thinking out loud

Hello May, it is nice to see you.

by frogpondsrock on May 2, 2012

in ceramics,Grief,thinking out loud

April was very hard this year and I spent an awful lot of time being very, very sad. Next April I am not going to make any plans or commit myself to any exhibitions or anything. I am just going to eat cake and be kind to myself for the whole month.

I often wonder what impression of myself I give to people who read this blog.

The ceramics that fulfill me are made using pieces of plastic that have been inside dead birds. This plastic came out of the stomachs of only three Flesh Footed Shearwaters on Lord Howe Island.

And so using this plastic I made this work.

These cigarette lighters came out of the stomachs of Laysan Albatrosses on the Kure Atoll in Hawaii in 2009.

Using these lighters to make marks in the clay, I made these porcelain touchstones.

I take photographs of roadkill and I cry for my mother a lot .

The ceramic cooperative that I am a part of, has a shop in the Salamanca Arts Centre in Hobart. On my days in the shop, some time is always spent chatting to the other shop owners and members of similar cooperatives. One of these people is Viv, a lovely bubbly woman,with busy hands, always pricking a piece of felt or sewing bits of something together as we chat away each week. Viv was quite shocked by my ceramic touchstones and dead bird bowls. “But you are the most irrepressibly cheerful person I know,” exclaimed Viv in horror when I told her what I used to make the marks in the touchstones.

Viv’s bafflement has stayed with me in the back of my mind and I bring the thoughts out every so often and examine them.

I am also the most irrepressibly cheerful person I know as well and even though I make such sad, sad work, the work makes me happy.

I think this next photo is the woman that Viv sees. I didn’t have my teeth in when David took this photo and I am far far too vain to be photographed sans teeth. So that is why parts of my cat hat is artfully draped across my face. *grins*

So I really hope that I don’t give the impression that I am eternally gloomy, because honestly, inside my head it is a never ending Monty Python skit.

Beware of Rabbits.

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A question of personal ethics

by frogpondsrock on February 25, 2012

in blogging,On my soapbox,plastic pollution,potential insanity,thinking out loud

I would never in a million years deliberately align myself  with a brand like Nestle. The evidence of poor corporate practice is far too overwhelming for me to ignore and the thought of supporting a brand like Nestle is anathema to me. I lump Nestle in with my other least favourite brand Monsanto and I try to avoid any purchase of their products. It can be quite tricky trying to work out exactly where their corporate tentacles are tangled. So you might find this post  an interesting starting point.

I am an adult living in a first world country and as such I have the advantage of being able to pick and choose my lifestyle choices.

I am standing on my soapbox today, NOT to make anyone feel bad, but to ask questions that bother me.

I am baffled by the silence from a large number of bloggers that attended the bloggers brunch yesterday. I  know that there were bloggers at this brunch who I respect and I am interested in their thoughts. Why the silence on twitter yesterday? Did you miss the conversation about Nestle on twitter? Are you still working out how you feel? Or did you respond and I missed it?

The bloggers brunch is now a familiar event in blogland. Bloggers get invited to a brunch. An air of exclusivity is maintained which make the invites to these events highly sought after. Brands representatives  turn up and throw buckets of freebies at the lucky bloggers and the blogger in turn goes home and tells their  friends and readers how wonderful said brands are.

Everyone is happy happy joy joy.

Except me.

Watching from the wings and tweeting my displeasure about the fact that Nestle was one of the brands at the most recent bloggers brunch held in Sydney yesterday, my thoughts were Nestle? Really? Then I thought that maybe people didn’t know about Nestle’s atrocious corporate record, so as the #bloggers_brunch tweetstream started to flow I tweeted this tweet using the #bloggers_brunch  hashtag.

Just to make things easy for the bloggers attending the brunch I tweeted a link to the Nestle Wikipedia page. The controversy and criticism section makes an interesting starting point.

By this time other people had tweeted their displeasure at Nestle being involved.

I was at work at the time so I wasn’t following the twitter stream too closely, but I was very surprised by the absolute silence from the bloggers at the brunch.

So I started to poke at the organiser a bit by responding to her Nestle tweets with rather provocative replies of my own.

Deathly silence.

poke poke poke

I am sure there are bloggers out there who don’t want to ripple the bloggy gravy train by saying anything negative about the wonderful brands who were at the bloggers brunch. And from some of the instagram photos the brands were very, very generous. But I do wonder, is a bootload full of plastic product and free samples of  milo and tim tams really worth that much? Is it that easy to become so caught up in the hype and power of  brand events that it doesn’t matter what companies are giving away the free stuff as long as it keeps on being free?

I would like to finish up by stating very clearly that it is not my intention to start throwing stones, or to make people feel bad. I am trying to start a conversation about how we consume, not just the products but the message from our corporate masters.

The message I get from all these brand events is one of  rampant consumerism an any cost and honestly people the planet cant really take much more punishment, but that is a post for another day.

{ 58 comments }

No rhyme or reason

by frogpondsrock on January 31, 2012

in Arty stuff..,blogging,ceramics,thinking out loud

To the words that pop into my head. Or to the order in which I do things.

I am so time poor at the monet internet that this blog is sorely, sorely neglected.

Maybe tomorrow I will write an insightful blog post full of charm and wit.

I am typing so hurriedly that I wrote monet instead of moment in my second sentence and I sat for ten minutes pondering the significance of that word exchange and I thought it looked so nice that I have left it there. I am now thinking about blurry paintings and what a shame it was that Monet had a hissy fit and destroyed so many of his paintings.

Speaking of paintings.

I am part of a group show in Burnie in the north west of the state, that opens in less than four weeks and we have all been given a canvas to use as our Artist Statement. I painted my canvas yesterday. I am going to add some text to explain my work as well as some photographs of  the work in progress and maybe glue a cigarette lighter onto the canvas as well.

The hardest part about any job is starting.

Apparently you have to rub some white spirits over the canvas to break down the fibres. As the canvas was propped up on the shelf drying, I asked twitter how long I should wait before I started chucking some paint about. The answer I liked the most was straight away. So I set to work

These photos were taken with my phone.

I started off using a piece of cardboard as a paintbrush and smeared some yellow poster paint all over the canvas.

The cardboard soon became soggy and left little pieces of itself on my canvas, so I changed tools and started to use a cigarette lighter as my brush.I also fingerpainted quite a bit as well.

And this is the finished background to my Canvas Artist Statement. All I need to do now is tell the story of the body of work that I have made for “Fired Up” and have it all done by the end of February.

And of course remember to breathe…

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Wanting to share.

by frogpondsrock on October 8, 2011

in blogging,Distractions galore!,thinking out loud

I am sitting here at my computer watching two yellow throated honeyeaters dive bomb a hawk that is perched in a tree. The honeyeaters have decided that the hawk is far too close to their nest and they are taking it in turns to fly high into the sky and fling their little selves at the hawk’s head.

I was first alerted to the fact that there was a raptor outside by the carry on of the crows, or to be precise the forest ravens as crows are mainland birds. So I have watched as this hawk is harassed and bullied by a pair of raven and now the honeyeaters are having a go. She has stayed on the same branch for over an hour with nothing more than the occasional flick of her wings to indicate that she is bothered by the attention

It is these things that I like to share with you my dear internets but I am unable to get a decent photo of the hawk from here as some inconveniently placed branches on the tree partly obscure her from my view.

After I wrote that last line I grabbed the camera and went outside  to see if I could get a decent shot for you but the hawk flew away down the valley before I could even get the camera up to my eye.

And just like that, in the blink of an eye I have lost an hour or more of my day. Though I don’t consider it lost, not really. I saw some bright yellow daffodils in the middle of some very thick scrub. They would have had to be at least a metre high and I know that they have grown from seed from my own dafs.  The thought of these two daffodils straining for the sky in the middle of the bracken and dolly bushes, wattles and gum trees makes me happy.

Today the Qld police through their twitter account @QPSMedia are testing their new website www.QLDAlert.com ahead of the storm season. They set the ball rolling with this wonderful tweet. How better to check out a websites strengths and weaknesses but with a simulated Zombie attack on World Zombie day. Qld police media unit. I salute you.

Looking at the back of my house I don’t think we would have much chance in a Zombie Apocalypse. But it is a good thing that Klout says I am an authority on Zombies, So I will be able to put my Zombie Whisperer skills to good use in case the Qld Zombies decide to come down to Tassie.

 

 

 

Daylight savings has thrown me out of whack and I am waking up at 7 am or later and by the time I am into my first cup of coffee it feels like half the day has vanished. I have been absent from the blog because the early mornings are when I write and by 8.30 all my words have vanished so rather than write a page full of rubbish I write nothing at all.

Tonight is my High School reunion. It has been 30 years since I ripped off that hated school tie and vowed to never ever wear navy blue again in my life. Surprisingly enough I am quite looking forward to the reunion and I really hope my old English teacher is there. Apart from my mother, Mrs D was the only other strong female figure in my life and over the past thirty years I have often wondered how she was. Though if she is at the reunion I will have to keep my blog well hidden as Mrs D would be appalled at how I mangle the English language and as for my sentence structure, well my dear internets we wont even go there will we?

 

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Straight lines make me cry.

by frogpondsrock on August 5, 2011

in Arty stuff..,potential insanity,thinking out loud

Or at least they do when I come home and tell “The Spouse” about them.

Confused? Let me explain.

I have nearly finished a very short introduction to sculpture class. For the final component of this unit I need to make a sculpture out of cardboard. I have not been looking forward to the construction stage of this project at all, because I need to measure very accurately and be very precise.

Notice those keywords? Accuracy and precision?

Look how sharp and stabby those words are.

Anyway.

Yesterday I began to construct my sculpture.

Three times I measured the line I needed to cut, very carefully, super carefully in fact.

I was being accurate.

I drew a guideline on the cardboard.

I was being precise.

I had a straight edge to guide the Stanley knife.

I was being accurate and precise at the same time.

I was ready to create a freaking masterpiece, people.

But somehow I managed to cut a very, very crooked line.

Twice.

*sigh*

I am some sort of a crooked legend I am sure.

On my second attempt another student came over and gave me some help. Lelle showed me the guidelines on the cardboard which would help me keep my straight lines even straighter. I measured again, I even drew tiny little fucking dots spaced about two inches apart on those faint guidelines to make doubly and triply sure.

I spent ages being accurate and precise.

Again.

It looked straight to me. It looked like the beginning of a masterpiece

But it wasn’t.

*sigh*

Lelle checked my lines for me and they were crooked. What the fuck? So Lelle scored a line in the cardboard for me to follow, which by the way looked a bit wonky to my eye.

I stared at that fucking cardboard for about 15 minutes trying to beat it into submission with the power of my mind.

Finally I was ready to cut that fucker in half.

Yay! It was straight.

I was exhausted.

And I still had heaps more bits to make.

When I came home and was describing my cutting adventures to the spouse, I was being overly dramatic as is my wont and waving my arms about describing how only I, “Kimmy the Magnificent, Queen of the crooked” could turn a completely straight line into a curve.

And as I was turning the days frustrations into nothing more than a humourous little anecdote, I started to cry.

Just a little cry.

Straight lines are hard.

Accuracy and precision are overrated.

Cardboard is horrible

But.

I have brought a piece of cardboard home with me and”The Spouse” has said he will help me with some of the engineering design details. I will work in my studio on a table at a proper Kimmy height and I will make straight lines even if it fucking well kills me.

Either that or I will go to plan B and I will make a woven cardboard ball and glue the fucker into submission.

Stay tuned…

 

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