Australian adventure last evening

 

The Fowler Museum of UCLA presented an amazing hour of screen printed art created by aboriginal artists of the Top End, in northern Australia. It's in connection with a new in person exhibit at the museum.

I was puzzled that it was zoomed at 9 pm EST, early evening in LA where the physical exhibit is up. Usually these events take place early afternoon here. I found it was originating in Australia in real time. A hot summer  Saturday afternoon there.

There are five art centers where the artists work and teach. They introduced themselves, explaining what their language is-- there are over 200 aboriginal languages-- and spoke to us also in English. They hope to make the trip to LA to visit the exhibit, and one artist said his plan was also to meet native Americans and share their cultural experiences.

Here are the artists whose work is featured

And here are their locations

And some of  their screen printed art on line

And here are artists at work. There are two sisters working together in some images

Some of the action images are blurry because I was getting screenshots from a video, but I think they're worth seeing.

The images are about the creation of Australia, about iconic animals and birds, and are still very modern in style.  Virtuosic work, as you'll know if you've tried screen printing.  Not your t-shirt and poster work!

Just a reminder, if you fancy imitating any of the motifs: many of these images are sacred to the culture they come from, so it's good to be respectful of that in the context of your own art.

This was a thrilling event, and I gathered from the respectful presentation that there will be care taken not to appropriate the art nor exploit the artists, always a concern when richer nations get involved.

Misfits box arrived

Great timing today. I was at the door enjoying the sunshine when the delivery van arrived and the driver kindly lifted the box over the step and into the hallway for me. 

That's the hardest part, since it's not only heavy but too big to get a grip on. The hefty drivers just pop it on a shoulder and trot to the door with it. I struggle to get it indoors to unpack even after I've opened it and ditched the freezer pack, which weighs a couple of pounds itself.

But all is well. It's complete, in good shape, arrived early afternoon.

And now after a frenzy of washing and scrubbing and chopping and bagging and labeling, it's stored. And after wiping the counters and mopping the floor.

Today I added in making stock from the trimmings which I've been adding to a bag in the freezer.  I wash all the produce before cutting, so there's a minimum of grit in the trimmings, always good for stock. 

I strain it twice anyway to he sure.And I have a couple of quarts of stock in the freezer now. The picture of which won't load, but okay.

On the food front all's well. On the household front not quite so much. A kitchen outlet suddenly stopped working. I reset the nearby GFCI, and it didn't work. Hm. Moved the microwave and toaster oven to a different outlet. Worked. 

So maybe there's a screw loose in the dead outlet. If ever I see Gary again, I'll ask him to look. I've exhausted my electrical knowledge. Haven't seen him in a couple of weeks, so I hope all's well with him.

When the new light arrives to replace the one with the faulty clip,  I'll get in touch. But I think I'll bite the bullet and get the plumber for the plumbing issue. It's not complex but it's strenuous,  I don't want to impose. 

There's a new arrangement where I can return the old light without wrapping it. I got a code, one of those square things, which I have on my phone, take the light and parts to the UPS store locally, they scan the code, accept the light and pack it with other returns. Then eventually I get a refund. If it works, great.

Now for my Friday salad supper, fresh from the Misfits box, a picture of which I can't load, oh well, you've seen a salad before.

Nerd delight, stealth art and the intersection of art and cooking

 I thought if we have any number nerds among us, you'd like this

And, before you say nobody puts the date year first, in fact people who work with big databases do. It's just a fun thing, like Pi(e) Day and May the Fourth be with you.

Earlier today I seized the day to catch the fall Japanese maple in sunshine. 

It clouded over soon after, but I made a composition here, indoors.

I like the contrast in shape and direction of the ginger foliage and the oak grain. Color too. Not that color matters here. Shapes and relationships are what this composition is about, not what it depicts. 

All my photos are carefully composed and cropped to say something beyond what they're showing.  Just a word to the sharp of eye!

Then, since some of the tips I've been getting about the little derm surgery next week, talk about soft food, to minimize chewing, the stitches being on my  face and better not disturbed, I thought soup.

The sugar pumpkin you last saw outside with the wooden cat, is now soup, along with cashews, lentils and celery, using up the vegetables before tomorrow's Misfits box arrives.

In the course of boiling it to make easy cutting and seeding, the long stem broke off and it's so pleasing a grainy shape, that I thought I'd do a bit of handmade paper molding.

I have quite a bit of cotton linters pure white paper, and I sprayed a thin sheet arranged over two bits of stem with clear water. 

It will be a few days before it dries completely, at which point I can lift it off and see how it worked. Material for future composition maybe. This is how I molded those earlier gold pieces you saw on one of the now completed figure series.

And since we're in the neighborhood of outdoor art and natural materials, here's the finished exhibited work from the rock filled cherry tree caper 

It's a triptych, said the gallery manager grandly. All framed on one backing.

Center is an ink drawing mounted on an image transfer, left and right are image transfers of my film photos of the rocky tree, left just of the tree, right the tree in context. 

And while I'm at it, here's a work to which I added bits later, designed to hang outdoors unprotected on the fence, for birds and squirrels to play with. 

Carolina wrens had a grand time climbing in it and swiping bits in spring for nest material. Squirrels climbed and yanked and chewed and had a good time. It's knitted, using several techniques, the light part parcel string, the dark part garden twine. 

It lasted about three years before weather and wildlife reduced it to rags, at which point I hung it in the woods.

And here's an indoor piece, exhibited years ago in some show or other. 

Twining, knotting with lark's head knots, a favorite, knitted using both string and copper wire, handmade beads. It's built on my late beloved cockatiel Emily Hope's swinging perch, that shape you see, a kind of shrine to her. 

So that's where we are, after I got up feeling glum, nothing to do, nothing to write about, before a nice chat with a neighbor and her dog, a brief encounter with a ladybug in the kitchen, now resident in the houseplants, and a good walk, set me up much better.

Textiles and Tea and white rabbits

The white rabbits seem to hop past faster and faster.

Yesterday's Textiles and Tea, with the wonderful Char Norman, was a great impetus to make paper and use some of my natural dyes from the freezer to color the pulp, and mold it, revisiting things I did long ago. 

She weaves, coils,  draws, makes and casts paper and has adventures all over the world working with natural materials. She likes to reflect her surroundings in her work, like using cactus in its environment, in a kind of conversation with her surroundings. 

A lot of what look like rocks are cast paper pieces simulating rocks and petroglyphs. Some items are natural objects, like the cactus lacy interior below

And she does collages, here on the shrine concept.

And there's stealth art, which she did in Italy, leaving small artworks in the recesses of buildings, like shrines, photographing them in partnership with a photographer friend, then leaving the artwork to its fate.

I've done this locally, to entertain and puzzle local passersby. More below.

Here she is against a backdrop of linen thread, her favorite warping material.

She's an exciting multitalented worker, always ready for new pathways. Currently she's started working with a glass artist to incorporate fiber and glass. Can't wait to see what happens there.

About stealth art: I would hang small rope snd paper sculptures from local trees so people would look twice. One piece I did consisted of filling a small dead wild cherry tree with rocks gathered from around it, so you could see them in the open spaces in the trunk. I took pictures, did drawings, made image transfers of the Polaroid pictures, which were exhibited, and left the tree as I'd done it. 

This was particularly fun, since it was at the edge of a golf course, and I was out walking one day while two golfers were searching for lost golfballs. They noticed the tree and one said "squirrels did that"!  Stealth indeed.