HIGH UP IN THE TREES

To the New Year ahead

{The world now upside down.}


{Feeding off treasures.}


{Of another hemisphere, surely.}

With the New Year tapping her foot in the wings, a collaged floral trio this warm Saturday morning seemed a good fit for the last post for 2011. To you, my friends, I wish you all the very best of luck for an adventurous and bright brand New Year.
 
This summer holidays I’ll be continuing work in the studio (in readiness for an early February install), so you can expect much new work to appear on these pages in pleasing moments of diversion. Please swing by and wave a paw my direction or leave an offering of fruit. Either or both. Your friendship is always appreciated.
 
+ For those of you who like, prefer, downright enjoy, Louise and I can now be found on Facebook. You can Like us, should the verb agree.

These days.

{All in a day.}

And so, these great bright days have seen us feast well, my family and me. We’ve dined indoors and outside in the sun under the blue. We’ve feasted on all things savoury and all things sweet and all in good festive spirit. The walls of a gingerbread castle, they can make a breakfast delicious (though not nutritious). This relaxed air, this is what makes these days after Christmas so very appealing, that sense that plum pudding with brandy cream is a great lunch, listening to my Dad’s last two Bop Shop purchases (Preacher Jack at the Piano and Ocie Stockard and the Wanderers) as we do so.
 
Yes, we may now have a car dinted beyond a panel beater’s repair (owing to those Christmas hailstones that fell so very hard), but it is still a worthy chariot until the New Year arrives and a new car bought with those insurance claim pennies*. (*We hope.) Tintin’s adventures with Snowy have left me feeling inspired. As I mentioned earlier this morn, “have will, need only torch”. All adventure seekers have a torch. Get thee ready!

Nursing my shocking misfortune...

Dear you,
 
Nursing my shocking misfortune and trying to remember who it was who whispered in my ear “whole, half- and quarter-errors are most difficult and wearisome to put right, to sort out”. Once more I find myself asking, was it you? Was it Goethe?
 
The advancing years proving predictable trial, if only I’d have listened sooner,
X
 
+ My trusted source tells me that the Black rhinoceros (Diceros bicornis) is known to be less sociable than the square-lipped rhinoceros. They live alone in overlapping home ranges marked by dung heaps. Am starting to feel that perhaps today's Dear You postcard collage is not the right fit with abundance of festive cheer a-swirling. On the other hand, for those who find it a hard thing to get through, perhaps this is just the thing, just modify the territory markings to, say, tinsel.

With my Dad at Hound Dog's Bop Shop.

{Abbots Lager, The Dancehall Racketeers, The Starliners, this is how things looked on Saturday the 17th of December, 2011.}

Dearest Tups ... the first 45rpm, Bobby Marchan, Ace Records 532 — I'll never let you go — backed by — I can't stop loving you — paid $1.75 & the first LP, Roy Brown Blues Way, BLS-6056, paid $12.50 on Saturday May 30 1975 ... Abbotts was the preferred brand of beer on opening day & come December 2011 a special release of Abbotts by CUB coincided with the closure of the legendary Hound Dog's Bop Shop, Victoria Street, North Melbourne ... SLP

(Small note: Tups is my Dad's nickname for me. Tups, short for Tuppence, as in two pence, two pennies, is a nickname I’ve owned since I was two. In the month of May, 1975, my Mum is several months pregnant with me, Mrs Hound Dog is pregnant with Joel, and the Bop Shop is born. 37 years later, one hot and dry Saturday in December, we’re all gathered once more on the pavement before the Bop Shop. This is a fond farewell.)

+ Hound Dog's Bop Shop closes this Saturday the 25th of December

+ Crate Digging for Records, Broadsheet Melbourne
+ Those two daring pirates, artists' book launch at Hound Dog's, 2004

Looking back.

Every line you dream or composition you conjure, ever get the feeling that it's all been done before?

(Photos taken late one night at the V&A.)

Of all life’s principles, fairness is not one of them...

Dear you,
 
As someone wise once said to me, of all life’s principles, fairness is not one of them. Was it you, or was it in some novel I read as I travelled from Port Macquarie to Sydney?
 
Yours now high in search of possessions lifted from suit pocket as I slept, a copy of Maigret and the Burglar’s Wife where once my wallet and gold lighter,
X
 
+ The African civet (pictured above) and I can't thank-you all enough for your orders placed through our online store. We've been posting your print, zine, and card orders as soon as they come in and hope they all arrive in time for Christmas. Please excuse any rogue civet hair in your taped up parcels. Though lithe, wrapping paper goods is proving a challenge.

Le Super.

{Unseen fugitives.}


{All became clear by moonlight.}




{With a certain sense of security, the swamp wallaby paused and took in his new surrounds.}


{Holding steady (with a Southern Fiddler Ray (Trygonorrhina guanerius) gliding into frame.)}

Thank-you for all your recent postcard collage print, greeting card, and zine orders. It is wonderful to post the things we have made around the corner, interstate, and over the seas to you. It is wonderful to set off to the Post Office with many parcels in hand.

Our Super Sale, lest you missed it, runs until the 25th of this month. Simply enter SUPER upon checkout to receive 25% off everything listed in our store.

+ The little studied Southern Fiddler Ray (Trygonorrhina guanerius) is docile and harmless, and uses its strong tail fins to cruise the seagrass meadows in search of crabs. (By 'little studied' I am referring to scientists, naturalists et al., the rays themselves, I am sure, are most learned, particularly in the art of crab finding. In addition, I am guessing that these rays are not very docile where crabs are concerned. Crabs of the Victorian bays and inlets would probably not describe these beauties as harmless. Nevertheless, I digress. December's frantic pace has addled own brain function and the cogs are a-rusted over.)

Morran

{I am 12 weeks of age. The year is 1975. I am in my Mum's arms, and the original Dixie is in my Dad's arms.}

{The year now it is 1979 and it is summer. I am nursing Dixie II (so tiny! So ghost-like here in this photo scanned) with my Fairy Godmother, Hilary.}

Delighted to see the release of The Morran Book Project this morning. There are two versions of this book, and I am thrilled, truly thrilled, to have a work made in collaboration with Louise appear in both.

Our piece, Morran’s dreams of the stage take amazing form (i), (ii), and (iii) has perhaps, like many of the contributions if not all, taken on new meaning since dear Morran has passed away. I was sorry to read Camilla’s news, to say goodbye to a pet is so hard. They leave an unfillable gap, and we are so lucky to be able to have shared our days with such marvellous, perplexing, loving, sneaky, loyal, humorous layabouts for as long as we get chance to.
 
To all the pets I have been lucky enough to know, I hope your dreams are a little like these recent works. Thank-you for giving me the chance to get to know you.

xo


{Morran’s dreams of the stage take amazing form (i)}


{Morran’s dreams of the stage take amazing form (iI)}


{Morran’s dreams of the stage take amazing form (ii)}

Proceeds from the book sales go to WSPA Sweden.
 
The Smaller Morran Book Project
1 dog, 75 illustrations by illustrators from all over the world
(Available here.)

The Morran Book Project
1 dog, 236 illustrations by illustrators from all over the world
(Available here.)

(More.)

What animal are you?

{A suite of eight new prints, previously unveiled at The Wonderful Creative Things Fair.}

Were I not human but some other animal instead, I wonder which one I would be. Would I be one that graces my new suite of eight collage prints. I might be, but I have yet to settle on one. Would I be a Snowshoe Hare (Lepus americanus) with fetching black-edged ear tips, active at night, feeding on juicy green plants and grass in the summer, and twigs, shoots, and buds come the wintertime? Would I be an American Bison (Bison bison) with short sharp horns? Or perhaps that ancestor of the domestic cat, the Wild Cat (Felis silvestris), largely solitary and capable of giving tremendous screech upon occasion.

Ah, such things they cannot be answered in a post singular. Such things cannot be deduced early on a Monday evening so let those conclusions be drawn up some other time. Let us move on, without great ado, and allow me to introduce you to eight new postcard collage prints of mine. Each is an edition of twenty-five, and all are lithographic offset printed.

As you may no doubt have seen on Louise’s recent post, caught sight of on our twitter feed, and read in our thirty-first newsletter, we’re have a SUPER SALE to mark their online release.

Until the 25th of December, 2011, everything in our store is 25% off the listed price when you use the discount code SUPER upon checkout.

It couldn’t be easier, my friends, and Louise and I have enjoyed wrapping up the orders already received. To St Kilda, Canberra, and New Zealand, we’ve sent paper hares and red foxes. To Geraldton, Noosa Heads, Bruchsal, Minnesota, and somewhere in the heart of Melbourne, we’ve dispatched owls and swamp wallabies. To… you, perhaps.

Prints from top to bottom, left to right:
Unseen fugitives.
All became clear by moonlight.
No one but you and me.
Holding steady.
A fortunate leap.
On the shore, in a dither.
With a certain sense of security, the swamp wallaby paused and took in his new surrounds.
I thought I saw you there.

This sale is our way of saying thanks.

Gadabout.

{These days...}

These days, these warm, bright, rainy, changeable days, they have been busy, deliciously busy. But not too busy that there is not enough time to view the gold and turquoise and lapis lazuli amulets, jewels and trumpets of the Egyptian boy king at the Melbourne Museum, and to leave with a little treasure by way of the gift store. A mummified cat with a face too dear to refuse now hangs by gold chain about my neck. Those Egyptians, they loved their cats, those cat-headed goddesses of Bubastis. Bouncing from dark exhibition interior, golden artefacts still twinkled before the eyes, and the feet they headed in direction of the zoo for the purpose of a splendid backdrop. There above the Southern Fiddler Ray’s (Trygonorrhina guanerius) pool, Louise and I photographed eight of my new postcard collage prints. As we did so, the faces of many metal flying foxes watched us. (Can you see one, there, third picture from the top?)

+ Twitter influencer: Gracia + Louise, Pattern Pulp
 
+ Red foxes appear on Saturday, we’re in the Good Weekend

'As my eyes grew accustomed to the light, details of the room within emerged slowly from the mist, strange animals, statues and gold - everywhere the glint of gold...I was struck dumb with amazement, and when Lord Carnarvon, unable to stand the suspense any longer, inquired anxiously, "Can you see anything?" it was all I could do to get out the words, "Yes, wonderful things."'
(Howard Carter, from The Tomb of Tut.ankh.Amen, Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs)