HIGH UP IN THE TREES

With my shadow a timid mirror close at heel...

Dear you,
 
Pulling low my hat brim in Bournemouth and sliding into new cove with my shadow a timid mirror close at heel. Shyness prickles my cheeks and sets them aflame. My heart rate quickens as my tongue trips over verbs, adverbs, and popular expression. Infinitives all too easily and wildly split as I order two scoops of lemon sorbet in a cone. Do those other bathers I spy, who make warm days look so easy, do they, I wonder, lament their cuddly rolls and hairy chests?
 
Yours keenly aware of self,
X

+ To those of you curious, the animal featured in this postcard collage of mine is a Norway lemming.
+ To those of you in Melbourne, next Thursday evening (the 3rd of November), In Suspense opens at Hand Held Gallery.

An arrangement of connected parts.

{The arrival, a collaborative collage by Louise and me.}


{Detail from our artists' book, Sleeping during the day (2010), in which the first and last image is an original collage inlaid into the page.}

With a clutch of links to share with you this morning:

+ Matthew Asprey, Honey For The Bears, asks me five questions and I answer. (Thanks Matt.)
+ Louise and I have been making modifications to two foldout publications from 1933 and 34 for a forthcoming group exhibition.
+ You have until the 31st of October to respond to Camilla’s Open Call with an image of Morran.
+ From my Mum's sketchbook, new drawings are appearing on Pasadena Mansions.

"...and a star that blinks in the murk"

{Running home without stopping. (Postcard collage from the zine That in the moon did glitter, available here.)}


{No one but you and me. (Postcard collage from the zine That in the moon did glitter, available here.)}


{One more voyage and then I am done.}

Emerging slowly from fitful slumber, astounded to find a quiet Sunday morning at my window as I pull back the curtains. Last night I was in a submarine’s hull. Last night I was sinking to the ocean's floor. Last night, I went to sea, to hear, experience, and drown in all that was epic and bleak, Kursk: An Oratorio Requiem by Australian composer David Chisholm and Russian poet Anzhelina Polonskaya. The conductor (Eric Dudley) elegantly danced, as we sunk to the floor, 118 lost souls pulling at the shoulder.

Dawn. The lights of the infinite
ship of the Universe have gone out,
the cups are drunk to the dregs
and the tyrants all beheaded—
on the executioner’s block
a trident of bird traces
and a blanket of fog.

The pages are shredded
and on the walls
a horde of shadows.
With its last beams
a moonlit child plays on the white
hills of your knees
and a beam melts in your elbow’s bend.

Doleful eyes wake,
they look and see the abyss
of the soul,
like the flotsam of that Universe,
blown ashore,
and a star that blinks in the murk,
following the ship’s masts.

Anzhelina Polonskaya

They gasp at our feats of brilliance...

Dear you,
 
Let us take to the stage and drink in the awe of the crowd as they gasp at our feats of brilliance that defy all conceivable odds. Sandow, a fractured toucan and me. I like that!
 
Scampering to new heights but sure to topple,
X

Move up and down lightly and quickly.

Running, leaping, crashing into my Monday afternoon having seen Pind 3D, a film for Pina Bausch by Wim Wenders.

The secret of this success may be that the Tanztheater of Pina Bausch risks a fresh look at reality and at the same time for daydreaming. It takes the audience in their everyday life seriously and equally encourages their hope that everything will turn out well. For their part they are called upon to take responsibility themselves. All the men and women in Pina Bausch's pieces can do is test with utmost accuracy and honesty what brings each closer to happiness and what pushes them away from it; patented remedies are not provided. But they always send home their audiences in the knowledge that — with all its ups and downs — life can be survived.
(Quote from PINA film site)

Some sort of idyll, this is...

Dear you,
 
Some sort of idyll, this is. Unseen in Switzerland. I look down at my feet, but they’re already camouflaged from own view. They’ve become enmeshed in the floral carpet on which I stand. Quite expect at any moment to soon become at one with the landscape in literal sense. This is not how I expected it would feel this sense of oneness with the earth. With petals for toenails, Mother Nature seized me for herself.
 
Yours blending in to the extreme,
X

+ Artists' Books Q and A with Sarah Bodman, State Library of Victoria
+ Postcards from other worlds, The Eloquent Page, National Library of Australia
+ Collaborations We Love, Golden Ink Collaborative, The Design Files

Yours in profusion of knots and confusion...

Dear you,
 
Well, of course, the beauty of it was it all seemed so gloriously familiar. At first. I didn’t realise, until too late, too late by far, that it was actually anything but. They had their own identities, the Red Lechwe and reflected Kirk’s dik-dik, and I’d managed to offend both in one clumsy swoop.
 
Yours in profusion of knots and confusion,
X

(Please find enclosed one Norwegian fur flyer for record.)

Remain upright and steady.

{An even distribution of weight in hand.}

balance |ˈbaləns|
noun
1 an even distribution of weight enabling someone or something to remain upright and steady

I have written exactly as much music as is necessary and I am not going to add a single note. The ballet is complete as it is. You may take it or leave it.
(Prokofiev as quoted in Dr Mark Carroll's Musical Note in The Australian Ballet's Romeo & Juliet programme)

Driving home from the Latrobe Valley, a backdrop sighted and made use of just before the rain broke. An even distribution of weight is the zine Louise and I made especially for the recent IMPACT7 Print Conference held at Monash University last week. Our characters are shown in attempt to remain upright. They are trying to keep their balance and this as we all know is never as easy as it sounds.

It is now available through our online store and you will find it here, my friends. I promised it to you last week, but one thing it does tend to lead to another and now Friday's promise is made good this sleepy Wednesday eve.

...and then there were three.

{...and then there were three is, or rahter, was a boxed set of three of my zines.}

Louise likes to make boxes. Louise likes a boxed sets of things. I like that this is so and happily accepted her offer to box-up in white three of my zines from long ago. Three boxed sets were made of the artists' proofs 1, 2, and 3, and into their faces smooth and white, I cut my irregular stars with sharp blade's aid. These three boxed sets we took with us to the IMPACT7 zine fair where to great delight they found new homes before afternoon arrived.

(The three sets of artists' proofs were of a loose trio of zines that won the 2010 Artspace Mackay Inaugural Zine Prize, as part of the 2010 Libris Awards.)

...and then there were three:
Tumble & Fall (2009)
A vagary of impediments & a sneak of weasels (2009)
Postcards from... But for the moon nobody could see us (2008)
(Compiled 2011)

(Collective nouns still delight. Perhaps it is time to revive what I have left languish?)

+ Out gathering stars as they tumble from night sky
+ Suit one's book
+ Twinkle, twinkle, all the night

+ And Then There Were None (1940)

Paper by blue light.

{Two photos of Monash University Museum of Art, outside and inside (2010) taken by Trevor Mein (via flickr).}




{Setting up the IMPACT7 mini zine fair co-ordinated by Anna Poletti at MUMA with Cougar Flashy and friends, Dianne Peacock, Breakdown Press, and Sticky Institute, and us (with one of our chairs perilously close to a Juan Davila piece).}

Thank-you to everyone who came along to Friday's mini zine fair within the beauteous blue alcove of MUMA. It proved a great end to a deliciously wild weathered week. So, as the afternoon light begins to fade, to our old faithful friends and those shiny new faces, hello, you're lovely, and thank-you from Louise and me. Do come again soon.

+ There are 29 birds in this box