HIGH UP IN THE TREES

These bright December days.

{Reading spots, December-ness, and a feline on the mend.}

These bright December days, full of mirth, lightness, good feasting, and reading, they are what is both needed and what is desired. The sweet December blur where days roll one into the other, they are the reward for the year that has been, and they are tremendous. From the leaf of the pets’ book of Just How To Do Things, I loll about, I recline, supine and prone. I bury nose in a book so as not to disturb their positioning by my side, galloping through Neverwhere, Greene, and co. The family pride of 4-legs 2-legs, we luxuriate in the seasonal shift in tempo. This is the time for gold to be found and ice-creams defended as birthdays are marked. This is the time for post-surgery recovery (Omar’s), inflatable slides (in the back garden of Louise’s parents), expanding sides (mine), and a few extra barre body classes to make the summer muscles sing.












{December gold, any which way carved.}

{53 images in 15 seconds, in loose summary of What Was.}

The company you keep, Natalya

The company you keep, Natalya
Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison
2013
digital collage
 
Lest you missed it last week, and in keeping with Louise and my occasional pattern to usher in a bright New Year, The company you keep, Natalya is our festive image especially for you to download, print, pin, and enjoy.

Download our 2013 print
(The inked particulars: Created to print on an A5 (210 X 148mm) piece of paper (or larger, if desired).)
 
This collage, featuring a photograph of Natalya Goncharova and Mikhail Larionov in 1906, is part of our new work for a forthcoming exhibition, Not Quite Sure, in the Little Window of Opportunity at Port Jackson Press Print Room, from the 1st of May, 2014.
 
And don't forget, our SALE runs through until Christmas night (Tuesday 25th of December). To receive 25% off your order simply enter the code NEARANDFAR.

(The patient is on the mend, though things are at the messier end of the recovery wicket as stitches are plucked and painkillers wear off. We're alternating between giving Omar a little sugar or vegemite in his water that we administer orally through a plastic syringe. He has always been a good patient, that way. Thank-you for all your kind messages and comments.)

Omar on the mend.

{Homeward with a groggy but well elderly man. Omar is out of the woods.}

Yesterday our Siamese was broke, but has since been put back together again. X-rays revealed one giant polyp to remove. One giant polyp that was slowly causing our old boy’s third eyelid to remain part closed on his left side (Horner’s Syndrome). One giant polyp attached to the bone above the mouth, in his middle ear. One obstruction that needed to be removed surgically from the small body of an elderly and much-loved feline.

Yesterday, it was also realised that I am a complete and utter jelly when confronted with medical gore where loved ones are concerned. (Medical gore where small ones, elderly ones, or all ones, really, should specifics be required.) I’d suspected this, of course, but yesterday I realised it as my legs felt as sturdy as if swapped momentarily with those of a flamingo. Yes, three times repeated, a pattern made. Once, could be an anomaly. Twice, perhaps a pattern, yet still too close to coincidence to call; but thrice, now that is a pattern. A pattern realised yesterday at the Port Philip Animal Hospital where once more, and to my terrific shame, I felt myself on the verge of fainting.

I am, it transpires, the character in films and books that will grow woozy or faint in such scenarios. I had long thought such characters a fabrication, an embellishment for colour’s sake, but it seems the weak-at-the-knees tribe are my people. My ears rang and, Louise tells me, my eyes grew wide and dark and my face pale. Drawn of colour as I looked at the large wound on Omar’s little neck whilst telling Louise, ‘don’t look at the wound on his neck; it’ll only make you feel queasy’. In the surgical recovery room, I looked at our broken-looking cat, all drowsy and confused, one paw extended through the bars. And I looked at the little white rabbit with only one eye in the cage above. I looked at the dog asleep in the next pen, and scanned the notes of the procedure. Was this the dog that was hit by a car that caused the surgical procedures to be reshuffled? I wondered if that dog, that poor run over dog, I wondered if he or she made it. I made no effort to stop my mind racing away and imagining all manner of things. Instead, I made sure my eyes saw every little thing in the room. I listened to the little whimpers and cries from a room of well-tended animals quietly being monitored. No cause for alarm here; buck up. And I listened to all the bleeping machines supplying saline, and I looked at the tiny pink bandage decorated with paw prints around Omar’s spindly paw. I looked at the shaved fur and I thought of all the tiny little bones beneath the surface. I recalled the X-rays I’d earlier seen on the vet’s computer screen. Of the recently opened packet of Lindt chocolate balls in the office. Of the small lump they had found and collected from his throat and were keeping in a jar just in case, down the track, it needed testing. Not likely to be cancerous, nothing to worry about. I listened to Craig the kindly vet who seems to have a certain soft spot where Om’s is concerned, explain that there’d be blood in the ear but that this was to be expected. I tried to pay attention, but my desire was to sit down lest I fall and draw attention to myself. (Suspecting stuffing to be jelly, why did I spend part of the afternoon as we waited to hear news of Omar’s operation feeding on a diet of Ban Live Export footage and Lost Pet Finders updates?)

Having established I’ve no role to play in Call the Midwife and ilk, I can however offer good round the clock assistance, and once Omar was home, we all slept on the floor in the lounge room in order to stop him scratching at his bloody neck wound. And as he shook his still groggy head, blood and gunk would dislodge from ear, splattering all things near. Tending is hard work. And the hours are long. But it's not nearly as hard as the business of recovery and repair. Omar is now walking about on wobbly pins, a little disorientated but good. It must be confusing to go under sedation and wake up with a bandage about one’s neck and a pain in the throat and ear canal. I wonder what they know of this, animals, how they handle the shock of being one way and then waking another with a plastic cone about the head and gauze placed over a now new wound. It is perhaps this very wondering that gives me wobbly pins.

Thank-you to all of you for your kind words, concern, and good wishes emailed, messaged, texted, and tweeted. The patient is out of the woods, and has an excellent nurse in Percy, who has not let him out of his sights. Olive, finding the whole thing rightly terrifying, gives him a wide berth. He is, after all, a broken-looking puss on the mend and we all of us wish for good health.

To Omar, the Christmas miracle! To pets! And wellness, in general.

Signing off, but not for the year, one blubbering mess,
X


{Little Omar heads to the vets for X-rays and an operation, and we're all hoping for a Christmas miracle.}


{The patient and his nurse.}


{Earlier today, in the full bright sun, we two (plus our siamese puss) painted our new fence frame Admiralty blue.}


{Sun pocket pets, Omar and Percy, afloat on an Inky Storm.}


{Long ago, from kitchen skylight vantage point, a hungry siamese kept an eye on his staff.}


{Omar, in earlier, healthier days, in my parents backgarden, looks all together like another cat.}

+ The marvellously robust Kakapo, with claws like tree roots, arrives at Juliet's door seeking good conversation and shelter. (A repost from Juliet Burnett)
+ The company you keep, Natalya
+ Packing our (imagined) travel necessities and niceties (toothbrush, pens, books) and calling in on a pair of Portuguese swans. (Our Nice Work Advent repost from Milly Sleeping)
+ 'I promise never to get another mouse' and other tales
+ Christmas Sparrow

Fluttering, trembling, flying.

{Something new in hand.}

The coordinates 38.1500°S, 144.3500°E will get you where? Why, those magic digits will land you not in the company of medieval sea monsters or upon the back of a whale commonly mistaken for an island, but to Geelong Gallery's door, of course. Yes, that's where this sequence of numbers will take you. To Little Malop Street where Louise's birds, being better mimes than me, held their temporally fixed place on the wall. They didn't move a wing, at least not on my watch.

This new zine of Louise's features the birds from our recent exhibition, and it's yours in exchange for a coin.

And as our sale runs though until the night of Christmas, you've little reason not to scoop it up. Simply enter the discount code NEARANDFAR to receive 25% off your entire order.

And there are still a handful of copies left of my (homage to) Poirot zine too. A Catalogue of Bodies was recently exhibited as part of Shelf Life 2013 (Delmar Gallery, N.S.W). You may be able to sight it in these gallery installation photos (courtesy of the gallery).

You can pick up a copy of this gruesome body count zine through our online store, if quick.






{Shelf Life 2013, Delmar Gallery.}

Shelf Life
20th of November ‒ 8th December
Delmar Gallery, Ashfield, N.S.W.
Exhibiting artists:
Ernest Aaron, Maxime Banks, Joel Beerden, Bernardo Bento, Joshua Boerma, Priscilla Bourne, Penelope Cain, Sophie Clague, Adrian Clement, Laraine Deer, Tom Doherty, Kate Dorrough, Alberto Estanislao, Alex Fensham, Anne Ferguson, Stevie Fieldsend, Sioux Garside, Sally Gibbs, Ian Grant, Rod Grant, Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison, Barbara Halnan, Peter Hardy, Geoff Harvey, Greedy Hen, Koichi Ishino, Annabelle Josse, Mark Kimber, Bryan King, Kimie Kitamura, Jari Kutasi, Neil Laredo, Gina Law, Belem Lett, Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison, Nicholas, Dean Manning, Tara Marynowsky, Rose Anne McGreevy, Brett McMahon, Claire & Mie Nakizawa, Peter Nelson, Clare Nicholson, Yiwon Park, Kristi Paul, Louis Pratt, Andrew Purvis, Chris Raymond, Terry Reid, Randall Sinnamon, Richard Tipping, Floria Tosca, Michelle Tran, Erika Tucha, Sam Valenz, Peter Wildman, Sandra Winkworth, Alex Wood, Vincent Wozniak-O’Connor, Kayo Yokoyama, Nahomi Yoshizawa, Sairi Yoshizawa

+ Shelf LIfe 2011
+ Shelf Life 2010

+ Two steps backwards

Kingdom scenery shift.

{Drawing lines in the earth of Exmoor.}

As blogging seems to have changed recently, so too the way I use it. Whilst it has been and continues to be a place to put all my collages, and things on the drawing board with Louise, it is increasingly becoming a space in which I feel completely at ease. It wears a gaudy t-shirt emblazoned with the words My Kingdom, My Rules, and it sticks to this maxim. Whilst still keeping its manners, it cares little about posting at Opportune Traffic Times on Opportune Days for Maximum Visitations. And it finds it cares little about the unfashionable length of its posts and has no wish to repeat popular content for glory stats collection. It still types in its keywords, and enjoys a conversational air, but its left behind the awkward phase of its 2006 roots. As conversations shift from the once busy comment section over to twitter and instagram, posts feel decidedly unencumbered and, though readership figures say otherwise, unseen. The sense that I can say what I please, no one’s looking or reading, is incredibly freeing, whether true or not. I now approach my blog more like an artwork in the sense that I am doing it solely for own pleasure. (When making a new artwork, and in order to shake off any self-conscious mannerisms, I try to forget about the destination.) Moreover, what with there being so much chatter about one could easily go unseen. (Quipped Hugh Laurie on twitter this morning, “do you ever get the feeling you're not being watched?”) So unseen that I can tell you that I spend a large part of December trying to wriggle out of staff Christmas parties. So seemingly undetected that I can tell you that sometimes at work when everyone else has gone to lunch, I enjoy making like an Agatha Christie corpse at my desk. A lone wolf with poor social skills, I found it hard to fathom that a cousin of mine believed my life to be one long Warhol style party, until my Mum kindly set him straight (at a Christmas party I did not attend, though this was because I was at a Thanksgiving leftover party). To my way of thinking, Trash (1970) and Flesh (1968) et al. are quite far from my days spent head down scaling Big Work Mountain, but I guess I’m kind of flattered by the wild miss-pinning. Or, rather, one part flattered by ambiguity this affords to two parts indifferent penguin (see: this photograph from 1904 of a member of the Scottish National Antarctic Expedition playing the bagpipes to a nonchalant penguin). And now, I’ve some 2014 Australian Ballet season tickets to flatten under the press after yesterday’s wet mail delivery. Stanton Welch’s La Bayadère vs. Chelsea Girls (1966), or What Is vs. Perceived.


{Feeling welcome.}


{Caught in spring's upheaval.}


{Keeping watch in the Rose Garden.}


{Those nights majestic.}


{This shouldn't prove an obstacle.}


{Offering assistance.}

+ A trombonist waits (Rachmaninov Piano Concert 3)
+ Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Rossetti lamenting the death of his wombat, a pen drawing
+ Mum's cat Stella is not amused, not now, not ever
+ Louise's birds are flying in the library

Wet lion's mane.

Snipping at paws, clipping at claws, collaging on a soggy Monday afternoon, something new for 2014. Something with reference to Zarafa, the Nubian giraffe who walked all the way from Marseille to le Jardin des Plantes, Paris, in profile, neck stooped, a caravan of birds upon her back, and blue sky in their collective sights. Something with beasts and a cosmos silvered. And something with reference to the famous French animal trainer of the 1940s, Alfred Court, but with the tables turned, hurrah. Until all can be revealed, ink dry, curtains drawn aside, here is a quartet of postcard collages with nary a drop of rain visible to my eye, but plenty of ice blue chill.


{Chasing trinkets for a garland.}


{That brilliant upsurge.}


{Wondrous sights come at a price.}


{The motionless statue.}

If all this be too far forward (2014 so soon, too soon) or too unfixed to position in time, might I suggest:
remnants of a good Thanksgiving feast recently enjoyed (one day ago)
when Omar was a young feline, the kitchen skylight proved best vantage point for spot of staff surveillance (ten years ago)
Castelo Branco, Portugal (many blue moons ago now, in the year 2000, still so odd to say)

+ Lisa Solomon's 1000 doilies, the process of
+ Something beautiful made (Flower earrings by David Neale)
+ White, Grey, Winter with Anna Emilia

Seven days.

{With a siamese cat upon her shoulder, we head to the local veterinary clinic.}

Dissect a week; it looks like this, slicing it where you choose. In tradition’s keeping, the week as shared on instagram, nestled under the one umbrella. Moving from Rabbit launch to veterinary clinic, it’s been greatly varied and bright. It has brought with it increased girlie werewolf knowledge; potentially dangerous ironing techniques for the pressed for time; collections of air in the gallery and trinkets in Footscray; dog lead tangles; wet sandshoes; new zine coordinates; print deadlines and polish for 2014 plans.

Thank-you for your emails, comments, tweets, and messages in regards to Omar. He has Horner’s Syndrome, which is a disruption of the nerves that control parts of the eye. Somewhere on the nerves wriggly twisty journey from the brain down the spinal cord just inside the chest, up the neck just below the inner ear, and all the way to the eye there is a problem. Somewhere along this pathway there is a hiccup and this third eyelid that will not retract to its normal position is a sign of this. It is not painful and does not affect vision, but as to what is causing it, we don’t know. All we know is that his appetite for shredded roast chicken remains unaltered; his spot upon my shoulder unchallenged; and that this little, demanding, vocal, elderly puss is woven tight around the muscles of our hearts.


{Congratulations and thank-you, Jazmina Cininas. (The Girlie Werewolf Hall of Fame, Monster Fest)}


{Errand boy, Perce.}


{The Sunday Quick Press. (Everyone irons like this, don't they?)}


{From Melbourne Now's The Gallery of Air to a brilliant front garden collection in Whitehall Street, Footscray.}


{Patrick Pound's The Gallery of Air includes August Friedrich Schenck's much loved Anguish (1880).}


{Earlier today, I blocked Stella's sun, and made myself into a little bear in yoga.}


{Jurate's severed head reads from Rabbit.}


{Bumble and Bumble, lead tangle tango (via @misterpercy).}


{In the back garden, we all have a favourite bluestone rock for sitting on as we catch the summer breeze.}


{Not my hound.}

+ Thank-you to those of you who have swung by our sale. And thank-you Alice of Pinknantucket Press for the sweet rooftop holler. Lest you missed it, our sale runs through until the 25th of December. Simply enter the discount code NEARANDFAR to receive 25% off your entire order.

+ In interview for Stephanie Levy's 30 Days of Collage
+ And they silently steal away because sometimes, just sometimes, it is good to look back
+ With a siamese cat upon her shoulder, as drawn by my Mum
+ Who feels inelastic now? (The (bendable) Ross Sisters, 1944)
+ Rabbit Poetry Journal (Congratulations Jurate Sasnaitis)

Keeping those wet whiskers in line.

Time for two new card designs for the month of December. Here, for you, Wet whiskers drying and Keeping in line, two postcard collages you will have seen on gallery wall, instagram feed, or chance copy of October's Art Almanac. From the shady banks beneath Geelong's Batesford Bridge to Rock City, Tennessee, these two new cards, near and far, are now available through our online store, and in keeping with well-formed pattern, we are having a 25% off EVERYTHING IN OUR ONLINE STORE SALE to usher in their arrival.

Our online store sale runs up to Christmas night (25th of December), so you've near all of the month of December to make the giddy most of things. Simply type in the code NEARANDFAR upon checkout (the code is not case sensitive).

You can purchase these new Near and Far greeting cards singly, as a pair, or as a bundle of five (of the one kind).




{Wet whiskers drying.}




{Keeping in line.}