Artist Mini Docs Launch

I left my job as a media producer with ABC Open late last year just as I wrapped up the production of this series, Artist by Artist.

This was another one of Solua Middleton and my 'babies' that we got off the ground in our year of being B1 and B2. (First two to start).

I want to share with you these 10 films and the process because it was one of the most powerful, precious and successful things I have done in my life based not only on my own personal experience but the feedback I had from the artists involved. It all went well beyond our expectations in terms of personal growth and reflection on ourselves and each other.

The Artist by Artist process

Put 10 artists of different disciplines in a room for two days.

Take them through listening and sharing exercises to discover the depths of each others story.

Teach them the basics of storyboarding, camera shot styles and script writing.

Team them up with an unsuspecting partner and tell them they are making a film on each other.

Then spend the next 3 months in production and editing of these 8 mini docs!

The artists operated as directors of the films and I picked up some of the gaps in skills.
Most of these are my cinematography and many are my editing with the artist's direction.

So without further ado - I here by launch my unofficial online screening of Artist by Artist.

Please grab your drink of choice, snack of choice and enjoy the mini docs on artists by other artists.

Evangeline by Lin from ABC Open Sunshine Coast on Vimeo.

 

Lin by Evangeline from ABC Open Sunshine Coast on Vimeo.

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Kim by Pat from ABC Open Sunshine Coast on Vimeo.

Pat by Kim from ABC Open Sunshine Coast on Vimeo.

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Christine by Peter from ABC Open Sunshine Coast on Vimeo.

Peter by Christine from ABC Open Sunshine Coast on Vimeo.

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Janna by Karuna from ABC Open Sunshine Coast on Vimeo.

Karuna by Janna from ABC Open Sunshine Coast on Vimeo.

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Greg by Cindy from ABC Open Sunshine Coast on Vimeo.

Cindy by Greg from ABC Open Sunshine Coast on Vimeo.

 [current mood] Sydney Corner Deli Smells & Science Themed Parties

Windows into Weddings

Someone suggested it might be a good idea if I focused on one thing at one time. Like one passion for one year.

*gulp*

Yes,  I understand how that could be a productive choice and how I could become really really good at that one thing if I just did that one thing. But then, I know myself....

I wouldn't feel complete. I'd feel all trapped inside this 'day job' I'd create. I'd want to escape. I'd want to take up other opportunities. My finger tips would be seeking out other pies!

So, with full awareness I will continue to juggle my 3 core passions. Design, Documentary and Photography.

Here are some little windows into my wedding photography which is pleasurably filling up a good third of my life.

These are aspects I love to capture and would like to share with you.

If you would like a weddings sampler to share my images with others, just send me an email.

[current mood] Donuts & Steam Train Sound Effects

Covered in Green Ink

I'm loving my new found role as a designer for The Green Party's Bob Brown's office. I'm able to use my skills for what I believe in. I've been thinking today about how if everyone gave their specific talent to the causes they resonate with then change really can happen, as a team.

Bob's team are developing some fresh materials that I can really sink my creative teeth into and step away from the greeny green look that we might expect from The Greens.

In the booklet is a "happy selectivity" of quotes from media sources not owned by Murdoch that paint a picture less-biased than what we experience in mainstream press.
Quotes come from sources like The Monthly, Quarterly Essay, Crickey and The Age.

Gold, Lime, Teal and Turquoise with a splash of Hot Rose!

I like designing Green without grass green sometimes.

Next job is a campaign brand called 'Precious Places' that will be about protecting our Australian Icons.

[current mood] Natural Highs & Nectarines

Just do it. From one artist to another.

Here is a short film I just finished about Tanmayo. An artist who lives in Buderim on the Sunshine Coast.
She's an abstract artist with a grounded yet spiritual approach to her life, which she expresses through her art.

It was one of those jobs which you start and then you come across a bump, a little hill that seems just not quite as surmountable as you hoped. So then you leave it for a bit, and then a bit more... meanwhile that hill just keeps on growing. Every week, every month that you avoid facing the challenge it turns that little bump into a mountain.

Reminds me of when I tried to jump off a tall jetty last month. If I'd just run and jumped I would have been fine but instead I lingered on the edge, sizing it up and the fear of it just chewed me up til I crawled away from the edge and took the stairs.

So what did it take for me to finish it?

Well if I'm completely transparent it was Tanmayo saying "I'll pay you to finish it". I absolutely could not accept this as it was intended as a gift. I then realised I had no other choice but to let go of my expectations and as Nike once said 'just do it'.

And typically it just flowed together like magic and in two short days it was done.

Oh me, oh my, the brain has a lot to answer for!

[current mood] Sneaky Stolen Chocolates & Lavendar in my Button Hole

Jamming

I've been spending the better part of February jamming.

And by that I mean fingers deep is crystal coloured jellies! Right from handpicking blackberries to gelling it up with sugar and packaging it with love and stripy twine.

Rowan took me down the garden path to the freshest of berries. He showed me the slightly matted blackberries at the tips of the bunch - for jam supreme.

We were alloted aisles 1-7. They were flush with ripe juicy packages as it's been quiet on the berry farm because of a very rainy New England.

Once I got those jams all bottled up I took Rowan's established style and finished it off with string. A different colour for a different jam.
Purple is for plum.

I just want to look at backlit jam all day
on wooden boards and with words made of string.

I'll let you know how business booms when we sell them at the local Armidale and Bellingen markets.

Here's my poster artwork dedicated to our jams at Neram Harvest, Armidale.

[current mood] Portuguese Tarts & Jazz-like music

Getting My Art On

It's hard to avoid art when you live down the road from a gallery... and spend most days in it's cafe.

I'm taking an avid interest in print making since I attended a weekend course at NERAM with Basil Hall of BHE. He's a superstar teacher and print maker doing lots of work in Aboriginal communities and running courses in places like Greece.

It was my first experience of etching on tin and using acid baths, aqua tinting and a printing press.
Here are tin plates soaking in acid solution. Eating away the design to create an indent that the ink will fill.

I loved discovering this process!
However with my innate self-criticism and perfectionism which truly comes out when I'm learning a new thing... I was pretty grumpy as I created some 'art' and found myself quite disappointed with my weekend's work.

But I kept telling myself "I'm learning and the outcome isn't important". (ie shut up brain).

In the last few hours of the weekend I grabbed a fresh plate of tin and a needle and quickly scraped this picture on to it. It's based on a photo I took of myself sitting on a beach in Exmouth, WA.

Far better than the hours of work I'd done previously, so I have one thing I'm happy to share.

Still, I felt a bit sad after my course because I am actually disappointed by my level of skill. I realised that I've always felt mediocore with art despite considering myself an artist... to be perfectly honest!

I can do the occassion impressive thing but ultimately my work is far from the talent of artists I respect. And that's a frustrating thing, to know what is good art and be unable to create it.

But someone said to me "Isn't it a case of practicing?" And I said, "well, with a bunch of talent too!"
But then I thought that without the practice, how would you know if the talent wasn't laying in there, just a bit dormant, just a bit hidden by lack of skill?

This caused me to feel hope and a drive to really practice.

I grabbed a piece of lino in the afternoon sun yesterday and sketched a bunch of pencils and an old leaf.

Then I sliced out parts pretty swiftly, seizing the moment of inspiration. I painted it and squashed it on paper...

and today I took a sketch pad on a walk around Blue Hole, the incredible gorge that lies just ten minutes out of Armidale. I sketched what I saw when we stopped.

So I'm researching, collecting, looking, playing. I can stop criticising myself.

I can simply be pleased that I am practicing, regularly. Giving my talent a chance to be discovered. (TBC).

[current mood] Crunchie Bars & Falling Water

Picking up the pieces of January

Hey remember me? I use to blog n stuff on this site.

Well life has been getting in the way - and it's been really interesting, so interesting that i had to ask my boyfriend if he was real and if this was a dream? It's just that I'm so out of my usual context that it's causing some kind of existentialist crisis...

Well then he pinched me and said "See! It's not a dream" but that didn't prove he was real so I pinched him back!

I'm living half my life in Armidale NSW, with my little office set up in the corner of a beautiful restaurant, designing fun things.

and then I flit back to Perth every month to shoot weddings and hang out with my family...

Sometimes I look through my phone to remember who my friends are (helps with guest lists for parties) and sometimes I look at the photos to remind myself what I've been up to.

Here are some reminders of my life that has been...

The chalkings for the production of artwork for Andrea Gibbs and her upcoming show 'The Allnut St diaries'.

The finished artwork.

The insanity that was me collecting dozens of Greek and Italian props for a wedding photobooth.

And the results...

Then there was the 'photographer that cared too much' deal sealer when I made a huge green triangle cake.

With my mother.

For the Greens Party member's magazine.

My company (Seedpod) is now the design and editing team for Green Magazine which will relaunch in 3 months.

So the upcoming months will see me busier still but I am now reading David Allen's 'Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress Free Productivity' to get more of a meditative grip on my working life.

[current mood] Haruki Murakami & Greek Salad

Nanna Before My Time

I've been nicknamed 'Nanna'... and I don't find it very becoming. I know I have Grandma Hands - as they were full of lines since I was seven, but now I've coupled this with some heavy-duty crocheting.

Yes, I have been travelling for a while now with "three clothes and half an underwear" (credit: Nicola Harte) but have prioritised the inclusion of a fully kitted crochet bag.

As discussed last night with friends... as you get older there is a period of acceptance of not actually wanting to do what you used to do. For example, a couple years ago I would have forced myself to go clubbing and to late night bars whilst visiting Melbourne. I would have walked the streets all day, shopping and meeting friends and been damn exhausted but thinking that was what I was meant to be doing. But now I fully embrace that I want to simply sit on a good friend's couch, crochet, talk about life and drink one damn fine glass of wine. I don't have to prove nuthin!

Now I know that craft is oh so irritatingly hipster right now, but it does not detract from my delight at having learned to crochet and the incrementally improving quality of my productions.

I forced Rowan to give me an object to crochet and after some thought he came up with 'a breakfast radish'.
I had to google it and discovered it's like a radish and a parsnip and a carrot got together and made a three-way baby.

It's pretty accurate.... but I was sorely disappointed to discover on Google that other people in the world felt that crocheting a breakfast radish was also a good idea. How hard is it to be original? What is not crochet-corrupted yet? Can I truly make a soft and knotted version of something that hasn't been nannafied before??

I even joked with Cristina about 'haha, what next, a crochet eye patch??" only to discover that is like, so 2 years ago...

Well I'm going to try to find things (or more like NOT find them on the interwebs) to crochet.
Feel free to suggest...

I don't doubt I'll be over this phase soon and hopefully I will still find things to do when I am 70... or back to clubbing for me!

[current mood] A not-curdled soy latte and a not-cashew-allergy laced granola

30 Ties and No Occasion

This is the third participant in The Occasion project that I started in Armidale, NSW. I only managed to get through 3 people in my week as artist in residence at NERAM. But I will continue on as I travel around Australia... starting conversations about why we hang on to objects and ideas and fantasies and helping people seize the day and USE their things for a photoshoot.

I loved working with Hadley. He's one of my fantastic new friends in Armidale. Hadley has 30 ties he's been imagining wearing when he becomes a 'professional'. Years later, those ties haven't seen the fluorescent light of a day in the office.

Donating his ties to the occasion project was certainly a PROCESS as much as an outcome, as Hadley explains in the video piece below.

The Occasion: with Hadley from Neram on Vimeo.

Hands up if you want to take part if you're in Perth, Sunshine Coast, Brisbane, Sydney, Armidale or Melbourne! I'll be in those parts over the next two months and I'd love for you to find an object that you are saving for a special occasion and use it in an everyday or unique way.

Got something? Email me.

[current mood] Old Funk & Cherries

An Instagram Love Story

I discovered Instagram a week ago, in a park, in Armidale NSW.

For those that are at least a week behind me, Instagram is a free smart phone ap that takes photos that you can apply a range of funky filters to including colour and focus effects AND geo-locate them and then share them with friends, following any number of people and their beautiful views of life!

As a sometimes-slack-photographer, I love using my phone and clicking to create effects. It's far more versatile than Hipstamatic which you know was my camera of choice in India and the USA!

Looking back through my week of Instagram photos, I realised that they tell the love story that occured concurrently...

I sat outside at the NERAM gallery cafe where I'd get my morning coffee and it was here that I took my first Instagram photo of a man reflecting.

My coffee was delivered by the owner, Rowan, and I showed him my photograph and put it on the cafe's Facebook page. We struck up a friendship consisting of shared nerdiness, beatles lyric quotes and an identical cutlery collection.

It was raining a bit and very chilly for December, so I wandered into the Museum of Print under the gallery.

I played with the letterpress to create a christmas card I imagined giving to friends. I could spend a week down here!

But the next day, Rowan asked me out.
We only have a week but 'why not', we both thought.

So we ate brilliant food together as much as we could.

We drank martinis and margaritas together when we could.
And sometimes apart - him working and me playing with Instagram.

We discovered a tiny rabbit at the cafe and I made a dozen new friends.

I followed him on errands as any time was good time

I picked flowers from his garden for glass jars we bought at the tip shop

I immersed myself in fresh produce and his housewarming party

We didn't get much sleep

I never made any more of those letterpress cards but nothing seemed more right than to rest the one print I did make against a vase of flowers on Rowan's porch.

It's almost Christmas and now my poem makes perfect sense.

So I'm contemplating Armidale and continuing a love story...

[current mood] Artichoke Hearts & The Beatles