ELSEWHERE

A lone Grey Currawong

A Grey Currawong could easily be mistaken for a crow, but then I am no twitcher. My primary aim is not to collect sightings of rare birds, I simply like to draw them.

I am busy making a concertina style zine of birds and thought you might like a taste. Allow me to tell you about this little chap. He is sometimes known as a Clinking Currawong or Squeaker, flies with a flat silhouette and has pulsing wingbeats.

Oceanic artifact 1

It’s Thursday afternoon and it seems to be panning out to be one of those days when my mind is a-whizzing and my hands are struggling to keep up. I’m juggling a few design commitments and the making of a new zine or two. Fingers crossed it will continue to pan out okay.

This little watercolour depicts a shield carved and painted by members of the Mengen People in New Britain some time in the very early 20th century. Hope you enjoy it and more importantly your Thursday afternoons.

(Click to enlarge. It helps.)

On paper

Somewhat rusty and a great deal of fun. Drawing outside is not something that comes easily to me all of the time. How about you?

The soul of the mind requires marvelously little stimulus to make it produce all that it envisiages, and employ all its reserve forces in order to be itself, which it clearly knows it is not until it is very different from its ordinary condition. It does not want to submit to being what it most frequently is. A few drops of ink, a sheet of paper as material for the accumulation and co-ordination of moments and acts, are all that is required...
(Paul Valéry, Degas Manet Morisot)

Tumble & Fall zine

Gracia's new zine Tumble & Fall is hot off the press and looking rather spiffy, I think. I hope you enjoy it as much as me and that it enables you to catch a few stars as the fall.

Seventeen pages of brilliant and glossy colour prints and hand cut stars on black linen paper, you can take a closer look here and here, and of course, if you’d like a copy of your very own, you can skip over here ($6 AUD or $4.50 USD).

For those of you based in Melbourne, come along and see us at The Atrium, Federation Square on Sunday 30th May. We will have a stall of all our zines available for purchase (including this one) at Page Parlour, part of the Emerging Writers' Festival 09. Come along and say hello.

zephyr and blue

Yes thank you, Toast, I am wishing I was in north-western Crete. Your Zephyr and Blue Super8 film is too much to bear this beautiful though chilly autumnal morning.

Before I don my woolly jumper and scarf and head out in search of sun, Gracia's Star zine is almost ready for release. Soon. Very soon.

When not with brush in my hand

In between days and nights spent watercolouring and reading about Oceanic atefacts of cultural and historical interest, I have managed to enjoy the chilliness of an autumn morning at the Collingwood Children's Farm with friends. Geese and guinea pigs and goats make for a pleasent change of pace. Catching up with friends also helps to put a spring in my step.

Mask from 1878

(Click to enlarge)

This watercolour is based on a mask from New Ireland, Papua New Guinea which would have been made for an elaborate post-mortuary ritual.

This example is missing its coiffure, which originally would have been made of fibre or sea sponge. Over the head are carved two interlocking branches of cockerel feathers.
(Island Ancestors: Oceanic Art from the Masco Collection, A. Wardell, University of Washington Press.)

Hope you enjoy your weekend.

House Mask (tapuanu)

(Click to enlarge)

The original House Mask on which this drawing is based was collected in 1887 from the Caroline Islands, Mortlock Satawan Atoll. Although it is very handsome it would not have been worn, rather it was carved as an architectural ornament.

It depicts a sacred ancestor spirit that served to protect the island (Atoll of Satawan) and its breadfruit crop from the devastation of typhoons.
(Island Ancestors: Oceanic Art from the Masco Collection, A. Wardell, University of Washington Press.)