These photos are doing my head in. I wonder if they put this bird down after photographing it or if they left it to die a horrible oily death? Or if it was taken to a rehabilitation centre and cleaned up?
I have been trying not to think about the birds in these photos.
All I have heard reported in the media is the failed attempts to plug the leak and stories about police not allowing access to the heavily polluted beaches. Admittedly I don’t watch much television and a lot of my information about the oil disaster is coming from twitter.
So I will ask you my American friends what is happening on the ground in Louisiana? According to reports on twitter the oil has reached Florida.
I clicked over to this site www.ifitwasmyhome.com which was able to give me an idea of the scale of the oil disaster.
I have zillions of words swirling around inside my head but none of them will behave for long enough to come together in a straight line. So I will finish up with a photo of the Wedgetail Eagle that was in my backyard the other day. These birds are critically endangered here in Tasmania and I wonder how long it will be before they are just a memory.
Yesterday was my last class withDr Christl Berg. I cant remember the exact title of the class but in a nutshell Christl’s class was all about developing ourselves as artists as well as learning to look at art critically. It was a valuable experience as we had lots of presentations from established artists describing their own art practices.
Our last presentation yesterday was fromvisual artist, Glen Dunnand I had a lightbulb moment during his presentation when Glen said,”That in essence, artists are thinking in public.” I realised that is what I am doing, I am thinking in public, I am having a public conversation with you. I know it looks glaringly obvious but I hadnt actually thought about it that way before. A couple of pieces of the puzzle clicked loudly into place yesterday and my mind is buzzing.
My proposal for the sculpture trail has been accepted by the friends of Chauncy Vale committee and I am really excited and terrified at the same time. Now I have to do more than actually think about making the eggs, I have to produce them. Eeek.
Just to add more excitement and terror to the mix, yesterday Glen also suggested that I should film the whole process. I was going to photo document everything anyway but making a short film has captured my imagination. I have absolutely no idea how I am going to go about it at all but the thought of making a film is really exciting.
Now back to the idea of thinking in public. I hadn’t really thought much about the oil spill in the gulf of Mexico other than general, “gosh that’s awful” type of thoughts until I followed a link on twitter to the Boston.com’s Big Picture, News stories in photographs and the images truly brought home to me the devastating impact of this massive environmental disaster.
The dragon eggs are a very public thought. The dead albatross bowls are very public thoughts. And now I want to make a couple of oily dragonfly plates. This dragonfly is trying to clean itself while it is perched on an oil soaked blade of grass. I cant get the idea out of my head that to the executives of companies like BP and Monsanto we are as worthless to them as insects.That the destruction of our environments dont matter as long as they get their fat paychecks and the shareholders get theirs.
How can BP compensate the world for the loss of a dragonfly? How much is a dragonfly worth?
I need to write a quick Artist’s statement for the upcoming exhibition. So what better place to practice writing it, than here on my blog.
It is hard to maintain a steady flow of words though, because as I am writing this I keep on having to tromp through to David’s room to rouse him out of bed for school. The words are whizzling around inside my head as I prepare his breakfast and I have to be careful not to put butter in his coffee and sugar on his toast.
An hour and a half later and Dave has left for school and I have a small window of opportunity to write something halfway decent before the phone rings and I lose my train of thought completely.
I lifted bits of this next paragraph straight from my Boganvillainy blurb. All I have to do is elaborate a bit more without sounding like a complete tosser.
I am a ceramic artist and when my hands are filled with clay, I am able for a short time to forget my despair and shame, that I am a silent witness to the destruction of Tasmania’s spiritual heart.
The thought of ancient forests being turned into woodchips chills me to the core of my being.What madness this is, that we have become so anaethesised in in our lives that we squander so lightly our grandchildren’s legacy.
In this exhibition, “Perspectives of Fire” I have entered two completely different bodies of work.The handbuilt bowls hold my despair.The slipcast cups and bottles contain my hope.
If I allow myself to think too deeply about our poisoned waterways and smoking forests, I will be paralyzed with grief. As my tears mix with the clay and the forms come to life before me, the despair loosens its grip on my soul and I allow myself to hope
I have now emailed it off to the exhibition co-ordinator.It is done. So what do you think, do I sound like a complete looney? Or will it do?
Try saying that title without any teeth,heh. My mouth is healing up nicely and I have been able to wear my teeth for 3-4 hours at a time now. The small steps are working for me and my natural confidence is slowly returning, as is my tendency to make fun of myself. I didn’t realize how much I had missed those two qualities of mine, until I had to face the world toothless without them.
The date for the exhibition has been set, yay. It will be held at Eco Haven’s Gallery 71, which is in Murray street, near the corner of Liverpool street, right in the middle of Hobart. The opening will be on Wednesday the 25th of November. I will publish a copy of the invite closer to the date and of course you are all invited to the opening.
I should be well and truly used to my teeth by then, so I dont think my sleep will be too disturbed by nightmare visions of me trying to intelligently discuss my work and my teeth flying out mid sentence.I don’t think I could really disguise something like that as performance art either, do you?
Two words have been going around and around in my head for a couple of days now and they are Useless Residue. These words were used to describe some leatherwood trees and other minor species that were recently logged on Bruny island. Leatherwoods only grow in Tasmania and are responsible for the state’s iconic leatherwood honey. I am sure the beekeepers wouldn’t describe them as useless residue.*sigh*
So with the words useless residue spinning around in my head I made another large bowl yesterday and wrote on it. I think my handbuilt work that I exhibit in November will have a very strong environmental theme. It wont be as “in your face” as Boganvillainy was last year, but there will be a strong environmental message in there nevertheless.
