HIGH UP IN THE TREES

Partway.

{A Somewhat Gentle Man, Street Days, Karaoke, Godard's Film Socialisme and Bresson's Au Hasard, Balthazar.}

Here lies in order of sighting a still from each film recently seen so that I may remember them all the better in time. All in order bar one, A Somewhat Gentle Man, that ought to have made its way into the middle of the previous post but did not. My memory is not reliable, especially at present, and whilst each film stands independent from that which preceded it and that which followed it, some already they are fading from instant recall. At the halfway mark, eight days in and eight days remaining, I have several more films still to see. As if on queue, I have the sniffles and I am hoping it does not turn into a full-blown cold. I don’t want the bother of a cold but film festival fatigue it can happen. The seated pose requires stamina, the mind requires a good lunch and tea, and the weariest of eyes cannot stay open propped up by caffeine and sugar alone. So, tonight, post Stephen Fry at the Regent, I am adding liberally to my soup garlic and ginger, and pulling my footy socks up over my kneecaps.

 

{You're invited. (Click to enlarge, or try over here.)}

Playing Field
Opening celebrations
Thursday the 5th of August
6-8pm

Craft Victoria, 31 Flinders Lane, Melbourne

(The exhibition runs until the 4th of September, but more of that I will share later.)

Night, night.

Festivities!

Of all the things I look forward to each year the Melbourne International Film Festival is more than one on a list, it is akin to a jewel in a crown of peculiar make. Six days in, eight films seen so far, and I am hoping that what remains, what is still to come, I am hoping does not fly by. I’ve mentioned before I like to prolong the finale, the full stop, the ending, the book’s last chapter, the rolling of the credits. I like to leave the Durrell family in Corfu before inevitable gallop to the finish line, and just now, the Dorrit family in the Marshalsea. (Serving as a bookend to either end of my whole days spent at the cinema, I am reading Dickens’s Little Dorrit. I have not read it before and I love it.) I like to prolong the good stuff, no matter how cracking the conclusion. No matter the fireworks promised. So far, this festival, I have been to a village in the wake of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict, learnt of double agents and the plans they scuppered, before feasting in Shanghai. Highlights for me, so far have been Harutyun Khachatryan’s Border, Garbo: The Spy and Jan Hřebejk’s Kawasaki’s Rose. And I’ve enjoyed Medal of Honor, Wang Quan’an’s Apart Together, The Day Will Come. So to, I have seen the Russian epic Exodus: Burnt by the Sun 2, and began it all with Around a Small Mountain.

Now I am home, playing catchup with some of the things overlooked before next I tread my well-worn path to cinema door and find myself once more seated inside and in a state of eager anticipation.

{The films in order as thus far seen. (Stills gleaned from various film sites.)}

Bathing.

{They bathed like bathers before them. (With Georges Seurat's Bathers at Asnières (detail) sandwiched in between.)}

I always carry about my person a collection of things. Things I am not altogether conscious of and things sometimes irrelevant. Sometimes it reflects the manner of my arrival home, things unpacked from my bag left until next time. Loose buttons, hairpins, lipstick, receipts and junk mail and napkins, they all fall largely into this category. Sometimes what is stored, what has been squirreled away, sometimes it reflects the equipment’s memory, such are the things stored on laptop or iPhone. On my phone’s memory and camera chip, I carry a slew of old photos. Some of the photos I have already uploaded to computer and there is now no need to hold onto them all. Nevertheless, I do. I hold onto things out of sentiment, out of attachment, and the collection serves as a string of highlights threaded like a necklace to be worn, tucked in close to the heart. (Have I mentioned this before? I have the distinct feeling that I have, that I am repeating myself. Oh dear. Perhaps a pitfall of Sunday posting.) Having now posted (a mere) two of them here, I will delete them and set to gathering a new crop of visuals with a press of my finger.

squirrel
verb

1 [ trans. ] (squirrel something away) hide money or something of value in a safe place : the money was squirreled away in foreign bank accounts.

2 [ intrans. ] move in an inquisitive and restless manner : they were squirreling around in the woods in search of something.

Current verb senses date from the early 20th century.

+ Two films in and thus far spellbound. Twenty-four to go and feeling perhaps as though that is too few. Undoubtedly shall book more. Undoubtedly shall post about it here too.

Dear Dad.

{Happy 68th Birthday, Dad. xo}

 

For you today, this forenoon, a closer look at the Australian Poetry Centre’s Dear Dad being printed. Thus far, it has been a joy and honour to work on such a project with them, and it will be exciting to see this little publication of ours to completion. We have designed the book in keeping with our zines of late and made it A6 in build. On the cover and inside, to be revealed at later date, you can see several new collaborative collages Louise and I made especially for the book.

Today being my Dad’s birthday, it seemed only fitting to show you a little taste.

{Printing. Printed. Now all that remains is to hand collate and bind all 500 copies.}

In the borrowed words of the APC, for sometimes when introducing things I falter,

Celebrating Dads, this attractive alternative to a Fathers’ Day Card, includes the best poems about Dads from poets across the country, as well as contributions from Premier of Victoria, John Brumby, esteemed poet, Chris Wallace-Crabbe, as well as TV and radio personalities Alan Brough and John Clarke. Relationships Australia, the Australian Poetry Centre and designers/publishers Gracia and Louise have joined forces to produce a book on Dads and what being a dad or fatherhood means to Australians.

A winning formula.

{We recognise this scene set, with its moon above and stars left on. A collaborative piece made with Louise (when she is not busy drawing dodos).}

The sorting of affairs, no matter how small, always puts my mind at ease before embarking on a new stage or an additional project, be it small or large. Before the task of collating the printed pages of Dear Dad for the Australian Poetry Centre (due to arrive early this week) can occur, I set to updating my large neglected photo albums, washing quilts and thick woolen jumpers, and changing the green water in the fish bowl. Once these things are done, some more pressing than others (I can now see Arthur swimming in his bowl before me), I know I’ll be ready to sit and finish my next part of our collaborative artists’ book. Decks must be cleared for new things, even if at first it appears I am going the wrong way up the mountain.

 

Some of the things completed are not really tasks at all but things that fall on my own list of Wants, like books by the bed that gather dust and have yet to have their spines cracked open and typed worlds within explored. And so I have read this week Kazuo Ishiguro’s Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall and Nicholas Drayson’s A Guide to the Birds of East Africa, learning more of music and birds and all manner in between. It feels good to do the things you’ve long wanted or intended to do.

Tick.

{Recently finished, recently framed and recently delivered to Craft Victoria for the exhibition Playing Field.}

+ A short film by George Wu made in response to Nocturnes.

From the tree.

{Such reward. (Playing with the pinhole function on new camera.)}

One mandarin tree, branches snapping with the weight of its produce. They are ripe and surprisingly sweet (after last year’s bitterness), and so rewarding to pick from the tree in my parents back garden.

Maybe next year I will replace the much-neglected grapefruit in my own garden with a fruiting tree of own greater fancy. Apricot? Cherry? Such decisions are best made on a whim when next I visit the nursery, I think.

+ Dear Dad, a project we are working on with the Australian Poetry Centre, is taking shape. More soon.
+ Thanks, Lizzy. So happy to be a part of your Project Patchwork.

Serendipitous.

Some days are lucky. They feel lucky and they prove lucky, and on such days film festival session times fall into line with your calendar with seeming ease and complimentary lemon meringue cupcakes are bestowed upon you with your coffee order. Sugar aided, we selected thirty-something films to see as two sisters at the table nearby appeared candidates ripe for an Oslo Davis Overheard illustration.

{With coffee ordered and pen in hand, the MIFF guide is cracked open.}

{...and I am thankful for the chance occurrence that lead us to Our Kitchen Table.}

{Can I sit through a screening of Robert Bresson’s Au hasard Balthazar? Am I brave enough?}


{There is little not helped (or given persuasive push in right direction) by sugar.}

+ Aquarius: The Water Carrier, Louise's project for Blanket magazine

Taking new shape.

{Tiny as a soul, there comes the rabbit. (A collaborative print to be exhibited in early August at Craft Victoria.)}

Returning from the printers with a look of both relief and joy, Louise carries into the studio our prints and individual pages for our next artists’ book. They are wrapped in stiff brown paper and, cut down, they look rather tiny, these packages so labored over on all fronts. Weeks have gone into the imaging, the plate making, and the printing and now that they are guillotined to size, they look small. Now that they are wrapped in brown paper, they look so very small. Two parcels and inside them our work. In one, four prints, each an edition of fifteen. In the second, the pages of what will become a concertina book that will reach two meteres in length when extended. All so rich in hue. It is exciting to leaf through the various prints and prepare them for editioning. It is rewarding to see that which was dreamed of many months earlier when the days were long and the nights were filled with neighbourhood noise and windows flung open wide. Summer is for dreaming such things and winter is for making. Clad in woolens, I tinker indoors. About me, animals snooze and on the roof the rain sometimes it falls.

+ Getting self film festival ready, I took in a screening of Christian Carion’s Farewell (L'affaire Farewell). The afternoon it seemed too sunny (for my liking), winter solstice now behind us. Cold War intrigue was needed, and it fitted the bill. I’d forgotten how absorbing, how enthralling a good film (and winter) can be.

+ Thank you for you kind words and recent orders of my postcard collage prints. It means so very much to me. (Lest you missed my earlier post, you can find them available here. Let me send a pika or a parrot your way.)

Ink. Roll. Print. Dry. Done.

{The passage home was long.}

{A possible shortcut is considered.}

{A moment to hold close to the chest.}

{Looking for a way in.}

{A chance sighting.}

{One moonlit night with little to no prospect of success.}

{They had returned.}

{It was worth it if only to see the stars scuttle across the shore.}

A little while ago, I called for your assistance. I asked you to help me decide which postcard collages I ought make into prints. They had returned, A moment to hold close to the chest, It was worth it if only to see the stars scuttle across the shore and several others were your favourites and now they form a suite of full-colour prints. Eight different postcards I was able to print in the end, and each is a limited edition of fifteen.

You can find them all listed under Works on Paper in our store.

It is exciting for me to see these postcard collages printed and to be able to share them with you all for first time ever as prints.

+ Beck, Ritva and Aris, you will be happy to know that I have a postcard print ready to post to each of you. For you, Beck, I have a tiger; for you Ritva, I have a musk deer; and for you Aris, I have a pika. I do hope you like the ones I selected for each of you.

Up, up and down.

{Salomé (c1919) as flag on a grey day.}

Week has followed pleasing pattern, its rhythm suiting me well, a regular repeating pattern one part jubilation, one part (monkey) wrench in the works. Salomé beckoned and I followed, catching the Rupert Bunny exhibition just shy of its closure. (Rupert Bunny: artist in Paris at the NGV until the 4th of July). From mythological idylls to his paintings of the Belle Époque, what I would not give to clamber into that scene and find myself there in place of Jeanne Morel or some other sitter with a rose tucked behind the ear. However, it was the rhythmic movement and colourful energy of his paintings inspired by the Ballet Russes that captured my heart above all. They look like more than scenes captured; they look like the scenes as performed in my imagination. Such great enchantment on the canvas framed.

 

Not to be always in the past, in a time that no longer exists, I leap from sea-idyll to another kind of peculiar beauty, crossing the Caspian sea by way of a floating city, a fish-processing plant in Andrey Kurkov’s The Good Angel of Death. I am traversing the deserts of Kazakhstan with a spirit-like chameleon named Petrovich for company. And I am balancing the disheartening news with the delightful. Cilla has come close to going to a new home twice over only to have it fall through at eleventh hour and I find myself unpacking her belongings—her brush, her rug, her toy mice—in doleful fashion; a new fence between our house and noisy neighbours seems to have all but fallen through; and a beloved bookstore has closed its doors. Nevertheless, other things by comparison, they grow brighter by the day.






{Flutter. Flitter. Dance.}

Patched.

{A windy moment and a patch almost lost.}

In change from everyday, a one-off patch has been made especially for Lizzy’s marvellous Project Patchwork 2010. Louise and I are one of several involved and given the simple joyous task of decorating a 30-centimetre patch for worthy cause. For our square, we embroidered a rabbit and placed him upon a tree in blossom. Lest he be lonely up there in the unfamiliar, we gave for company a purple bird. Here is a look at the finished patch, and in time, you will be able to see it in its place in the finished quilt.

{One patchwork square, ready to form a part of a quilt.}

+ Further details about this project and the finished quilt's raffle as well as other patches in various stages of completion beg further exploration.