high up in the trees

Closed for a spell... more soon

{Keeping it all together. (View I)}

{Keeping it all together. (View II)}

A small blog hiatus is required. With a speaking voice reminiscent of Louis Armstrong, a knot of frogs in my throat and an aching jaw that feels the wrong fit for my skull, it seems the perfect time to take a little spell from high up in the trees. Not a long one, I think I’ll miss it too much to be gone for long. No, just a little one… I’ll be back late next week sometime or early the next, and when I return I shall have flown up to Noosa and back (to give a talk on Louise and my artists’ books and to conduct a workshop on experimental binding techniques. Did you know that we’ve been making artists’ books collaboratively since 1999? Neither did I until I sat down to prepare our talk...) and I’ll also be a little older. It’s my 32nd birthday next Thursday. A whole new year begins for me just as spring kicks into gear, and I think it’s going to be a ripper. Best get back to writing about those Pemberton’s Deer mice (Peromyscus pembertoni) sporting sailing ships for head gear, red herrings ala Agatha Christie, and unfinished woollen sleeves and fronts that have been fashioned into small pouches perfect for housing an artists’ book.

With luck on my side, I’ll return with photos to share, and maybe even a few pages from the sketchbook will make their onto the scanner too. I shall also, hopefully, have some new cards to show you. They are on the press and are closer than they were last week to nearing completion. The red has been knocked back and all is looking closer to how it should.

{Stuffie love.}

In the meantime, new Thelma’s felt pins, and a rather motley crew of felt and fabric stuffies have been added to both our hammer & daisy online store and our etsy one too. I’ve had to keep a couple of the pins for myself; one with a Portuguese button at the centre for it looks just like a little jam tart, and another with canary yellow detailing. Twenty pins and nine stuffies also made their way to Craft Victoria… a handsome collection of handmade beauty as made by my Mum.

{Felt blooms for spring.}

Enjoy what remains of Shari’s Natural Elements Week (I’d had such hopes of playing along) and I’ll be back in this space soon.

xo

Pasta fazoula, Tallulah

Have a banana, Hannah
Try the salami, Tommy
Give with the gravy, Davy…

And the “Chile con carne for Barney”, Cab Calloway’s Everybody Eats When They Come To My House seemed like the right thing to listen to when working on these four, food heavy collages.

Pass me a pancake, Mandrake…
Eat the tables, the chairs, the napkins, who cares?

(Can’t recall the song? Why here’s a teeny, tiny taste: Cab Calloway – Everybody Eats When They Come to My House )

A long while in the coming, here is a small sample of new, decidedly food related, collages that may end up in a zine all about eating. A zine you ought be sure to bring your appetite for. A zine to be made by Shari, Louise and I, and due for completion… well, sometime soon, should nimble toes and fingers be crossed.

The frying pan still needs a scour, and the skillet needs a-licking, but other than that our zine is slowly, slowly edging ever closer to completion. The chef will be taking them zine orders soon. In order to get things moving just a smidgen, new collages with titles from songs, you guessed it, all about food.

{Purple Stew.}

(Some of the assembled pieces include... from Detroit Publishing Company postcards, A Chinese Vegetable Pedlar in San Francisco, food stuffs from Egypt, purple Ting ware of the Sung dynasty caldron engraved with cicada designs, and a large pestle shown without its mortar.)

{I Heard The Voice Of A Pork Chop.}

(Also from the Detroit Publishing Company postcards (11000 Series, published 1907-1908), Drying Peaches at Isleta, New Mexico... whilst hearing the melodic sounds of a pork chop one can only presume.)

{Swing And Dine.}

(Vegetable Men, Havana, Cuba, (thank you, Detroit Publishing Company postcards, once again) alongside imagery from the Powamû festival celebrating the glorious distribution of bean sprouts.)

{I Like Pie, I Like Cake.}

(A Fruit and Poultry Vendor, Havana, Cuba, meets with all things yellow... Chêng Tê ware of the Ming dynasty (a small libation cup, without decoration) and Hung Chih ware of the Ming dynasty (a wine vessel decorated with coiled dragons).

Please… now set the table, Shari, and bring the ladle, LJ, we’re well on the way to a feast.

A few flickr favourites for the taste buds before I go. Bon Appétit, my little ones.
~ Mav’s dear green tomato
~ Camilla’s fika
~ Anniebee’s cookies
~ Lisa S’s tea
~ Lottie’s pêche
~ Paula’s *day 16
… plus one more from Hanne:: before I go.

Keep enjoying that weekend. And don't forget to swing by both Shari and Louise's blogs to see a little more of what's simmering on the stove and cooling on the ledge. More, more, more food delights to sample before the day is done.

Monday, Tuesday... please, slow down a little.

A little short on words today so here’s some visuals from the week thus far. Visuals in their place. It may only be Tuesday afternoon, but I feel, already, as though I have let go of the reins and the week is out of control. It is, as I’ve already alluded to, galloping at tremendous pace in an open field and I’ve no means, none whatsoever, of reining it back into an orderly line. I think I’ll just leave it to do its own thing… sometimes it’s better that way.

Catching some winter sunshine in the local gardens en route to the airport to pick up my parents from their recent jaunt across the sea to Tasmania to see the Hawks loose. Enjoying a lunch of shelled green peas and a Sanpellegrino Limonata. A tasty snack, somewhat awkward to consume in haste, but so much to my liking.

Taking a sip of LJ’s Mandarino, but preferring my own (bakelite bangle co-ordination aside).

Wearing new and wonderful Dark Smokey Quartz Cluster earrings from Abigail Percy. They’ve barely left my ears since they arrived in the mail.

When at home working on a job I am a little less than enthused about I tend to wear this big, plastic red sparkler from the V&A (from LJ’s parents recent trip abroad). Needless to say, I am wearing it often of late.

{What's one thing more? View One.}

New collages... featuring Matsushima, an Inland Sea in Japan, and many Koriak handicrafts, as well as a few interlopers.

{What's one thing more? View Two.}

And a smattering of Iakut attire (from Eastern Siberia) makes its collage debut, coupled with various other forms from the natural world and antiquities of Southern Russia and the Black Sea coast (Gold ornaments and amphora, found near Kamenka).

Did I mention I miss the film festival? Well, I do. Terribly. The arrival of the brilliant Kauas pilvet karkaavat (Drifting Clouds) on dvd has helped to fill the blankness, though still I am mourning the passing of the festival. Next year, I am adamant, I shall go to even more screenings. Care to join me?

In the meantime I am anticipating with great eagerness Louise’s homage to the domestic cat from the order carnivora, and listening to:

{Joe Strummer - Burning Lights (I Hired a Contract Killer)}

*** Please, don’t forget the One in Ten auction which kicked off on the 19th. ***

“With all the misery in the world, how can we not get drunk?” she laments.

{Inland Sea. View One.}

Sunday found me in the darkened bowels of the cinema once again for the final day of the international film fest. Four movies all in a row, three at the Regent and one at the Forum, commencing with the first at eleven and concluding at a little before 7.30pm that evening. What a day. What a splendid day. A most fitting end to a festival I have enjoyed so very much. Four films viewed in two beautiful old cinemas… just me, and a whole heap of others. Fellow like souls, most of them.

You, the Living (Du levande), Roy Andersson’s film “about the grandeur of existing”, started the day, and it would be an understatement to tell you I loved this movie. Having not seen Songs from the Second Floor, nor any of his earlier films, I knew little of what to expect save for a small typed blurb: “A series of precisely framed long-takes rife with awkward encounters, beguiling non sequiturs and very dry Nordic humour. Marginally lighter, even sweeter in tone than Songs, its playful use of music turns You, the Living into a sort of bittersweet ode to the foibles of daily human existence, walking a fine line between derision and sympathy, pessimism and very dim hope.” (MIFF)

Tears-rolling-down-the-face funny, I adored this film, its music, its humour, its everything. I felt as though this film had been made just for me. It suited me perfectly, and it fitted like a glove, like a second skin. The kind of film one would like to have conjured up, albeit with a team and cast of many. Ever had that feeling before... as though a film has been made just for you? Perhaps it helped knowing little of Andersson’s popularity. I could only find this rather poor version on YouTube to share with you, of a dream scene, as recounted by a man stuck in traffic, sentenced to the electric chair. Seen out of context, and blurry, it perhaps fails to capture the humorous qualities of the scene. Viewed without other vignettes of daily life by its side, I’m not too sure what you’ll be able to make of it. I had hoped to come across the scene in which a woman laments that no one, not her lover nor dog either, understands her. She breaks into song, something along the lines of wishing she had a motorcycle so she could ride away from all this pain and loneliness, as she sits on a park bench... (the character, Mia, quoted in the title of this post from a later scene.)

{Inland Sea. View Two.}

Where You, the Living induced tears from laughter, The Mourning Forest, a Japanese film by Naomi Kawase, of longing and mourning, had me attempting to visualise windows behind me and open spaces before me. As the two characters Shigeki and Machiko head deeper into the forest, I felt so terribly claustrophobic. One large theatre felt like a small, darkened cave. A beautiful film with a nod to the Japanese masters, I spent most of this film, sadly, willing it to end so that I could go outside into the fresh air, to walk in open spaces.

Little time for a saunter though for after this film it was a quick walk around the corner, past the otherworldliness of the Westin Hotel, with its uniformed concierges and bellboys, and head first into the monochromatic landscape of filmmaker Alexander Sokurov’s Alexandra. Chechnya as viewed though the eyes of a woman visiting her grandson at a Russian military base... everyday life once more, and so removed from my own.

From present day Chechnya we were hurled back to 1987, to Bucharest before the fall of communism, for the second festival screening of 4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days. For most of this screening I sat in somewhat of a physically constricted pose, legs tightly crossed and arms wrapped around myself, as I watched two girls organise an illegal abortion in a hotel room. A sold out screening, we sat in seats on the far right hand side of the cinema, in front of a woman who quietly sobbed throughout the entire screening. I can’t describe the film adequately, so I’ll just recommend it to you, should you get the chance to see it.

So much to take it… and I can’t wait to do it all again next year. The perfect foil to all these beautiful though heavy films has been the arrival of snail mail by the seeming bucket load. Thank you, Lottie. Thank you, Alyssa. Thank you, Brydie. Each piece of post so timely in its arrival, and super too, to say the least.

From Lottie:
+ A copy of Gloria Home, Finnish Interiors and Design never looked so good.
+ A host of brilliant colour stickers of wildlife and dinosaurs courtesy of The Guardian (and sure to make an appearance in a collage soon).
+ And a paperback copy of Moominsummer Madness by Tove Jansson... to treasure.

xo

From Alyssa:
+ A copy of two novellas by Natalia Ginzburg, Family. Translated from Italian by Beryl Stockman, the first line of Family reads: “A man and a woman went to see a film one summer Sunday afternoon.”
And from Borghesia: “A woman who had never kept an animals was given a cat.” Intrigued? I thought you might be.
+ And She Cow Six, an original drawing by Alyssa, from her She Cow series... to treasure in equal measure. (More photos to come just as soon as I've found the ideal frame.)

xo

From Brydie:
+ Two postcards; Chinese taking chow-chow (unsent, Hong Kong), and Paardeplaats Monument (sent, Cape Town).
+ Two cigarette cards; one of a Polar bear (“In its native state the Polar bear is something of a mixed feeder for while in Winter it lives largely on the flesh of seals and walruses in Summer it lives on vegetation and berries.”), the other of Book printing in Edinburgh (“Printing and publishing is its staple industry, but brewing and distilling are largely carried on.”)
+ Two delicate and beautiful handmade contour line necklaces, one for each of us.

xo

And, I feel I should also mention Russian post from LJ’s parents. Postcards depicting the Kremlin, the Hermitage, and the Red Square ... they keep popping up in the green post box, and they, too, make me smile. Emailed photographs from Prague, and souvenirs from London... all wonderful and can be found in watercoloured detail, over here, shortly.

Happy weekend to you all.

A little Finnish tango at the Regent

{Film stills from Lights in the Dusk.}

My life doesn’t screen like a movie. There is too much clutter in every frame. It does not read like a scene from an Aki Kaurismäki film. I do not sharpen the blade of my singular knife with the base of a peppermint green mug against a sand coloured tabletop as I sit on a beat up red stool. Lights in the Dusk; all tones of red (be it background walls, Grilli neon signs late at night or a man's shirt), blue (security guard uniforms, brick walls and the interior of a 50s Americana style car), black, sandy yellow and a splash of green. Nocturnal Helsinki never looked so fine. Every scene so beautiful, every scene so stylized. Loneliness, Pub Pete and music by the wonderful Olavi Virta, the king of Finnish tango... seeing this movie on Tuesday night at the Regent, I knew, before it even began, that it’d be a new favourite of mine.

Leaving the cinema and returning home I am confronted by the amount of stuff around me. Not just stuff; piles of fabric to be cut, cds, discarded jewellery and footwear at the front door, bags, clothes, pens; but also the amount of colour, unorganised. Reds, blues, yellows, greens, pinks, whites, patterns, all side by side, and all jumbled together. A complete lack of set direction. No one black jacket hanging on a singular coat hanger on a red wall. No prison uniform of jet black with pencil thin red stripes running up and down the body. Lights in the Dusk, should you get the chance to see it, is beautiful. As mentioned earlier, a new favourite of mine, and a perfect final instalment to the loser trilogy of Aki Kaurismäki.

Want to see the trailer?
Want to hear a little of Olavi Virta?
I thought you might.

Olavi Virta – Täysikuu (a small taste)

{But I always wanted to play for the Mexican Orchestra of Old Seville.}

{Thin skinned.}

{You know, I’m really not interested.}

{Destined not to work from the very beginning.}

New digital collages to see out a week that has me feeling very thin skinned to say the least. Dutch filmmaker Nanouk Leopold’s Wolfsbergen, a few too many late nights and early starts… I’m feeling more than a little sensitive to the world of late. A little raw and peeled. What I need to see right now is this (which I suspect Shari will enjoy)… a stoat performing a hypnotising dance on it’s prey (save for the ending). La danza hipnotizante y letal de la comadreja..

Further likes, loves and smiles from the week:
+ Our collaborative work shown on Maditi Likes, a new quiet space. All visuals, no words.
+ Show posters, & the floating light photographs of gu fan (both from Maditi Likes).
+ Shari’s farm photographs from the week… and Jenny’s photos from Brasil.
+ Lisa's photographs, all coloured and varied, from Japan, and the continuation of Wendy's bed series.
... & so much more.

Brown bears, green peas... another week begins.

Monday night has me…
- Shelling and eating raw peas by the handful.
- Longing to submerge myself, loose myself, in yet another film (seven to go before the week is out).
- Wrapping hammer & daisy orders to take with me to the Post Office tomorrow.
- In full awareness of my sides, post yoga class this morning.
- All over the place. A little disjointed, thinking about the day that’s been, what’s coming tomorrow, and thinking about Phillipa’s Raspberry Jam which I plan on enjoying liberally spread on toast for breakfast several hours from now.

I’ve been, of late, rediscovering my love of porridge with rhubarb, and, completely unconnected, falling asleep to The Ink Spots, Java Jive… every evening it seems to weasel its way in there. More morning than evening to me, nonetheless, come nightfall, it can often be found whirling about in my head.

Oh, slip me a slug from the wonderful mug
And I cut a rug till I'm snug in a jug
Drop me a nickel in my pot, Joe, Takin' it slow.
Waiter, waiter, percolator!

I love coffee, I love tea
I love the java jive and it loves me
Coffee and tea and the jivin' and me
A cup, a cup, a cup, a cup, a cup!

And this song is often in my head when I wake… as is this one, Ushti Baba.

{Treasure before me.}

{Don't mind me, just passing through.}

I am…
- Eagerly awaiting an arrival of a parcel from Abigail.
- Feeling quiet.
- Wishing I was “spending the first half of August in the foothills of the Pyrénées” like Lotte, namely because it is fun to say aloud.
- Loving traveling through Astrid’s photoblog.
- Willing a bag of fresh green peas to last a little longer (they are a favourite snack of mine).
- Finding it impossible to go a day without a small taste of chocolate.
- Feeling at a loss for words.
- Still very much in the visual world of Half Moon. Crossing borders on a journey to Iraq… care to see too? To hear the songs of 1334 women in exile? To cross the snow covered mountains?
- Smiling at the sight of this.
- And happy to see this post of Mav’s WHY I'M LUCKY {THREE}, and my image here (as part of Books 07: Works of Imagination).

Today I am also pleased to show you a new collaborative image, You know this isn’t the way home, don’t you? created with Louise... the other half in a pair to First time ever I saw you (Antarctica). Here a lone fisherman returns from the sea. Should you see him, do point him in the direction of home for me.

{You know this isn’t the way home, don’t you?}

More soon, friends.

Mice this way? In Reykjavik?

{A rabbit green bakelite chocolate mould meets on the sill with a luminous bunny.}

{A blue curtain that cuts the breeze just a little.}

{Really? I'll be finding mice this way?}

“Hey there, you. Wanna go on a little holiday? You want to travel a little further afield than you’re doing?” proposed this years international film fest to which I could only reply… YES. Take me with you! I’m in. It didn’t have to prop on a corner and leer in my direction, I accepted readily, and so I have spent many of these past days indoors, in one of several cinemas, and I’ve travelled far indeed. I’ve travelled to Iceland drenched in black and white, and across the border in a large truck with a Kurdish man.

My circuit at this years Melbourne International Film Festival began with an 82 year old Danish man, a bachelor by the name of Mr Vig. With a wish to see his castle in the Danish countryside turned into a Russian orthodox monastery, Friday afternoon found me inspecting leaky roofs, broken tiles and suspect heating with Sister Amvrosija, Mr Vig and a handful of nuns. Pernille Rose Grønkjær’s documentary, which screened at the beautiful Forum theatre, a Greco-Roman statuary inside with its blue-sky entrance, was, for me, the perfect way to commence my global journey. Having now been to Denmark, I want to go back.

I’ve also explored Reykjavik in glorious black and white in Vesturport and Ragnar Bragason’s Children (the second part to this, the film Parents, to follow). Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. One simple colour palette and several intersecting stories… Marino, a forty year old schizophrenic, Karitas, a single Mum of four, and Gardar, a father on the road to reform with a placid dog by the name of Castro. A 5pm screening of Children had me leaving out the exit on the left and heading back around to the front door for DOL: Valley of the Tambourines, a film set in the small Turkish-Kurdish village, Balliova, at the border of Iran and Iraq, all beautiful mountains and conflict between the Turkish military and the Kurdish guerrilla fighters… amidst all this Azad and Nazenin hope to marry.

Now take me to Tibet in the 1940s and 50s and show me rare archival footage, show me a world that no longer exists (The Lost World of Tibet)… all turquoise circular drums and colourful robes. Take me to one of your many festivals on any one of those 68 days in a single calendar year. Take me to Tel Aviv too with Batya and Joy, and show me an apartment flooded and an answering machine submerged (Jellyfish).

Now I look forward to seeing the Soviet block during the final days of Communism, (4 Months, 3 weeks and 2 Days) and for You, the Living, 62342 meters of film, 58450 meters of tape, 227.5 litres of putty… 26200 screws and 103680 hours of work. Five films down, nine to go, including one day where I’m planning to sit through four in a row… back to back. Is it wrong that I am already mourning their passing? I seem to want to spend all my days in the movies, bumping into friends and acquaintances, and marvelling at the curious ceiling at the Capitol.

(I haven’t been around this space much of late. Winter has brought with it, glorious festival indulgences aside, little time to blog. I’m hoping to put that right again, juggle a few things higher in the air, and make a return, a more frequent return to this beloved space of mine. I very much miss it and I miss conversing with you.)