Pattern.

{Little Verreaux's Sifaka, where will we put you?}


{A Puffin and other mischief makers in the blue bowl of off cuts. (The view from the weekend work table)}

This gathering of squares captures largely the big beast of a March near-to closed. At the drawing board, with a pair of honeybee scissors for last minute nips, tucks, and tail edits, and a series of small glue brushes on rotation. One glue jar with generous dollop of fluid, on-the-go smooth PVA. One lamp plucked from bedside table and placed just so. One drawing board placed across a glass cabinet that allows for me to sit legs folded underneath as I work. And playing in the background, typically on rotation, one performance or concert so as to fool my body that it is one hour and not four since position’s were last changed, and so as to sustain whatever thoughts I had in mind. Yesterday afternoon’s gluing atop Louise’s delicate pencil work was done to the accompaniment of Tales of Beatrix Potter music from the Royal Ballet film (John Lanchbery & Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden). A Pampas Cat was glued in time to The Tale of Two Bad Mice, and the merman and bright iguana to The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin. Keeping the world at bay, the blinking owl, Hunker Munker, The Mouse Waltz, the fast-paced, whirling, and uplifting score that suited the Sunday afternoon atmosphere as paper characters were placed to serve as feathered under carriage of an extinct and flightless Moa. 

And just as Wednesday’s music was Massenet’s Manon (reorchestrated by Martin Yates) on repeat as I drew up my response to The Australian Ballet’s recent performance and Lucinda Dunn’s farewell Melbourne performance (to be published on Fjord Review soon), the afternoon’s music to glue to will be the Mandolin Concertos of Vivaldi. Music long has set my work pattern by quietening the chatter. 

Make new work STOP Scan new work STOP Flatten STOP Repeat END


{Thursday night at the drawing board (Beautifully staged (Shukumei c 1975-76), one of twenty new collages for In Your Dreams)}


{Wrangling legs, seizing horns, positioning tails. Placing collage pieces. (Sunday's choreography)}


{Places please. Quiet on set. We're about to commence glueing in 3, 2, 1, go.}


{Sunday's drawing board with a peep at something new. (House mouse and a Moa)}


{The Pampas Cat (Felis colocolo) is glued in place in the late afternoon light. (With Fanny Cerrito in Ondine from a book on Romantic Ballet)}

Cutting, placing, glueing, pressing, scanning, storing, repeat. This is the pattern of the month of March. And April, too, no doubt.

+ As Olive looks out the window, a Moa has its scales polished with 2B (by Louise).
+ And it's under the press you go, my pretties.

+ "Richard Owen, who was to found London's Natural History Museum, stands beside the skeleton of a giant moa. Owen had been given a 15-centimetre bone in 1839 and from this deduced that a large flightless bird had lived in New Zealand."

+ Former Soloist of The Australian Ballet Jane Casson talks about performing the scene-stealing role of the Mistress in Manon, in Dancing the Mistress posted on Behind Ballet.


{Percy takes an interest in a portrait of Kobi by @pasadenamansions for @h_shachar.}


{Why I declare, Kobi, your eyes are as green as the grass. (Portrait by @pasadenamansions for @h_shachar)}

To see: a handsome painted version of Hila's cat Kobi by my Mum, Elaine Haby (currently making its way to WA)
To read: Hila's recent post, Love is Blind, about a work of same name by Russell Dumas (which I will be seeing later in the week at Dancehouse)