ELSEWHERE

Papa Westray Great Auk

The great auk is one of the most powerful symbols of the damage humans can cause. This male from Papa Westray in the Orkney Islands was taken in 1813 and is the only British specimen in existence. It is one of the last pair of the great auks to attempt to breed in Britain — its female and her egg had been destroyed the year before. The penguin-like bird is now extinct, not because of habitat loss, but rather intense human exploitation. Huge colonies of this flightless bird once gathered in the summer on rocky islands off eastern Canada, Greenland, Iceland and Scotland. The colonies were a spectacle, but made easy killing grounds for hunters. The birds were slaughtered in huge numbers over hundreds of years, killed for their meat and eggs, but also their feathers which were used to stuff mattresses. By 1800, the auks were so rare collectors paid huge sums to own just a single egg or skin. The last known breeding pair of great auks was killed by hunters on Eldey island, off Iceland, in 1844. Their single egg was smashed.
 
Treasures of the Natural History Museum
Natural History Museum, London
2010

Pacific Gull

Larus pacificus Latham 1802 (Garnett 1993)
Pacific Gull
Family: Laridae
Collection history: William John Macleay at Elizabeth Bay

This Large native gull is one of hundreds of animal species collected by the Macleays on or near the grounds of Elizabeth Bay House. Larus pacificus was once common on Sydney Harbour but was driven out by the common kelp gull (L. dominicanus) in the twentieth century. The Macleay collections are of immense importance for documenting and understanding the original biodiversity of what is now one of Sydney's most densely populated areas.

Museum: The Macleays, their collection and the search for order
Robyn Stacey and Ashley Hay
Cambridge University Press
2007

(An evening edit: A library of books. I think you'll really like this.)

Cats form a conga line by concertinas

Five new concertina A6 journals are in our online store. They are white all over and await your marks. Enjoy.

(The two cats were a recent find. They were sold as a pair of salt and pepper shakers but actually they are both peppers, hence the conga line they form. In a toss-up between a Wade beaver and these felines, I could not resist them.)

Seven random facts and five concertinas

Recently I was tagged by the lovely Christine to reveal 7 random facts about myself. I think I’ve procrastinated long enough so here goes…
 
1. I wish I could write my 7 facts as well as this is penned.
 
2. I wish I had some musical ability.
 
3. I am obsessed with ballet music lately. I have Tchaikovsky playing continuously in the car. The Nutcracker is particularly entertaining when played at volume whilst driving at speed on a country road trying desperately not to be late for a dear friend's surprise birthday party. (Happy Birthday CS!)
 
4. I have just finished reading Dancer by Colum McCann and I keep thinking how wonderful it would have been to see Nureyev dance when he was young and would explode onto the stage. I did see him dance once when I was very young. It was on his final tour. He was grand but very ill.
 
5. I learned ballet as a youngster. I have zero ability and it turned out zero application. I lasted a year and then concluded I was no dancer.
 
6. I am trying to cut down from four coffees a day to two or three. It is not going so well.
 
7. I have a peeled mandarin beside me. It is my substitute for a fourth coffee. It looks and smells delicious, but my head is still craving caffeine.

Thanks for tagging me, Christine. And thank-you to the equally lovely Natsumi too for bestowing upon me a Sunshine Award.
 
Before I head off to enjoy my mandarin I thought I would share a few photos of some small concertina journals/books I have made. There are five, three with a red ribbon, and two with blue. They all have Lana paper on the cover ready for drawing upon and heavy blank paper on the inside. You can snap one up here very soon.

Thank-you Fanja

A few weeks ago the oh-so-talented Fanja of Le Train Fantôme held a giveaway for her new beautiful postcards. I was a lucky winner of said postcard pack and received it in the mail soon after. I think they are lovely, so fun, so gorgeous. Her work is superb and so to is Elizabeth’s, who collaborated with Fanja’s on these works.
 
Thank-you Fanja, I love them. So much so, I took your characters to the sea with me.

New bindings

I spent a few hours last week playing with new Japanese stab binding techniques and while I was in the bookbinding mindset, I bound a bundle of little wrap-around books from proofs of Gracia’s artists’ book Find your place from 2007.
 
All the editions of Find your place sold long ago, making their way into several collections. Only one artists’ proof remains. The question was what to do with the remaining lithographic offset proofs that languished in storage. Why not make them into the covers of some wrap-around books with blank Aquarelle Arches 100% pure cotton hot pressed 300gsm paper inside.
 
There were but a few spare proofs so we only have four colour and four B&W wrap-around books available here through our online store.

 

These notebooks feature one of our postcards as the cover and with a card backing they are held together with a simple Japanese stab binding.
 
Thanks for all you kind congratulatory cheer. Have a lovely Monday, or what remains of it.

Too much excitement for a single day

Here’s a screen grab of Gracia and my work which was recently featured in Kinki Magazine. Very exciting.

 

Also, Gracia and I have one of our fox images in the current issue the very beautiful Uppercase Magazine. We made several at the time, here’s one of the Uppercase companions with a nod to the brilliance of the Ballet Russes.

 

The company of the Ballets Russes weighed upon him.
Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison
Digital collage
2010
(For those of you interested, the fox featured is a Gray fox (Urocyon cinereoargenteus). Please click to enlarge and better read the detail.)

But most exciting of all is the news that Gracia won the Inaugural Zine Prize of the Artspace Mackay 2010 Libris Awards: The Australian Artists' Book Prize.
 
Enjoy your weekend.

Free range chicken eggs

Easter has been and gone and I spent every second of it enjoying the company of family and friends. Much time was also spent enjoying good food and of course far too much chocolate. As a result I feel very relaxed. Dyeing several batches of eggs, I also feel I gained much knowledge in the art of decorating Easter eggs. Primarily I learnt it is not easy, in fact it’s very difficult. Here are a few photos of the ones that made it through the process.