moeraki boulders - new zealand

I spent a few weeks on the South Island in New Zealand a couple of years ago and one of the things I was passionate about seeing, were the Moeraki Boulders on the Otago Coast.  They are phenomenal - at the end of this blog I have put in a few photos though I probably took a hundred and when next I go I will stay in the area so that I can view them over a couple of days, sunrise, sunset, tide in and out!  They captured not just my heart but my imagination - and my creative imagination foremost.  It has been a long time coming, but this artist's book is the first piece of art I am making in what I hope will be an ongoing exploration of work on these rare spherical boulders. (If you google Moeraki Boulders you will see a wealth of information out there on the web.)

I decided that the smaller sheets of rusting I had done a week or so ago would be perfect to work into for this project.  I used various layers of ink to change the nature of the rusted paper and then did a mock up of the cutting out of the holes for my three boulders (small black pebbles).

As you can see in the couple of photographs below, the result of this inking left gorgeous residue on the paper below.  Why I NEVER remember to use some exquisite piece of french or italian, or khozo paper - anything but butchers' paper or newspaper, I will never know.  Probably because I am more focused on the images I am trying to produce than remembering the delicious happenstance effects that happen on the 'mop up' papers underneath.

For me this is rather  small book - not nearly as tiny and intimate as my tea bag book on 'A Sense of Place', but when closed it is only 9.5 cms x 28.5 but when opened, it means I am working on images that are 9.5 cms x 57 cms.  A shape I have always loved - very much a landscape shape.

I decided to restrict myself to the use of graphite, piercing, black linen thread and a little transparent paper. The cutout pieces of paper were too tempting not to use and though I am not a collage person, I did resort to bringing some of those elements into the design.

Although I do like the effect the collaged pieces bring to the page, I find myself wishing that the visual result on each page was worked into the paper and not onto the paper as I have done here on the cover of the book.

I am still playing with ideas about how each page, double page, should work and am trying to make each open page suggest different aspects of the boulders even though they all see the three stones poking through.  It is certainly still a work in progress but a little more work should see it complete.  Most of the design decisions have been made - the work just needs to be done.

Because I will be using coptic binding with this book, I have not yet stuck the pages together which means where I have glued transparent paper in some areas prior to piercing the paper, the paper is bending and protesting.  I am trusting that the pages will sit flat and a little less twisted once there is glue on both the surface the inside of the pages.

I think the colours and the sense I remember from the boulders, with the tide washing in and around them,    are starting to come together well.  I will be using the thread on only two of the six double pages and am leaving it quite loose to play around much like the water washing in and around the boulders.

I will post some photos of the books when completed next week.  Meanwhile, here are a few photos of the boulders ..........

wordless wednesday .....

road trip book - journal

I was able to revisit a little journal I made a couple of years ago when I visited Wim and Del in their studio last week.  Sitting up high and dusty on a shelf, I was able to bring it down and take a few photos.  I should absolutely be more diligent about taking photos of my work.  I think blogging will help as I take photos now of both the making of a book or artwork, and then photograph the final piece.  This has not always been my practice though....

I made this book as a journal - titled 'road trip' hoping that some one would take it on one of their trips and write in it, thus adding to its character. White ink on the black and visa versa.  As it is, it works quite well in its perspex box as a little sculpture.  Maybe one day it will have a story to tell inside.

The partial partitions in the perspex box I made, allow the hinged ends to fan out.

Lots of threads left dangling .

Not how it is meant to sit but this is the way Wim has it standing up on a shelf in the studio.

a peek at my DaD book for 2006 .....

You can always tell when I am not completing anything in my studio - I revert to showing you peeks of things already done.  That is not to say that I don't have plenty going on in my studio - too much started really and not enough being completed!  Many ideas and some of these, finally, are working their way through to fruition.  Etchings mostly - and I find the who process time consuming and involved.  There is absolutely nothing like the marks we make with etching though - and the gorgeous plate tone, scratch marks on the plate which I love to leave as they tell their own story and the way you can blend your inks, different ways to wipe the plates etc.  Obviously a print lover!

And a book lover ..... In 2006 I decided to bind my year of drawings into monthly volumes.  I only made ten, though I will finish two more for the set.  I have bound them with a series of different bindings and will make a perspex box for them ... a showcase really of stitching techniques which will be helpful when I teach.

As you can see, I actually rusted or manipulated many of my pages before working into them as I found this way less intimidating that facing a blank page every day.  Very often what was on the paper suggested my drawing for the day.  In my former home we lined the road leading to the house with liquidambers.  I was told not to expect too much autumn colour here in tropical Queensland but you should see the magnificent colours each year.  (I now live a couple of hundred metres from this home so each time I drive by, I still get to enjoy the autumn colour.)

One of the techniques I love working with is using white ink on translucent paper over my drawings.  Now I pierce and scratch the transparencies but it is lovely to be able to look back through my DaD books and see when those ideas took root.

I have always really loved this drawing - the manipulation of the paper did much of the work and I only had to draw into it a little to suggest the dandelion.

I am a Andy Goldsworthy fan.  This was inspired by his 'Time' book.  Towards the end of 2010 my partner Steve and I went on a six day Art Refuge walk in Haute Provence, in France  - doing the walk with a guide, looking at various works Andy had installed in the region, actually sleeping (not that we actually did get any sleep on the hard floor) in one of the art refuges and being able to see his installation in both the evening and morning light.  Bliss.  The experience was one of my most favourite travelling experiences.

2006 led up to my divorce and there were plenty of these black hole days!  The nice thing about drawing a day, which is usually a very personal visual diary (until you post it on your blog!) is that you can indulge in these 'poor me' drawings and keep up the pretence on the outside!

This would be another of my favourite drawings because it encapsulates what the DaD project is all about - not meant to be little masterpieces but sketches that reflect your day.  I was obviously cleaning and being spring, bees had flown into the house and died on the window sills.

I use a number of  'symbols' repeatedly in my serious work.  (One day I will have a web site organised and share images from some of this work.)  Vessels and the elongated seed pod shape are two that I use for woman (the vessel) and man (the seed pod).  I have an on going body of work 'The Art of Language' where I have used these shapes in my etchings many times.  They appear in my large drawings too.  I also have a thing for crosses and squares!

I never would have thought I would put anything personal out there on the web - and look at me.  Think I am now just in such a happy part of my life that it no longer matters.

The Studio - brisbane ....

Yesterday I had the chance to slip down to Brisbane and catch up with dear friends Adele and Wim.  It should have been last Friday - we usually go out and celebrate their birthdays in May as they are two weeks apart, but mum ended up in emergency ..... and thus plans change!  We all know about that.

This is Wim de Vos, the man who taught me to be a printmaker way back in 1998 in The Studio , and I still spend time there occasionally for masterclasses.  Adele Outteridge shares this studio space and teaches book arts.  It was Del who started my passion for bookmaking and artist's books.  Quite a change from the drawing and painting that had previously been my focus.

Wim has just come back from months travelling overseas and with a mind and heart full of incredible experiences and visual memories and he is now bringing some of those into a creative reality in the form of books. The one seen here is a tunnel book of the Ghetto in Venice.  I took a number of photos but decided that when Wim is ready, he will be showing off his marvellous book and I did not want to preempt that unveiling.  Suffice to say, it is quite brilliant, as his work is - please take time out to see some of their work in The Studio link provided above.

This colourful array is the beginning of another book of Wim's to do with the Red Light District in Amsterdam.  Can't wait to see it finished.  Once he is exhibiting these works I am sure he will be happy for me to photograph and post the images.

In previous posts I have talked about the DaD project initiated by Adele in 1998 - and I am pretty sure that as a comparison to my poor attempts to draw each day of the year since then, I mentioned Wim and 

Del and their dedication to the project.  Here is a photo of the bookcase holding the many, many volumes of Wim's drawing a day journals. Oh, I am so envious of his discipline.  His journals are not only a reflection of what is happening in his life each day, but a reflection on what is happening currently in the world of politics and shenanigans in public life.  He often draws from things that are happening globally or locally for his daily drawings.  Many of the bits and pieces in front of his drawings were brought back from his last trip.

Now I could have taken hundreds of photos of Adele and here beautiful books, but would not do so without her being present, or without her permission.  She was off during the day doing a book binding week at the State Library with Keith Smith and Scott McCarney who are out here from America.  I did ask her for permission to use a few photos I took of 'stuff' in the studio.  These books are just some of the 'stuff' piled into cubicles - certainly not Del's masterpieces which are beautifully displayed and housed around The Studio.  Not mine to show you though .... maybe one day.  You will have a glimpse of her talent looking at their website.

And this is for Jennifer who reads my blog whenever I post and is usually the very first to comment - this is their  'stuff' wall.  Wim and Del are masters of 'stuff' and ever since I have known them, have been collecting and filling perspex boxes (which Wim makes) and creating this wall between their personal space and the teaching area.  Each box would make a photo in its own right - full of the comical and the whimsical, the interesting and the memory collections.  Talk about lust and envy.

Just everywhere in The Studio is something to look at ......... and enjoy.

And here, up on the shelf, is one of my books that Wim bought from one of my Open Studio Days.  The black and white book on the left, in its perspex box.  The book is titled 'Road Trip' and as I had shamefully not done so before its sale, I took the opportunity to photograph it yesterday while in The Studio.  I will write about it at a later date.

 Well, some days lately have been sad or stressed, but yesterday was a day full of colour, fun and friendship.  We dined last night on a Japanese Banquet which was delicious and then though I drove back up to Montville (an hour and a half north of Brisbane) - it felt as if I rolled!

wordless wednesday .....