Jack of all trades ...

Zaha Hadid 

Further to last post's contemplations on Clarity, I have discovered many things.

Post-post I went out in search of wisdom. The desire to have one crystal-clear image of what I was to do and be, was tightening my ribs like a concrete straightjacket.  The internal nego-mantra kept brain-circling in every quiet moment  "If I could just see what it looks like. If I could just get a picture of what it is, then it will all come together." (I have read A LOT of self-help and strategic planning shizz, so apparently envisioning your outcome is critical to success. Everybody says so.)

So I went to a psychic. Of course, I did.
She was brilliant.

Wisdom from the psychic-with-the-spiritual-name in no particular order:

• Bring your energy back in from all the people who are leeching it (I don't think she actually said leeching, but I like the dramatic effect of the word and its parasitical inferences) 
• Be grounded
• Listen to your own wisdom
• She had me imagine I was talking to my dad. 'He' told me to let go of fear and take a risk.
• She also commented that just because I am good at stuff doesn't mean it's my calling 
• And she clearly said to me "Let go of the desire to know what it's all going to be and go with the flow".

I can't say I give a tinkling toss whether she was genuinely psychic or not. I wafted out of there like the mother of a toddler leaving a day spa to have a coffee alone before heading back to motherhood. Like any good psychic or psychologist, she had made me feel better about the existential crisis I was experiencing and had offered the illusion of control.  And she gave me a big hug at the end.

So, there I was feeling a little less desperate and a bit happier to sit with my messy mind. But still, the desire for 'an answer' was limiting my breath. Like some religious revelation, I knew it was going to come at me, the big shazaam. Unfortunately, the universe had gone all tight ass with the revelations, and no vision was forthcoming.

Next, I went to a business coach, also with a spiritual name, who is nothing less than human spun-gold. 

She asked me lots of hard questions. Like "What do you want?" and "How does (insert various scenarios and ideas) make you feel". I squirmed around in my comfortable chair, shifting and itching, from sitting arms crossed and legs outstretched, to head in hands and elbows on knees. All the time doing lots of fast-talking without ever finishing a sentence or entirely forming an idea.  

"It's all so, so ... messy." I gacked out like a hairball from a cat. 

And that beautiful, gilded spirit-woman gently asked me this:

"So look at your mess", gesturing in big circles at the circular mat in an invitation to visualise it,  "How does it make you feel when you resist this mess when you just want to tidy its messiness." 

Then she looked up at me and laughed "Look at your body language."

I was as close to the foetal position as the comfortable chair would allow. 

Resisting the mess, I felt tight, thick on the chest. Short of breath. Panicked.  Like when the kids were small, and the housework got so rank you stopped people from visiting wanting no witness to your weet-bix-encrusted shame. 

"Now take a minute" she guides gently, "And see how you feel when you stop resisting the mess. When you can sit with it and accept it."

I tried it on. Squirmed. Exhaled and Answered:

"I feel ... relieved and excited, like the mess is where the gold is, and how it is full of possibilities."

Checking myself, I saw that my body had moved into power pose, hands together gently in between relaxed knees, shoulders soft, heart open.

My life is a messy scramble, just like the Secret Language of Birthdays predicted ( Th ebook tells me I was born on the 'day of the Scrambler'). In accepting the mess, I could drop the shame, stop fighting it and enjoy it. 

An insightful friend quizzed me late on Saturday night about my Clarity post, her bullshit-o-meter clearly registering high levels in the immediate area - "but wouldn't you just be bored doing the same thing forever?"

Yes, my wise and insightful friend, I bloody well would. 

As much as I fight it, I will always be far more Margaret Olley than Zaha Hadid.

So you see I actually have discovered many things. Like did you know that the full saying goes:

"Jack of all trades, master of none is oftentimes better than master of one".

 

Me and Ken Burns

The luthier made a truly stunning thing - a baroque instrument, a viola da gamba. He diligently took photographs of the entire process from the rough bits of wood to final completed instrument. I gathered up the shots and made a wee film of it with iMovie. It was a fantastic process. I didn't really know what I was doing, but nutting out how to crop shots and drop in music and lengthen clips and zoom and all was really fun.  Jane Campion, eat your heart out! Well, maybe not quite yet.


What the luthier does never fails to astound me. His work is superb and sculptural and fine. This instrument, with its beautiful Baroque quirks, caught my heart. The size (smaller than a cello), shape (flat backed with sharp edges) and its extraordinary range (7-gut strings of sound, - and when they say gut, they do mean gut) and its unique, sweet feur de lys embellishment, handpainted with love by the luthier, all came together to make an incredible objet d'art. 


So, if you would like to see how to make a viol in 4 and a half minutes, please do watch this little film, cropped and edited with love by moi. 


iMovie. So good!

I do just have one question though. Why do they call that zoom-y, croppy effect "Ken Burns"? Who is this Ken Burns? Anyone?

I obviously have no idea, but his natty, zoom-y effects are quite jazzy. Thanks Ken!

Something Beautiful

Sometimes you need to see something beautiful. 

'Illumination' is an exhibition of the work of Tasmanian landscape painter, Philip Wolfhagan currently showing at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery in a Hobart. 

Philip's work not only illuminates but transports to the wild, Tasmanian sky, scrub and sea. His 'scapes evoke the sense that our island exists right at the edge of civilisation and our rugged Wild only just tolerates White Man's intrusion. Being in Tasmania's unforgiving Nature makes you feel that prehistory for this island was not that long ago. 

I walked into this exhibition and did not want to leave. It applied itself like a balm to my grief wounds, the soothing familiarity, the light, air and earth of this wild island was all there, like family and home.

A short film plays of Philip Wolfhagan and his work and I am seduced by the life of the artist. Walking into his studio, pulling out a huge canvas, mixing his earthy hues with beeswax, taking the pallet knife to it and letting the blues, whites, greys and blacks reveal the torrid Tasmanian sky or the turgid sea all to an orchestral soundtrack that fills his lightwashed workspace. 

Sometimes we all need to see something beautiful. Beauty to lift the spirit, to illuminate, to resonate, it is essential. 

Bookshops, Words and Pictures

After my luxurious lie in on Friday, I hauled myself out of bed to take the kids to the museum. Here we discovered treasure. Pure gold in the form of a gorgeous exhibition of original children's illustrations by a fascinating man with a wonderful story. The collection was gathered by Albert Ullin, the founder of an utter gem, The Little Bookroom,  the first specialist bookshop for children in the WORLD. Images include work from the last 33 years of children's publishing in Australia with work from favourite illustrators of the calibre of Jeannie Baker, May Gibbs, Bob Graham and Graham Base.

There is something about catching sight of these images, they are so familiar.  Its as if you have somehow internalised the work on reading them in childhood. They become part of your structure and signify much more than their image. A stunning pen and ink and watercolour image by Ron Brooks from one of my childhood favourites, "John Brown, Rose and the Midnight Cat" by Jenny Wagner, brought tears to my eyes, joy tears, like bumping into a beloved and long lost friend. The image of John Brown, the big old English sheep dog staring at the midnight cat, sent me back 35 years. I re-felt the emotions evoked by the book, the sadness of this big, loyal. fluffy dog, (who was just like my childhood puppy, Henry) and his frustrations at having to make room for the feline intruder. I remembered the feeling far more than the story itself. (When I reread favourite childhood books, I often find that my memory has warped the story line.)

Aside from the images, the exhibition reveals the story of Albert Ullen, a man who started a bookshop.  But not just any bookshop, one specifically to provide quality lilterature for children. A space for children not before provided on the whole planet! And he began with nothing but passion and knowledge. He created something from nothing which has lasted 52 years and inspired many other  heavenly little children's bookshops.

Bookshops are havens. They provide sancitity, silence and inspiration. They help create emotions and memories of characters, words and images that lock into a child's body and cells, enough to bring gasps and tears to the adult 30 years later.

We are lucky enough to have three excellent  bookshops in our town. Me and the kids love them. We visit weekly, almost,  and regulary dedicate some of our funds to purchases from them. I know that books are cheaper in the internet, but I want our bookshops to remain open. I hope that they are here for ever and that one day I will buy " The Eleventh Hour" by Graeme Base, " Chicken Soup with Rice" and "Where the Wild Things Are" by Maurice Sendak and " Mr Magnolia" by Quentin Blake, for my grandchildren.

I have never been to The Little Bookroom and I can't believe I had never heard of it until last Friday. It is on the top of my list for the next trip to the Big Town. However,  I am very pleased to live at a time when I can follow them on Facebook and Twitter and read their web site and to have recalled the weird emotions of childhood while sharing in the illustration collection of its founder.

The exhibition 'Hooked on Books: Australian children's picture book illustrations from the Collection of Albert Ullin OAM' is continuing at the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery until October.

I sent a children's book manuscript submission to a publishing house. I hope that one day my work is good enough to be published and to sit on the shelves of "The Little Bookroom".

Spring-y

For winter's rains and ruins are over, 

And all the season of snows and sins; 

The days dividing lover and lover, 

The light that loses, the night that wins; 

And time remembered is grief forgotten, 

And frosts are slain and flowers begotten, 

And in green underwood and cover 

Blossom by blossom the spring begins.

- Algernon Swinburne.

The Brothers

Photos by Danielle Thompson

Art

I love painting and drawing with the kids. Even though sometimes the effort and mess daunts me a little. Once we get cracking its such good fun.  (Its annoying the number of times I have let that inertia stop me from doing things that I know, once I start I will love. Here's to efforts to get over that ol' chestnut.)

So this morning, while the luthier took his wise ass off to Symmons Plains to ride his saucy Italian mistress around the track, me and the kids manifested our inner artiste, and here is our exhibition or  exervishun (as Sophie calls it).

Below is my study of a thick-lashed plonker and the subject.

And now, like Mary Poppins, I get Saturday afternoons off, so I am heading out the door, yes out the door sans enfants, off like Mum's undies on Father's Day, to seek out adult company and look at plants and probably eat cake.

Movember

Write to me hand printed stationery. It's nice. Really nice.

This little stack of it will be on my market stall this weekend.

Now I am off to get my eyebrows and lip waxed so nobody at the market thinks I am a freak show exhibit. Left to their own devices my eyebrows would rapidly take over my entire face. This morning I observed to the luthier that my nose hairs were oddly growing underneath my nose. He replied " That's your mo'. " Which is nice.

It might be Movember but this mo' is about to go.

More Inspiration

The latest Country Style magazine has a truly beautiful piece by Hilary Burden from Hilbarn about her journey from London to Karoola. Receiving, hand delivered, my Hilbarn box each week, containing wonders like this mignonette lettuce, is inspiring enough, but now to have the story behind the box ... inspiration in spades.

The latest Adult Ed guide details a course being given by Hilary on writing about place. More food for thought.

There is life in the ol'town yet

**

Who says there is nothing to do in this one-horse town? Next week she is going to heat up to steaming point and her whistle is going to blow! This ol' town is the site for the Junction 2010 Regional Arts conference and the city is coming alive with the arts.

Niche All Wrapped up market will be superb over, not one, but two locations this time. Loz and Dinny (Mrs Burns you are a new-mother-of-three marvel!) and the wondrous Black Eyed Susie will be peddling their wares, amongst many other unreal hand makers about town.

I am lucky enough to have been providing the Stompin' cats with a little admin help in preparation for their wicked "WeTube Live" extravaganza show. Don't miss it! Next Thursday and Friday at 1 and 6pm at the Albert Hall.

There is graffiti knitting, shop window performances, public gatherings and the Junc Room in Civic Square is bringing us the gift of Barry Morgan and his world of organs.

Get down here mainlanders! For the next week we are artsy and HOT! (After that I can't guarantee much more than some fine food and a lovely walk, if its not raining!)

Islanders, no more complaints that there is nothing to do. We have one week of entertainment overload. Soak it up!

** All photos have been unceremoniously ripped off the Junction 2010 site but I hope they don't mind as I am advertising their stuff shamelessly. If they do, someone let me know and I shall remove them forthwith.

Heide

I love Heide. Our visit to the Modernism exhibition and lunch in the gardens with this guy and some other beautiful sculpture was my favourite outing of our recent trip to Melbourne.

 Aaah the serenity ..

Crafting and Thrifting

When I started this blog, all those years ago, I did have secret ambitions to craft. I secretly wanted to become a crafty blogger. Such goddesses of crafty blogs as Aunty Cookie and the like were to look out, for here I was to come!

Unfortunately, this was about all I could come up with. In the area of craft and design I turned out to have not much more than a few baby blankies in me. Only one of which I photographed and blogged about. And thus, forsaken by talent and inspiration, my blog turned into an occasional blurt about family and such like.  Well, times they are a-changin', my bloggy friends, for I have found me a craft coven and we are making some beautiful magic together.

Led by the AMAZING crafter extraordinaire - Eve and the inspiration of Mrs B. of Loz and Dinny fame, Mrs W. and I are learning to explore and expand our inner-nanna's horizons. 

Last week our lino cuts were inspired. Mrs B's can be seen here, and my little birdies came out a treat. Well, not bad for a lino cut virgin I thought. 

When I got home from a blissful evening of craft I found this note from my 8 year old son. 

It reads: 

Dear Mum you are the 

star of my life. You love me and cer for me.

Love you no how ( you know who)

Happy sigh.

Today Mrs B led me on a thrifting adventure and now I own a bona fide craft basket (ok it may have been a picnic basket in its prior life but now its a craft basket).  Nothing like the incredible finds to be seen here  at the Willy Wagtail giveaway, but pretty sweet to me. 

Beauty of the Island

My mother, always a woman of impeccable taste and refinement, bought me a card featuring this print "Mount Wellington' by Mandy Reynard. An artist on the island creating portraits of geographical features and beloved spots of the island as 17th Century woman.

It is divine. Go to Handmark Gallery if you fancy a look at the rest of her available work. My favourites are Bless, and of course "The Delicate Workings of Smith".

Speaking of beauty my number two son informed me with great authority the other day that milk is gotten by farmers who squeeze it from cow's milk bottoms. Yum!

Today's Ramblings

Tuesdays are my favourite days. Its just me and the bubba at home. I don't have to go anywhere or do anything but play, tidy up, play, quilt, play and watch Oprah. It is toooo sweet.
Here is todays picture of bath-boy-bubba. The bubba is officially a genius as he can play peekaboo at 7 months. But you see him here in the bath today, brandishing his new tooth.

Just surfing the unbelievable web of craft blogs starting from the unfeasibly talented Aunty Cookie. It mostly makes me feel very dull and not very stylish -but its not all about me is it!? Granny is bringing back some new fabrics for me from the big smoke, so my little island crafty quilts may raise my blog craft profile yet. I think gran has selected a barnyard theme for me. Nice! Just found great fabric shop on ebay. Some very cute retro kids prints.

Went to the Dance on the weekend. Culture comes to the Island! The show was bloody fantastic. Entertaining, stylish (costumes by Akira Isogowa) and inspiring contemporary dance that does not dissapear up its own intellectual a*hole. The music was fantastic too - from Debussy to Gershwin. When you don't get out much its very gratifying to go out and be purely entertained. Graeme Murphy got loads of love from his hometown audience too. Quite touching really.