Saturday, February 13, 2010
too much moaning
Sorry bout the fart post, universe. i promised to whinge less this yr, n tryin to hold to it. i'm not depressed or nothin, just not feelin a whole lotta progress with important things. Workin real hard for work just seems like a rat on a treadmill & truly it have the same effect on the world. Sometimes u gotta wait & things come good. I've always bin patient. Bein in ma 40's now but, it doesn't behoove me all that much to hang about waitin too much bloody longer tho, eh. Cripes if i don't get things shiftin soon i'll be too weak w old age to ever get em moving. Been reading Lis Frinks Biography. Its inspired me to think about going to England & checkin that out. The arts council mob got a new residency in liverpool & nobody much went for it last year, cos like who wants to go there, eh? But now i do wanna go there & maybe i got a chance this next time to apply. i also got a mate moving to wales sometime in the next yr or so & that makes it easier, having a local friend. i mean wales isn't england (or is it? wot?) but he's moving to the bit o wales thats nearest to london, so thats nice. Its good but, England, they speak da english there, thats a total bonus eh.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
A fart at dawn
A friend once told me that during a particularly bad stretch in his life, the only enjoyment he got for months was to smell his own fart occasionally. Well i feel a bit like that these days, except since i'm a girl & girls don't fart i have even less fun than that. However, i reckon i'm amazinly lucky really & if i just survive this patch (probably by quittin my job) i will be havin more actual fun someday..
Been researchin this Frink dame (yep she was a Dame in actual fact). Found a great book in the library her catalog raisonne whch has nothing to do with breakfast cereal but has loads of pictures of her work in it & some words about it all including from herself. She had a way fascinating childhood, for e.g. bein a teen at the end of the war & bombers on fire crashing about the place, & a great life with loads of acclaim & like 3 husbands or summink. Like, how cool would it be do u think if the Tate Gallery bought yer first exhibited work? Most ppl these days would go straight out & get a cocaine habit once they got established like that but she had the strength o character to just keep doing brilliant sculptures thereafter for the rest o her life.
(Sadly this type o thing could never happen to anybloody in sydney since the AGNSW never ever buys any sculpture.
But hell if it saves just 1 child-like art student....)
Been researchin this Frink dame (yep she was a Dame in actual fact). Found a great book in the library her catalog raisonne whch has nothing to do with breakfast cereal but has loads of pictures of her work in it & some words about it all including from herself. She had a way fascinating childhood, for e.g. bein a teen at the end of the war & bombers on fire crashing about the place, & a great life with loads of acclaim & like 3 husbands or summink. Like, how cool would it be do u think if the Tate Gallery bought yer first exhibited work? Most ppl these days would go straight out & get a cocaine habit once they got established like that but she had the strength o character to just keep doing brilliant sculptures thereafter for the rest o her life.
(Sadly this type o thing could never happen to anybloody in sydney since the AGNSW never ever buys any sculpture.
But hell if it saves just 1 child-like art student....)
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Sunday evening
I'm all showered & wearing my celebration shirt, the thai one, all pillowed up on my bed, typing this thru the magic of wifi: humdullah, i have finished the sculpture! Humdullah means as G-d wills it or summink similar. Its what my sister said when i announced the status of the project... :)
The head was stuck on alright, i patched the cracks, strengthened it, haired it, tarted it all up real nice all over, making accents with the great new flexible plastering blade with teeth. Its a bit of extra texture on this one, a little more than usual. Its way cool how you can spend months building up all the forms & chunks & then in one day bring them all together with a bit of drawing on the surface. Its almost a "Doh" moment. Ah, its finished-looking now. Sweet!
i think it helped a lot that i took last weekend off. I must remember that.. you get your strength back & a fresher outlook. You can be objective about what needs doing then & just do it. Work life balance bleat bleat.
Lately I been all inspired by a pair of 2 minute podcasts about Elizabeth Frink. She used to do direct plaster too. She was real big on rough texture. The podcasts say she used to turn bright lights on her sculpture at night & move em round to see the textures well. She hacked at em with chisels & rasps. I bet she'd go off if she had some of the power tools i got. I met her many yrs ago, when i was a bright young unformed fart student - she was havin a show at David Jones in town & she rung the art schools to make sure there were some students there so it wouldn't be too stuck up. She wore a gold lame shirt i remember, looked like a bloody big glomesh handbag material shirt, which was lke real smart cos it meant *everybody* knew who the artist of the evening was. She weren't gonna get lost in the crowd. She said hello to me :) And now i'm older i know what i would have said to her, but she's been dead a while now, so.. but you get that. There were some real nice works there particularly some horses that even then inspired me & there were a couple of huge bronze heads which i never really liked a whole lot, but lookin back, bloody hell - what a massive job! To make and to cast, and to carry upstairs into David Jones.
The head was stuck on alright, i patched the cracks, strengthened it, haired it, tarted it all up real nice all over, making accents with the great new flexible plastering blade with teeth. Its a bit of extra texture on this one, a little more than usual. Its way cool how you can spend months building up all the forms & chunks & then in one day bring them all together with a bit of drawing on the surface. Its almost a "Doh" moment. Ah, its finished-looking now. Sweet!
i think it helped a lot that i took last weekend off. I must remember that.. you get your strength back & a fresher outlook. You can be objective about what needs doing then & just do it. Work life balance bleat bleat.
Lately I been all inspired by a pair of 2 minute podcasts about Elizabeth Frink. She used to do direct plaster too. She was real big on rough texture. The podcasts say she used to turn bright lights on her sculpture at night & move em round to see the textures well. She hacked at em with chisels & rasps. I bet she'd go off if she had some of the power tools i got. I met her many yrs ago, when i was a bright young unformed fart student - she was havin a show at David Jones in town & she rung the art schools to make sure there were some students there so it wouldn't be too stuck up. She wore a gold lame shirt i remember, looked like a bloody big glomesh handbag material shirt, which was lke real smart cos it meant *everybody* knew who the artist of the evening was. She weren't gonna get lost in the crowd. She said hello to me :) And now i'm older i know what i would have said to her, but she's been dead a while now, so.. but you get that. There were some real nice works there particularly some horses that even then inspired me & there were a couple of huge bronze heads which i never really liked a whole lot, but lookin back, bloody hell - what a massive job! To make and to cast, and to carry upstairs into David Jones.
Saturday, February 6, 2010
September bekons
Work is nuts we are doing the final stretch to get much labs ready for semester 1 & its long hours every day. we are promised time off in loo eventually which is good for me. Hard work tho. Its toughening me up tho which is good.
Decided to have a show in September at this little gallery who asked me. Its cool there are no strings attached. They'll earn a nice chunk if some get sold & i'll have fun. We negotiated that i can take my expenses off before the commission gets taken, which is right nice eh. Had some choices of date, decided sept rather than june cos its really too much to do it for june, sadly. Gonna be making some Awesome work intend it to be the best i ever did & bigger ones. I got 2 windows to put nice big tall ones in & then you need a couple of nice big/medium sized flatter ones inside & the rest can be smaller but still incredibly spectacular. LOL. Well if you start ambitious u can scale down later, i always do... :P
Anyway its all very exciting. Been doing lots of drawing.
Today i was back on the big man to finish it this weekend. Its had a date extension of about 3 months, they would rather everybody agree & be happy than just run it thru on time, which is real good. Today i detailed the clothes with a cutting blade on the grinder & a cool new flexible plaster slathering blade with teeth, & cut off his head to put a tweak in his neck so his heads a bit crookeder. By golly the bastard head was on there good, it took me over an hour just to dislodge the thing. I remembered then that i'd stuck a steel square tube up to keep it on. Ah yes that is hard to remove... I did the usual hold the head in place while the plaster sets business. Its a bit gruelling on a miserable rainy day i was gettin wet & pushin hard on his forehead just so for like 20 or 30 mins waiting for the plaster to set. Then it didn't work... i ended up doing this 3 bloody times it damn near kilt me. By the end i'd got my second wind tho & if not for a sudden spasm of "had enough" pain thru my arm i woulda been orright but then i gave it away for a bit cos i need that arm. It did set in the end with just a 2mm droop crack & i'll see if thats a real crack tomorrow when i pull on it, but for now i leave that thing. its still on the metal tube so hopefully it won't fall off.
Decided to have a show in September at this little gallery who asked me. Its cool there are no strings attached. They'll earn a nice chunk if some get sold & i'll have fun. We negotiated that i can take my expenses off before the commission gets taken, which is right nice eh. Had some choices of date, decided sept rather than june cos its really too much to do it for june, sadly. Gonna be making some Awesome work intend it to be the best i ever did & bigger ones. I got 2 windows to put nice big tall ones in & then you need a couple of nice big/medium sized flatter ones inside & the rest can be smaller but still incredibly spectacular. LOL. Well if you start ambitious u can scale down later, i always do... :P
Anyway its all very exciting. Been doing lots of drawing.
Today i was back on the big man to finish it this weekend. Its had a date extension of about 3 months, they would rather everybody agree & be happy than just run it thru on time, which is real good. Today i detailed the clothes with a cutting blade on the grinder & a cool new flexible plaster slathering blade with teeth, & cut off his head to put a tweak in his neck so his heads a bit crookeder. By golly the bastard head was on there good, it took me over an hour just to dislodge the thing. I remembered then that i'd stuck a steel square tube up to keep it on. Ah yes that is hard to remove... I did the usual hold the head in place while the plaster sets business. Its a bit gruelling on a miserable rainy day i was gettin wet & pushin hard on his forehead just so for like 20 or 30 mins waiting for the plaster to set. Then it didn't work... i ended up doing this 3 bloody times it damn near kilt me. By the end i'd got my second wind tho & if not for a sudden spasm of "had enough" pain thru my arm i woulda been orright but then i gave it away for a bit cos i need that arm. It did set in the end with just a 2mm droop crack & i'll see if thats a real crack tomorrow when i pull on it, but for now i leave that thing. its still on the metal tube so hopefully it won't fall off.
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