HIGH UP IN THE TREES

An even distribution of weight.

{Detail from An Even Distribution of Weight, a new zine by Louise and me for you.}

To tomorrow’s Impact7 zine fair at MUMA, we bring tucked under wing a new folded zine we have called An Even Distribution of Weight. Following the A4 folded and spliced design of Louise’s current coloured series, we have made one to give to all those attending the panel discussion Reifying zines: a roundtable discussion of the relationship between ephemera and institutions.
 
We will have copies of this zine available for purchase at our stall too. Should all follow plan, it will also be listed on our online store
 
Monash University Museum of Art
Ground floor, Building F, Monash University, Caulfield Campus
Friday 30th September
10am to 4pm

+ This zine was made as Prokofiev’s Romeo & Juliet played on repeat. This is not something you need to know as you make your way through the zine. Consider it our way of tipping our hat to Werner Herzog mentioning of albino alligators in Cave of Forgotten Dreams.
 
+ And it’s been lovely to meet you too, Sarah & Paul (PS Go Away). See you at tomorrow’s fair, should our paper boat not have transformed to pulpy sinkable mess. This fantastical rain and thunder agrees with us but not our paper wares.

Shine brightly with flashes of light.

{Not one to resist the magnetic pull of the moon, Gold Sparkly takes flight one night. Just like Pegasus.}

Gold Sparkly was made for my dear friend EZB.

A friend once mentioned that in passing one night they had left a gold and sparkly horse in my letterbox. Having never received such a surprise toy offering with my post, we wondered if someone else ever chanced upon the unexpected and found this unexplained gift in their letterbox. Perhaps Gold Sparkly simply galloped to new foreign fields.

For a gold coin, Gold Sparkly is yours, friend.

(Thanks EZB. xo)

Just as the ship went down and other songs I don't believe I know.

{Hello, friend, you look familiar. We've meet before, no?}

In cahoots with Fallen by the wayside... is Just as the ship went down and other songs I don’t believe I know. This zine, this twin, it too features songsheet covers from America.

Yes, I got it / sung by Miss Lillie Beach; published by Will Rossiter. [c1892]
When your cash and friends are gone / by Felix McGlennon. [c1892]
Strangers / by Chas. K. Harris. [c1893]
Fill the vacant chair / words by M. Maurice; music by Ed. E. Treumann. [c1896]
Just as the ship went down / words by Edith Maida Lessing; music by Bernie Adler & Sidney Gibson. [c1912]
They didn't believe me / lyric by Herbert Reynolds; music by Jerome D. Kern. [c1914]

You don’t need me to tell you that I had a lot of fun ordering these found covers until the shuffle made a sentence I liked.

You can pick up a copy here in trade for a gold coin.

+ Louise and I (but not Percy) will be at the IMPACT 7 Zine Fair next Friday. Come and say hello.

Monash University Museum of Art, Caulfield Campus
Friday 30th September, 2011
10am – 4pm

2.

{Romeo and Juliet keysheet. (White Studio theatrical photographs, 1912.)}


{Two views of musculature of the arm. (Anatomical studies of the bones and muscles, for the use of artists, from drawings by the late John Flaxman, engraved by Henry Landseer, with explanatory notes by William Robertson.)}

Astaire and Rogers. Lancelot and Guinevere. Aristotle and Plato. Aces and Spades. Abbott and Costello. Lady and Tramp. Bonnie and Clyde. My Helter and Skelter life. Salt and Pepper in my dinner.

Owl and Pussycat. Victoria and Albert. Romeo and Juliet. You and Me. At quick glance, the Internet and history books awash with pairs linked arm in arm. With duos dynamic. With one plus one.

And as one continues to look about, there are many songs, too, that hold a two.

Just we two.
Two little girls in blue.
Two little eyes of blue.
You know a thing or two.
There are two sides to every story.
Two hearts that beat as one.
Two sisters from the same old home.
Two marionettes.

In Cantonese, two is a homophone of the character for 'easy'. Good things, they say, good things come paired. Like luck. And of such, of luck I mean, I have been fortunate enough to see Graeme Murphy’s Romeo and Juliet two times. (On Wednesday of last week, and last Tuesday evening. Giddy delightful decadence come here!) I saw two different casts perform to that brilliant score of Prokofiev’s, new chorography to make one swoon.

And in taking a different pathway home, today I found a crumpled $20 note on the pavement (and not a soul/rightful owner in sight). So here is to the 2!

Her collection was ninefold.

On my laptop, I store countless images to one day call upon, sift through, remember, perhaps discard. They are stored in countless unordered folders within folders and I’ve no idea of their source, more often than not.

From the uncategorized images I have kept, I lead you by the hand to two articles I know the source.
 
Gracia + Louise Artwork by Hila Shachar for Desktop magazine: The Culture of Design

From Fluxus to iPad: A very short history of artists' books by Sarah Bodman for Cassone: The International Online Magazine of Art and Art Books

+ We are game! Why I adore the night challenge accepted. (Thanks Hila xo)

Good night.

'My Lady of Moods' and other songs.

{Come closer and let my whistle a tune in your ear.}

Though I only started reading it this morning, I am so immersed in Roberto Bolaño’s By Night in Chile that I would not be surprised to look down and discover I am wearing the cassock of my narrator as I stand beneath a great araucaria tree. Yes, I am so immersed in said book that by the time I wander out into my own back garden to hang out the washing on the line I am somewhat disappointed by its scale. I am in a small urban courtyard garden. I am not on the estate of a literary critic who works under pseudonym Farewell. I am in inner city Melbourne and it is spring. I have an afternoon before me to divide into work, leisure, and various chores, but instead I want to travel. Travel back to my book. To another country. Chile. Yes, let’s. Maybe I will. Maybe I’ll forgo that which needs doing and read instead.

My cassock fluttered in the wind. Boldly I advanced towards the place where the shadowy figure had hidden. .... His back was turned. He was wearing a velvet jacket and a scarf and a narrow-brimmed hat tipped back on his head, and he was softly intoning words that can only have been meant for the moon. I froze in a posture like that of a statue, with my left foot on the ground.
(By Night in Chile, Roberto Bolaño (translated by Chris Andrews))

Of no relation to this visual painted, here is a look at a recent zine of mine, Fallen by the wayside and other songs I don’t believe I know. A six-page concertina, it features six American Popular Song Sheet Covers from 1892–95, and it made its debut last weekend at The Wonderful Printed Things Fair.

Should you please, you can purchase a copy through our online store.

Fallen by the wayside
The story is always the same
My lady of moods
Cast aside
Is life worth living?
Adieu!

(The above photos were not taken in my back garden but in one far far grander, the Royal Melbourne Botanical Gardens. The black swan was most obliging.)

Holding tight lest I slip off deck...

Dear you,
 
I never knew I missed the smooth flat seas until they were a distant memory. Holding tight lest I slip off deck never to be sighted by those other than with scales and fishtail fans.
 
Eyes closed, storm ahead,
Where’s my sou'wester?
X

The Familiar Routine

{From Fanja. In the post. A lovely surprise. Presents arrive for Louise and me with a recent order. (Thank-you Fanja xo)}

Every morning I awake and follow familiar pattern. Curtains are drawn back, coffee is brewed, cats are feed (and Omar the elderly Siamese is medicated; a dose of lactose to keep the digestive system chugging along), dog is feed, birds are uncloaked, and so it continues. The order can vary, and there are a few other things that make up the fabric’s weave, but I need not tell you for you to understand. Presumably, your morning routine is similar. Perhaps it involves beginning with a shower, a run, a good book. With watering the garden, plugging in the toaster, washing the dishes from previous night. A salute to the sun, a load of washing, email correspondence to knock off. You know what I mean. Those things you do without thinking. Those things too that sometimes I think have I done that already or was that yesterday? Have I already feed the fish? Have I already turned on my iPhone from its nightly sleep?
 
Last night I saw part of a programme about memory, and it has me thinking about why I keep a blog. I think in some way I see this as a letter to myself. I can look back and remember some of the things I made, thought, saw. Only some, you see, I’m actually very private.

The blog archive that grows month-by-month serves as a security for memory fail. Not that I necessarily look back at what has been (previous dips into the past don’t always leave one feeling elated), but all the same I like to know it is there. A silver trail like that left by a snail across the garden courtyard bricks laid in herringbone formation. A trace. A history. A calling card.

+ Artscape featured Kate Denborough’s play/dance Sundowner (Memory Play) about a mother coping with Alzheimer's disease.

After the Fair.

{From wall behind to floor beneath, this is how it looked. Sort of. (Glean further.)}

Thank-you to everyone, our friends, family, newsletter subscribers, blog readers, twitter followers, and you especially, for coming along and seeing our new zines at yesterday’s The Wonderful Printed Things Fair. It was lovely, as indeed always is, to see you there, to meet you, to show you our new paper works.

Thanks for inviting us to be a part of the fair, Rona. And thanks for having us, St Heliers Street Store + Gallery. Louise and I had a splendid time of it at aptly named wonderful fair.

+ The title of today's post is in loose reference to After the Rain (part of the Australian Ballet's recent British Liaisons programme). What a beautiful performance that was! Keenly anticipating Romeo & Juliet later in the week.

You animal.

{Momentarily visible. Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison, collage, 2011.}

Louise and I relished the chance to create these collages for The Big Issue (Twelve Tales, Fiction Edition Special, No. 388, 30 August – 12 September, 2011).

Both of our collages were created with author Charlotte Wood's words in mind. It was a delicious challenge. So delicious we actually made several more featuring the city, toucans, and a dog spoon-feeding a cat.

A small sip of what is in wait for you. To whet the appetite this Thursday. (From the printed extract featured in The Big Issue of Charlotte Wood's novel Animal People. The book will be published by Allen & Unwin in October 2011.)

He knew there was something about animals he could not perceive, that this was a deficiency in him. For even people who did not dress their dogs in silly clothes found something serious, something profound in a creature's company. When animal people looked at a dog or a lion or a meerkat or a monkey they perceived a fellow being, where Stephen only saw a bundle of muscle, a package of alien hair and fetid, frightening breath. He didn't like to look into the eyes.
Charlotte Wood, Animal People

{Not so very different upon reflection. Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison, collage, 2011.}

You have until the weekend to pick up a copy from your favourite vendor.

+ Charlotte Wood in interview with Sarah Hogan (Perilous Adventures)

Thank-you.

{The retreat. Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison, collage, 2011.}

Popping up this glorious spring morn to say thanks for all the birthday messages (left here, here, here and more). Am cheered beyond all belief and made giddy by the attention lavished and the love.
 
Thanks, my dears.
xoxo

Happy Birthday to you, dear Gracia

Happy Birthday to you!
Happy Birthday to you!
Happy Birthday!
Happy Birthday!
Happy Birthday to you!

...sang me and this chorus of Eurasian Golden Plovers (Pluvialis apricaria)

xo
lj