The fact that a plain brown caterpillar can spin a cocoon and after a bit of a snooze, emerge as a multi coloured butterfly is pretty remarkable. Cramming hundreds of people into a tin can with wings and flying across the ocean at speeds of over 500 miles an hour is also quite remarkable. Alan Shepard thwacking a couple of golf balls across the surface of the moon is also classed as remarkable.

A bloggers talent agency in Australia, whilst long overdue, is not that remarkable.

There was a very loud and muddled conversation on twitter about The Remarkables Group, which wasn’t helped at all by whoever runs the @TheRemarksGroup twitter account only posting half a tweet at a time and responding defensively, if at all to questions by other Australian bloggers on twitter.

Other people joined the conversation and words like Storm and Furore were used, shouts of Tall Poppy Syndrome were heard and then the crowning glory of conversation stoppers was used, as Zoey Martin and I were described as Vocal Minorities with a galloping case of sour grapes.

*Sigh*

Nothing is ever easy when you are trying to get your point across in 140 characters but I thought this tweet of mine was pretty clear in its intent.

I don’t have a problem with the @TheRemarksGroup or with the Remarkables themselves. I have a problem with the promotion of Superiority

Indeed it is the promotion of superiority that I dislike very much, but I am very well aware that Brands and PR love it.

The first rule in Marketing is:- If you want to sell Product Z, you first have to make people want to buy Product Z. The easiest way to make people want to buy Product Z is To make Product Z exclusive, thus heightening its desirability by a zillion marketing points.

But there is also a very real and clear danger here in this small Australian fishbowl, that  this premise of exclusivity will backfire on the remarks group and ultimately hurt those bloggers that are involved.

The tweets from @TheRemarksGroup linking to a blog post by Seth Godin titled, You will be judged or you will be ignored  also act to further shut down conversation. The Remarkables Group make it clear that they are coming from a defensive position of the injured party being wilfully misunderstood by some disgruntled and jealous members of the Australian blogging community.

*Sigh*

The Remarkables Group represents five Australian bloggers, two of whom are internet friends of mine, I would like to state clearly and for the record that I wish all five remarkable bloggers the very best in their new venture. May your blogging careers be truly remarkable and may your spare rooms be forever full of interesting product.

A bloggers agent is a fantastic idea, but surely the job of an agent is to promote those bloggers in their stable to the best of their ability. Not to deliberately provoke some members of the Australian blogging community with the assertion that we the unremarkables have also been judged and somehow found to be lacking?

I like to make rocks. I get a great deal of personal satisfaction from making ceramic rocks. As I am making rocks I go elsewhere in my mind and I find a place of beautiful stillness and in this space I am working at my most intuitive.

I enjoy making all the work that I make, otherwise I wouldn’t make it BUT it is these rocks that give me the most pleasure.

So without further ado here is the Ceramic edition of this weeks Sunday Selections. There are some rules to this meme but I am fluid, follow them or not, it is up to you. I do ask that you link back to me though.

The Blurb

I take a lot of photos and most of them are just sitting around in folders on my desktop not doing anything. I thought that a dedicated post once a week would be a good way to share some of these photos that otherwise wouldn’t be seen by anyone other than me.

I am also remarkably absent minded and I put photos into folders and think that I will publish them later on and then then I never do.

So I have started a photo meme that anyone can join in and play as well. The rules are so simple as to be virtually non existent.

Just add your name and URL to the Mr Linky.

Publish your photos on your blog using the “Sunday Selections” title.

Link back here to me.

The Photos

These little lidded vessels are about the size of a squished tennis ball. I call them puzzle boxes because it takes a few twists and turns of the lid to make it sit correctly. I had heaps of fun making these.

This is a candlestick and incense holder. We had a power failure recently and I didn’t have anything to stick any candles into.

This is the side view of the same candlestick and incense holder.

This is part of the first platter that I made in response to my recent trip up to Burnie. I can still feel the psychic impact of driving over the hill into Devonport and being smacked in the soul by the ocean.

This platter is available in the Off Centre Gallery in Salamanca Arts Centre

And then we leave my rocks and travel to the other side of my artistic brain and have this work, which I also adore making. These three pieces are part of the Rose Exhibition, which is showing now at the Lady Franklin Gallery in Lenah Valley. I have donated all of the sale price of this work to the Cancer Council.

The Blurb

I take a lot of photos and most of them are just sitting around in folders on my desktop not doing anything. I thought that a dedicated post once a week would be a good way to share some of these photos that otherwise wouldn’t be seen by anyone other than me.

I am also remarkably absent minded and I put photos into folders and think that I will publish them later on and then then I never do.

So I have started a photo meme that anyone can join in and play as well. The rules are so simple as to be virtually non existent.

Just add your name and URL to the Mr Linky.

Publish your photos on your blog using the “Sunday Selections” title.

Link back here to me.

The Photos

These photos are a mix of  images that I took yesterday. These are truly “happy snaps” in the fact that every image makes me very happy. “The Spouse” and I are keen anglers and we worked very hard to infect our children with the fishing bug. When we took our own children fishing we were often fishing for the table and Jeff wasn’t perhaps as patient as he could have been. It was a totally different story watching him fishing with his grand daughter and I spent most of the day yesterday watching these two have the time of their life and grinning to myself.

These next three photos are taken with my phone.

Releasing the fish and watching it swim away is almost as much fun as catching them in the first place.

I think Miss Amy looks like she is having a good time.

With this post I thee wed. I mean with this post I am entering a competition, somehow I have managed to get myself onto the kidspot social top 50 bloggers list. If I manage to claw my way to the top of the list I can win a trip to New York later on this year and I wouldn’t mind having a bit of a look at New York.

To kick off the blogger challenges, we would like you to write a post before 13 April titled:  ‘Kidspot Ford Territory Top 50: Feel the difference’ about your journey into blogging and what sets you apart from other bloggers. We invite you to put a button on this post to enable your audience to vote for you in the Top 50.

My journey into blogging began on a dark and stormy night when we were rudely woken up by furious banging on the back door. “The Spouse”  opened the door wearing only his jocks and a grim expression and you could tell that he was not impressed at all, by the wizened old man who was thumping on the door with his staff. “You have to let me in’” muttered the old man, “My need is dire and our time is short…”

In 2006 I had a sticker on the inside of my fridge door that read: I drink to make other people more interesting. When visitors would see that sticker they would smile at the joke they thought they were sharing with me but in fact that sticker was telling my truth.

I had been an outsider in my community for a long time, my children were picked on at school because they lived in a shed, their mother was a feral, a fucking greenie, a tree hugging hippy, their father was a dole bludger, we ate roadkill, had nits, had wild drug parties, you name it, they said we did it. I think my worst crimes amongst the local women was the fact that I collected cobwebs and neither dusted nor gossiped.

In 2007 my daughter talked me into starting a blog and Frog Ponds Rock was born. I tapped out a few words and received some comments. I took some photos with a hand-me-down point and shoot my mother had given me and I received just enough compliments to keep me going. My world expanded, my confidence with the camera grew and my loneliness receded. I faffed about on the internet, joining in with memes and making friends.

I didn’t realise how lonely I had been until I wasn’t lonely anymore. The isolation that had seemed such a huge barrier vanished, as I was connecting with like minded women and men all over the world. I could talk about politics and my concern for the state of the environment, without getting into an argument. I knew that if I jumped onto a plane to Europe or the United States, I had friends there and that knowledge was very comforting. My world had shrunk.

Whilst I was making friends all over the world my husband’s disapproval grew. The Spouse really, really, disliked me being on the computer and he worried that you, my dear internets were going to steal my identity, lift my credit card from the back pocket of my laptop or shock horror, you were going to entice me into kinky cyber-sex. I had to steal time to blog, or keep my ears peeled for his footsteps so that I could jump up from the computer and pretend I was doing something productive, like housework.

At the same time as my husband was worrying about identity theft, I was studying ceramics and struggling with my own identity. During a group discussion in one of my classes I decided that I really was an artist, not a student and so I started to call myself a ceramic artist on my blog.

You know if you start to tell people that you are an artist, they actually believe you.

This is where my blog differs from a lot of the blogs in this list. I am not a stay at home mum writing to save my sanity and I am also not a work at home mum trying to earn a living from blogging.

I am an Artist and this blog in 2012 is an extension of my visual diary. As a visual artist I do my thinking in public. I am comfortable with that. A nest of ceramic eggs in a public space is the realisation of a series of thoughts, as well as an invitation to you, the public, to join in the discourse; to participate in the public thought processes with me.

A conversation that starts here on the blog as nothing more than a wisp of an idea, often coalesces into something much more tangible than an abstract concept. The simple processes of examining my ideas, combined with feedback from you, is an invaluable tool.

I use this blog to de-clutter my mind. I take ideas out and examine them publicly and see what happens.

I also use this blog to poke at old wounds and see if they still hurt.

Early in 2010 my blog was nominated for Best Australian Blog in the bloggies and within the internet this was a big deal. When I showed my husband the nomination he was totally chuffed. I overheard him telling his mates that his missus blog is the best in Australia. The bloggies nomination removed any perception that my husband might have had that I was a total and complete nutter for writing on the internet.

He still knows that I am just your ordinary every day nutter.

Because of the 2010 bloggies nomination, I stopped having to blog in secret. I structure my time so that I write in the mornings and my blog has become an integral part of who I am. My husband is still deeply suspicious of all things computery but not as suspicious as he would have been if there really was an old man banging on the back door in the middle of a storm.

Today I am sitting here trying to write about my journey into blogging so that I can gather up enough votes to have a chance to jet off to Blogher in New York. I hope that this blog post has given you an idea about part of my journey and I also know that some of you reading this have been here since the beginning.

Thank you for reading and thank you for giving so much of yourselves to me over the years.

Good Morning everyone, before we start with this weeks Sunday Selections, I have found a photo challenge that you might be interested in and so I thought I would share it with you here. I followed a tweet from Carly Jacobs to a link by Fat mum slim and this photo challenge caught my attention.I am not sure whether to post the photos here on the blog, or to just post them onto my Frogpondsrock facebook page but either way the challenge looks like fun and it might also be a way to get my creative process back on track.

Now let’s start this weeks Sunday Selections.

The Blurb

I take a lot of photos and most of them are just sitting around in folders on my desktop not doing anything. I thought that a dedicated post once a week would be a good way to share some of these photos that otherwise wouldn’t be seen by anyone other than me.

I am also remarkably absent minded and I put photos into folders and think that I will publish them later on and then then I never do.

So I have started a photo meme that anyone can join in and play as well. The rules are so simple as to be virtually non existent.

Just add your name and URL to the Mr Linky.

Publish your photos on your blog using the “Sunday Selections” title.

Link back here to me.

The Photos

This photo is the one I took for the “Your Reflection” photo challenge.

I have no idea what this little fellow is, he was on the bathroom windowsill and looks like a cross between a cricket and a grasshopper. I let him go in the garden and took photos as he ever so slowly walked away from me.

I published this photo the other day but I wanted to share it again as I just love the feeling of ecstasy I get from this tree. As if the tree is reaching joyously for the sky.

It snowed up here last week and then the next day was a lovely balmy 24 degrees. Autumn weather is unpredictable.

The last of the summer insect porn. No more beetle sex for me to capture for quite a few months now.

That is how I feel. I feel like I am stuck and unable to gain any momentum.

I haven’t made any new work in over two weeks.

There is an exhibition coming up that I am quite looking forward to but as for making the work for it, I have been reading instead.

I haven’t made any bread and butter stuff for the Off Centre either and the studio is just too far away. My book is closer.

The industrial strength laxative I took last week as preparation for the colonoscopy made me ill for days. Great waves of nausea that saw me take a bucket to bed, also gave me a small insight into how my daughter feels on a daily basis. I take a small measure of comfort from the fact that my GP told me that if it was cancer I would surely be dead by now.

So there is that at least.

The blogosphere is giving me the shits, with a cowardly anonymous commenter on my daughters blog turning out to be someone we know. A sycophant of the first order, too weak to own her own words. An asshat who thinks that whispers are the way and taints her friends so that I cant be bothered with any of them, or their high school antics.

I am mired and I am also angry.

It wasn’t until I started to cry in a meeting yesterday, that I realised what was wrong with me.

It is grief.

Grief.

That raging weight of missing, of a hole that is too huge to be filled, the pain of the overwhelming emptiness and the endless if onlys.

I am trying to board up my grief with planks of anger and as the fury rises the creativity recedes.

And I am left with nothing but ashes.

My mothers ashes in a box on my shelf.

I take them down occasionally and shake them and whisper hello.

April was Mum’s month.

Easter and her birthday on the 11th all tied up with Mum’s zest for life, with her love of food and family.

April just exposes the giant hole in our lives where mum used to be and the anger bubbles away quietly under the surface.

April is coming and I am trying not to cry.

But sometimes internet, life is hard.

It is really really hard.

Hi everyone, last night I went along to my very first roller derby match and along with some other brave souls I had all my hair chopped off to raise money for the Leukaemia Foundation.

So instead of hunting through my zillions of folders of forgotten photos I will share with you photos of The Worlds Greatest Shave.

My daughter Veronica took all these photos for me and I have not edited them at all.

For any newcomers here that would like to join in with my Sunday Selections meme you are more than welcome and here are the rules .

The Blurb

I take a lot of photos and most of them are just sitting around in folders on my desktop not doing anything. I thought that a dedicated post once a week would be a good way to share some of these photos that otherwise wouldn’t be seen by anyone other than me.

I am also remarkably absent minded and I put photos into folders and think that I will publish them later on and then then I never do.

So I have started a photo meme that anyone can join in and play as well. The rules are so simple as to be virtually non existent.

Just add your name and URL to the Mr Linky.

Publish your photos on your blog using the “Sunday Selections” title.

Link back here to me.

The Photos

I dyed my hair one last time especially for the shave.

The Minister for Tourism Scott Bacon starts to chop off my hair and I am hamming it up for the crowd.

I am now holding my hair in my hands. I will use my hair for paintbrushes.

The serious clipping begins.

The public part of the shave has finished.and here I am with short hair, Tadaa!

After the public shaving had finished, the lovely Bridget from the Leukaemia foundation took one of the other shavees, Garland and myself off to the staff room and she finished shaving our hair. So my hair is even shorter now than this last photo but you get the general idea.

There is still plenty of time to donate to this very worthy cause if you feel so inclined. All you have to do is Click this link to my page on the Leukaemia Foundation’s website.

oh ps. Thanks for all the hats I didn’t realise just how cold my head would be.

This is the last Sunday Selections I will be doing with long hair. Thank you to those of you who have written blog posts for me and an even bigger thanks to those of you who have donated. On a silly note, I am more nervous about publishing photos of myself with short hair than I am of doing the actual shave. Vain, I am vain.

There is still time for you to write a post for me, if you would like to encourage your readers to donate to the Leukaemia Foundation.

Together we have raised $2726.11 so far and I am thrilled to bits with your efforts on mine and the Leukaemia Foundations behalf.

So thank you all from the very bottom of my heart.

The Blurb

I take a lot of photos and most of them are just sitting around in folders on my desktop not doing anything. I thought that a dedicated post once a week would be a good way to share some of these photos that otherwise wouldn’t be seen by anyone other than me.

I am also remarkably absent minded and I put photos into folders and think that I will publish them later on and then then I never do.

So I have started a photo meme that anyone can join in and play as well. The rules are so simple as to be virtually non existent.

Just add your name and URL to the Mr Linky.

Publish your photos on your blog using the “Sunday Selections” title.

Link back here to me.

The Photos

This is my grand daughter Amy, we were at the Museum in Hobart. This was taken in 2011.

This cow wandered onto my property late in 2010. I don’t like cows very much and this cow can feel my dislike. She is glaring back at me as she quietly hums the tune, “Cows with Guns”

These next two photos have been fiddled with in photoshop. I like them.

Hello my lovelies, I am back from my sojourn to the internet free zone and as such will be hosting Sunday Selections myself today. I am also in full blown procrastination mode as I have all this new work in my head that is demanding to be made and the studio needs a darn good clean, so I should get around to visit you all today.

The Blurb

I take a lot of photos and most of them are just sitting around in folders on my desktop not doing anything. I thought that a dedicated post once a week would be a good way to share some of these photos that otherwise wouldn’t be seen by anyone other than me.

I am also remarkably absent minded and I put photos into folders and think that I will publish them later on and then then I never do.

So I have started a photo meme that anyone can join in and play as well. The rules are so simple as to be virtually non existent.

Just add your name and URL to the Mr Linky.

Publish your photos on your blog using the “Sunday Selections” title.

Link back here to me.

The Photos

I spend a lot of time down at the river, fishing, fossicking and photographing the birds. I adore seagulls and I take endless photos of them. The Spouse calls them rats of the sky but he will also interrupt his fishing and  throw bread into the water for me so that I can photograph them on the wing.

On the drive up to Burnie last week as I came over the crest of a hill just before Devonport, I was smacked in the soul by the ocean. I giggled and squealed like a child and drove down to the beach, took off my shoes and walked barefoot on the rocks. I have a post half written about the impact seeing the ocean proper had on me.

On our last night in Burnie, three of us went down to the ocean with our cameras.

I am sorry this post is so late, I have been at a Ceramic workshop all day. It is a zillion degrees outside and I am melting.

The Blurb

I take a lot of photos and most of them are just sitting around in folders on my desktop not doing anything. I thought that a dedicated post once a week would be a good way to share some of these photos that otherwise wouldn’t be seen by anyone other than me.

I am also remarkably absent minded and I put photos into folders and think that I will publish them later on and then then I never do.

So I have started a photo meme that anyone can join in and play as well. The rules are so simple as to be virtually non existent.

Just add your name and URL to the Mr Linky.

Publish your photos on your blog using the “Sunday Selections” title.

Link back here to me.

The Photos

Just one photo today and it is of the spectacular sunrise the other morning.

I will come and see all your lovely photos tomorrow morning, when I am not so melty.