Sustainability

One of my most important concepts in my work and my life is the issue of recycling/upcycling.  Apparently someone called   Reiner Pilz of Pilz first used the term upcycling as opposed to recycling, because recycling often means smashing up items to remake them into something of less value.  Upcycling as a term means giving an item more value by reusing it in a different way.
With recycling/upcycling comes sustainability - for our own personal resources and cash, for the beautiful planet we live on.  There is much in our daily art and craft practice that we can reuse.  When we experiment with a technique and hate the result, we can use that as the backing layer for something else.  If we print an article that we decide is irrelevant after all, we can upcycle those pages into a trial run for a folded book.  You get the idea.  My own favourite is using bread tags as beads - yes those little plastic things around the top of the plastic bread bag.  More and more plastic, but this is something I collect and use to hang from the spine of my journal.  Use heat-protective gloves when heat-gunning; they curl up beautifully, singly or in groups.  Or use them as they are because even a small heat gun uses up electricity.

Bread Tag Beads, heat-gunned

I have been inspired often by re-reading the following post on "Slow Cloth".
http://www.handeyemagazine.com/content/slow-cloth
Jude Hill (Spirit Cloth) and Elaine Lipson (Red Thread Studio) are two artists who use and promote Slow Cloth principles, which you can read in HandEye above.

Phoenix - am I obsessed?

How much time do I spend thinking about the phoenix before it is classed as an obsession?  It's been in my head for months though this is only my second (I think) post about it.  When I was working on my Bird Art book for my Visual Arts Cert 4 earlier this year, I wanted to go more into the phoenix but didn't have time right then.  Now I do have time and I've been making sketches, and researching the myths.  I think one of the things that I found quite wonderful was how it used to be believed implicitly that there was such a bird, just that no-one you ever knew had seen one.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_(mythology)
This was one of the first sites I found when I started researching.  The symbolism for rebirth and renewal is something that I find fascinating, reflecting as it does my own artistic change from traditional to contemporary, and from set ways of working to being much more open in my attitudes to different approaches to art and craft.  Bookmarks - I have collected them for some time, being an avid reader, mostly they are card rectangles; after finding some online websites for bookmarks exhibitions such as
http://www.miragebookmark.ch/be_0_exhibition.htm
I started experimenting - letting out my Inner Phoenix - and produced this:

Hand Made Silk Paper with Bouganvillea bracts and running stitch in silk floss

Hand Dyed Silk and Organza strips, running stitch in silk floss

Phoenix as a concept

I've been thinking about the phoenix - not the mythical bird exactly, but the concept of new rising from old, as I come to the end of my studies at Marden.  Studying Visual Arts (Cert 3 & 4) for the last two years has changed totally the way I work.  I no longer automatically make traditional designs, but have developed my own style, which is much more contemporary, with ragged edges on paper or textiles - and I use a lot of paper now, as I turn towards my new interest in making artist books, blank journals and bookmarks - I will be starting to show them on my website soon, but just at the moment I am still revamping it.  I spend much more time thinking about what I am trying to say, and what book format will suit it best.  Phoebe the phoenix is sitting on a stone thinking with her tongue sticking out, as I do when concentrating.

Thinking also about Art as Business - this website "OhMy!" has some interesting information and philosophies on how to turn your art into a business venture; I'm still exploring it.  Hope to get some insights so that I actually sell something!

Art and Technology

After promising myself that I would post every week, I found I lost my internet connection (now fixed thankfully, just a technical difficulty).  Computers are great till they don't work.

I'm seeing baby ducklings down at the river, and was delighted to see two dusky moorhens with five babies, hiding away on the edge of the wetlands.  They moved away as soon as I approached so I watched them through the binoculars as the two adults picked whatever they eat out of the water and fed it to the chicks - so cute, what a wonderful sight.

Also I watched two Purple Swamphens walking over crushed reeds, picking bits out of their long long toes with their beaks - I could almost hear him complaining ........

This http://sketchbookchallenge.blogspot.com.au/ is an interesting site which I am considering joining - I have been working on my sketching skills this year.

Birds and Plastic

Quite shocked to see an ABC "Catalyst" program last week about Shearwater chicks on Lord Howe Island (off our Australian coast) which has had a dramatic drop in numbers.  Their parents are picking up what they think is fish but is plastic pieces and feeding their chicks with it.  We've all seen photos of plastic-filled birds but to actually see this scientist split open the body of the dead chick and see it stuffed full of brightly coloured plastic was horrifying. 

And what can one person do about it after all?  Except be careful about disposal and using plastic - such a useful material but it doesn't degrade, just breaks into smaller and smaller pieces, easier for wildlife to eat.  One thing I have been doing is using those plastic bread tags that hold the plastic bag of bread at the top; I collect them and use as beads on bookmarks and book spines - they can be "as is" or heat-gunned.  They have become part of my personal artistic style.  Several people collect them for me.  When you turn the heat-gun on them, they curl up into little curvy cylinders; not all alike, each one is different, and if you hold several close together you can get them to intertwine for a longer bead.  ALWAYS USE HEAT RESISTANT GLOVES FOR THIS.  Here is a photo or two of what they look like.

This photo shows them in use on the stitched spine of a book.

The other two photos show them curled and partly curled by the heat gun.
You can see two together as well as singles.

To see the story from the first paragraph, this is one of many sites linking to the story.
http://bird-o.com/2011/02/04/plastic-a-colourful-killer/

Making Hand-Made Artist Books Workshop

I have just completed two Saturday workshops with Irmina van Niele, making books and gaining so much practical knowledge and loads of inspiration; below is a link to a site where you can see some of her work.  She is a lovely person and so helpful when you need to be shown a technique.

http://www.artroom5.com.au/archive/Exhibition2/vanNiele.html

This workshop was enjoyable for the experience of being with others who love books and making books.  Irmina is a person who teaches clearly, also the value of her as a teacher was in the inspiration she gave, the knowledge she impartated, the encouragement to know the rules but also to know you could break them if you wanted, and the encouragement to make it your own way and not just the same as someone else's.  Her enthusiasm was inspiring and gave me a lift just when I needed it, at the end of my Cert 4 work.

I found from making the concertina "Meditation Book" in last week's post, that this format gives a very broad view as it opens up, yet can be a confined view also when closed or partly open, so it is usable for complex themes or concepts.  One of the important points when folding a concertina is to make sure the creases are at right angles to the sides, otherwise the book will not stand straight.  

Book Arts

I've always been passionate about books; love reading them, holding them, looking at them.  Bookshops, libraries, second-hand bookshops, rows of old books in charity shops.  Often used to feel guilty about "just sitting reading".  Last year for Cert 3 Visual Arts (Textiles) I tentatively started exploring making books - both with textiles.  This year for Cert 4, I have fully embraced Book Art, researching, learning new techniques, becoming confident about my own style and my own artwork.  I have been using a lot of paper materials and techniques.  I have been to the first of two workshops on hand-made books and here you see the Meditation Book I made.  It is a concertina style with pamphlet inserts.  The front cover shown is artboard, with my hand-dyed fabric glued on.  The concertina is made from card covered with layers of my hand-dyed papers, with the addition of pastels used in areas.  Pastels are new to me but they are like very soft crayons or coloured wax and give lovely depth of colour to any area.  The papers that I dyed are white tissue paper (as in gift wrapping), greaseproof paper, and paper towels used as mop-up cloths in dyeing.  The running stitch is naive-style to echo the random effect of the colours.

I have developed into this unexpected direction after studying at Marden Senior College, with Suzanne Gummow , Cathy Boniciolli and Sarah Bell Smith in Visual Arts - I recommend them heartily for anyone wanting for expand their artistic horizons.

Next time I will tell you about the workshop.