I was listening to local ABC radio the other day and Tim Cox was having a conversation with Sally Bryant about Tasmanian Wedgetail eagles. I thought I would share the information I picked up.
The female wedgetail eagle is a larger bird than the male of the species and the darker the feathers the older the bird.
This still doesn’t help me identify this lovely eagle that has been visiting me but I do like to gather and share snippets of useful information as well as interesting links like this one, Raptor and Wild life Refuge
I am a storyteller, I hadn’t really thought about it much until this weekend at the Junction 2010 Arts Conference. I had just been blogging away merrily here at Frog Ponds Rock telling stories about my life, working away creating ceramics, all of which have their own stories and now I am discovering film making which is the easiest way of all to tell a story.
I also like to help other people tell their stories. So if you are here reading this because I offered to help you in some way please be assured that my offer was genuine. Send me an email or leave me a comment and we can work out a plan.
I am always astounded that people are interested in what I do. I keep on waiting for someone to tell me that I am stupid and useless (thanks Dad) and that what I am doing is a ridiculous waste of time but people never do. They smile when I talk and they ask me questions about my work and let me waffle on about dead albatrosses, ethical food production and dragons eggs.
I have passion in abundance. I am passionate about my work, my family, life in general and thanks to Ernesto Sirolli my newest guru I know that I am on the right track.
It was amazing to listen to a passionate speaker like Ernesto Sirolli confirm what I truly believed, that if you are doing what you love, the money will follow.
I have always told my children to do what they love and to worry about the money later and a small part of me has often wondered if I had been doing them a disservice. I look at my daughter doing what she loves passionately and I know that although her path is difficult she is happy. Once my son starts to follow his passion I know that he will be happy as well, it is just a bit hard for him at the moment because he is such a gifted child that all his teachers want him to excel in their chosen field and that is a lot of pressure for a sixteen year old to carry.
I have so many stories to tell and so little time in which to do it. So stay tuned my dear bloglings I have come back from Junction 2010 with so much energy and renewed passion that it could be dangerous.
Here are some photos from my weekend away, just mouse over the photos to get the titles.
Though I also don’t think that they are horrible photos either. I went for a walk this morning and took some photos. I was fascinated by this piece of roadkill. This was a wallaby. Now it is a series of photos.
Not much later though, I am looking forward to putting this together, I am just waiting for the weather to warm up a bit and then we will have fishy mayhem. There will be death and destruction galore and I will film it all.
For new readers of this blog I am not really about to indulge in a bit of fish assisted homicide, for even though he is very grumpy I am rather fond of The Spouse.
I am talking about the film I said I was going to make during my creative concept development class.
I have discovered that there is a little bit more to making a film than grabbing a video camera, shooting some vision and sticking it all together in a watchable format.
I have discovered that the practice vision that I shot will suddenly take on a life of its own and demand to be shown as a short film instead.
I have discovered that I really, really enjoy film making. My poor Nikon still camera has been slightly neglected in favour of a second hand video camera and I have been hoovering up vision left, right and centre.
Yesterday we all had to present our work to our teacher Glen Dunn and our colleagues. I wasn’t prepared for how nervous I felt presenting my short film to my class. I am cheerful, outgoing, opinionated, wisecracking and flippant. I am also intensely private which is a bit of a contradiction as I am a gregarious show off with theatrical tendencies. I rarely get nervous, stressed yes, nervous no.
My ceramic work is what it is.
All my emotional energy goes into the clay and afterwards I am drained. Even though my artist statements are usually quite emotional, my inner thoughts aren’t really out there on display next to my pots.
With this first film I made I was giving people a glimpse into myself. I was really sharing what I see in an unambiguous manner and I think that I was so nervous because I really wanted people to like what I had done. As opposed to my ceramic work where I just want people to respond to my work and I am not really fussed whether people like the work or not.
I am sure that I will get over it though and soon my film work will be the same as my ceramic work, where the response is enough, but it was interesting to analyse my feelings towards this first film.
Anyhow enough babble. I have uploaded the film to Vimeo. This is the first draft, is that the right terminology? Do films have drafts or edits?
This is the first version of my first film. Drive.
I am interested in what you think about it.
Drive from Kim Foale on Vimeo.
I have never regretted the hours I spent lying in the dirt with my small daughter watching ants drag sugar into their nests. Or the time holding my small son’s hand as we followed lizard tracks and hatched our own butterflies from cocoons.
The housework would always be there nagging at me but the lizard tracks were fragile and urgent. Time spent chasing fairies and feathers on the wind is always better than time spent shaking a toddler off your leg as you do the dishes.
When the spouse would roar at me about the mess, I would roar back and slam the door on the offending room and declare that it was fixed. I would try desperately to make him understand that the housework would always be there forever but that the wind was covering the lizard tracks and that small children needed to lie on their backs in the sand and look for dragons in the clouds.
In the spirit of hope and desperation I applied to do ceramics at the art school in 1991. They applauded my enthusiasm and kindly suggested that maybe a bit more of a background in ceramics rather than a couple of adult ed courses would serve my cause better and my application was declined.
I went home and put my dreams away and immersed myself in the business of raising my children and building my home. I was incredibly lonely but I only had so much energy to spare and I needed that energy for myself.
When the lonliness and frustration overwhelmed me I would rage at the night, I would howl at the moon, I would stand in the middle of ferocious thunderstorms and dare the lightning to strike me and when I emerged unscathed from the storm, I would drink some more.
I couldn’t afford proper materials, so I painted the carpet, the doonas, my clothes, the door of the bus and each time the spouse came home he growled his disapproval of the paint and the mess and I would want to vanish into thin air. My children were my anchor and I would walk barefoot in the garden until the energy of the earth soothed my soul.
I was 25 when I applied to do ceramics at the Art school and I was 39 when I eventually returned to clay.
In those rare moments when I experience regret I sometimes wonder where I would be today if I had persevered with my dream of going to uni and then as I read my daughter’s words or listen to my son’s music, I know that I chose the right path at the time and that there is a proper time for everything.
