Artist in Residence @ Curtin Springs - Part 4 - The Blackwood Tree @ Rim Rock

Amee took us on a sunset excursion to view the Rim Rock on the Curtin Springs property. The Rim Rock is a geological remnant of the rim of a volcano.  The other remains of the volcano includes the impressive Mt Conner.

Unfortunately a lot of cloud cover prevented the full effect of the sun lighting up the gold ochres of the Rim Rock, but instead I turned my back on the view to sketch the beautiful Blackwood Tree we were sitting under.

The tree had been partially burnt in a fire in 2012, but half of the tree is still alive.  The burnt section of the trunk has the underlayer exposed and now weathered with time. The textures and colours were too good to not photograph and sketch.

Relaxing

The Bloodwood Tree, on the burnt side

The non-burnt side, in the sunset light

Its good to look up too, beautiful textures

close up of the bark

My sketch, the photo doesn't do it justice,
I laid dow a watercolour waah first, then drew over the top,
leaving just the wash on the background branches & leaves.

Artist in Residence @ Curtin Springs - Part 3

After helping with the cattle for a few days, I had the opportunity to get working on my art project for my artist residency at Curtin Springs.

Doing the cattle work meant that I've seen quite a bit of the landscape and I was inspired to do some sketching of local birds and plants.  The vegetation around the homestead is a mix of exotics and non-local species (planted by Peter Severin, the original owner from 1956) so I had to go a little further afield to find some local plants - not very far, across the road to the 'home' cattle yards.

I've been spending some time there, enjoying the quiet and sounds of the landscape, recording with pen and watercolours in my sketchbook.  I plan to use the drawings to create an artist book of monoprints and drypoint. 

Sketch in progress of the Umbrella Bush.

Back in the 'Paper Room' art studio, identifying
the plants I recorded.

Interesting shapes and textures, spiky and fleshy plants that
suit the harsh environment.

Artist in Residence @ Curtin Springs -Part 2

Here are a few photos from my first couple of days at my residency at Curtin Springs.  I spent most of the time out with the family and staff working the cattle.  They were rounding up the cattle to truck them to take them off to be 'processed' as meat.

Its something I've never experienced before, so lots of 'firsts' for me,  I even got a ride in a semi-trailer - another first!

Travelling in the 4WD checkiing yards.
Mt Conner is in the distance.
The colours of the sky, soil and plants is amazing.

I got my first ride in a semi-trailer, the  tation cattle truck (woo hoo!).
This is the view in the side mirror - tons of dust but
you can see a cattle tail hanging out!

View from the truck - we were driving on sandy tracks,
not bitumen.

The huge road train, ready for loading, to take
the cattle away. 

Here I am, working the gates to help load the cattle
onto the truck.  Dusty work!

White-plumed honeyeater in the gum trees around the homestead.

Brown Goshawk

Artist in Residence @ Curtin Springs - experiencing life on a cattle station

I’m a true city girl…. an urban dweller with a love of the outdoors….but for three weeks I’m swapping my high heels and handbag for jeans, sensible footwear and a heap of red dust in Central Australia.

My temporary abode is at Curtin Springs, a large cattle station (100km long and 40km wide) situated between the township of Alice Springs and Uluru, in the Northern Territory.  I’m the current Artist-in-Residence, part of a new program that allows artists to work, create and experience life on a remote cattle station.

For those who don’t know me, I live on the coast in a city suburb, with plenty of infrastructure including sealed roads, utilities, and shopping centres. I live in a world of convenience and choice – access at all hours to fresh food and entertainment, but with the negatives of urban noise, busy-ness and traffic.

My residency at Curtin Springs is an opportunity for a change of pace, and to gain a deeper experience of the people behind a working cattle property that also provides tourist accommodation, fuel and meals.  They also operate a papermaking facility utilising grasses and plants from the property.

I arrived last Wednesday and its been full on since then as the family has been moving cattle, sorting and loading them, ready for market.  I’ve been able to get hands-on, helping with herding and working the gates.  I've never seen so much red dust, I'm constantly covered in it!

Between excursions out onto the property, I’ve had some short spells of art – working in my sketchbook, taking photographs and identifying birds and local plant species.  I’m planning on making an artist book that looks at the history of the property (plenty of that!) as well as the natural environment.

I'll be posting about my progress with my residency in the coming weeks.  I also post almost daily on instagram, my username is sandy_p09.

Dragonflies, Beetles and Bugs - freeform printing to create Artists Books

Its amazing how much good stuff I have tucked away in drawers and boxes in my studio.

In the past in my art practice I have used solar techniques to create etching plates starting with metal plates with a photo emulsion layer.  I printed copyright free images from my computer onto overhead transparencies and then exposed them on the plate to UV light to create the etching plates.  The plates are expensive to buy and the process can be fraught with risks - a lot can go wrong - exposure timing, washout etc etc.
So recently I remembered how much work went into creating those plates, so I dug through my stash to see what I could find.  Insects!  One of my favourite themes at the moment.  It was meant to be!

I inked up the plates and did some random printing on some lovely toned Stonehenge paper, not worrying too much about accuracy and print perfection.  Even the ghost prints (printing without re-inking) looked effective, with strong prints as a contrast.

I then overprinted a coloured background using acrylic paints and my gelatine plate.  Not too strong, just wanted some colours and impressions of grasses.

The resulting prints have been turned into 2 small concertina books. The covers are made from leather look papers, I think the scaly pattern of the paper suits the insect theme.

The books were a lot of fun to create with no expectations or pre-conceived ideas.  And I'm happy with the result, so I hope you enjoy my photos below.  At the end of this post there's also a quick video I took of the dragonfly prints before I folded it into the book.

So whats in your stash that you could re-use or repurpose into another artwork????

The solar plates.  Between uses I smother them in vege oil and wrap
them in plastic so they don't dry out. 

The ' Beetles and Bugs' book

The 'Dragonflies over the Pond' Book

Fading to Grey - Solo Exhibition

I've been super busy, hence no blog posts yet for this month!  Well, its not quite the end of June yet, so here is my June post......

A week ago, I opened my solo exhibition 'Fading to Grey' at Gympie Regional Gallery.  Its a beautiful exhibition (no bias of course) in a historic building converted to a gallery space.

‘Fading to Grey’ is an exhibition of printmaking, works on paper, installations and artist books that comments on human-initiated transformations of the landscape around us – urbanisation, agricultural monocultures, invasive species, and fragmentation of wildlife habitats.  The title of the exhibition references the change in the natural landscape when it is disturbed and developed by humans - the green softness 'fades' to monochromatic grey hard surfaces - brick, cement and bitumen.   I'm really passionate about the impacts of urbanisation on wildlife, particularly on insect pollinators and birds. 

This exhibition features a few works exhibited previously as part of a partnered solo with Barcaldine artist Jo Taylor, though most of the works have been added to or modified since then.

Having a solo exhibition is a chance to get all those crazy ideas up into a professional gallery space and make a statement about something you're passionate about.  Sharing my message is what drives my art practice.

The hero piece of my exhibition is 'Interconnection' - a wall installation of about 300 paper cutouts in the shape of hexagons, illustrating the diversity contained within natural habitats and the importance of pollinators for biodiversity.    The pattern on the wall reflects the spiral pattern of the native stingless bee hive.  The paper cutouts are made from monotypes, etchings, flight maps, book text, atlas papers and the centre piece is bees wax.  The work also features entomological pins, used for pinning insects in museum collections.  Great fun to create, sifting through ten years of discarded prints and my stash of papers.  Not so much fun to install, as I have to make sure I set up the spiral shape from the first hexagon.  :-)   Photos below.

Over the coming weeks/months, I'll feature more works from the exhibition, with some work-in-progress photos as well.

Installing 'Interconnection' - over 300 hexagon
cutouts and lots of blue-tac!

My installation 'assistants' - my Mum Jan
and my partner Craig.  Lots of help too from
gallery staff and volunteers.

Selfie view of part of the gallery space.

Opening day and I'm explaining one of the works to
a visitor.

Visitors walking through the gallery.

Here I am giving my speech. 

'Interconnection' - Image credit: Leeroy Todd Photography

'Interconnection' (view from below) - Image credit: Leeroy Todd Photography

A Second Glance

Back in February, I blogged about printing with weeds, see my post here.

The printing of weeds was part of a larger work originally called 'Dispersal', made up of about 50 monoprints of weeds on the inside of business envelopes.

I wanted to exhibit this work in a local group exhibition 'Tightrope' that had an environmental theme, but 'Disperal' was too large.   So I reworked my ideas to present a smaller work and reworked artist statement that reflected the theme more precisely.

The new work consists of 8 prints spaced on the wall into an area 1 metre x 1 metre.  To me, having only a few prints can have less of an immediate impact (I love repetition and making multiples), but the intimacy of the smaller work does beckon the viewer to look closer at the detail in the prints.

Sometimes its a challenge to rethink my ideas about my work merely to comply with display requirements, but on reflection, perhaps those challenges are a good thing.

For those living in Brisbane or South-East Queensland, here are the exhibition details:
'Tightrope"
Location:  Pine Rivers Gallery, Strathpine
On until 4 August, Monday to Saturday 10-4
I'll be at the gallery on Wednesday 13 June running a workshop on Drypoint printing with a pollinator theme.

There's some really interesting works that caught my attention including sculptures by Mary Barron and Kym Schoenberger and a video work by Deborah Eddy.



My artist statement:

Exotics. Aliens. Weeds.  There are many ways to describe those plants that pop up in places where we don’t want them.  We continuously uproot and poison our urban landscapes to rid ourselves of these spontaneous opportunists.   But perhaps we should pause and take a closer look to appreciate the important role of weeds in revegetating contaminated city spaces and providing habitat for connected species such as pollinators. 

'A Second Glance' seeks to readdress the imbalance and elevate the image of the garden weed.  The often unnoticed elegant patterns within a business envelope provide the background to showcase the weeds' hidden beauty and grace.

The work 'A Second Glance' on display at the
Tightrope Exhibition

Adding to my art toolkit - Part 2

In my last blog post, I talked about adding to my art techniques toolkit.  As well as the collagraph plates I discussed in my last post, I've recently been learning about Polyester Plate Lithography.

Lithography is a 19th-century printmaking technique traditionally used with stone and a lithograph press.  In recent years there has been an explosion of using different matrixes such as foil, metal, and now polyester plates.

Lithography is based on the idea that oil repels water.  Simple!

Polyester plates are relatively inexpensive and allow prints to be created using direct drawings onto the plate, drawings scanned and laser printed onto the plate, or digitally printed images onto the plate such as photographs.

Inking is via roller and oil-based inks, and printed with an etching press.

I was introduced to the method by artist Nicola Hooper last year in a short workshop and I was hooked by its simplicity and the direct connection between drawing and printing.  Since then I've undertaken workshops by artist Jenny Sanzaro-Nishimura and also Charles Cohan, Professor of Printmaking at the University of Hawaii.

This is another technique that I can combine with other printing techniques, including monoprint and cyanotype.  Nicola also tells me that she uses it to produce text for her artist books, something I must try.

The possibilities are endless with the potential for editioning - something that I miss in monotype printing!

Rolling up the ink onto the plate, with washes of Gum
Arabic and water

Heating the plate after drawing to set it

The three plates I created - left "Sparrow' is a drawing with
a litho crayon and black Sharpie pens, middle is a
plate created from a photo of Noisy Miner birds,
on the right is a plate printed from a scan of Kangaroo Grass.

The 'Sparrow' print.
I like the drawing prints the best, they
have a beautiful textural quality.

Adding to my art toolkit

In the past month, I've been adding to my art tool kit.  Not new brushes, inks or papers (I've got more than enough paper!), but adding to my printmaking skills.

Last weekend I hosted Jet James from Yeppoon for a workshop exploring creative approaches to collagraph plates.  He uses a PVC plate which gets around the problem of having to seal the plate with multiple coats of shellac as you would with book board etc.  It also allows the use of some ingenious materials and drypoint techniques.

I enjoyed the creative process of creating the plates using a combination of embossing, drypoint and collage, giving a variety of marks and textures.  The 'busy-ness' of imagery on my plate is what I really like when I'm doing my monoprinting.  I can see that I can combine my monoprinting techniques with these collagraph plates, and am looking forward to playing more with it in the coming months.

During the workshop, we also had a play with inking using more than one colour, which gave beautiful images but in a workshop situation of a group of 10 keen printmakers was very messy!

My bee print.  I've explored this bee image in drypoint and
lithograph, so its interesting to see it in a variety of
techniques.

Wren print, multicoloured inking.

The Wren plate and print in blue-black ink.

The chaos of multicolour printing.......

Show and tell at the end of the workshop.
Great prints, great group of people!

Autumn Leaves and monoprinting with my Gelatine Plate

I live in a sub-tropical climate so I don't see a lot of autumn colour in the trees in my local area.  So a recent holiday in central Victoria in southern Australia gave me the opportunity to collect and print with some different leaves.

As I was traveling around for a week in a motorhome, I had to work small and light,so I packed my 5 x 7 inch Gelli Arts plate, a small roller, a few tubes of paint, some papers and my bookbinding kit. 

I did a series of prints using two different leaves, in two colours.  I then cut up and constructed the prints into a pyramid-style book [thanks to Jill for the design].

Each of the 'pages' is a square folded diagonally both ways, then with most of one of the triangles cut out to form the shape once glued.  They are all then stuck together [I used double sided tape]. 

Its been a great little portable project that I worked on over a week from my mini-studio space in the motorhome [doubles as a dining table].  I'm always happy when I have an art project to work on, even if I'm enjoying a holiday with my partner at the same time.

As they say "Happy Wife, Happy Life"........

Printing with the gelatine plate, I can feel the serenity.....

One of the prints, two colours, two types of leaves.
I think that this is a failure-proof combination.

Cutting out the book components - four squares of three different sizes,
printed on both sides

 

Creating in my motorhome studio [dining table], too bad
if we needed to eat!

Folding the book pages, accuracy is always a good thing for less
wonkiness in the finished book.

The finished book opened, with ties.

The underside of the book, I did the prints
double sided so the underside would be interesting as well.

The book closed.  I made some covers from thick paper and left
over prints, and some tapestry yarn from a local charity shop.