, with the poem narrating the activities and life cycle of the beetle.

Here is the poem:

This is the mockup design based on
Helen Hiebert's tutorial

The closed book - the cover is a piece of
thick handmade botanical paper, with a scrap print
on the front (featuring a gelatine print with lithograph beetle print).
The slip band is a piece of kraft card with a gelatine print
fragment and digital text.
The book is approx A6 size, so produces an
intimate viewing experience.

Looking through the book.  The imagery features leaves,
and has been created using gelatine prints, drawing and painting.
The cuts out give peep holes into the layers beyond,
like layers of leaves on the forest floor.

A view of the book in its entirety.  There is a dung beetle
print on the inside of the back cover that can't be
seen in this view.

Another view looking down the 'tunnel',
the view getting narrower as you look
through the book.
I love the layering of colours,
the greens and the blues.

The Buzz of Bees - a new Artist Book

I'm continuing on my pledge to reduce my stash of reject prints (as seen in my previous posts).

My latest artist book was inspired by my love of pollinators and native bees.  A couple of years ago during experiments with polyester plate lithography, I created a bee drawing using crayon onto a litho plate.  I wasn't real happy with the image, so I printed off a few test prints and never used them.  Hence they ended up in my stash.

Recently I was re-introduced to a Winged Book structure.  I remembered that a few years ago I had made a model based on instructions from Alisa Golden's wonderful book 'Making Handmade Books'.  

So began the idea of my 'The Buzz of Bees' artist book.  As well as prints, the book features a short piece of my writing 'The buzz of bees is the melody of the garden'.  I wanted a positive message in my book, perhaps to offset all the negativity of recent world events.  I used traditional letraset, the action of rubbing on the text is a cathartic experience as well as justifying my growing stash of letraset templates....!

Below are some photographs of the completed book and a discussion of my thought processes.  Enjoy!

The model book I had made.  Very useful
to refer to when making my artist books.

'The Buzz of Bees' closed
with slip-band

The book open.
There are 2 panels of bee prints and the
hexagon patterns were made using
hexagon stencils and gelatine monoprinting.
Simple repetitive printing, and I used a paper mask so I didn't
print over the bee images.

I think that the 3D geometric structure of the concertina with the 'wings'
describes the movement of the bee in and out of the hive.
You can almost here the buzz in the air as the bees go about
their daily routines.

The concertina is made up of square papers, joined at
the 'wings'.  The difference between the model and my book is
that I didn't fold down the top  of each square. The bottom
is folded up, with the reverse side showing, that's where the text is.

Sketching Banksias into life

Banksias are a favourite native plant amongst many Australian artists.  Their amazing shapes, colours and textures inspires a lot of obsessional art making!

As well as discovering Banksias in the bushlands where I walk and ride, I grow them in my garden.  I love how their sculptural forms rise majestically above the other plants.  They command the attention of the various honeyeaters as well as the human-sort of visitors to my garden.

Banksia flowering on one of my walks.

The lines of yellow 
remind me of the segments of an orange.

And when the colourful show is over,
the pods remain.

One of my interpretations.  This is a snapshot from a concertina
artist book on Parchment paper, the watercolours I used on the paper
shine brightly like the banksias in flower.

Another Banksia artist book, this time on Kraft paper
using muted colours in my favourite combination
of blue and brown.

Another artist book, this time I played
with more intense colours,
and brought out some textures with
waxy pencils.  This one is also
on kraft paper.

Listening to Kozo and Kangaroo Grass

Late last year I participated in an international online kozo papermaking workshop with US artist Amy Richard.  Read about it in my blog post HERE.  Amy is offering another round of workshops during May, you can find information on the workshops HERE.

I have made kozo paper both in Australia and Japan, but never from the point of collection of the fibre from the Paper Mulberry tree, so Amy's workshop was very enlightening as to the whole process.

From the kozo paper that I have made, I created an artist book.  I wanted to capture both the long meditative process of kozo papermaking with the soft rustling sound of kangaroo grass heads waving in the breeze.  Kangaroo grass is a native grass that I grow in my garden - its leaves make nice paper and the seed heads are wonderful to use in my monoprinting.

For this book, I chose white oil based etching ink.  Oil based for a long drying time which extends my working time, and white so that I could play with the idea of ephemerality and the gorgeous transparency of the paper.

I have titled the book 'Silent : Listen' which is from a poem I wrote during a kayaking trip amongst the mangroves:

I cut through

jagged reflections

drifting

silent

then with the exhale

of the full tide

my ears 

mouth

listen

Even though the poem describes a moment in a kayak journey, it also speaks about the healing power of listening.

And this is my artist statement:

This long landscape format book is a meditation on the beauty of the kozo fibre and the native Kangaroo Grass which grows in my garden.  I have gently layered the transparent kozo with the pale ghost imagery of the seed heads waving gracefully in the breeze to honour a quiet moment of contemplation.

I embedded thread into some of the papers 
when I made them.
The grass imagery is printed over the top
when the papers were dry.

The book is a long landscape format
with a machine sewn spine, like a stab
binding.  Its meant to be loose and casual to
reflect its meditation on the grass and fibre.
The long soft pages slow down the
experience of the book.

I machine sewed the book title
which is printed with letterpress.
I'm aiming to print the whole poem in letterpress
one day, just need to get back into
Fiona's studio as I don't have letterpress equipment.
.

Mangroves, arts practice and sense of self

My direction in art over the past 12 months has been shifting to a mode where I am getting to know my self better through connection with place.  For me, that place is mangrove creeks and tidal zones.  I have a strong history of family connections to coastal and tidal zones - my Dad was a keen fisherman and now that he has been gone for over 10 years, my memories of him are found amongst the mangroves.

I don't consider myself to be a writer, but I am using words to explore and discover more about the connection between myself and place.

My casuarina skeleton lies like a bridge

connecting creek water to eroded bank, 

my strength devoured by the hunger of a full moon surge,

my roots parched and shriveled, straining

against the ash of salt-laden air 

holding both my breath and reclamation.

-  I will return to the earth one day

 

This work is a study of mangrove leaves found washed up on the high tide mark.
I was amazed at the variety of colours, so I made a long
concertina of watercolour paper, with watercolour, pen and pencil
drawings.  I also added a few words of poetry that I had
written - the words flow between the leaves along the 
length of the book, a celebration of detritus and decay.

Trying out Letterpress

Anyone can print text onto paper using their computers and home printers, but there's something special about type that has been pressed with ink into paper.  For me, there is a mystery and allure of letterpress, the serendipity of slight imperfections of old wood type, the breaking down of words into single letters arranged and printed by hand.

I've been working with artists books for many years, and have been wanting to try out letterpress as a way of incorporating text into my work.  I like the idea of hand printed type sitting alongside my monoprints and lithographs.  I've also been working on some creative writing projects this year, so would love to print some of my poetry using letterpress.

So, once Covid-safe restrictions allowed, my first step was to spend a day at a letterpress studio, to see what the process of letterpress was.  I visited Deckle Edge Press, run by calligraphic and book artist Fiona Dempster in the hinterland of the Sunshine Coast (fionadempster.com). The moment I walked through the doors, I knew I was in art heaven. The walls of her studio are lined with an assortment of large wooden cases, with long narrow drawers packed with metal and wood type, as well as various printing presses, rubber rollers, papers and plenty of inspiration in the displays of  Fiona's beautiful and thoughtful artworks.

For my first go, I picked a couple of words from one of my poems ' Silent : Listen '.  It was exciting to be able to select the font, then find the tray of type, then set up my 'chase' - which is the metal frame which holds the type to be printed.  There is an amazing letterpress language which has been developed over the centuries - for example, forme, fount, furniture, galley, leads, make ready, pica, planer, quoin, reglet, slug ...the list goes on!

I was able to print my words onto a variety of papers, including my handmade papers.  I plan to use the papers as a basis for prints, perhaps a series.  And I'd like to go back and print the rest of the poem now that I have some experience with handling the type.  I'm trying not to take on any more art techniques, but I can see that I'll be right at home working with letterpress in Fiona's studio when I'm ready to take the next step.

One of the trays of metal type

Setting up the type block with my chosen font,
I had to remember to put it in backwards/upside down.

Yay!  A successful print.

Soooo beautiful

Soooo organised

There's something so lovely about
old ink-stained wood

That's a BIG H....!

Sharing Nature Sketchbooks

Covid-19 restrictions on gatherings have eased in Queensland, for a while perhaps, so I'm finally able to offer face-to-face workshops again.  I'm so grateful for the opportunity to get back into running workshops in this 'new normal' world of hand sanitiser and social distancing.

I'm currently facilitating a series of 'Mixed Media Nature Sketchbook' workshops, combining gelatine plate monoprinting with drawing and watercolours in a concertina format.  Its a technique I've developed to combine my love of printmaking with the intimacy of sketching.  My books are always centered on a personal experience of place, usually involved with travel to national parks or coastal areas.  

The following photos highlight the results of two of my recent workshops, I hope you enjoy the imagery as much as my workshop participants did!

My work, a workshop demonstration

My work, scribbly gum inspired, workshop demonstration

Student work, I love the watercolour work on this one.
Viridian green can be hard to work with, but it really makes the work pop

Student work, guess what her favourite colours are!
I love seeing colour combinations that are so different to my own.

Student work, in progress.
This book was inspired by wattle trees.

Student work, wonderful to see them all at the end of the workshop!

Beautiful work girls!  A lovely day out for a group of like-minded friends.