postcard and flu

I have been laid low with the flu for the last week so have felt OK about spending hours on the computer playing lots of games of lexulous and eucre. I did update my webpage for 2009, it's only half way through the year, maybe I should have made allowance for 2010 while I was at it. It probably needs a complete overhaul but I'm not sure I've got that much energy. Yesterday I felt like death warmed up so just sat around watching videos but the day before I finished off a couple of books and made my postcard for the Yabbers exchange. The theme this time was 'Icons' and there had to be some sort of construction. I have done a few things with icons in the past so already had images on my computer and I had the moulds for the decorative framing that I'd carved in plaster. It was just a matter of casting four copies of the frame then joining them together with some strips of calico and painting them. I used black gesso for the base then rubbed over some metallic oilstick and gold acrylic. I then painted everything with shellac and rubbed again with the gold since the shellac dissolved the oilstick. Now to test the mail and see if it gets to its destination.



The books I made were concertinas for the exhibition at Artisan Books called Between the Lines. I haven't decided yet which one to submit, the first one has the text watermarked between the strings and both pieces of paper had the text watermarked, they don't quite match up but the text is still visible, I am pleased that the text is quite subtle, says something about reading between the lines!


For the second book in the series I lightly coloured some pulp so that there would be a slight contrast, making the text less of a watermark, more a stencil.

The cream paper in the two books is cotton sheeting beaten in Papermakers of Victoria's lab Valley beater for three hours, the blue is archival mount board processed in an old non automatic washing machine and with a blender dyed with cartesol dyes.

winter excuses

It has been nearly a month since I posted and I guess I haven't been producing much in the way of artworks. I have edited two magazines which has kept me at the computer a lot and since winter has hit there isn't much desire to head out to my open air workspace.
Here are a few pieces I made a while ago in preparation for a workshop I am running in July on using kozo and armatures. I have made a series of boats and other vessels, there is something special about the boat, it can represent so many things. I haven't named any of these pieces yet but I will get around to it eventually.

Bamboo and kozo dipped

Cane, thread and kozo dipped

Bamboo and Kozo sheet

Wisteria and Kozo dipped

Cane and Kozo, dipped and wattle sticks and Kozo also dipped

Chicken wire and Kozo dipped

Chicken wire and pulp painted recycled cotton paper.

I am also working on an altered book as part of a Yabbers round robin. The two people before me did boots so I thought I'd continue in the footwear vein. Here are some drawings on gessoed pages.

And an added page and some wax rubbing of soles of shoes.

At our last meeting of Papermakers we made concertinas by drawing a page then passing it on, we got the one we started with at the end of the day. I thought I'd connect the diverse images by dipping in my indigo vat, it did much up some of the images a bit by making them bleed but I like the covers!

twitter and fitzroy library

On Wednesday night after teaching a workshop all day I went to Fitzroy Library to hang works as a representative of the Contemporary Art Society of Victoria. There are several wall spaces and ten locked cabinets in a hallway. I was able to put up some works that I had dis mounted (the frames are now around other works) but I also made some new works, though I had to do that quickly so I made some collages using a range of papers and digital prints of previous works.

Tesselation is part of a larger piece I made for Natural Connections back in 2002, The twelve pieces just fitted nicely in the cabinet, but boy did I have sore fingers from putting that many pins in a fairly hard material.



Patho Collages 1, 2 & 3, Korea Bowl Collage and Coorong Barrages Collage. Some of the papers were made in the workshop with Amanda Degener, others came out of my store. The backing sheets are half sheets of the Hahnemuhle paper I use for the journals I make, they worked out to be an ideal size for the display cases.

Magnolia, Lillies and Iris pulp paintings from a few years ago.

Arapiles, cast pulp painting.
Margaret Mason visited Twitter a birdy exhibition in Nowa Nowa and she sent me these pictures of the nesting pieces on show there.

Here are some of the other works in the show.

I have been very quiet on the blog front lately, just too busy with other things. I got the IAPMA bulletin back from the printer today, I'm very pleased with it noe I have to get the covers on and samples in. I am also waiting on a DVD of the congress which will be duplicated and posted to all IAPMA members along with their bulletins.

Sesame Street and ABC RN review

I have just received a newsletter from Helen Hiebert and in it there was a link to a Sesame Street segment on papermaking, it's lots of fun to watch.

Also I was reminded of the Radio National Arts program last week which featured an interview by Greg Leong about the paper exhibitions on while the IAPMA Congress was on.

I have been spending a lot of time at the computer lately editing the IAPMA Bulletin so haven't done much physical creating. However today I set up an indigo vat so plan to do a bit of playing in the next week or two. I've also got some works going in the Fitzroy Library in the Contemporary Art Society display, it will mostly be old work but I did make a few simple collages using digital images of old works on handmade paper and other papers. I'll put up some pics next time I'm on.

Paper boats and Amanda Degener workshop

The three boats I posted off to be part of Joanne B Kaar's project in Scotland. There's a mix of plant fibre papers, marbelling and dyed paper both with natural dyes and with synthetic.


My sample book from Amanda's workshop

Sample on the left is stencilled with indigo or walnut mixed with wallpaper paste, the one on the right is pigmented paper dyed with walnut on belgain flax paper.

mix of indigo and walnut, walnut crackle and multiple dips in indigo

Walnut and indigo

Indigo, rust and walnut


Cyanotype with alkali, rust and walnut
Michelle has started a blog for the congress the address is www.iapmaburnie.blogspot.com.