Diabolical Clay

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.

Easy Peasy.

One of the hardest things for me to accept at the recent Aussie blogger’s conference, was having to drink out of a plastic water bottle all weekend. I forgot to pack my stainless steel water bottle and I felt uncomfortable using the plastic, even though I re-used the same plastic bottle and brought it home with me, it still grated.

My lovely Scientist friend Dr Jenn Lavers, came to visit me in the Off Centre Gallery on Saturday and she gave me a bag of plastic that had been recovered from the stomachs of dead shearwater chicks. I kept the bag on the desk all day and had lots of interesting conversations about plastic pollution with a variety of people. Some people even went so far as to walk out of the gallery and hunt up their friends and partners and bring them back into the shop.

We all commented on the irony of the plastic pollution being displayed in a plastic snap lock bag. This plastic that you can see in the photo below came out of the stomachs of three of our Australian Flesh Footed Shearwaters on Lord Howe Island.

That is a  lot of fucking plastic.

As a Scientist, Jenn either removes the plastic from the dead birds, or she forces the chicks to vomit up the plastic.

This plastic came from dead birds.

The plastic industry would like this Plastic Pollution to be called marine debris as that sounds nicer.

I want you all to remember that when the words marine debris are used, it really is Plastic Pollution and we can’t just gloss over this tragedy that is happening right under our own noses.

The level of micro plastic in the worlds oceans out numbers plankton by a staggering 6-1

Six to fucking one.

Because plastic is a resin it attracts all the toxins in our oceans to itself and becomes a deadly poison pill, chocker block full of DDT and every other chemical nasty that you can possibly imagine. This deadly poison pill is being ingested at the foundation level of the food chain and ultimately is poisoning all the creatures that live in the ocean.

I could dig up miles and miles of data for you and pepper it all through this post but that would take the rest of the day.

These couple of links are pretty interesting and will send you off on any number of directions.

Pete at Midway

Midway Journey

The Plastic pollution is a global problem and we will never remove all this pollution from our oceans but we can certainly stop more going in.

Chris Jordan has done a wonderful job of raising awareness of the enormity of the plastic pollution in the pacific gyre and the plight of the albatross that breed on the Midway Atolls.

I want to concentrate on the plastic pollution that is a bit closer to home.

If you drive along the highway and notice the plastic on the side of the road and then you think that there is a pretty good chance of that plastic going into the ocean there is a real risk of feeling overwhelmed.

So just remember that from little things big things grow and each of us has enormous influence within our own circle of family and friends, colleagues, school associates, etc etc.

I have started to do what I can do within my sphere of influence by writing out my thoughts on this blog and by making some more “dead bird bowls”

I initially made the dead albatross bowls in response to Chris Jordan’s photos of the dead albatross chicks on Midway atoll. I then made the oiled bird bowl in response to the  oil catastrophe in the gulf of Mexico.

I am now making some more bird bowls in response to the deadly bag of plastic I have at home.

Here are some photos to show you where I am at, the quality of the photos is a bit dodgy because I get so immersed in the making of the work that the photos are always an after thought. Sorry about that.

And once again just for luck, the plastic itself.

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.

Easy Peasy.

I was one of the speakers on the My Blog My Story panel at the inaugural Aussie Bloggers conference in Sydney 2011.

I have had a number of people ask me to please publish the talk as there was a concurrent session on SEO and monetisation running in another room. This story that you are about to read wont be exactly the same as the one I told up on the stage, but it will be pretty close.

I love an audience and when I finally got up onto the stage to tell my story, my nerves instantly vanished and I had a blast. I spoke passionately and we laughed and we cried together.

My daughter Veronica introduced me with a list of the things that I am. It was a long list.  It included words like, storyteller, environmentalist, film maker, writer,visual artist, curator, public thinker, mentor of young artists and gatherer of people.

I am all of those things and more. Here is, My Blog. My Story.

I am Tasmanian and there is something that you need to know about Tasmania, apart from the fact that we don’t all have two heads (flashes a bit of neck) is that in Tasmania you are either a greenie or you are not.

There is no in between, it is very black and white.(waves arms around for emphasis).

Over twenty years ago I moved from the city to a very, very, small rural community, where 99% of the population were, very, very definitely not greenies.

It is very easy to be a greenie in the city sitting in a coffee shop sipping a latte, it is a tad more difficult being a greenie when you have a log truck hard up your hammer, doing 100 clicks on a dusty dirt road.

Let me tell you a story to illustrate the isolation I felt.

When my daughter was about nine months old a local took me to playgroup, she failed to tell me that it was also a  pre- Melbourne cup do and so I walked into this room full of impeccably dressed women, looking like something the cat dragged in and not one woman spoke to me.

Not. One. Word.

I spent the next two hours playing in the sand pit with the children, who loved me and my odd socks, and I was left wondering if their Mothers had little tiaras on, underneath their fucking hats. Needless to say I didn’t go back.

Fast forward to 2007 and try to imagine how I felt when my adult daughter tells me that she is moving even further north, further into the heart of  Hilux country. As I was saying that is nice sweetie, inside I was going Noooo fucking noooo don’t do it. (covers face with hands to emphasise the horror)

The difference between my daughter’s situation and mine was that Veronica discovered blogs and blogging, and she connected with other isolated women with screaming, sleepless children. The connection with these women saved Veronica’s sanity.

Like anyone who has found something life changing Veronica wanted to share and filled with an evangelical fervour she made me set up a blog as well.

So you can all blame Veronica,(points) it is all her fault that I am here today.

With Veronica’s help I set up a blogspot blog and launched my thoughts out into the ether. I started to add photographs to my blog posts and I discovered two photography memes that I hesitantly joined. (This is where I plug my meme Sunday Selections, it is a great way to meet people. Come and play with me.)

Suddenly I wasn’t lonely anymore and 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 an argument. I knew that if I jumped onto a plane to Alaska or Belgium,I had friends there and that knowledge was very comforting. My world had shrunk.

Whilst I was making friends all over the world my husbands disapproval grew. The Spouse really, really, really, disliked me being on the computer and he worried that you, my dear internetz were going to steal my identity, lift my credit card from the back pocket of my laptop or shock horror (pantomimes shock and horror) you were going to entice me into kinky cyber-sex. So 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 else, like (shudders) housework.

At the same time as my husband was worrying about identity theft, I was studying ceramics and struggling with my own identity. After a group discussion in one of my classes I decided that I really was an artist, not a student (does bit of a shimmy and waves arms about for emphasis) And 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.

In 2008 My mother was diagnosed with Lung Cancer.  A diagnosis of cancer within your family is very isolating, as people do not want to talk about cancer and they most definitely do not want to talk about death at all. (starts to cry) There is a strong stigma associated with Lung Cancer,  it is a smokers cancer,  a brought it on yourself, sucked in you deserved it kind of cancer.

My Mother was a non smoker.

So I reached out to my online community and you all held me in your cyber arms and gave me the strength to keep on going. (thanks kleenex for being a very handy sponsor)

In 2009 as my mother was dying in palliative care, my phone rang off the hook. In order to shut the fucking thing up I gave my blog address to Mum’s friends, co-workers and all our relatives.

The fucking thing went viral in my small community, every man and his dog had my blog address. I didn’t think about the ramifications of that until much later. For the moment I was just pleased that I could get information out there as quickly as possible and that my telephone was reasonably silent.

After my Mum had died I grieved her on my blog and once again the internet came to my rescue an example being the huge box of chocolates sent to me from a blog friend in Florida that the postage alone on was $100.

So it is late 2009, I am grieving my Mum and I am trying to come to terms with the fact that my blog is now no longer anonymous and a strange thing starts to happen. I don’t know if it is the passage of time or the fact that artists are allowed to be eccentric, but some of the women that shunned me in the very early days actually offer frosty smiles and small nods of their heads when they see me in the supermarket.(looks incredulous)

Wow.

Early in 2010 my blog is nominated for Best Australian in the bloggies and within the internet this is kind of a big deal. When I show my husband the nomination he is totally chuffed. I overhear him telling his mates that his missus blog is best in Australia.(pantomimes a proud husband strutting) The bloggies nomination has 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.

I was very proud to finish in second place in the voting behind the awesomely talented The NDM

Because of the bloggies nomination, I don’t have to blog in secret anymore. I can structure my time so that I can write in the mornings and my blog has become part of who I am.

Here I am in 2011 up on stage in front of a room full of bloggers telling you all my story.

Blame Veronica (points at daughter, again.) it is all her fault

There is a post script to this story. I have made you all some hand made ceramic beads but I wasn’t able to get them fired in time to give them to you so please leave a comment telling me you were at the conference or email me and I will post them out to you.

Cheers Kim.

And met a plethora of amazing bloggers.

I have spent the morning reading blog posts about the conference, looking at photos, reading the tweets and sitting here trying to work out how to write a post that actually captures the sense of community that was so strong through out the conference.

The dynamics of my twitter stream and google reader are changed forever now.

I am able to put real faces and real voices to my online friends avatars and I am very very happy that I was a part of this wonderful event.

But the main thought in my head at the moment is how do I write about all the amazing people I met without overdosing on adjectives?

How do I write coherently about the cold, cold anger that I am feeling at the way that my daughter was unceremoniously dumped from the the final keynote speakers selection with less than five minutes notice due to so called time constraints, without admitting that even a public apology will not calm this Mother’s rage.

So I wont, I will write instead about the phone call I received at 1.45 am this morning that has left me gritty eyed from lack of sleep.

The words

Hi Mum, I am at the hospital can you ring me back, click .

Turned my soul to ice and my fingers to jelly

It seemed to take an eternity as I searched for my mobile phone so that I could find Davids number in my contacts. The fucking phone was flat and the charger was in my suitcase so it was a few minutes before I could call my boy back to see what was wrong.

The words

It’s okay Mum, it’s not me, I am fine, allowed me to breathe again.

My teenage son had been staying in town with his friends while I was in Sydney and one of the  girls had wandered off and had slashed her arms so deeply with a razor blade that she needed an ambulance.

David told me quietly that he had carried his friend up the hill from the oval and waited with her for the ambulance. He told me that he was in the hospital without any money, totally stressed, covered in her blood and desperate for a cigarette.

As we talked I could feel my son calming down and together we worked out a plan to get him back to his friends house.

My son is so like me, he is a people person

But my son gathers the broken to him and I worry about my boy.

This is the third time in less than 2 months that one of Davids friends has attempted suicide.

And I wish I could protect him, I wish I could protect both of my children. I wish I could magically make their hurts vanish as easily as I did when they were small when something as simple as a wiggles bandaid was all it took to make them better.

I look at both my children and I am incredibly proud of the pair of them.

I watched Veronica act with class and grace and style on the weekend.

I listened to my son this morning tell me that he thinks he needs to go and do a first aid course.

And I look at my husband as he grumbles about the mess I have already made in the short time I have been home and I know that I am pleased I went away but I am even more pleased to be home.

I am hurriedly typing this in my hotel room. I am currently in Sydney for the Aussie Bloggers Conference which was held yesterday and was heaps of fun.

This next photo is completely unedited.

I took advantage of a lull in the conversation at the dinner dance last night to announce to all the conference delegates that we had a “hen” in our midst.

Somehow a veil and tiara, a stud finder, a butt grabber and a garter magically appeared.

I wouldn’t have been able to take this photo without the help of my fellow co-conspirators, Bettina from The Beet goes On, Jayne from Our Great Southern Land, Kelley from Magneto Bold Too and Tiff from My Three Ring Circus.

There were a lot of other lovely bloggers who were in on the secret as well, but they are far too many to list.

The look of happiness on my daughter’s face in no way softens the anger I am feeling at her omission from the the final keynote speakers selection with less than five minutes notice due to so called time constraints. More on this subject later.

If anyone is interested, this is the piece of fiction that Veronica was going to read.

But this photo does make me smile and I do like to smile.

Here is the weekly 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 Selection” title.

Link back here to me.

Easy Peasy.

I am one of the speakers on the My Blog My Story panel at the Australian  blogging conference, this Saturday.

I have been thinking about this speech for the past twelve months and I was reasonably confident about my ability to produce a cohesive and interesting talk. After all, the title of the panel is “My Blog My Story” and I would be a poor excuse for a storyteller if I couldnt manage to croak out my own story.

The problem I am facing my dear bloglings, is that the story I was going to tell is about fourteen minutes long and I only have eight minutes up on stage. I need to condense the buggery out of my talk in order to make sure we have a beginning a middle and an end.

I reckon I will have time to cover five points briefly, or three points in a bit more depth but trying to decide which are the salient points to leave in, is proving a bit difficult.

So this is where you come in my dear internetz, if you were forced to sit through eight minutes  of “This is my blogging life with Kimmy” what would you like to hear?

Wow! This is the tenth Sunday Selections post, the time has gone really quickly.

I am really enjoying this meme, though I must admit that sometimes I get stuck in my photo archives daydreaming away for ages.

So without further ado, here are my photos this week.

Anyone can join in with this Photo Meme, “Sunday Selections” but I do ask that you only add your link if you are joining in with Sunday Selections, as links that are off topic or spam will be removed. Also be careful when you are adding your URL as the Mr Linky will remember your old URL and we will click onto an old post.

Here is the weekly 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 Selection” title.

Link back here to me.

Easy Peasy.

The Australian blogging conference is next week.

Twitter is all a flutter with talk of pre and post conference meet ups, tweet ups, dinner dates and the like.

Blog posts about what to wear and what not to wear, why we should wear this and why we shouldnt worry about wearing that, are popping up all over the place like pimples on a teenager.

Each time I see a tweet about makeup or fashion I get a little twitchy.

And I wonder about our obsession with our appearance.

And I then think critically about my own appearance.

And my own sense of style

Which I call bag lady chic.

And then I get the giggles and go and play in the mud.

So for anyone that is worried about what to wear, come and see me at the conference and I will make you feel like you are the queen of chic and the epitome of style. My ample proportions will also make you feel lovely and slim.

For the style challenged amongst us, here are some shoes I wore in the snow a couple of winters ago.

If you are shy come and find me because I am not shy at all.

And I would love to meet you.

Especially if you read my blog.

I will have bright purple hair

And I will be wearing stripey socks like these but my shoes will probably be black, or they could be purple flowery crocs. We shall have to wait and see.