a busy wet week .....

What a week ........ we have had some rain but the big wet has come not from the skies but from tap water. Just after doing my last posting Steve and I had a few days up at Noosa finishing off some bits and pieces in the house and came home to find my studio floor flooded.  Not a good thing in a studio as you can imagine and all the water had pooled towards two large Ikea bookcases which store much of my work and lots of books and precious things.

I was surprised that only three or four pages of my drawing a day type work on the bottom shelf got wet and thought I had had a lucky escape.  Steve said I needed to get everything out of the bookcases - not the easiest thing in a studio as floor space is sparse.  Within a couple more hours the water had soaked almost half way up the shelves and had my artwork and books still been in the shelves there would have been so much damage.   The two bookcases were then cut in two and rebuilt to make one, and a couple of days ago another one was bought so my studio is now reorganised and I can find work space, and floor space, again.

We did a quick return to our Noosa home for maintenance on Monday - or that is what we thought, and I found the master bathroom flooded.  Seriously .... what is going on!  Hours later and a new tap installed, we managed to get home again.  The first two week rental begins tomorrow so we are crossing fingers that all is now well in our new home.

In between all the wetness I managed, under the pressure of time lines, to finish off a few books for the upcoming Cairns/Brisbane exhibition '4 x 4'.   How thrilled I was until I re read the forms and saw that it was to be an exhibition of books as sculptural forms.  Two of my books I view as sculptural (or one I then made into a sculptural form) but 'Downstream' which I had just finished did certainly not present in that manner as it needs pages turned to be viewed and seen properly.  Panic.  Then I remembered my play time with the paper looking bark and decided to finish that book.  I went back to my friends garden and rescued some more of this delicious bark from the woodshed, enough to make another 5 or 6 I hope.  I have had numerous bits and pieces outside rusting and many of those will now be able to be used in these books sculptures.  One will suffice for this exhibition and I am quite pleased with the results.  All three books will be packed and posted this week.  Yay - tick.  Then onto my edition of the WW1 books that those of us who sent work to Belgium are showing in the Caloundra Regional Gallery.  Fiona and Barry have both been posting on their additional books.

I took photos of my studio flooded but haven't included them here - just some photos of 'Downstream' and some of a little book I re made and turned into sculptural form  'Finding my Place'. I am not all that happy with 'Downstream' and when open it is 84cm x 13cm so very difficult to photograph, but have always like my little mapping book about finding my place.  And one photo of by 'bark book' - yet to be named.

and then this beauty from a wander around my friend Sue's garden yesterday morning