HIGH UP IN THE TREES

It’s all in the figures.

{Going my way.}


{A fluttering of wings.}


{My friend, you look just like me.}


{Roaming the streets unopposed.}


{Looking up at the moon above.}
 
65 vertical postcards
378 horizontal postcards
443 in total
 
I have 443 postcard collages to hang on the wall, or so the plan goes. 886 tabs to adhere to the reverse side of each postcard. 886 1cm bullet-head nails to secure each work to its allotted place on a wall 13 metres in length. Hung in a grid seven horizontal high interspersed with bands of verticals five high. This, my friends, will make 54 columns of horizontal and 13 columns of vertical postcards. This, as I say, this is the plan. Hanging these postcards will be the coming week’s mathematical puzzle for me.

It is enough to make the head spin round and round. It is enough to give one birds in the chest. One million fluttering birds in the chest as the head spins clockwise.

Take it outside.

{Lunchtime sighting, St. Nicholas Gardens, Scarborough.}


{The leisurely stroll.}


{Holding steady.}


{The volcano rabbit was suitably wary of place names.}


{Now this, this was the place.}


{With a languid roll.}

Today, we take it outside, blue skies or otherwise, as Roy Smeck, the Wizard of the String, plays us a tune or two.

+ Playing in the background as these and various other collage pieces were cut, the delicious sounds of Roy Smeck to guide the scissors. You may wish to leave it playing in the background as you view these recent postcard collages.

{Roy Smeck: The Wizard of the String in "His Pastimes", 1926.}

+ With coloured wings
+ Today

All secrets are revealed at dusk...

Dear you,
 
Quickly are rituals formed. As evening settles, when all is on way to quiet, you’ll find me in the Botanic Gardens of Ballarat, having my chin grazed, teased, tickled by a statue of alabaster. All secrets are revealed at dusk, in gardens green or otherwise.
 
Yours in a flush,
X
 
+ The animal featured in this postcard is a Vicuña (Vicugna vivugna) from South America. They are known to live in groups of up to fifteen females led by a male (in territory fiercely guarded), or in all-male herds (who wander nomadically). They are known to be fast and graceful animals, capable of maintaining speeds of 47 km/h over long distances, even at high altitudes.

Sunday Silver.

{Building a mansion with an assortment of minerals.}


{Tied up by longing.}


{If you had not gone away.}


{Waiting for the shadows to begin their dance.}


{Never far away.}

Instantly the room was populous with sounds of melodiousness, and mournfulness, and wonderfulness; the room swarmed with the unintelligible but delicious sounds. The sounds seemed waltzing in the room; the sounds hung pendulous like glittering icicles from the corners of the room; and fell upon him with a ringing silveryness; and were drawn up again to the ceiling, and hung pendulous again, and dropt down upon him again with ringing silveryness. Fire-flies seemed buzzing in the sounds; summer-lightnings seemed vividly yet softly audible in the sounds.
 
Herman Melville
Pierre: or, The Ambiguities
(As quoted in I listen to the wind that obliterates my traces: Music in Venecular Photographs 1880–1955, Steve Roden, published by Dust-to-Digital, Atlanta Georgia.)

Summer Sunday sounds, sitting in pyjamas still, legs folded up beneath me, scanning recent postcards in batches of five. The scanner loud and out of time yet in step with the recorded sounds of several hundred canary birds Reaching for the Moon (Roy Smeck Trio) and other musical delights. Crackle, whirr, scratch, glide, I need not tell you it is a good day.

Outside, inside, them wild things abound.

{I see you.}


{All safe, all secure.}


{At last!}


{Let the exploration commence.}


{Still a crown, view dependent.}


{The long wait.}

With 12 days to go until Louise and I begin to install our work at Latrobe, last night’s beautiful musical interlude proved the tonic perfect I knew it would be. Amiina brought their musical saws, bells, drums, talent, invention and charm to the stage at the Melbourne Recital Centre and took us all to someplace else. Bliss transportation if ever there was, their sounds created, so far reaching and sad and joyous and evocative of play.
 
The clock chimes, I am off. I leave you in warm Spanish hands and fairy tales once more.


{Cinderella (Aschenputtel) as "told by a pair of scissors on a screen" by Lotte Reiniger. (For those, like me, not at Animagica.)}

Greetings from Spain.

{A tank large and glorious in which I escaped all cares.}


{Mastering the art of the duck and weave.}


{Mastering the art of the nosedive.}


{It made for a harmonious combination.}


{He heard the pad of feet.}


{He sensed change afoot and prepared to meet it.}

Ah, Spain, I long promised you we'd get there.

(These postcards in their original guise were a gift from S and D. Thank-you.)

+ Taking shape
+ Morran in triplicate
+ A different look at January

They both spoke together.

{Planning.}

to•geth•er |təˈgeðər|
adverb

1 with or in proximity to another person or people
2 at the same time
3 without interruption; continuously

ORIGIN Old English tōgædere, based on the preposition to + a West Germanic word related to GATHER. The adjective dates from the 1960s.

This is how things look as they come together. One of several beautiful cabinets we are borrowing from the ever helpful, ever super NETS for our forthcoming exhibition.


{When taken together all made sense.}


{A good fit.}

BY THIS UNWINKING NIGHT
Saturday 4th of February – Sunday 1st of April, 2012
Latrobe Regional Gallery, 138 Commercial Road, Morwell

By an area of water.

{In pursuit.}


{Yes, it was a calm night.}


{Reeled back.}


{One of us is avoiding the other.}


{One of us was wrong.}

There is a gallery wall and it is thirteen metres long (which can be glimpsed in part to the right of this photo here). Thirteen metres is the length of our hallway and lounge room combined. Looking down the hallway now, it is long and home to various pieces of furniture from coat rack and hall table to display cabinet and market trolley in wait. There are shoes to be slipped on and bags to be slung over the shoulder. There are things piled near to the front door ready to go out and things piled near to the front door that have only recently come in. However, today, this long and busy and domestic space represents part of the length of a gallery wall and it is here that I plan how to hang a large gathering of my postcard collages.

+ Thank-you. Patient Omar is doing brilliantly and has made a full recovery. With the removal of his canine tooth (owing to infection), the poor old boy is now more gums than bite, but he still has a good (if not to say better) appetite.

Some nonsense.

{Page details from The first aerial travellers.}

The end of the week will find us looking at cabinets for our forthcoming exhibition (thank-you NETS), and the end of the month will find us installing our work in said cabinets and upon gallery wall. It is no longer an exhibition coined thusly by my Dad, “Don’t worry, it’s not till next year, Tups,” but this year. It is rapidly approaching. It rides a horse and at a furious gallop. It is but twenty days away. Twenty busy, long, beautifully exhausting, glued in papered merriment, frenzied, messy days away. I’ve left the house little these January days. I’ve seen little of the garden, seen little of people beyond the family circle. Seen little but the space in which I work. Should you have seen the latest Sherlock Holmes film, I am akin to Shirley, living off caffeine (though passing on the embalming fluid) and connecting my ideas with one long red ribbon crisscrossed. This isolation and focus suits me well only if you are a paper cheetah or hornbill. I’ve no conversation, no tales to share. Just me, manic and furred at the edge. Careful, may just turn into one of those animals that I place in the scene. You’ve been warned.

+ I am working on a small series of modified King Penguin artists’ books, of which The first aerial travellers is one. This particular book is now part of The New South Wales State Library’s collection so it will not feature in By this unwinking night, but its comrades shall. More details soon.

(What are you up to, dear friends? X)

From idea to publication. (II)

{It all begins with an idea.}

In the recent edition of The Big Issue Summer Special (No 397, 3 – 16 January, 2012), a collage of ours all inked and glorious appears. Here, following pattern dictated by previous post, is how said collage evolved.


{On the page.}

+ You can also spot a collage of ours in The Big Issue 2012 calendar. We're thrilled to be that fifth month of the year, the month of May.

+ Lest you missed it, should you fancy, you can now Like us on facebook.

From idea to publication. (I)

{Collaborative collages created for the Big Issue to accompany an extract from Charlotte Wood's novel Animal People.}

Talking to you today in pictures, this quiet Saturday afternoon. As well you know, all things begin with a germ of an idea. Here, in interest of freeing up a little baggage room in my head, is how things look at the beginning, and how they end up on the printed page. It's quite the ride.