Diabolical Clay

One of the first things we did when we moved here was build a chook house and this had been more or less occupied by chooks, ducks and once even by a free range pig, for the past twenty years. But storage space is at a premium here and the original chookhouse is now full of car engines,gearboxes and assorted mechanical bits and bobs that didn’t have anywhere else to live.

The Spouse absolutely despises poultry and he is always the one to tread in the chook shit thus making his hatred of all things feathered, loudly clear to all within the immediate vicinity. But, “The Spouse” also loves me and I like chickens. I like free range eggs, I like the fact that the girls eat the snails and slaters and I especially like that I have a free range chicken for the pot when I want one.

So to keep the peace, “The Spouse” very, very reluctantly built me a small portable A-Frame shelter for my newest batch of girls, which he didn’t actually know were arriving until the day before we were due to go and pick them up. This A-frame worked wonderfully well until last Christmas when I decided to keep two pigs. Mother hen decided that the pickings were much richer near the pig sty and moved her brood to a native cherry tree next to the pigs sty which only left the old red hen living in the A-frame.

I wasn’t too fussed about Mother hen moving as she wasn’t laying and I thought all her offspring were roosters and as such they were destined for the pot.

Veronica and I were also given some Muscovy ducks and once again I promised The Spouse faithfully that I would remember to lock them up of a night time and as I talked hard and fast about yummy roast duck and golden duck eggs, I could see his eyes glazing over and I knew by the way he noisily stomped off into the distance that everything would be fine.

And so it was, until the ducks squeezed through a tiny space in the fence and took up residence underneath the verandah at the back of the  house.

Nothing is ever easy when you are a scatterbrained keeper of totally free range animals.

Six months down the track and the fine batch of roosters have turned into a fine batch of hens. David and I went out one night and by torchlight captured the only rooster and one of the hens and gave them to Veronica.

We went out with our torches the next weekend to capture the rest of the hens and bugger me if they hadn’t moved to a different roost. Damn!

This has left me with two young point of lay girls who are totally wild and a mother hen, who has gone broody and is sitting on a hidden nest somewhere deep within the bracken ferns. A broody hen in the middle of July is very strange. Admittedly the weather has been very warm lately but broody in July? It is the middle of winter you stupid bird.

I will need to wait until she comes out to be fed and then after she has pecked around for what feels like hours and hours, I can follow her to the secret nest and replace her eggs, as these eggs are infertile and she will sit for weeks waiting for them to hatch. This isn’t as easy as it sounds as mother hen is very sneaky and I am easily distracted.

I think the ducks might be laying underneath the house which is a a bit of a problem as well because I gave the drake to Veronica and these eggs are also infertile, as well as inaccessible and my glowing promises of golden duck eggs are sounding a bit hollow.

So, I need to convince “The Spouse” to block off access to the underneath of the back verandah, to keep the ducks out from under the house. This will entail all manner of recriminations from “The Spouse” involving lots of swearing, angry glaring in my general direction, lots and lots of grumbling and threats of dire consequences to all poultry that cross his path.

Then he will block off access to underneath the house. Yay! Or that is the plan as I am sitting here writing and hoping.

This photo of a dead sea bird is the inspiration for my newest work. I took the photo from this website.

There are reports that journalists are not allowed to photograph anything within 65 feet of the oil booms.

My head is a messy place at the moment, I have been researching reports of leaking methane and benzene in the Gulf of Mexico and the news isn’t good.

So today I have been listening to loud music, feeling sorry for myself and playing in the mud.

If you mouse over the photos you can read a description. I don’t have the energy to say much more. I am shattered today. I think the pot will look good when it is finished.

Here is the finished work. This bowl is available at the Off Centre Gallery in Salamanca.

Two dragon eggs are out of the electric kiln and I have been staring at them and thinking about them for a week now.

Today I took them outside to play.

I was concentrating on photographing the eggs and nearly missed these two beauties soaring high above me in the winter sky.

Today was a good day.

As I sit here in front of my computer, nice and warm The Hadrians walkers are pitching tents at the end of the third day of their walk. News of the walkers and how they are going is scanty and I am hoping that Martins feet are still firmly attached to his legs and that his sense of direction has improved.

I have struck up a tentative friendship with Dad who writes and you can read his updates of the walk here

Dad who writes, posted this photo with the caption,

“We are walking across the strong, rocky bones of our land #hadrianswalk”

This photo really brings home the enormity of what these people are doing.

They are walking 84 miles in 6 days.

I walked a couple miles around a perfectly flat headland recently and it nearly bloody killed me.

So I am in awe of their efforts to raise money for the Joseph Salmon trust with this massive walk.

Well done to them.

If you want to donate some cash you can do so here.

But if you are broke and cant afford it just go and comment here and I will donate a dollar for you.

If I think about how much I actually have to do in the next three months or so, I start to get a bit panicky. I have a bit of an “EEEK!!!” moment and my chest tightens up and I start to breathe a little bit faster. This feeling of being overwhelmed, of having far too many irons in the one fire lasts for a minute or so and then my laid back Aussie spirit kicks in and as I whisper, “She’ll be right” to myself  I am fine again.

Marylin has started  Sunday Snippets. I am hopeless with memes I either forget about them or I have all the best intentions in the world and then I write about something else entirely. But in the spirit of friendship I am going to do this one and it still counts even though it is Monday.

I need a good recipe for fake blood. I have been given a few recipes via twitter friends but they all seem to be very sticky, the main ingredients are either red jelly or corn syrup mixed with cocoa. The Spouse will be covered with this blood and as we will be filming on location, it needs to be easy to clean up. Also, “The Spouse” has super sensitive skin due to his EDS so we have to be careful there as well.

Did you notice I said filming on location? hehe That sounds very exotic when in actuality we will be filming about an hours drive away from home near the water somewhere. The only requirement being that the ground needs to be sandy as I cant have “The Spouse” writhing around  fighting for his life on a pile of sharp rocks. Just because he is going to die a gory death, doesn’t mean he has to be uncomfortable whilst he is doing it.

One of my props, a large blue seahorse has been posted and I am tossing up whether to alter it or leave it all shiny and blue. I think it might add an extra creepy tone to the film if I leave it pretty.

I will be firing some of the dragon eggs in reduction on Wednesday and having some of the dragon eggs actually finished makes me a bit less stressed. The exhibition is only seven months away and I have heaps to do.

Half of my studio has been delivered but I am still waiting on the excavator to come up and clear the site. I will post photos when something actually starts to happen.

I made something blue with butterflies for Tiff but the blue ended up black, so it is back to the drawing board there. Sorry Tiff.

My friend Martin and all the other walkers are ready to begin Hadrians walk. Things aren’t looking good for Martin if his tweets are anything to go by.

MartinFitz Wore backpack from train to baggage drop off point, took it off and had to steady myself from falling over. Kill me now. #hadrianswalk

To encourage Martin to keep on going you can go over here and leave a comment if you haven’t already done so.  I will donate a dollar per comment. (the small print says only one comment per person and a valid email address is needed in order for the comment to be valid.)

So there is a snippet of what is happening here with me.

Welcome to my life. Nothing is ever simple. And I wouldn’t have it any other way really.

I am doing a class called creative concept development. The aim of this eleven week class is to allow us the freedom to develop an idea that is separate from our current work. An idea that will inform our future work practice beyond what we are doing now.

I have decided to make a  short film.

Initially I wanted to make a fishing film where “The Spouse” or David caught a trout. I wanted to have this film showcase the gorgeous natural beauty of Tasmania, the excitement and thrill of catching a fish and the release of the lucky fish back into the lake.

I wanted to send this film to my friends in Massachusetts as well as share it here, with you on my blog.

But…

I just couldn’t get rid of the idea that it was a little bit boring, that it was just a bit too safe. I justified it to myself by saying that it would teach me the skills that I needed to make the dragon egg film in february, learn to walk Kimmy and all that.

Whilst inside my head mutant zombie fish were lurking. Killer fish banging on my mind saying, “Let us out! Let us out!”

So on the drive home I let the killer zombie, mutant fish out to play.

“The Spouse” thinks I am mad but that is nothing new and after his sixth beer last night he agreed to star in my film and be killed by a mutant fish. YAY.

So the idea is this, a man is fishing in a beautiful seaside location when he catches a large fish, he lands the fish and as he bends down to pick the fish up it suddenly transforms into a mutant killer and goes for his throat. He tries to fight the fish off but to no avail and and he dies a gory death.

Problems kept on popping up but they were easily solved. I thought of making the killer fish out of papier-mache but Veronica thought the water might wreck the fish. I also needed an oil rig, a couple of explosions, some oily water, a soundtrack and I probably will need a bex and a good lie down.

Last night I bought four blow up dolphins, a giant sea horse and an octopus from ebay, I can make the oil rig out of lego, I am sure I can find an explosion online, though I wish I had some crackers. David has said he will compose the music for the film. If I need some scorched earth a neighbour down the road has been burning off and I will ask them if I can film their front yard.

This is going to be so much fun. What do you think? Do you want to watch my film as well? Do you have any suggestions?

If you want a nice start to the day, this video clip will do it for you. Regular readers of this blog will know that Ivy is the youngest daughter of a friend of mine and now new readers know as well. yay.

Ivy spends an incredible amount of time in hospital and because she is only little this means that her mother, Tiff also spends a lot of time staying in the hospital as well. Tiff wanted to raise some money to make things a bit more comfortable on the ward where they stay.

Together we have raised over $5000 that is a massive effort. So give yourselves a clap on the back.

Ivy’s elder siblings organised a fundraiser at their highschool and as Tiff says here:-

The response was amazing, many of them dressing as fairies and princesses (Ivy’s favourite things) on what turned out to be the coldest day of the year so far.

It was a wonderful day and rather than trying to explain to you how one school came together to raise well over $2000 for Team Ivy and what that means to me, I’m just going to show you

Well not me personally, it is payday today and I still have $20 in my wallet which is pretty cool and also very unusual for a payday morning. Also today is my son David’s 16th birthday which makes this fundraiser all the more poignant as I am able to watch my son grow up, unlike the Salmon’s. *sigh*

I want you to dig deep and donate to the Hadrian’s walkers who, next week are, walking across England to raise money for the Joseph Salmon trust.

In July of 2010 they will be walking the length of Hadrian’s Wall in six days. That’s 84 miles across the entire width of England.

Joseph Salmon was a little boy who died of pneumonia when he was three. A year after his death his parents set up the Joseph Salmon trust to give financial support to parents in the Huddersfield and Mirfield areas, whose child has died.

Now what has this got to do with you? What has this got to do with me a zillion miles away from England?

My friend Martin is walking across England to raise money for the trust.

Martin is probably going to die from blisters or his feet will fall off or he will whinge and moan so much that his fellow walkers will chuck him off a cliff.

Or in Martin’s own words

I’m five and a half feet tall, if I walk 84 miles there is a good chance I will lose 15% of my pathetic height, my stubby legs will be worn and eroded to just above the ankles. My last miles will be mapped out with a bloody wet trail of oozing slime. Like a snail. Or a 55 year old midget prostitute.

And I will pay good money to see that happen. *muawahaha*

You can donate here.

You can read more about the walk here

If you cant donate don’t feel guilty! You can still help, you could put a quick post up on your own blog, or on your facebook page. You can buy a t-shirt or a buff bandana

Or you can comment and for every comment on this post until the end of the walk I will donate one dollar to the trust myself. But please only one comment per person and all comments must have a valid email address.

cheers Kim