Hoppin to the Berra

I went off to Canberra to present a proposal for a sculpture. I think i did 100 times better than last time, but really when they ask u a question like how is this gonna complement the architecture, which doesn’t yet exist except in some photocopied pictures, well what can u say really. Besides, they want a particular object made, to look like wot it does. So if it doesn’t really suit any architecture except the bottom of a swamp, well.. what can u say then eh. I just said it will have a strong clean silhouette.

Besides that nervous-making stuff, i went & saw some glassblowing at the Glassworks. I can’t get over glass, its so amazing. I reckon if i had time i’d be into it. I bet it takes ages to learn how to do it beautiful, but anyway i’d still like to have a go. The cool thing is you CAN have a go at the Glassworks. Well if u are in the area. Normally i’m not.

I learned a few things while i was away. When u drive a lot, u cogitate & stew on things a bit & eventually the fluff blows away & little hard rocklike truths fall out. Some of the little truths i discovered were:

1) There is nothing like trying to drive at night in an unknown place to show u just how bad u need that eye operation. 

2) ..... bugger... I can’t remember the rest. I think there were 3 main points. Hm. Maybe they will come to me next time i'm thataway, & i might even WRITE EM DOWN.

I stayed overnite at the usual overpriced place. I keep saying i won’t do it again & then i just go there anyway cos i know it & its got a real good bookshop across the rd. Next time its Formula1 or summink...for sure... anyway i went for a walk in town in the evening, now my foot is good & i feel like walking (thank g-d). Its a funny town its kinda unformed & alien. There was a street of just snow gear shops. I finally settled on pizza for tea & while i was waiting there a large group of young men walked past only in underpants with socks stuffed down the front & names written on the back. They strategically pantsed each other just as they drew level with the pizzeria as it was the only lit & peopled premises in the whole street.

There should be a lot more of this, and less of the drinking, for young people.

The next morning the hotel fire alarm went off & we all got evacuated at 6.50am. The hotel was full too so there was about 100 ppl all standing out with bad hair on the grass. I did the wrong thing & packed my bags & carried them out, cos from my previous fire alarm experience we could be standing outside for hours. I didn’t wanna spend the day standing out here thanks, on my one free half day in Canberra.

But it was over soon & they offered us a free brekky in the nice dining room. Very classy.

Then i spent the weekend in the studio & worked on the life sized armature welding. I made a little stick version this time, out of those very handy kebab skewers (A new studio staple - is there nothing they can't do???). I put the maquette on the desk & got the angles right in the kebab stix held together with little blobs of wax, next to it. Then i made the life sized using my own measurements for arms & legs & that, and the angles off the kebab armature & there u bloody well go. I found this a really good way to do it & i think i got the armature pretty much sorted right out. I did waste a lot of time watching Bones on a laptop tho & also got visitors both days. But i like visitors & i like Bones so well its all a matter of self discipline, which of i ain't got none. Still, did get some progress, certainly. If it weren't a rush job again i'd be very pleased with how far i got. Its just the way it is when they pay u to do stuff i guess.

Back at day job work today. Not happy about it. Something's got to change.

I wrote this in the Test WebCT page (somewhat inspired by seeing Winston Churchill on the latest Dr Who yesterdy):

Never before has so much been done, for no apparent reason, for a pack of whingeing tards, for no visible gain nor thanks. 

Yet as we stand here shaking gently on the dawn of a new week, we give thanks that they do continue to pay us. For without that we are but leafs in the wind, just tatters on the flag. 

And lo, we can also be grateful for our ICT morning teas, i've personally never seen one, but hear they are wonderful indeed.

A new week brings with it the bracing challenge of a new age. A new age of streamlining, of improvements and of new procedures that excite the gristle encrusted soul particles of every broken down clapped out employee.

Thusly, we ride the continuum of change that envelops our glorious silver rimmed ICT - into the new week!

Proposed Presentation

OK well i feel, for the first time in forever that i can remember, that i'm actually prepared for this presentation on thurs. I got to travel to the capital & give a blurb in the hope of getting a job making a sculpture. Of course as usual its all confidential so sadly i won't go into details but u know who u are etc. Anyway this time yes i have a Powerpoint, yes i have ONE model, and a fully realised very simple straightforward yet slightly witty Idea. So i'm happy about that.

The life sized man tho well its progress has been stopped completely while i got ready for this other thing & perhaps that is a bad thing. Anyway i'm still stumped at how on earth i'm gonna make it in this new studio, like out of what material. I'm almost even falling into the idea of plasticene. i really hate the lack of fightback it has & i see many horrible sculptures from it. But it doesn't need to have the last word does it. After all its up to me to beat it into submission.

Anway i won't be taking a lovely little holiday in the capital i will be coming more or less back the next day & get back to work on life sized dude.

Am really thinking my days in my real waged job are coming to a close. i realised today that  used to enjoy the job a bit, it had its moments & was generally good. But i struggle to remember when i had fun at work last or hell even did anything slightly interesting. I feel like i have forgotten how to learn new things as when i need to, it is usually under great stress & u never learn anything properly under great stress do ya. Not when u have other stresses waiting on ya too. So get a clue fast, make a guess, hack it together & u may never even know what happened but you're already hacking something else so no time to think.

Not good, not sustainable either. The Xmas rush sucked severely but we thought we'd get a rest later. Not gonna though eh. It never ends, there is always some asshole causing trouble.

.

New one starting

Started making the armature for the next one. I'm using an old base on wheels i used once or twice before, so i needed to grind off the worst of the rust & grease the wheel bearings & check the welds aren't rusted thru. I'd had to cut it up to fit it in the car to take it to the studio, so i then had to weld it back together. So when i felt hey an achievement to get those bits welded on straight, i suddenly realised it wasn't, cos i'd bloody cut it off myself. Dang nab it.
Then painted it in french blue cos i got a tin of that & its a way cool colour to cover rust & bare steel.
Tomorrow i'm going to actually make the armature of the actual figure. So all that preamble was just getting started really. Hm.

Sadly the amount of toxic smoke & dust i managed to manufacture in that airtight room from a simple bit of grinding & welding makes me think doing plaster work in here is a bad bad idea. Kinda sad about that.

I'm negotiating for a larger studio, which would be great. Doing one thing at a time is ok in here but if i want to do wax & clay modelling as well, then there ain't enough room really. I don't think the dust thing is gonna be any easier tho in a bigger room, there's still not much air.

Make mag has a lot to answer for

Make mag... beloved of geekery everywhere it is an icon of logic in a sea of chaff & bondi cigars. Yet... there is a dark side.

And that dark side showed itself lately round the traps. Picture an art show...

Item #1: a 44 gallon drum.
Item #2: a fucked-in-sorrow feedback loop amplified to tooth-drilling volume.
Item #3: some corn flour in water.
Yes you guessed it... they did that science experiment that is so well known that they prolly do it in primary school. And have a flamin guess. They called it Art. FFS.
And yes it was switched on ALL FUCKING DAY while i was trying to work in my studio.
And what is saddest of saddery, it didn't actually make the cornflour do anything. So it didn't even Work.

Please, get a 3rd grade kid in to do it right. And realise that if u found it on the internet on You Tube, then so can everybody else. And its not art unless there's a FLAMIN POINT TO IT.

Unless the point was to annoy the living fuck out of everybody in earshot. Hell, they should put it in the Archibald.

Sex & the sculpture

Yesterday decided i had a crush on a bloke at work. I guess it was all the testosterone around the place lately what with the footballers & all the hard work we been doing & he does have a cute butt/broad shoulders combo which gets me every time. A hangover from the first BF back in the mists of time who was a seriously gorgeous hunk of a bloke & there u are, forever reverting whenever u drop a hat.

Anyway it has worn off already, like a 12 hr virus. But it was way cool that i took that energy & went to the studio after work & did some sculpture & put on some music & worked very hard & humming along to the mp3z & made some work. Generally if u need an energy boost & help to concentrate then a bit of infatuation will do it for ya. I must admit to not being stirred by anybody in flamin ages i spose i just been working too hard for too long to care about anything much, but a couple of slower days at work & there you go the mind starts to wander.

The Arts work better with sex involved, generally. Like where would rock n roll be if the blokes in their codpieces & mascara weren't trying to get laid? Like where would any artistic endeavour come from if not originally to attract attention? With rock n roll it even works LOL.
Heh... sculpture... pfft. Maybe i'll choose better in the next life or summink.

A charming interlude

A charming interlude in an otherwise mcfucked day full of disaster soak-up & abasement before IT-injured lecturers baying for our filthy silicon laced blood, was a special lunchbreak: meeting with the subject of next sculpture. A football player, taking off his shirt in the old unused server admin room at work for me so i could take some research snapshots of a particular pose. He did half an hour of football passing using a box of tissues for a footy. My, what pecs u have... and arms like tree trunks wth huge veins & rather entertaining muscle definition. I love anatomy, whoo boy. And i think a gorgeous bloke with his shirt off is much like a joy forever. If only i had a lunchbreak like this every day, i could probably get thru the work day easier, and crack a smile at least sometimes.

A productive weekend

That light at the end of the tunnel was a train coming. So work is still arse. But i have to admit it helps to crystalize the desire to be a real artist.

But this weekend i was a real artist! I did some waxing & some plaster. Even though i had to run into work briefly & had a visit from a friend with 2 insane children, i still managed it! I made a footballer, a speed skater & a dragonesque bunyip out of wax. Then i made a large head out of plaster. Dunno if thats gonna work out but its kinda cool to make something that big. Are details still details if they are really BIG?

Been doing wax work in the studio. I went in 8am both days. I never been able to work on wax before in the morning but cos its quiet there then, its been coming along sweet. Using the rice cooker to melt wax is a new way too, its faster to get started than using a hot water bottle to soften the wax. So now i have a better System.

Bin a while

Bin a bit quiet lately as the day job been horrendous. Can see light at the end of tunnel now as i got to go home only 10 minutes after usual time. Hooray. The light may yet turn into mirage but i have a glimmer of hope.

We just have to push on & its too late to say management fucked us over totally by lumbering us with this stuff to do or that we should have fought back cos it couldn't be done. Now we just got to keep hacking at it til it dies or we do. Like chewing like hell what management have bit off for ya. Sure along the way we will all get RSI & respiritry infections & rashes & our homelife will suffer greatly marriages break up kids start takin drugs pets starve.

And for what. Well yeah don't go there oK.

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.

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....)

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.

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.

Bad news good news

Its been very sad to watch the dissolution of a great workplace into a hovel. Half my work friends have left now & the other half hate working here & most want to go.

It used to be a fun place to work, and i'm glad i saw that for a while, cos you don't see that much. I mean you can have fun with your fellow peons in a lot of jobs sort of in spite of things, like in most jobs where your boss sucks, but here even the managers used to be great. Wow respect from a manager as if you were a real person. Awesome concept. Now we have ghost whispy jobsworth bosses, n workers trying like rudderless boats to row thru the morass that is their lot since they changed everything. You can tell the people who are still trying by the wide eyed desperate look they have.

One a positive note i was havin a chatter up the closest possible gallery to work yesterday at lunchtime, buying some tools actually, started chattin, anyway to cut a along story short they have offered me a show. Nice eh. Kinda exciting really. Anyway i need to revisit them for a proper discussion with all sorts of numbers 'n that in it, so if that sux then it could all come to naught, but on the other hand it could be a wonderful opportunity. Could even do some abstract kinda work now, cos they often show ceramics, so their clientele is used to the materials being as loud as the form, so ta speak. They also like figurative work there cos seen a lot of it in their past shows.

Anyway its worth a chat next week when i got a lunchtime to walk back up there. It is funny though i have a history of getting a gallery thats across the road from whatever job i have at the time etc there must be some explanation for it but whatever it is, its bloody convenient anyway.

Regards the current life sized man, well they are seeing theres issues & the date for delivery is put way into the future now, June or summink. This is both good n bad, i sure as f*** don't want it hangin round that long, but of course its already too late for it to get installed by march so its just as well innit.

They came over today, well some of em, cos they got stuck in traffic & it was all a bit crap really & only some of em made it at all & some had to leave before the others arrived & so the full discussion i need from everybody i still hain't got, but they did all try very hard & we will have to all try again next week too... But anyway the few ppl who did chat about it were v positive & the prob is not with my sculpture it is rather with ppl's expectations & they all got to get to discussin them & agreeing with each other & then telling me what they really really want & then i can just do it eh.

Me n a Prius

Today i loaned a Prius, one of them electric hybrid cars. They have a slew of em available & i found out how to request one. I been spending the week walking everywhere & while its been great for my health its a total waste of time when we got so little time to spare. Tho it took me 20 mins to work out HTF to get it started, and other 5 to find the handbrake (hint u don't use your hand!) so that was a bit counter prod. Fun little thing tho it was quite nice to drive once u sussed it out. Just like a car :) I like wheeled things.

I was first trying to gain access to the 2 labs i had failed to gain access to the day before. This was pretty stupid waste of time but this what happens when someone goes on leave & u get to come to actual grips with the rotting corpse u have been handed, & that bagful of loose keys u grabbed from their desk drawer don't save your ass at all. Anyway after some serious emailing i got some pin code for a lab & finally (not easily at all, but i don't wanna bore u too bad) got in to discover - one pc & no working network whatsoever. The really great bit was that there was a back door... that was unlocked... that i had actually walked into yesterday, but it'd been really dark in there yesty & i had sorta barely seen thru the darkness that there were empty desks, with some comms cabinets LEDs flickering up the back, so why would it enter my mind this was a lab... I would say a solid 4 hrs work (and walk) over 2 days got me into this unlocked unlab. Priceless.

I found a person who knew vaguely about this lab, and she told me the real person was on holidays, but she went looking for the pc's. I didn't really want her to go looking for the pc's, cos i wasn't gonna do anything with them anyways, i just wanted her to produce the key to the other lab i needed. I did say this, a few times, but we traipsed across the faculty & got to a building with a sign on the door, Bees have escaped into this building, do not enter for 48 hrs. She let me stay outside. She came out, no, there's no computers in there. Good thing too - what was i gonna do with em.. prolly full a bees.

After various detours she got the key. Finally got into that 2nd lab - i wasn't bloody going to quit before i got in there. My goal for today was to kick these 2 labs in the guts. Success. Sorta. I did get in, but kicking guts was problematic. Anyway the bees, the prius & the pinpad non-lab were the highlights of my week, and all happened on the same day!

Hard

Finding it really hard to address this sculpture. Need a week off. I worked all weekend on it, and it did improve, but the face is now like beyond me being able to see it at all. I think this is what happens to my work, in the end. In the end it gets to a point where i can't stand to work on it one more second & thats it, its finished. Not ideal i guess. And its certainly not how i finish my own work. Tho with my own work i finish it much earlier & leave it half done & i like it like that. When u work for other people u try to make it more perfect cos well they are paying for it it better be excellent.

Anyway if i had my druthers i'd have a week off then take a long look as if it were fresh n new & then modify & then another week off etc. Perfect world that would be but we don't live there, & here is always deadlines.

Work is arse. But i'm getting fitter walking many miles to different labs. i now have an offsider to suffer along with me. Not sure why.

Saturday

Hey another saturday has visited upon us. Today was my birthday i did get an awesome broom as i had hinted really hard about :) Its a wonderful thing to have a good tool. I can sweep the carport out in 5 strokes. Its very satisfying.

Today I rung the dude with the results of the commissioners' viewpoint from the other day & told him he needs to look 17 in this sculpture. He was less than impressed for some reason even though i said it very tactfully i think, i left a lot out. But hell i have never been tactful so maybe someone else may have said it better. He was also coming back to the shoulder business. He been thinking it needs to have shoulder-head situation "rising up" kinda thing. He was pretty sure about this before, tho he seemed to be happy enough with the changes i made earlier, but he's decided not, now. I can't really see it in the photos like he sees it. To me it looks like a trick of perspective in the picture, and it comes from the legs more than the shoulders really... but thats just what think i see, cos i don't really understand it. Anyway today i was stumped again cos he seems to really want this. And most of the main changes he's wanted have been positive & improved it heaps. So anyway i went all 'lateral thinkin' on it's ass, & decided to lift the thing at the front by the base & place it on my 2 Wood Blocks. Bobs yer uncle its all different now, it rises outta the ground more. I set to levelling out the base, & cut off the back foot & put a bend n the back leg & when i get that sorted out proper she'll be right. It will be more powerful like this. I am happy i feel some Progress in positive direction. Even tho this will take some time, it will be better so its worth it.

Still working on the face too tho so we'll see. Gotta get it done tomorrow - another viewing is tuesday.

Verdict: Fail

Today sucked. I had the morning from hell in the computer labs trying to install some dongle licence files on half finished computers. Some program called Wonderware which is impossible to pronounce as anything else but Underware & while it may be the prog of choice for reactor engineers its dongle userfriendliness leaves somthing to be desired in a lab situation where they're all wired in to avoid em getting nicked. A morn of all the worst excesses of user irritation that Windows can provide with slow logins, flickin off USB drives & group policy fails making everything stuff up all over the place. When u got to do so many of em it crumbles away your heart & soul.

I went & had a coffee when i couldn't stand another moment. I went to the new building where they had a cafe. There was the usual windtunnel effect u get in new buildings & the furniture was moving past me as i sat there holding down my macaroon & cappachino. The girl come out & put it all back but it was scraping back along on the concrete before she got back in the door. It was pretty funny really but i was too stressed. Sadly the coffee made me more stressed & i went back into the lab feelin worse than when i left, which is unusual. That was a long long morning then.

I was worryin cos the commissioners were coming this arvo. They kept slipping the time earlier by 15 mins each time they confirmed it so that i was stressing out that i wouldn't even get home before they did. Anyway i did, at 80kmh, 5 mins to spare...

Verdict... they said he looks too old. They want him young like 17 or so. I thought i'd took at least 50 yrs off him but there u go. Studying the old feller was maybe the last thing i shoulda ever done. They said they'd rather i'd not met him til after i finished it! Well thats debatable cos i reckon u can always learn *something* from meeting yer subject. But well yeah it has sure caused me LOADS of problems. But i dunno if i'd do it different next time.

So i'll be working thru my birthday. Not happy cat.

Sign of the time

I found a "Please Queue Here" sign, on a pile of crap for neighborhood junk day. The possibilities!

I stuck his head on tonight. I finished it in darkess, so let's see how scary it is tomorrow. Its my birthday on the weekend but i guess i'll be working thru it. Damn it. This is really starting to wear on me. I'm getting sick again, today at work i went & laid on the desks in the room next door, where the windows server guys used to work, its dark & empty there now. So i had a nap at lunchtime. Its kinda good in a way, cos sometimes u need a nap for lunch & we never had a place to go do that before, not that was inside. Every sharp edge has a silver line then, or what. I was gifted (after a little prompting) with a lovely device from there, it is a ridiculously long power board with about 20 or more sockets on it. Its off a server chassis & it bloody funny. There are a couple under the desks there. There is such a thing as a server geek joke you can hold in your hand :)

Still intrigued

I'm still intrigued by Henry Moore & his pebbles. I feel cheated somehow, that none of the pebbles i've ever found look anything like the extraordinary little hollowed out blobular sculptures he used to find all over the beach when he went to the sea side every year. I was just reading that he used to see & be excited by different shapes every year, like he'd get obsessed with one type of shape. But if he sat down with a pile of em he would see new things there that he liked. Well, der. I mean is the ability to put into words the bleedin obvious a sign of genius? Perhaps it is.
I'm not bagging him... i can see from that how its sposed to be, you know. Simple truths are the real ones, usually. And whats more simple than making things/being a sculptor. It should be a fantastically less difficult thing than i'm making it into, thats for sure. ;)
New years resolution #2: make it easier.

I wonder what beach had those pebbles?

Dawgs

Well i'm feelin a bit like a dead dog - or something deader - but i think i've done the FACE at last. I've spent so much time on this lately that its like its my sentence.
The dude came yesterday & he still didn't see himself in there. Which is cool, cos i didn't think he was there either. But today i sat down & worked for 6 hrs straight on a new clay head & i finally got the bastard. Instead of studying the dude's head as it is now, like i been doing, which is not working at all, i took all the studying i done of his current head & used a 50 yr old photo. so it was a mix of what shape his skull is in reality & what he looked like back in the day. Basically: remove a lot of Character. Young blokes are pretty, but, well, not the same amount of sculpting excitement, not so much hollows & creases eh.
I applied rubber mould to it & in the darkness this evening just before Bones started on TV i finished the plaster mothermould. So should be able to pop out a plaster tomorrow after work & then cut off his old head with an angle grinder & apply the new one maybe the next evening. Then we have visit from the commissioners the afternoon after. So not a moment too soon by golly.

Work is getting in the way of my career

Yeah. As above.

Break'n

So having a wee break. A day of being sick is about all i give myself. I think i've become some kinda weird workaholic type. I don't think i *want* to be a workaholic it is just thrust upon me, since i'm still sure my natural state is to bludge like anything. But maybe it can creep up on ya like a disease.

I spent last couple of days working on this dude's head & it is slowly getting there. Shwaya shwaya as the egyptians say, slowly slowly. It will come. Hopefully. I fobbed off the commissioners an extra week & so i reckon i get one more weekend & then what i have is what u get. The head is looking loads better. I had to let go of some parts & imagine others. It now has a youthful determined look. I have to take 50 years off the real dude but i do take his point that he couldn't quite see himself in there yet. Think i have improved it plenty since but. I think his is the most difficult head i ever seen. Deceptively simple as they say in the real estate ads. Anyway I give it til saturday to invite him back. That gives me wiggle room with my flu. Today was a write off for example. Tomorrow, sadly, terribly, is back to work. Luckily i'm pretty sick i might have a sickie since i doubt i will be productive & i certainly can't walk half an hour distance to press a button in a lab which is part of my duties at the moment.

It does kinda stump me how this likeness stuff gets *harder* with practice. I sure hope in the end it all adds up to some skill set or something. Can't see it now but. One point can be stressed is its easier to do dead guys. LOL. They don't care as much :)

Saw Avatar in 3d friday night. That was cos i couldn't face the fact i done nothing but work all the hols. Gee what a great treat it was. I love this digital projector stuff too - the first time in history that projected movies are in FOCUS! Hooray & bring out the champers.

Been a couple sad things happen in the sculpturin world lately but both of em too new to talk about. Sober u up though. Gird them loins for one & RIP the other.

Fail territory

The dude & his wife came yesty & while immediately they thought it was awesome they did start to pick niggles soon after & it went from there into fail territory by the time we were finished pickin it to bits. I pulled out the tools & the plaster bucket & did some instant reno work & we got closer but still when they left we were indecisive on things. Have asked them to return in a few days. Then i got to work & worked all day on it. Made large changes. Had a revelation regards the cheek/jowl area. Incrementally i may be getting the guys face. Cannot believe how hard this is. He says it himself though when he looks thru photos of himself they are "all different!". The books i read about portrait sculpture have not helped much. I can do better eyebrow areas so ppl don't look surprised, but thats it. They didn't help with a likeness at all.

Sick today. Horrible head cold. Typical. But no whingeing. No whingeing til 2010, i resolved. Think i will make a NY resolution to do less whingeing generally. I won't say do none, cos it can be entertaining to hear a proper good humorous whinge & sometimes whingeing has its place, lets face it i would write much less blog if i didn't whinge. But its a bit negative really innit.

Anyway having a sick day. Biggest effort, which left me wringing in sweat & shaking legs was wrapping 2 sets of birthday presents. Lest u think thats not much work, well it took about a hour so it was hard yakka. Have now 2 bags of b'day presents & not sure which is whose. Bugger. Ah yes no there is 1 way to tell but i won't write it here in case they look. Which they don't cos nobody reads this blog but Ben. Hi Ben!

The Do

The dude is much better now that i have like adjusted his hair style. Funny that cos really in all the photos his Do is kinda different, & esp now he is a elder dude in reality, there ain't much left at all - but it STILL improves the likeness & thank christ it no longer has the hitleresque hair style that really doesn't flatter anybody or anything. Thats a real bummer when u finish up at the end of the day on a likeness & the thing looks like hitler. FFS. F_F_S. But now his Do is a little flouncier & all is improved. Now if i can just get his eyes to look similar.. but think i nearly got it.

Once again proving if u keep at it long after a sane person would have chucked it in 1000 times over, u WILL get there. Not that i'm quite there, but nearly i can see that oncoming train at the end of the tunnel. I even put on his number on his shirt. Lookin good there. One thing i can do good is the numbers.

One thing thats powered me ahead is i got some new glasses, the Opto gave them to me. They are like 1.5x enlarging plain sorta glasses that u can buy down the chemist for 20 bucks he sez. But the good bit is that they don't muck with yer perspective like my prescription ones did. That was a different Opto. Some total wanker i suspect, he wanted to "improve" my vision by fucking it up totally. The more i think about that the more pissed off i get. He said my eyes were weird & in two diff directions so he wanted to solve that by somehow turning one eye around via those glasses. Without considering that i BEEN SEEING LIKE THAT FOR MY ENTIRE LiFE ALREADY & didn't need my bloody eye turned around i needed a cataract fixed, which he said i didn't have. FFS i should go back there & shoot him.

On a break this arvo i sat down in armchair with the Kaossilator & a little mono speaker attached & mucked about. I made this sweet simple quiet hypnotic little loop & feel asleep to it. Woke up it was still going. That was real nice.

Drawing

Today i sat down & tried to draw this guy. I think sitting about drawing or painting is just so xcellent bludge.. cup of tea, a heater, a cat purrin nearby maybe, i can see why painters feel so superior. Dumbass sculptors out there in the cold, rain, sleet, heat, etc slavin away & getting filthy & catching cold & dermatitis & rotting feet out in plaster mud. Gross innit. Yes it is. But anyway i have kinda got a bit better into the guys head. Externally speaking. Went out & attacked the real thing after that & i feel slightly better about it. This time i'm just building his face in plaster, on the body. I guess its kinda cool to do that, cos its really not an easy way to do it. But my lack of progress in the studio working in clay has kinda depressed me. And this seems to be working well.

Xmas passed in a whirl of junk food & a bit of outings. There's 3 birthdays this month of the 4 ppl in this house & we all been shoppin furiously lately but yet preending to be all casual.

I've hinted for a Sabco broom.

More xmas choppin

Been doing yet more food shopping. Seem to have caught the terror that everybody gets this time of yr when the shops shut for 2 whole days. Tho we have 4 people to feed at the moment, at least one of them appears to not actually eat anything so its hard to see where it all goes. Anyway apart from a dearth of chocolate & lettuce, we are set now for the next 2 days, Xmas & Boxing Day.

The dude of whom i am sculpting came over yesty with his wife, so she could have a look. She is a painter & did the same art school as me, even. She is awesome - not only did she really like the sculpture, but she went into great detail & depth on the dudes head & got him to suffer there while she pointed out all the strange parts of his head & explained his head was quite weird & how hard it was as she had tried to paint his portrait many times. We again discussed his nose in enormous depth & she made me feel his nose so i can understand it now where the bone is & how the cartilage works cos i studied nose anatomy before (i can feel u laffing but its true i have) and now i can understand why his is shaped like that. He has an original nose, he reckons it was never broken while he played, but maybe as a kid. Anyway eyebrows & nose, planes of face, i learned a lot. And i've asked them to come back next week & they would love to, which is way nice eh. It can't just be the cake & tea, i'm sure they would like a good sculpture too. Which is what i want! So i should get it fairly well along & then get it checked out again when they come back, & so i'm feeling real pleased about it.

Feeling people's head is a fantastic way to understand them BTW but i doubt most sculptors do that. I don't think people would really like to get their head groped just cos they commissioned a head - but its a shame cos it really shows you a lot about how their head is. I wonder if my failing eyesight was once better enough that i could have got all this data without fingering a person's head? Maybe, I think the hands just shortcut what the eyes need to decode. I'll never know that for sure cos i never did likeness type heads when i was young & my eyes worked top. Maybe after i get my eyes fixed they'll work better. But I'm scared to get my eyes fixed in case they work like they do now with glasses, which is i lose all nuances of depth perception. The world is like paper cutouts laid on top of each other, so there is some type of depth there, but each object is dead flat. This makes me very unhappy. It makes me realise though, maybe, why most sculptors go abstract as they get on. Its possibly a camoflaging manouver so nobody knows they can't see for shit anymore.

Xmas choppin

Had a great time xmas shopping.. we don't "do" xmas really but yet still suffer the slings n arrows of the xmas shoppin xperience due to everybody else "doing" xmas. U get that if u live in civilization i.e. big city in Aus. But i've taken to the after hrs xmas shoppin universe & this is very satisfactory. Being out at 10pm wandering alone thru the toy aisles - all of em fully stocked mind you, which never happens - what a relaxing time. More store staff than shoppers actually. The star wars stormtroopers i been eking out of ebay are on the shelves now. i bought one, it is actually luke whatsisface under the helmet, chose that one cos i know his helmet doesn't fall off all the time. Having played (is that ok for a grownup?) with a friend's child's collection & studied this up. Its a beauty & the family most impressed with how expressive it is. Even sis, who is not easily moved to playing with toys, whatsoever, or approving of same, quite likes this little dude.

Also got a little Terminator for $3 which quite a good bargain, nobody else seems to want those things. I can understand, its not much like a real Terminator in looks for a start, & its poseability is very limited. $3 is about right. Yet there is a strange feeling of godlike power to hold a Terminator in the palm of yr hand, esp if you have seen the movies, cos they are evil little f'ers in the real world. Heh.

On hols - Xmas

The dude upon which the life sized man is based come for another visit. He picked out some more issues with the 'spring off the hip' action. Bit of a bugger that there is only weeks of time left, there are major changes needed so this isn't gonna be easy. Still this is yet another important thing i'm learning, get em early. I may have learned that before, but if i just get it right next time, that would rock.

Bro-in-law is here now for a month of physio & told us the story he was looking for a bank down the local mall & ended up in the hairdressers trying to get the exchange rate out of the guy there & then arguing about it when he said he had no internet. Pretty funny. I countered that story with my embarrassing story of ringing the tyre place last week & them losing my car, when it was the wrong tyre place; & it seems like i possibly been consistently booking my car in at Jax & then dropping it off at Jobsons which are on the same intersection, almost. For years.

Yesterday watched Pandorum the sci fi horror flick, its pretty good & some of the gore was so intense & vast that i think it cracked a new level of grossout in my brain. Great stuff then eh.

Today we went to see dad's new gravestone. It was pretty good, the spelling & all & it was straight etc all spot on, except it was on the wrong plot. He had someone's grandma's grave on his plot & she must have had his, unless there were more graves involved in the total fuckup. We like to imagine that dad would be laughing about it but i'm not actually sure, and we're definitely pissed & some of us were in tears about it so i'm on the phone first thing tomorrow & get right up em. FFS there is one really important & yet quite simple thing you have absolutely to get right, eh. How can you get that wrong?

2009 resolution

December resolution, no more whingeing till 2010.

Hmm so what does that leave to talk about... ah yes, i'm on hols now. Yahoo! 2 weeks orf u little BEWDY!!!

Got measured for a cataract op this morning, i was under the impression it would take 2 hrs of measuring & i wouldn't be able to see good after, like my eyes'd be all blurry. So i went to work for just 2 hrs real early & said i'd be then off for the rest o the day on sick leave. However i was exceedingly happy to discover the opto was over in 30 mins & I could see normal. Whoo-hoo! The vista of an afternoon to MYSELF was suddenly appearing. A real anal retentive swot would have gone back to work, but a mob o orangutans could not have dragged me. I went shopping & got a tiny boom box for the studio from Aldi's. I dunno how u could call a cup-sized radio a boom box its more like a tweet box but anyway it plays mp3's off cd & it was cheap as. Had a lovely nap at home while listening to a Skeptoid podcast. Ah this is the life. Tho one could also admit it was so damn hot u could do little else. But no whingeing... Then out to do a bit o sculpting in the carport. The big man is kinda pleasing now even without a head. It looks pretty well sprung like its about to chuck that ball right at ya. I like that. The dude himself will come check it out tomorrow. I had tried to do the head sunday but i got sick. Went to the studio, tried but got nowhere. It was that earache thing coming to a head. Or to my stomach, anyway. It all went away the next day but.

Applied as Geek In Residence with Arts Council. You never know. Got to try it could be really cool.

New studio start

Sunday... I finally did a stroke of work in the new studio yesterday. I made a head of the current life sized dude. Its cool how if you just flog yourself mercilessly for hours you do eventually get a vague likeness. I'm not being sarcarstic there i actually mean it. Need to do it again & it should get better. I'm about to go for the day. This time i will have a working light bulb in my desk light so i might be able to get some shadow & that makes it easier to work. The poor old light has been moved so many times & the bulb always survived but all good things etc.

I'm very lucky- my studio is on the lower level & cool & i got Dave's mofo floor fan. Just need a bar fridge....

Good news... finally took the car to the shop & said can u tell me what that scary noise is & it turn out its most likely a wheel bearing which means its UNDER WARRANTY cos they put the things in a little while ago. Well thanks goodness i was expecting it to be like the tailshaft or the diff or something, cos thats all that hasn't been bloody replaced on the car in the last few yrs... But thats great eh. Hopefully they'll fix that tomorrow.

Cracking up & along

One of my workmates cracked & started yelling & stormed out this arvo. Just a bit too much micromanagement. She's bloodywell gonna use Gmail for calendar from now on instead cos she can never get the colours right enough for the team calendar. She uses Entourage apparently this gives a colour difference with Outlook. I guess mac uses Pantone colours or summink.

I've been brought close to it myself a few times recently. I particularly don't like the veiled sarcasm that pretends to answer a question that you start to think (after a long long time of listening to this rambling simmering anger BS answer) that maybe you shouldn't have asked, thats a fave, and if it happens again i'm gonna use that cool rejoinder that Sharon was telling me about: "i don't like the tone of your voice", & that should go down perfect.

And there's the whats going on i need to know/why don't you tell the person who needs to know type of catch 22 experience.

But i think you have to try to be patient & try to do your best for the team & not tell your boss to F'off, cos *maybe* there is some point to the annoying tasks. And how to refuse to jump up at the beck n call, without seeming just to be lazy? Whatever faint shadow of whimsy crosses the bossmind i get the bloody job. Get some cables we might need some sometime in the future. Fuck. The cables are 5 steps from our room. Sadly its up to me to curb this idiocy, cos i allow the power, that goes to boss' head. I have to stop doing what i'm told.

For a week or so i've had this occasional intense pain in the back of my neck at the left. Its like being stabbed. I realised that when i was seated at my desk this area of my neck was pointed at the exact spot at which my boss sits. I have other horrible symptoms as well. Got an earache that goes right down inside my neck, that ones on the right, keeps me awake at night. I feel pretty rotten generally & i'm getting flashbacks of bad things that depress me. I always get weird symptoms when i'm in some situation i shouldn't be in. Its funny, my body just starts yelling at me. This must be "body language".

On a positive side we had some nice xmas work things lately. The IT xmas party which was not a bloody orgy of back & front stabbing & fisticuffs that i expected, it was quite pleasant. Probably cos most ppl who care enough to ruckus have been purged already. And the VC's do, which was absolutely awesome, in the quad at sunset. I'm sure we won't do anything in our team itself, but to be quite frank, who cares. ....... And thats why we won't, LOL!

Never let it be said

that i don't bloody try hard sometimes. Or plan to.
I was very far down yesterday & almost planning a sickie.. and i was really just cruising for a car breakdown on the way in this morn so i could go get the car fixed & thus miss most of work. Not that car isn't wanting to oblige, its been right shitful lately. That noise is very loud now. But it dragged me in there. Kickin & screamin inside.

Anyway i have decided to go hard on this job business. i got to learn it & be good as i can at it, as long as i can manage it MAINLY at work. I'm not so crazed or have enough time to do homework. Tho i'm writing this as i wait for visual basic free version to download & install so i can do a wee bit of vb programming at home, so hmm. Still, some RUNS ON THE BORED is what i need to manufacture. I guess. WTF do i know about getting a head in business.

Aprez work i ditched a work mate who wanted to keep drinking beer til it was time to go eat seaweed & got a sulk out of that. Stuff it i got Thangs to Do. Got home & did nothin. But i'd still be out, if i'd gone, and i'm so sleepy.

7 days back

And i want to go on 10 months leave again.

I've been replaced by that weedy handshake boy, i worked it out today. Thats pretty depressing. Considering i was there from like at least a year before anyone else currently in the whole team, i'm now the newbie & lowest on the pecking order & the team leaders secretary. Funny how easily u can fall innit. I imagine its just like this if you go off to pop a sprog too. But fuck em. He may be up to speed & one o da boyz but at least i don't make shit up when i dunno something.

However - making shit up does tend to make you look good. You look efficient & knowledgeable, professional. Sigh. Ain't it the way. The only thing you can hope is that kinda person rises rapidly to managership.

Red Card Green Card

So.... you thought i might stop bloggin just cos i said i was finished. Well, i'm still here. Just cos i like talking crap i guess.

I went back to work, and its been 5 days of work. Feels like a billion years i must say. Getting up at 6am every day got old fast. Work is hard. Its not really a pleasure, except for the people there that i like, i enjoy their company. Its hard, & long hrs & no time for facebook/email/surfing. Sigh. It felt Ok though.. even tho i'd had a week of solid depression about going back it was not as bad as i had feared. People are not already disappointed at my lack o skills. That will come with time LOL.

I cracked out the old motorbike. Polished the bits i could reach. Squirted half a can of Start Ya Bastard down its gullet & it started first pop. Rode it 2 days & got such nasty blisters on my clutch hand that i'm over the "no neutral with heavy clutch" thing in traffic. Trade it in on a postie bike..

I went to see the National art school grad show thurs evening. First i slipped into Photography & immediately regretted it. I started to feel like why did i come. Why do they always have the teddy bears being stabbed with scissors? Escaped. Grabbed a beer & a kiss from a Technical Assistant & slipped away to avoid the speeches. I went to Painting, which used to be the Butchery & Pastry Cooking. I'd never been up inside those buildings & i really went in for the architecture. Tested the walkway up outside it where i'd always wanted to walk. Saw some shit painting. Lot of shit painting. Somebody had done some nice sketch paintings & then done them bigger but somehow lost all the skill they'd had in the sketches. That was depressing. A small glimmer & then it went away. Hopefully it'll come back. Its got to come back. Back downstairs i saw my old toolstore had been transformed into a little black painted dark curtained room with kinetic art in it with wee lights & stuff. Great. I loved my room, but this is cool.

Was pretty disappointed with the sculpture. Some of the work was ok but mainly they had this idea that they needed loads of SPACE between the exhibited items. Not much work either, but oddly presented. The space was arse. Stupid & pointless space, badly placed & annoying. I never been optically offended by space before... which was kinda interesting actually.

Friday was training course at work in being in a big team. Beats working, anyway. It was less bad than expected. There was a small subteam there who we are about to amagamate. They consistently fucked up the team activities by being self centred rather than working with everybody. Red card only when everybody else was green card. This doesn't bode well.

One skinny stalk of success i did have this past week. I crowned myself Queen of the Dells... i successfully dismantled my purple dell mini 10v & changed the ram to a 2 gig stick. Thats the most it can take & to do that you need to strip the entire thing down to 1 circuit board. I watched a video walkthru on youtube about it. Only had to watch it 1.0001 times, it was very clear. Bit nerve wracking working at the plastic fittings, thats all. i used a lot of plastic credit cards etc to help with the leverage on the bits that clip on. Everything very small... 3mm wide ribbon cables & stuff... a couple of times i took macro shots with the camera & zoomed in just so i could tell how to undo something. Done it but. It made me happy. Technical stuff rocks. Bow down little dells your queen is here.

Last day of bludging

Today's my last day o free. Back to work tomorrow. De blog will become redundant & the journey is finish baby. Today i will attempt to ready myself for work again. That means breaking out the motorbike, oiling various bits of it, polishing the corrosion off it, getting depressed about the shape its in & maybe charging the battery & trying to kick it over. The ol tin of "Start Ya Bastard" will be necessary. Then finding enough clean clothes for 5 whole days in a row, buying sliced bread for sambos & all that tedious shite that is the white fellas burden.

People r saying i can 'make my own' job there. Like figure something & run with it. I would say hey yeah i will be the sculptor then. But sadly it doesn't work that way. Its got to be something related to real work LOL. Narrow boundaries narrow vision narrow choices. If i cannae be sculptor then i have to admit i don't care enough about it to make my own job. Hard to find the inspiration to give a sh*t really. Gawd - i hope my attitude improves. I hear we are all "team spirit" etc with the new young boss. Bring one thing u been working on to talk about in our monthly meeting. Bleah. 20 people each talking about something u couldn't care less about its a little xtra torture. Work. There's a reason they have to pay you to do it.

Car shite

Yesterday i just went looking at car things. I went looking for vans & i tried to get my car looked at to find out what makes that horrible noise but you really got to ring ahead for these things. Fridays are everybody's day off nowadays & they manage then to be the busiest days to try to get anything done.

I laid the big bloke down & reattached his shoulders. Thats all i did yesterday cos to tell the truth i was a little peeved with it. Today i started making his arms up again & i sorted out the crotch... thats much easier done when they're laid upside down and their arms have fallen off. As the bishop said to the folk singer. Anyway then i decided righto before he gets too heavy i better stand him up again. That was extremely difficult & i'm sitting here now trying to work out if i did any permanent damage to myself when i did it. I guess i'll get over it cos i can still type. Anyway cos he's got wheels on its extraordinarily difficult to stand him up even when you can barely support the weight & he tried to get away. I reckon that doubles the difficulty. So i'm on the net to look into block n tackle outfits...

Bit of disaster

Well had a bit of a disaster this arvo. After the real dude came & went, i stood there with my coffee & decided where i was gonna cut, and then i did cut, a giant wedge out of his back. I chiselled a huge wedge shaped hole in his back alomost thru to the front. Then i carefully pasted a bit bit of hessian & plaster in such a way that i had a great big sturdy hinge across the top shoulder. I waited for that the get set & strong then i loosed up the rest of him with the mallet & chisel. I hinged him into position & wedged him by the football that he holds, on 2 milk crates & a variety of big ugly wood blocks i keep for these occasions. I pasted some plaster in the now skinnier wedge & it all looked quite ok. I let it set an appropriate amt of time, i thought, then i cut some of the hinge off & the whole fuckin thing went down like a car crash & his arms & head all bust off & there was a bunch of body parts all skittered everywhere & a loud bang as quite a significant weight was involved. So u know how when u really fuck up proper, u don't even swear. Well i didn't say a word i didn't even like breathe heavy or nothing. I guess when something like that happens u kinda been expecting it all along really. I feel strangely more professional when they fail than when they work, cos u know u been skating near the stupid zone i guess. Pusch the envelope & its you that gets folded spindled & mutilated.
Poo. More work to do now, & not much time.

Bad habit needed

A sculptor needs to smoke... u need the oral thing while staring. I tend to eat instead, or drink litres & litres of cold instant coffee. This is one reason i'm fat. You can be fat or smoke. But you really need to stare & hypnotise yourself at the same time. I got some massive changes to make now on the life sized dude & it would be good to meditate & smoke while staring. If only there were something like smoking that wasn't eating.

The real dude came to visit this morn, a true old gent & he has picked out some probs with the entire form of it. He demo'd how to pass a ball & explained what it all means. I have the legs & top half of the body at a stage where the arms should then be different, like have almost already unloaded the ball. So i need to move the body back to a quarter second earlier in the movement. The legs are not gonna be changed, though the feet might. It all makes much more sense once explained. As usually happens its way late in the time i have & we got the prospect of total skeletal renovation in order to get it right. He brought along a ream of excellent photos & put my meagre little photocopy stack to shame. If i'd had all these images months ago. But that tends not to happen. I just got to overcome this sorta thing, thats why they pay me. Though they would pay me if it was easy, too. Hm.

Anyway i got to stand out there & meditate while staring at it, without a cig. I got to work out where to cut to do the changes & if i can cut as little as possible to make the changes i want. Its like origami, probably. If i cut here, i may lose a section that i will have to remake but then i can avoid cutting there & there & there & there. Deep thought for a thursday.

Gloomy daze

Feeling quite down today. I haven't been as down since years. I guess arguing with sis doesn't help but i guess it is just that i'm about to go back to work & nothing else seems to be working out.

Thats totally wrong BTW cos everything is falling into place but of course it won't all get finished this week before i move into what seem like a different life which is FT work again.

I guess the overwhelming feeling is that i haven't finished what i need to do & also the usual which is that i get the feeling this 10 months off was just marking time & why didn't i enjoy it at all? But you know, it were work, weren't it. It wasn't 10 months of umbrella drinks, it was 10 months of work, just not *real* work like they know it jim. And i wasn't like miserable. I was pretty content, i guess. i woke up when i wanted, worked as hard as i could, and never got time to do anything else hahaha. I went down the mall (rarely) at the times when there was least people, i got my car fixed when it broke (often) without the stress of organizing around work. Took appointments without regard for what day. Having not been at work was very very good, i just shouldn't forget that. Its not what you get done, entirely, its also what didn't get done to YOU cos you were not goin in to WORK:
10 months of not commuting in any regular fashion
10 months of not being tempted by the junk food tray in the lunch room
10 months of not sitting in the lunchroom *EVER* (bad vibe)
10 months of not using the lunchroom fridge (really bad vibe)
Or microwave (juz don't go there)
10 months of not using ITSM or Sharepoint or any other broken stupid instruments of drip torture
10 months of not having to come up with metrics about irellevant rubbish you can't remember doing, but its "countable"
10 months of not caring what chair u have in the office or who got the biggest monitor
10 months of not feelin stupid cos u dunno stuff nobody told you & is not written anywhere

Yeah fuck knows why i'd be depressed about coming back for that shit again.

Its the next day now. Due to lack of internet we can only use it in the mornings so sticking the blogshite up is not so easy.
Started off today mediocre. But ended all depressed again. I hain't been this down in years.
I tarted up the studio. I have a shelf unit there that needs 4 tiny screws to set the cross brace else it all falls over like a floppy parallelogram (is that a rhombus?)
So of course i have lost those 4 screws. in spite of remembering, in fact mentally visually seeing that i put them in my drawer, they ain't there. I probably put them in SOME drawer but having checked them all, fuck nose. Anyway i took some boxes of computer screws over there & incredibly lucky i got exactly 4 screws that actually fit & have the right thread etc. Amazing really. Should make me really happy. I was slightly satisfied/relieved but thats about as good as it gets this week. I filled the shelves with my crap off the floor & rearranged everything & much improved. Its a long skinny space, so how to make it feel vast & wonderful. I'm putting all the shelves & boxes up the far end across the back wall. Then i can put tables in the middle, hopefully to encourage the walk round work-in-the-round. I dunno if that really works but lights would really help too. Well working on it... Going to get a bar fridge as there are precedents. Its a shame i can't get my own toilet too as the ones there are very much art school student share house style. Tho they flush. What more u need? Just don't ask what more u want. i brung my piece of blue astroturf in. I was gonna use it as a wee carpet. But its so small a piece that it looks pretty stupid. I wonder if reverse garbage ever gets in any of that. Spose it goes out faster than it comes in. I'd love to do the whole floor. And walls & ceiling.

The subject of the life sized man is coming to see himself in the front yard tomorrow & me to study his head. 10am. Thank goodness i will be able to progress a bit. It could be another reason i'm depressed cos u get that when there is a severe deadline & you're just stuck.
i got some spicy fruit rolls to offer with tea cos being an older codger its probably all he's allowed to have. Boring biscuit with a tinge of almost being slightly tasty. Anyway i know he's got a lunch to go to straight after so he won't want to fill up. Its a great honour to have him visit. I dunno anything about sport really but this dude was pretty great.

I got a new place to go & mope. Its a new boat ramp they put in on foreshore drive there in botany, its only been open a week or somethink. At the moment its quite cool they are building the container terminal & there's boats out there driving pylons or whatever they do into the underwater floor & its still open water to stare across, tho when they finish you'll be metres away from a fucking massive ugly container terminal instead. Anyway now is the time to go there & watch the sun set etc & the airplanes come & go constantly as you watch. Its like watching tennis your head goes left right left right watching the planes landing & taking off on the runways that cross right across in front of ya. I took photos with my phone of the sunset but they didn't save. Nothing i've taken with that bastard phone has saved for months. I just found that out this evening. Chalk that up to it being a complete POS lemon of a phone cos thats what it is. If it belonged to me i'd set fire to it.

When i got home it was dark. Put the old mattress out on the nature strip & i lay on it hoping the garbage men would take me away too. Some big bug was buzz flickin at me at random moments. When the stupid fluffy white dog next door started barking i gave it up.

Today is Thurs. I slept in & now run about trying to clean up the place for the big visit. Its a shame i hain't improved the life sized man, but maybe i still got time for a quick coat of oxide.

Sweeping times

Went into the studio today to sweep it out & lock the door. Some more furniture to move in but i wanna sweep first. Might even mop, with my awesome new mopping skillz that i gained when moving out of old studio. I know why old ladies can slap u so hard, it cos they mopped, in their day. Anyway i swept up a big pile of broken fluoro light glass & a goodly amount of black metal dust & assorted thingys. I guess i will need to source this type of debris again when i leave, if i am to leave it as i found it.

Found the electrician & got him to remove the hanging down wires & its all lookin quite good. I need some decent lighting, but i might make do with just some nice shades on the 2 globes there, and some desklamps. I think i'll be doing desk work there til i get started on a Project.

Lookin for some trestles now. Or i might go the milk crates. I'm over finding & moving big tables... doors on stands will be spot on for big tables. They got lots of spare doors here.

Got enough room in the studio for my sofa again, but i'll wait n see on that. :)

Decided to go on strike re the life sized man till i get the face working. If i never meet the guy i'm hardly gonna get it done. I keep pestering. I should be able to do it off photos, cos i done that before. But still if the guy's alive, it got to help heaps to have a look.

Sorta stalled

Feelin a bit stalled, still have not met properly the subject of current life sized man & it would be good to get his head sorted. 1 week to go til back to work. Like puttin your arms out for the handcuffs. Yuck. Still, [insert here positive words about work... i can't think of anything], so thats good.

Need to get studio sorted into some form of awesome home away from home, even tho i won't be able to go there much while workin FT. Need a good place to go to to give me hope. Its a bit of a prick of a place to get to.. whenever somebody breaks down on the M5, it takes more than 1/2 hr from home, even if you don't actually go on the M5. On the rare occasion nobody has broke down on the M5, its about 10 min. I need to find some anti-M5 routes that go nowhere near it.

There is a rotten lookin sculpture in Wolli there on the way, which i don't think puts me in a great mood for makin art. Got to find an angle where it inspires me... like, hey if that was put there as public art, maybe... Rather than thinkin hell if that is the standard i will never understand what drugs, etc etc. Its this pukey not quite grass green colour & kinda very standard boring irrelevant shape cut out steel. Its like the sculpture u have when you're not havin a sculpture. A place holder for saying this is where there should be a bit of art. If i sound grumpy its cos i am :P Its too hot today.

2 knockbacks in fast succession

...but i'm STILL going to keep trying...

Paris residency, AGAIN i got the flick. I am so gonna try for the 12 month Germany one next year. Forget Paris, it sucks anyway, i hear a cup a coffee is very expensive. And in Germany, Juz can make the coffee... :P

A sculpture show for January, my work didn't suit the content of the show (lovely excuse actually). Blast.

Someone said that, the most important thing is winning awards for yer art. What a load of bollocks is my response to that. But yeah you know once you win one, well you keep winning em...

Much like people who win residencies, keep on winning em. How the HELL do they do it?

HR

Hmm i went to see the HR dude at work re returning to wk. In the end we agree that going back FT is best in my old job. I also used that session as a bit of psychoanalysis on myself & i now realise my stress over returning is mostly cos of my mini-boss's nerves (worrying about whether i can get up to speed fast enough to be a help with the deadlines) & not actually anything to do with the job. All jobs are hard when u got to learn em & learning a different job wouldn't actually be any easier, for me. And its my job & my life innit. So stuff it.

I also on speaking to a colleague have found out what weedy handshake boy's duties were, and to my surprise its nothing like what i thought. In fact he is doing his old job, that he did before they centralised. So in other words its no wonder he looked guilty when he met me, a bit shifty. Its cos he is getting away with blue bloody murder, on a bigger wage, doing exactly what he did before, not pushing himself or being pushed, or learning anything at all.

Far out. It really does boggle me. Here i am killing myself worrying about him being better at my job, when he hasn't been doing it. I was going to ask for the same training wot he got. But there was none. And of course he's doing a great job - at his own old job. Its absolutely bloody shonky.

How can i take any of it serious now? No wonder mini-boss is nervy about me coming back. Its a total joke. It just show you, don't it, that your job is what u make it. Or, what u can get away with. Whole new outlook is dawning on my workmind.

A day in the inland sth

Monday i was took on a lovely warm tour of the southern highlands round picton & thirlmere & douglas park & buxton & i forget the name of the actual target town, starts with a C. Anyway i'm left with visions of hundreds of tall skinny trees & crunchy walking. Twas mighty hot out there, tho Camden beat it heatwise on the way back. Farkin ell. I was spared tho from the drivin duties cos I was couriered in style in Ash's little british racin green touring car. Its lovely to get out & see some cows & goats n check out the hi life of picton, with shops but almost no people. I could live with this lack o traffic.

Then over the past few daze been moving slowly into the studio. Its twice the size, and has awesome doors from the film set of Underbelly which was being shot across the rd & this mob acquired a bunch of doors, just before the building was demolished. Its an area where they knock down factories & put up yuppy blocks of flats. I have a suss the studios won't last long. Hope they took a decent lease.

The life sized man is a bit stifled. I been trying to do the face. I haven't met the guy properly yet & have stuff all photos. Its not surprising that its not going so well eh.

Have practically decided to go back to work FT. The part time work they offered is like pretty crap. I mean its nice they offered but i think (and everybody who i talk about it with) that i'm throwing too much away. I'm losing loads of good conditions like taking my lunch whenever i like, being respected, and a few pay levels. I tend to try to look at it as if i am getting "what i want" rather than losing something. But maybe thats the wrong way to look. How on earth would i ever get a job as good as that again, and it took me a while to get there, even tho it all happened sorta by accident. And like ppl keep saying, its your job, don't throw it away just to be good to the team. Well yes i see that point. I think i can count on the fingers of my arse how many ppl "put the team first" when considering their job (i.e. none, in case yr wondering about my arse).

Working FT tho, there is a lot more opportunity to get something different from inside. I can always quit later, anyway. I hope i can handle FT again, thats all. I'm tired now :) let alone going to work gettin up at 6am. I'm not a real sleep-inner tho i get up naturally at 6.30. Still it can be hard leapin up & running at that time o day. I usually lounge about drinking coffee.

Got my welder back after 2 weeks & a new circuit board. $240 later. But coulda been worse, i've heard of boards in big welders worth many grand. That was when i was learning to weld. Art students were always resting coffees on the welders. One spilled down the back of the machine & ZAP its a new board. The new welders are smaller & cheaper, thanks goodness.

Three Weeks

I said to mum just now, hey thats only taken 3 weeks, the footballer, to get to this, i reckon if i keep getting faster i might get it down to one month to make a life sized man!
Its not near finished but its coming along really fast. He's even got a collar on his shirt. No face yet, but i just got to sit down & sort that in a couple of days & then it'll be not much left to do.
She said 3 weeks? Its been 1 week.
I said no no no etc.
But actually if my welder has been in the shop since 1 week ago yesterday, well that was the day i welded up the armature, see, so i didn't start any earlier.
8 days :) :) :) F***!!!Wow!!!
It sure FEELS like 3 weeks cos i been working so damn hard, and it really seems like 3 weeks worth of sleeping as well...
Weird. But COOL!

It helped to have the other body there, which made the beginning of it all much easier. I think this really (as usual) points to the old masters being right - make a bloody good first model (i do that), then make a largish one, where u solve all the problems, then do the full size. I never do the large model usually, thinking i don't have time. But actually if it SAVES this much time... This was a full sized "model" but having it there was just so handy. It made reproducing it really easy, and i actually changed it significantly cos it had some scaling issues (i.e. it was a touch too big & the legs were just slightly wrong).

They're always right, them old fellers. Charles Sargeant Jagger wrote a rockin good book, & his teacher old Lanteri, who wrote the sculptor's bloody bible, awesome stuff. Every hard earned thing you figure out painfully over ages, well its all in those books. You see it on repeated readings sometimes just a tiny few words you never noticed last time you skimmed thru.

And to be truthful i really enjoy being back home & working in the yard. Its better than a studio in this weather. I'm working really hard cos i don't have to drive anyplace or plan my day to avoid peak time traffic (the afternoon peak is from 2.30 to 7pm thank u very much!), i can write myself off if i want cos i just go sit down & rest. I eat healthy lunch too. Its nice to be outside in spring in the front yard, there's lots going on & neighbours give me big smiles. I'm making a foul mess of the carport though, its all white & dusty.

Anyway my 10 months of bludging is kinda coming to a close. To the .0001 person who reads these words, i feel a responsibility to come to some conclusion about what happened to me during this time...

Well i won't probably be able to figure it all out in 1 blog post but some things that changed...

While doing this latest bloke, i got so much stronger that i can now break a geek's neck like a twig. My hands are abraded from rasping plaster. My hair is feral. Since my hairdresser retired & i got 2 ratshit haircuts, i decided to either get a #2 skin head or just let it grow long. For some reason i've gone with long. Inertia i guess. With a kilo of plaster dust in it, its got the consistency of mummified straw, a bit like dreadlocks on a corpse. There is a schizo killer on the loose & i'm *sure* the cops went round the block & stopped next to me at the lights to check me out yesterday. If you seen the chap i mean, my hair is like that... but hey it was twilight, i don't have the killer expression, really. I guess i better get it neatened up slightly before going back to work.

My finances didn't improve massively during the time, but i saved a few grand so i didn't do the usual 'starving artist' thing.

I didn't get a chance to go away, at all. I never went to Italy or Paree. Just never actually had time... It may have been more a programming issue. I guess i could have got 2 weeks out somewhere if i could have planned ahead. But if you have 10 months off - wouldn't you try to squeeze more than 2 weeks out of a trip OS? Does it seem worth going for less than a month? Obviously grabbin 2 weeks would have been better than not going. But, fact remains i never went. Didn't even go down to Mystery Bay for the weekend. Pathetic really.

Never traded my falling apart car either. Though i still got time, thats an ongoing task. An indicator fell off it last week, at about the same time as all the fluid finished draining out of the steering.

Did i decide i was a sculptor? well yeah, but there's lots of sculptors working in IT. Do i feel like i should quit work to be one? Well YEAH. But i'm not feeling quite confident enough right now to do it. One more year at work.. maybe. If i can stay a year ;)

Lookin for my MS SMS text book to study up for work. I think i hid that book very well :(

The untimely demise of a big hairy spider

I don't like big hairy spiders but it appears i must have squashed one inside the blind early this morn when i put it up. Mum found it when she pulled it down this evening. A big hairy spider squashed up on the blind. Grooooooossssssss. A sad end, as it must have took some time to grow so big a spider. And all for this?

There's been some untimely demises lately in the news. Very sad. How bloody annoying to go learn french & then die in some wasteful way before you get to france. How annoying to get a PhD & then pfft its all over before you use it to get a job as a uni professor teaching PhD students. They say only humans can worry about such things as imminent demise, & animals don't, thats why humans are different. Thats crap. I'm sure everybody's seen a depressed dog or a horse afficted with ennui, or a cat who's lost it & decided to live large cos they don't care anymore. well its cos they thought too much, which is what humans done to come up with the idea they're special.

The big man is coming along. I've decided i will go for a bit of artistic licence on this one & try to make it enjoyable, at least a bit. These things are so incredibly taxing on the mind & body its quite amazing. I'm ridiculously strong in the arms now. Thats maybe a plus. But i figure maybe i'm going about it wrong. I just think, what would Henry Moore do? Though as i've said before, Henry Moore would make a Henry Moore. while i sure ain't no Henry Moore i could perhaps relax a little & try to make something more me than usual. More enjoyable & fun. Usually i endeavour to make it more the subject in every possible scratch & bump. Every little nuance etc etc. But this time i still haven't met the guy properly, so i'm going to invent him, cos otherwise i will not get it done in time. I would reckon as long as his face is good & the body shape not too far off the few photos that are around, then people will be right happy, & perhaps killing myself for the last 10000 details is not actually necessary anyway.
I'm sure i will still try for the last 10000 details though. If there is any time left at all then the 10000 details will fill it. Everything fills the time available. And i still haven't started the face!

The new studio is ready to move into. Its a shame i'm gonna be paying for it while i have to work on this big guy still here, cos the studio is like pretty air tight & not ideal for a plaster dust cloud in it. Hope it'll be good & i get some use out of it. I'm only taking 3 month lease to start though so thats not long, really.

Sitting up now restoring the user on this problem laptop. If only i'd emptied the internet cache & trash etc first. this is much slower than when i saved the user. Damn maybe its USB 1.1 Argh. Groan. There's still 11,000 jpgs to go. Fuck. I want to go to sleep :(

Decisions decisions

OK so now i have made my decision regarding going back to work... i told them i'd prefer part time but if there's nothing available i'll go back full time in my old job. I was so pleased to have come up with this conclusion, far more pleased than you might think from its basic simplicity n all. But what it does is put some of the responsibility onto them to find me a part time position if they don't want me back in my old job. I had been labouring under the difficulty of only wanting part time when there seems to be no job like that, it was like i could only quit altogether. But anyway since it turns out i didn't get the big commission i went for, and that was the condition i set for returning to work, well that condition is met & technically if i went with my original plan i'd be coming back anyway. So asking for part time is a new step i guess.

I got rejected from a sculpture show i was trying to get into for january. They sent a nicely worded email about how this particular work didn't fit into the vision for the show & i guess not, but still its kinda depressing. But actually in the end i do make stuff for myself cos i like making em. I just got to take a step back & remember that. Selling one just means i can afford to make more, that was always what i lived by. Sometimes u got to sell your children to afford to have more kidz eh. But then if you got a decent job you can afford to cast for no reason but cos u wanna. Could eb good to get back to work then eh.

The big man is coming along OK. Its been quite great to have the old one next to the new & very quick to make the new one. Its only been less than 2 weeks & i'm about at where the other one was, except its better :) He has already one sock, but his arse is too big, bit like mine. Its hard to keep yourself out of your art.

I destroyed the old one this morning, cut him into 2 legs, a torso with head, and 2 arms, along with some battered corpses i had lying around. We ordered a personal junk day, so there are a plethora of body parts on the nature strip awaiting collection. I got some cuts & blisters out of it but i think i'm much fitter than i was & i don't appear to have done my back in or anything. Hooray. You'd need to be fit to go back to a tedious desk job i guess. Not.

Good balls

Those foam balls are very good. You can file down areas very much easier. Of course filing down solid plaster is a hard thing to do. Now i'm wondering how i ever had the energy to do it at all, ha ha. Its hard enough with foam balls in it. Tomorrow i'll get out the grinder & the mofo disk & blow half of it away in moments. Lovely. Feeling a bit crap, but getting into vitamins & green leafies from today & should be a bit better in a few days. Been staying up til midnight a lot, attempting to fix a mate's laptop. Its pretty dead. The registry appears to have broken. My trusty old knoppix wouldn't even boot on it so i searched around til i got something called Hawk PE which is a collection of useful stuff starting with a version of winxp in PE form, so it'll boot & run off the CD, Slax linux & some useful apps. Its obviously been created by someone who is so excruciatingly geeky they have PE desktop with a montage of star trek commanders across the screen. The boot chooser screen has the Enterprise. The laptop didn't appear to have any formatted drive in windows PE, it thinks its a raw drive, but i got the data off using Slax which found the entire file system. Awesome. I love them linuxes. When windows can't find itself, look in a linux.

Balls

In a massive brainwave the likes of which haven't been suffered thru since the great brain tsunami of last month when i created something *large* that would fall to bits on being moved, i have bought some bean bag balls & i'm mixing them in with my plaster to bulk out the big man.

I kind of expect a similar disaster, but i'm hoping..

On bright news a man just came & checked out my 2 scooters & says he will buy em. Much as its sad to see them go they take up way too much space & i'm so damn glad to see the back of em i can't tell u. Dinner's on me :)

DVD Piracy - just (don't?) do it!

Its been a week since i bought the Star Trek DVD. I found it last week in Big W for 23 bucks & i thought hell top film i'll grab that. Its been a week without being able to open the case cos it has a security lock & I didn't realise til i'd got home.

I had to find 2 HDD magnets so that i could open it & its taken a week to find them. Why didn't you take it back? You may ask. Well because if i did i would not be satisfied by the mere unlocking of the case, i would expect a limo ride from my house to the shop & back again, with cocktails. But that STILL wastes my time. Maybe if they just sent a courier to pick up & return it that would suffice, tho they should do it within 1 hr of me realising i can't open the damned case. There is no way in hell i'm going back to the mall just to get unlocked a dvd case even if it means i have to drill the case. FFFFFFS. FI.

For unique amusement, once i'd finally opened it, inside this BOUGHT & PAID FOR DVD is a double sided big glossy bit of paper telling me not to pirate DVDs & how it puts ushers out of business blah blah blah.

Now if i were serious about living with my own morals & ethics, which include the possibility of revenge as a positive force & the furious hatred of wilful stupidity, then i would NEVER BUY ANOTHER FRIKKEN DVD EVER AGAIN & JUST DOWNLOAD EVERYTHING.

Don't RIP my lovely little welder

Poor little welder stopped working today. Bit disappointing really as i was using it at the time. Suddenly, no sparky. Took it to the shop & they confirmed it was both busted & no longer under warranty. So its wire & string for now... not quite as sturdy (tho that is debatable when u contemplate my quality of welding). But gravity is on my side with the few connections i still have to do, so should be right. hopefully.

Thinking now i should go back to work part time. i think FT is a bit too hard. You basically never get a weekend if you work full time & try to sculpt, you're doing 2 jobs. It sucks. I done it. Yeah much as i have a sense of doom & failure in not going back to my job, cos i got this sense that i wonder if i would have done the job OK, seeing how its changed totally since i was working in it. So its my pride at stake. And sense of self & competence. Geez. But even then sometimes u got to let go. Guess i could even forget that i care about it & just be happy... a.k.a.: denial. I'm good at denial. Queen o' de Nile, thats me.

Things since then

Well i'm 99% out of the studio. I got to keep paying rent for 2 weeks, so i'm not killing myself to mop the floor, but it'll get done. Since i moved out i went in to work to meet my bosses & see about comng back or not. In the end of course its my decision & i guess they are a bit exasperated that i can't make up my mind but on the other hand they don't actually care either way except that whichever way it goes there will be some more paperwork. I met the dude who has been aligning himself to take my job. Said hi & shook his hand, it was a tiny thin damp limp little hand, that disappeared inside mine in such a way that it was kinda difficult to grab anything to shake. I do have big hands i spose but not that big. Could be an alien species maybe. Have met the guy before he didn't really impress me but the guys say he's doing OK so hope that is true.

It was a stinker hot day. As i drove home alternating the air con with the low fuel light warning, noticed a little red car ahead. It seemed to have a dog in the back. No, a koala. There was a koala with ears & it was waggling its head. I finally got close enough to see it was the driver with her hair up in those stupid lookin wee things like pigtails but they stuck out on her head like koala ears. She was having an animated discussion with her passenger. I remember thinking, pulling yr hair up like that surely must have an effect on the brain. One min later she smashed up the back of another car.

I found that a combination of travel in 2 ton truck, chutzpathic welding & experimental use of polystyrene foam as a structural material have all contributed to the miserable failure of the armature in the big man. Its failed in quite a boring way & i've decided to totally start over rather than attempt to drill into him & repar. Its OK i can use the old one as a template, so to speak. So i spent today welding up a new armature. After having wasted 1 & a half weeks being unable to work for fear of making dust I have now started over. What could be stupider? Well, NOT starting over would be stupider. But they're both right up there.

Time's pretty tight eh.

2 ton truck

I drove a truck today. It was a 2 ton truck, i dunno if thats how heavy it is or how much it can carry, but its no worries all i cared about was that it had a lift on the back & it did. It turned out to be manual so i had to remember how to drive manual again. I was Ok once i realised that reverse was where 1st should be & i didn't need to even use 1st at all anyway. The magic point, which is where the gear lever returns to, they always "spring" to some point don't they, was in between 2nd & 3rd, & so thats what made me realise 1st was probably an acquired taste. !st was for heavy loads on a hill or something, starting in 2nd was perfect. I really enjoyed driving it, though its hard to remember you have such a big wide bus behind you. Reversing is very difficult u can't see a thing & guessing how long you are, well i had no idea so i tried not to reverse much. Was good tho, i got 2 mates help in the morning & we put 98% of the studio in the truck & yes its been a terrible tiring day. I'm pretty well finished for about a week i imagine & the only reason i can sit here & type at all is that i had a wee nap & pizza for tea. Early night i hope.

It appears to have come as a surprise to the studio owner that i moved out, even tho we been discussing it & i asked her if she was ok with it & she was, but then she's been preoccupied with family disasters lately. She has billed me for the next month but hopefully we can come to some agreement. If i knew i was still paying for it i would have left a table & chair there at bloody least.

The Open Studio went well, considering i started the day with a bastard headache & it all went from there. Lots of people came, & all my friends seemed to buy stuff off the printmakers & so my mates spent about a grand on their stuff while they drank my cider & sucked my chocolate eyeballs, basically. Was a good day.

I did get a dude come put a deposit on a sculpture, & tho he was gona do that anyway, it was very nice way to do it cos the studio all looked so pro when he turned up. All "showy" n that. Noice.

Poured James out at the train station & puddled off home with a boatload of sculptures. Just a start on the next day's move-out.

The good thing about an open studio is you can do whatever the hell you like. I been tied up with the poo strings of gallery owners too bloody long, so whatever i choose to do, it all feels like FREEDOM. I wrote out my sheet of listing adding a line about each one, a little description of each or a little joke. And i put out loads of NFS ones, maquettes & practice heads cast in plaster. Its only an open studio, it ain't a show. But i like this freedom business. A bit more polished it could be a goer.

Cleaning cleaning cleaning

Ache all over after big day setting up for Open Studio. Considering i originally thought my full participation was going to be covering the secret sculpture & looking innocent whenever a person wandered in, i have ended up putting out 4 tables of sculptures & moving everything humanly possible into the corner. Thus rendering my space completely unusable in any way. Bit of a shame. I won't even be able to whittle a twig, really. Will have to just sit there drinking... life's very very hard innit.

Some good things today.... Using the excellent bagful of 192 identical perfect foam thin square slabs I've even made some of the tables have a tiered set up & covered with lovely white cloth they look rather noice. $2 a metre white cotton drill from fabric remnants next door & $15 worth of foam from reverse garbage, 2 Juz shelves, a shopping trolley, & 3 free tables. And i can dismantle it all in 5 minutes. Rockin'.

Yes we have fairy bread (or we will have, i'll make it fresh tomorrow, cos fleshy soft white bread needs that just puffed freshness), beer, gummi & choc eyeballs for Halloween, & cider. Mmmmm cider.

Then sundy the big truck. I love driving new things, this will be fun.

Big mess

Today i made an attempt to shovel the shit together in the studio into clumps rather than just a mid tone fuzz across the area. I succeeded to some extent but there is a lot of stuff there. You just don't realise. Anyway i took some away & some bags of rubbish.

Sunday i have booked a 2 ton truck to rent & its got a lifting tailgate & bugger me it is only 100 bucks for the day. I didn't even bother to shop around i just booked the thing. I could save quite a bit by renting this truck to take the finished work to the foundry too.. i never realised how simple it can be. But lets wait & see how that goes. I need this big device to move the big man. Its should be easy, i hope. I may need to call in favours of people whom i have moved in the past to help me on sunday. it would sure rock to get most of the stuff moved in the truck. I can move everything else in my old car, except the big man, but its less trips in a truck eh :)

Sundays great it will be no traffic & no parking issues & no people around. Perfect. If possible i am actually looking forward to it.