Hand Made Shadows

"What shadows doth hide in the souls of human kind?"

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Well a last year I bought a Dell Laser Colour printer. When it arrived it was so  heavy it came on a wooden pallette. It took two of us to loft it out of my ute and it sits in the middle of our home office, a black monolith the size of an old fashioned poof. And we all know how big an old fashioned poof is, don't we?

Well, I kept the pallett cause it was kind of interesting, and I knew that in the next one hundred and fifty years it would come in handy for something or other. And so, the other day, when I had finally finished the last kilometre of my folding book I was making for the show that opens next Saturday, I realised it need a box.

And not just any box. It had to be old and patinated and gothic and bashed around (a lot like me bar the gothic). And so I realised that it would be a great irony if I made a box from the pallette that had supported the printer that I had printed the pages for my book from. And so the idea for this box was born.

The box is kind of handy actually. The book sits in it and the pages fold out of it. Kinda weird, but it adds presence to the procedings of the reading. And it was fun making the covers cause I didn't have a clue what I was doing. And I ended up making packers to sit around the pages to stop the book innards sliding around and breaking when the book is in the box.

Accordion books are great fun because the folding structure can go anyway you like. It can go sideways, or up or down, and y ou can stick pages in the middle of the accordion structure as if they are pages of an ordinary book. And you can have big spreads  of three or four pages that all go to make one big image. That's  if you are inclined.

That image above on the left, well that's the witch in the story, the one that get's burnt in the oven. Well you pull the red thing and she pops out of the burning oven. Heh.

There's also a few pages of writing in the front of the book as an introduction. That's there to make you think I am smart :) I am not sure if that ruse woked though... (see pic below)

And did I tell you I made a Blurb book as well?. So I have made an Artist's Limited Edition of 100 and they will be on exhibition at the gallery. I had some critique on this one that was extremely valuable - so thank you to those artists for their advice - you know who you are!

And lastly I made this book cover for a book which will be feautured at the show called Cape Grimm by Carmel Bird. You'll probably recognise it from a few posts ago.

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Thank you for looking. I'll be visiting tomorrow :) Watch out! Heh.

Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

AWAKE! for Morning in the Bowl of Night

Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight:

And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught

The Sultan's Turret in a Noose of Light.

Dreaming when Dawn's Left Hand was in the Sky
I heard a voice within the Tavern cry,
"Awake, my Little ones, and fill the Cup
Before Life's Liquor in its Cup be dry."

And, as the Cock crew, those who stood before
The Tavern shouted -- "Open then the Door!
You know how little while we have to stay,
And, once departed, may return no more."

(Fitzgerald Translation)                  

Did I ever tell you about my friends Bob and Siggy? I had the honour of having Bob as my painting teacher at college for four years.

Bob and Siggy are artists.

Artists in that they are both amazing painters. Siggy has just been in shows in New York and Tuscany. She starts painting in her studio at 8 am and finishes at 2 am. Every day. She paints large paintings that seeth with her own personal iconography. Her icons, mysterious and animalistic, are to her paintings like the aphabet is to a writer.

Bob on the other hand is a draughtsman like no other. His pen and ink work is wonderous, his water colours are .... are ... ahh how do you describe a watercolour that in one passage has all the resilient glow and beauty of the best  of traditional water colour then suddenly slides off the paper into an abstract swirl of Turneresque etherealness....  Think Modigliani meets the fauvista Andre Deran. But better. 

It's silly trying to describe paintings eh? Maybe I should just say that the Queen of England has the good taste to have one of Bob's paintings in one of her palaces.

So what's this have to with the Rubaiyat?

Driving along the beach drive, on the way to dinner the other night, my friend Bob looks up at the night sky and sprouts the first verse of the Rubaiyat. Well how beautiful are those words eh? And I had never heard them spoken aloud. I, supposedly an educated man! Obviously I am not.

I was astounded. Speak that first verse aloud the next time you see the first star in the twilight sky and you'll see what I mean.

Though I did not deserve the honour, I'm proud to say that I was in a show with Bob and Siggy a few years ago. You can see some of my paintings from the show here  if you ever wondered what my traditional landscapes look like. There's some reviews at the bottom of this post.

I don't get a chance to brag much :) But as the next stanza suggests, life's short. Thank you for reading!

Whether at Naishapur or Babylon,

Whether the Cup with sweet or bitter run,

The Wine of Life keeps oozing drop by drop,

The Leaves of Life keep falling one by one.



Monday Art Day: Elves

   "Tottletwot hated losing at chess almost as much as he hated rats. He was that kind of elf."