Pre-recorded

Well i'm prerecording this entry, cos while this too-expensive hotel supposedly has wifi, it only worked for 5 minutes. I guess that was to give you hope. Some bastard in room 520 is probably downloading 25 wii games at once & hogging all the bandwidth. i guess that, cos its what i'd be doing if i had no brain & could just get the hell on.

The bed is very soggy, but the pillows are too so i guess its meant to be that way. Its not bad. Got a couple of cable channels & a big flat tv. But the best feature is the wall mounted air con/heater with remote control. Yes, and a timer, so i will set it to be warm for when i wake up. Wow.

Been writing my speech. Its got to mention a few things & you got to string em together so it all seems easy. I talked my parents into staying home. Dad wasn't getting out of hospital anyway & mum will be much more relaxed nearby. So i have now a nice hotel instead of a cheap hotel, cos life's to short to rebook. Its so expensive they don't even give u a free breakfast, dammit. At least the location is good - out the back there is the biggest cut-price booze barn i ever seen & a bunch of useful looking shops. Its too late for anything to be open for food, but i caught a burger on the way cos u know small towns, they often got miles between food & shut after dark anyways. it didn't make me feel particularly awesome tho, for some time after.

Meh, tomorrow's gonna suck till i finished my speech & get a gin or 3 in me.

Actual moving

Have filled the car with house crap while being watched by gormless idiots sitting at the cafe across the rd. This time avoided being cracked in the head by the car boot. It tried it on, but realising i knew its trick it gave up. And its not raining! Incredible. Sadly somebody's borrowed the housemate's van last nite so they could sleep off a party in it & that won't be back till later. Reckon if i had a van, i'd fill it with cats for just those occasions. I only need one trip in the van though so i just hoping the rain holds off till i get that trip over in the evening or so. I doubt the rain can hold back for the evening. Stress.
There's an incredible amt of cat hairs on everything, even tho i never deliberately let the cats in my room. I guess it flowed under the door. Sigh.
One last download before i go, thus the time to sit here writing rubbish.. 25min to go.

Grump

Am grumpy. Its basically rained the entire frekn week except the few hrs i was rostered to mind some hungarians yesterday. During which the sun was out like Hawaii in summer & even though one tries not to see this as some kind of sign of the personal bastardry of the One in charge, of whom mankind was made in His image, one find it very difficult, eh, doesn't one. Being that mankind was made in His image it behooves one to Not see the definite correllations between Hisself's sense of Humour & Bart Simpson's.
And it follows i wd not be surprised to find His hand in droppin the car boot on my head.

Anyway... I guess i will just let it go. Here, as i breathe out I attempt to breathe away the sense of stress involved in having no time to move house. Cos really, i could take a few days & nobody would mind too much. Really, i reckon i could. Is it EVER gonna stop raining, but? Cos eventually i DO have to actually bloody move.

Back to sculpture. Art. Well OK painting. Am painting a picture to go in the Cricket Painting Prize. I'm going real hard on the theme that has stuck with me since high school, when the teacher said that it was juvenile to paint a picture of the sun in a picture when you want to show the sun in your picture.
So now of course i will break my neck to put the sun in every picture regardless of any need for it in the picture. They said & done a lot of stupid crap. Not that i got post traumatic embitterment disorder over it, oh no. From them i also learned that if you can do it once, you can do it again. Thats for when some asshole steals your work, or they throw it away after u been waiting a year for it to get fired.
Gosh, i did learn 2 things then in art class: the sun thing & the do it again thing. The sun thing seems to be a bit of an impediment really but then the do it again was worth a bit.
A do it again is worth 2 suns in the bush, ya knows.

So anyway there is a big frekn sun in this picture u better frekn believe it. I got halo's & fractals of sunshine goin on all over it. Get that up ya, Ms De Twattser.

Transparency in the media..

Listening (without watching) the tv news makes the BS stand out like dogs balls. The emotive hype is much more apparent. The hysterical bodings of doom & despair are a massive load of shit shovelled onto us every day by shameless tossers.
It COULD be said to be the end of civilisation. It COULD be a new tide of death. It COULD be a sign that. What an utter load of crap.
The RISING tide of maybe POSSIBLE but IMPENDING death & despair washes the will from ya & depresses the hell into ya. Damn media is a scourge on humanity.
To make up so much crap, I guess there was nothing much actually happening. Ah, nice.

Feeling a bit depressed today.. trying to move house but its pouring frekn rain, like every day lately, & when i go to take something outside it immediately BUCKETS down 5 times as hard. The bastard back door of the wagon cracked down on my head, as it likes to do when it rains & i'm trying to load something heavy in the back & its the most fucked possible moment. Has completely removed any regrets i have about getting another car instead of gambling $1500 on rego.

Sad about moving out, and realising i feel sadder than my housemates who couldn't give a rats. I guess its actually no big deal is it. Feels lke it is tho. Obviously i need to do it more often, move house, then it won't bother me.

Entering things

I'm entering the Blake Prize again. Its 50 bucks thrown down the toilet, but for once i have a sculpture ready enough to get there & its religious (if yr egyptian) AND almost taking the piss (if you consider who i wish would go straight to hell & not pass Go). So really i got to do it eh. Its a case of beer - in a way a dreadful shame to pour a case of beer down the toilet innit. Tho u could say it cuts out the middle man.

Looking into what residencies close yesterday as well. Its about that time of year, so i've probably missed out on stuff. If not, then its time to get onto it, whatever is still available. 12 months in Berlin? oooh yum!

Free week!

So this week starts the new freeness of not doing a large sculpture. Ah, the relax... the time... the drink with umbrella. Feets up & chocks away.

Well no, actually its no relax, no fun & workworkwork anyway. Now i'm old enough to work it out i have discovered that you will NEVER have time for what you wait to have time for and you will NEVER be in the right headspace to do what you might like at some airy fairy time in the probability of the future, and you will never feel ready - so just get on & do them things, whatever they are, if you want to EVER do them, cos the perfect moment never comes eh.

I wish i'd worked that out 20 yrs ago but better late than never. I reckon everybody else knows that & that why they are so serious.

anyway.... today the foundry guys are starting to add the plaster mother mould over the top of the rubber mould & i'm doing some heavy socializing day where i have coffee & cake with old sculptor mate from yrs ago & then go look at house inspection of some run down dive in a hell hole no-man's-land type location & then out to a show tonite & beers. Life's hard eh. In between i move house or bits thereof. i got less time for that than i had expected cos of family stuffs. Friday has been removed from me but thats OK. Should be able to shuffle the big stuff on the weekend & just do the little stuff this week.

Easy!

Passed the taste test

Hey so he passed the test, they loved it. Not for a second did they not love it nor did they start to think of looking for somethin they didn't like about it, cos they knew they liked it. How cool is that. In & out in 5 minutes & all good.

Phew. I went home & celebrated by walking out & finding some food. You can live off the land pretty good in the inner west. I walked under Petersham rail & strolled up the rd there & ended up with some chinese takeaway. There's a lovely mist outside & while i forgot my hat i still didn't freeze. Somehow its not as cold this evening as it was during the day, maybe the mist is damping down the body heat of sydney this evening.

Surviving without a hat is no mean feat, cos I've been forced to wear a hat at all times since my unfortunate haircut on tuesday. Luckily Aldi had thermal fleece beanies a couple weeks ago, i had snapped up a couple, & they been keeping me alive since the haircut.

So anyway, a milestone has been passed & this week i just got to babysit the foundry dudes while they work in the studio & somehow at the same time, move house. But i'm gonna do it slow over the week, will be easy.

He come good

So well he's come good. 10am this morning i realised he was orright.

I need to work out what the deal is here. I can't handle the endless terror with a happy ending at the last moment. It sounds like a cheap sci fi episode if i ever heard one.

I ended up up making his face on a head armature on the table, and then casting it into plaster. Added some wire hooks on the back to attach it. I removed most of the head off the main figure, and then placed the face up there in its place & added clay around it to make a full head related to it.

i guess this is the way to go, something along the lines of making sections in plaster & glue em together. Rodin used to do that sorta thing, though he used to have a stack of body parts that he mixed and matched, far as i know. Can't say that wouldn't be handy (heh heh).

I think plaster is my medium, for the future. It fights back better than clay does & yet you can have the best qualities of clay in the finished product cos you can make the sections orignally in clay if you want to. But you don't have to, you can make them drect n the plaster too :) Except for the dust problems, its the best stuff to use.

Head

I been having head problems. I had to make a bunch of new heads for this dude cos it wasn't working out. Time's a pressin as usual. For some reason i always get it just before the last possible moment but. Which is pretty nerve wracking, but its better than after the last possible moment i guess. It not just settling for what i have either, cos i made a whole new head, eh. And its quite different. Anyway we'll see if they like it tomorrow night when they come see. if it passes the foundry guys are in at 8.30am the next morn.. and apart from needing to hang around all week, i'm free.. :)

So tomorrow is the last few details... its got to pass the test.

Stagnancy

I've come to a bit of stagnancy. This is where Concentration drugs should kick in i imagine, something to force you to keep going when you really don't want to. Any excuse to not go to the studio. So far its 4.17pm & i've done everything else bar my tax return & only cos i hadn't thought of it.

The subject of the sculpture came for a peep last night. Astonishing how it *doesn't* look like him. I took a snap of him next to it & the differences are staggering. Tis laughable & in some ways depressing but on the other hand the fact i can see whats wrong is surely a fantastic aid to getting it right when i fix it.
I guess this is one downside of making a sculpture based on b&w laser printouts of photos... they totally flatten out everything. I guess its almost the worst possible method of reproducing a photo, short of dot matrix or even inkjet b&w printing. Hmmm, make note of this.

Have started making plans to move out of the share house. Looked into storage costs. 1.8m2 for 105 a month. If i pay for 6 i get 1 free, which makes it 90 a month. Do i want 7 months but. Gawd knows what will i be doing in 7 months? Probably much the same as i'm doing now, stressin over nothin. :)

Essence of a house

I think i have come across a literal metaphor that personifies the share house.
A bit of furniture something like a wee platform or tiny tallish table was placed in the bathroom as part of the owner's SO moving in. Hooray i thought, a place to put stuff!! A place to dump the towel/clothes while i'm having a shower!! Marvellous. Much better than balancing everything on the toilet. There are no towel rails in the bathroom, or hooks. I have mentioned this actually but i think the bemused look i got in return was as if to say why would you hang a towel in the bathroom anyway. And what do i know, maybe other people don't. Maybe i'm the strange one, tho i sincerely doubt it.

Anyway i was pretty pleased for about 1 day & i used that little table & it was very good. So simple so relaxing so stressfree. Its crucial my clothes don't hit the floor cos they will get cat hairs on em & i will sneeze, eyes swell up, get grumpy, etc. Balancing them on the toilet is a skill but having a wee table was great.

The next day, there was a bloody pot plant on it.

Not a huge one, just about the size of a dinner plate. Just big enough to delete the useful space from the bathroom.
Like, can some bastard tell me, why there should be a pot plant in the bathroom anyway? Its only a small bathroom its not a greenhouse with vaulted glass ceilings or an outdoor style cabana bathroom, its a poky little terrace house bathroom with damp walls & peeling paint that leaks into downstairs thru a hole cut in the laundry ceiling into the 2nd bathtub down there thats full of old tins of paint & rollers etc.
Placing this pot plant actively removed the one useful bit of the entire bathroom thus transforming the entire room into a complete freakin joke. In one tiny fell swoop whipping away all the promised & longed for functionality. And so thoughtlessly cruel to give it & then take it away like that.
Do i sound unreasonable? I know i am :) I guess this is where you start to wish to call a house meeting & discuss it logically. But its no longer a democracy in the house anyways & i'm outta here soon.

So anyway, in closing, that example of assbackwardry is a living metaphor for the way the entire house disfunctions. I'm kinda glad i'm leaving soon, i like the people, though i think the preggers hormones in both of em are making it like 3's a crowd at the moment & i bet they can't wait for me & the other bloke (currently OS) to leave so they can nest down proper like.
But the only room where i can walk straight without sidling past piles of stuff, see where i'm going cos its not dark like in a catacomb, or put something down on a flat surface is in my own room, which is lovely & airy & light. My beautiful room simply rocks. In afternoon sun it is like joy & peace across the universe thank you very much. I'm almost never there at that time but i remember what it looks like.

Its the exact polar opposite of my room back at home though, to whence i shall return soon.

Lots

Lots of things have happened since last post but you have to say things is relative. If i get excited about the fact i walked up the very steep hill without collapsing & all the way to the shops & done the supermarketing this doesn't sound like much worth crowin about but its a rare thing for me esp in the day light hrs when i'm usually killing myself in the studio. Sound pathetic, well it is but i tell u what i don't underestimate the beauty of a cloud in daytime when i see em so seldom, & esp a cloud bathed in sunshine as its been raining for bloody ages.

The life szed dude is coming to that strange stage when every step you take consolidates an area & almost completes it. This means its comin up to deadline. Cos thats when this happens. It comes good. i think i've organised it all into stages now:
1) maquettes
2) measuring the subject & calculating stuff.
3) studying ferociously the photos & drawings & maquettes to get the body form right
4) the portrait - as above but 10 x harder work. you get to either love or hate the subject during this time.
5) 10 minutes before end: finally realise u need to throw away the photos & drawings & use own judgement to complete

somethin like that anyways.

Disappointin 10

I'm a bit disappointed... i can invite as many people as i want to the unveiling as long as it not more than 10. So with the obligated ones like rellies filling up that quota, some of whom i don't know at all but just live local there, i have no spaces left to invite people. Just as well my siblings is all OS & i have no bloke, or i'd be in real trouble. Tho i guess in that situation they'd bend the rule maybe. But they wouldn't bend it far. I usually get around the 8 - 10 rules (they all have em) by saying i'll invite 30 & only 5 will turn up, is that ok, and it usually is, cos its true. But for this one the 10 are definite starters & so i'm stuffed. I dunno why but people seem to get extra excited & committed when they have to travel a long way & its a huge pain in the ass to get there - weird.

But i got to just realise this is work, it ain't a sculpture exhibition i'm having or nothing fun like that. I just made something & they paying me for it & this is like a handover & thats it. You don't invite all yer mates to a sculpture selling do ya. Still, feel a bit shit about it. But there you are. It should just make me work harder toward having a real proper show where i can get blind with my mates, sometime in the future.