Hi everyone last week I was incredibly busy preparing for the upcoming exhibition in the Off Centre’s Micro Gallery that I didn’t get a chance to comment on any of your posts. I am sorry about that.

The kiln is in the process of cooling down now and I should be able to sneak a peek at the work late on Tuesday. So without further ado I am pleased to host the 52 edition of 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 isn’t my photo. It is a photo of Philadelphia Hanson Viney’s work, that I am using as our invitation to our exhibition. The photo was taken by a good friend of mine. Talented local photographer Robin Roberts.

The rest of these are my photos.

I have a very active imagination, I create wonderful “what if” scenarios inside my mind complete with multicoloured layers of alternate realities. This can be a good thing as it enables me to visualise work that I need to make and I can quickly fill pages of my visual diary with ideas that will keep me happy in the studio for months.

This can also be a bad thing as when I am feeling especially maudlin, I can spend an inordinate amount of time brooding on possible futures for my family, all of them grim, and so my mood plummets. Ehlers Danlos Syndrome and Autism don’t make for happy daydreams.

I try not to think of the long term ramifications of my daughter dislocating her good knee yesterday. I try to block memories of a particularly harrowing post, written by my bendy cyber daughter in England from my mind, as the thought of a dislocating trachea is just too horrible to contemplate. Yet it happens to my bendy girl and I worry.

I must not allow myself to dwell on all the medical problems that beset my family, my sons anxiety, his high blood pressure at 17, his pain. The fact that my husband at 48 years old, requires slow release morphine patches  in order to walk, and as I wrote those very words on this blog , The Spouse came into the kitchen to say good morning and as he kissed me, his right hip dislocated and then his left decided to do the same. The Spouse has gone back to his bed to lie down until his morning nausea abates, then he will get up and push through his pain barriers and finish building his new garage, from timber he milled himself. And I will gently chide him for working too hard, knowing that his pride will not allow the pain to win and also knowing that tomorrow he will be in slightly more pain that he was today.

I need distractions from my reality otherwise I too will begin to fall apart.

And this is where you come into play, internet.

You are my escapism.

Twitter provides me with countless hours of escapism. News links to all the current events that interest me. I follow the Occupy Wall Street movement closely, I keep an eye on various anonymous news feeds, I follow human rights abuses here and abroad. I subscribe to prostitutes and politicians, skeptics and believers, anonymous street artists and the world’s great museums and they all keep my mind occupied.

My Die Churp Die twitter revolution, complete with its own #occupychurp hashtag and catchy graphic designed by the inimitable Zoey from Goodgoogs, is an attempt to entertain myself, whilst not so subtly pointing out that I think my fellow tweeters are worth much more, than the few cents churping  promoted tweets will provide.

But this is only my opinion and my opinion is only one amongst the millions. If you don’t like what I am saying on twitter, please unfollow me rather than send me snarky emails with dodgy hotmail addresses.

My dislike of the principles behind churp are as inconsequential in the scheme of things as my love of Zombie Klout. But if pressed, I will admit that  it is the complete lack of originality in the churp churp logo that offends me the most.

I am a hypocrite of the first order as I will ask you to give me a +K for Zombies and I will tweet those links at the same time as I will use a Die Churp Die avatar. I will retweet links condemning Klout for creating Klout profiles for unauthorised minors, at the same time as I will declare that I am The Great White Crocodile Hunting Zombie Film Maker on Klout.

Why do I do this?

I do these things, simply to amuse myself, internet.

To take my mind off the things that grieve me.

To give myself a few minutes relief from the things in my life that hurt.

It is that simple.

I am on a list.

A very special list. (This is where you all go, YAY and punch the air above your computers!)

A list that is calculated by an algorithm, not by the number of votes you can pester your friends into giving you.

A list that isnt created by a PR company or a brand wanting link backs.

A list that was featured on a daytime Television show back in 2009 when the Australian blogsophere was still just a very small group.

A list that has been around for as long as I have been blogging and has been used as a yardstick for success for a while now.

The list began in October 2007 and after a rather long hiatus is back in action, bigger and better than ever. The directory will showcase the wonderfully talented Women Bloggers we have in Australia, a celebration of women blogging, across ALL niche, no matter what you blog about.

Blogs are ranked by an algorithm which combines a variety of metrics from Google, Alexa, Yahoo and Klout, it is by no means completely accurate. But it helps give a good snapshot of the women blogging in Australia.

Why am I drawing you attention to this list I hear you ask? Why am I flag waving furiously for this list? Why,why, why?

I will tell you.

But first you need to imagine that there is some sort of rousing musical anthem being played in the background.

I want you all to stand here with me in this proud moment in history and savour the glory with me.

I want you all to high five the air in front of your computers and imagine me high fiving the air back at you ( in slow motion of course)

I wont be in the top 100 for very long and I wanted to share my fleeting moment of glory with you all.

I want to have on public record that I was on a list that mattered. Once.

Once, back in the olden days when life was different and social networks called Plurk were all the rage, when Myspace was still in favour, when bloggers could photograph alien spaceships and search for Zombies in the local hospital. When life was rosy within the blogosphere and we all sat around virtual campfires singing kumbaya. When we all linked to each other because it was good manners and not because we thought we had to. When lists mattered and technorati was the be all and end all of ranking.

Aah those were the days my friend.

I may as well get the UFO out of the way. I am a tad peeved because the bloody thing buggered up a half decent sunset shot by hovering and being all beamy and reflective. It is also quite annoying that I now have the Startrekking song song stuck in my head as well. Bloody Aliens…

Can you see the rectanglular beam of light? That is my accidental Alien spaceship. You can right click on the photo and click view image for a better look.

Now back to the Zombies.

Once I started to have a proper look for evidence of zombies lurking in the hospital, the signs were everywhere. Zombie hunting is a bit like being pregnant. You don’t notice pregnant women until you are pregnant yourself and then it seems like every second woman is preggers as well.

Scratch marks on the walls where a zombie has dragged away a protesting victim.

In every lift the floors and levels were clearly labelled. Except for  the one that we used….

I crept out of the lift and very carefully continued on my way.

I didn’t want to go down this hallway but I knew that If I wanted proof positive I had to continue…

Finally I was nearing the end of my search. I was feeling a bit dizzy by now and I wondered if it was some sort of anti-zombie spray…

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK I had found them…

TO BE CONTINUED……………

We are off to an appointment at the hospital today.I doubt that I will be able to get any photographs of lurking zombies though. Our appointment is in the newer, pastel coloured part of the hospital and everyone knows that zombies can’t stand pastels.

Updated: The appointment was yesterday and I actually managed to get photographic evidence that there are zombies in the hospital. The signs were everywhere if you knew what you were looking for. I will post them later on…

Right now back to the original post. Focus.Focus.Focus!

I am really quite excited about this year in Ceramics. I am doing an advanced diploma and that basically means that I get to choose what work I want to do, without being restricted by all the extra course requirements that were superfluous to my needs as a ceramic artist, like Occupational Health and Safety and that sort of crap…

I had to write a proposal outlining what I wanted to achieve this year and this next bit is a paragraph from that proposal..

I intend to develop a wholistic approach to my ceramic work, fully embracing both thrown and slipcast forms as integral to my artistic practice. At the moment I see my thrown work and my slipcast work as two very separate bodies of work. I am interested to see whether or not this changes during the course of the year. If it does change it will be interesting to see, how and when the lines begin to blur and my work develops into a distinct and recognizable style of its own..

My keywords for this year are, FOCUS AND RESOLUTION.

I sometimes think that I have undiagnosed Attention Deficit Disorder because, by jingies it is incredibly hard for me to stay focused on one thing at a time. For example I will see something that inspires me  and my brain whizzes off on a zillion tangents, all filled with unlimited possibilities for future work.  I will have spent half an hour or so thinking about all the lovely things that could be made and not actually doing any real work.  One consolation is that my ‘ideas book’  is filled with enough ideas to keep me going for the next ten years.

I will be having a mini exhibition in a small space at Tafe in July for a week. I am going to exhibit thrown plates and slipcast porcelain tumblers with some of my photos that were the inspitration for the decoration of the work. I am going to include Jientje’s tumblers that she won in my “cheering myself up” contest.

This mini exhibition is a very good way for me to focus on a body of work and prepare myself for a small no pressure exhibition, that should have a lot of positive outcomes for me personally as an artist.

It will be the first time I have shown my photos, (apart from here on the internets) and I am shit scared of very keen to get feedback from the photographic students and teachers on the quality of my photos.

I am also interested to see how the images and ceramic forms work together and I hope the whole thing isn’t a total disaster because My friend Sue and I are planning on having a joint exhibition together in September or October. I have based my half of the application for exhibition space on the idea of needing wall space as well as floor space and I just hope my photos look good enough to show, eeeek..

Cheers Kim..

It feels like  time is travelling at an impossibly fast rate. The days seem to be sneakily getting shorter (and not just because it is Autumn either.) I am sure that some days are conspiring with each other and managing to just vanish.

Pfffffttt!!!! Gone in a blaze of almostness.

Like Hello, it is Tuesday already. What happened to Monday? I only just published my weekly winners a minute ago and now it is Tuesday?

Gah!!!! Something is going on but, mind you if I was a day of the week, I would probably try to vanish as well if I had to be a Monday.

I mean honestly what sort of a name is  Monday? Munnday? At least Wednesday has  tricky spelling to trip the unwary and Sunday has the promise of a good lie in even when it isn’t sunny..

Enough of that drivel. I need to get my internal dialogue under control. Thinking about that sort of stuff is probably why my days sneak off  anyway. Now Monday has probably gone and gotten all huffy with me, just because  I wanted to know what a Munn was?

You watch, next week it will be Thursday all of a sudden and then I will be really confused. *sigh*

Ceramics! Yay!

I had to type that in order to control myself and get back on track.

This year is all about Focus. Focus and Resolution.

But it is hard to focus on earthly things like housework and making pots, when I am so close to discovering where they keep the Zombies..

I am pretty sure there are Zombies at the Royal Hobart hospital. Mum and I have been traipsing all through the hospital lately. Up corridors and down elevators.There are lots of places in the hospital where you could stash a few Zombies and no-one would ever notice.

Ever.

Unless of course they escaped.

There are lots of closed off sections, with crumbling plaster ceilings and faded yellow tile walls, that look like they could have been used as a set for a Frances Farmer movie.

The last time that Veronica was with us we had to venture down into the dank depths of the hospital to make an appointment for a bone-scan. We had travelled deeper and deeper into the bowels of the hospital, passing locked rooms with innocent looking labels on the doors. Hmmm? Camera room? I wonder if that is where they filmed bits of Shawn of the dead?

We were getting further and further away from the modern section of the hospital. There wasn’t a pastel coloured wall in sight. Veronica and I were loudly discussing discreetly pondering the possibility of Zombies, when we suddenly came to an abrupt halt at a reception cubicle.  The receptionist (who looked uncannily similar to Norman Bate’s Mother, btw)  didn’t look pleased to see us at all. She was barely civil as she made Mum’s appointment and you could tell,that she knew, that we knew about the zombies. It was a good thing there were three of us,(and a baby) or we mightn’t have gotten out of there quite so easily…

I will try and get some photographic evidence next week when we go in for Mum’s chemo..

Ceramics Yay..

This year is going to be an exciting year in the Ceramic Studio.Very Exciting. But the zombies have exhausted my supply of words and I need to get off my bum and actually do some work..

Cheers Kim