The Travelling Journal, a story about six Australian artists

The Travelling Journal was a project I collaboratively worked on with a number of interesting artist types. In no order, my partners were:

Joeli Eastell

Kathryn Shewring
barek
Cherie Strong
Little Detour

And it spent six to eight weeks being passed aound the Eastern coast of Australia. I got it first, my contribution is the four anatomically-themed textile panels in the centre. I gave them the working title of Eyes, Brain, Heart & Hands, and I've never thought of anything more fitting. Eyes, Brain, Heart & Hands, 2012 it is then. A work within a work, was this Travelling Journal.

I really enjoyed stretching myself artistically - using threads to complete a line drawing was out of my comfort zone enough to be pleased what I'd accomplished in the timeframe, and close enough to it that I was confident I would not overreach. I refer to this artistic mind space as THE SAFETY ZONE.

Eyes, Brain

Heart, Hands

And I'm doing something new today! Here's my first video post (worked out how to do it, yaaay).



This was put together at the end by Barek, who is pretty clever at making short films about art. There's the travelling journal, as well as others, here.

Arts based workshops reviewed

The other day I had one of my arts based workshops reviewed. According to this small sample, I am pretty much a total boss at arts based workshops. Writing a survey, and choosing targets wisely....less so. But why the review to start with?

I live in a perpetual state of maybe-write-a-grant. Retrospectively, I've had no overwhelmingly expensive artists' dream to enhance the lives of Australians through public arts and I've never really gone looking for one. My materials needs are inexpensive and I legitimately enjoy my non-industry job, which provides ample income for any artist-based cash-splashy ventures....for now.
Life is full of surprises, though, so I also don't discount that one day all of these things will happen. One day, maybe soon, I will be sitting down to dissect exactly why I should be chosen above all others to be funded to have my ideas realised.

It was suggested that I do some surveys of the workshops as examples of my current practice. That fits in so well with the educational background which demands reflection and the artistic background that demands critique. It just makes total sense!

 As lovely followers of these posts would know, I have been hosting arts based workshops. One set in particular was a series of three textile-based (!) workshops for the Wirraglen Support Group, an organisation of home-schooled students in the Granite Belt District. For the last one I put together (very quickly) a survey of the workshop for the students to fill out and gave them a bunch of connecter pens and pencils to help the picture get interesting, if they were more comfortable with pictures.

The results were great! Total confidence boost, but not much to work with....On reflection, I should have given the parents an adults' one. I honestly just thought of that as I was writing this, so....I guess that's what they call it a learning journey. Not "a learning centre where you have all the knowledge of the world directly downloaded into your brain", which is what it might be called in the science-tastic future. Currently though, it's the sucky right now and I still have to reflect and evaluate :(

Clearly I will need to spend further time on tracking down/writing a more targeted series of questions.

Now, please prepare yourselves for the heartwarming sincerity parade that is my workshop evaluation forms! I think a lot of germs were passed on to me today and if I get sick in the next fortnight, I will look at this, and still think 'it was worth it'.

The Words.



To conclude, everyone knows how to copy the word 'embroidery' from the blackboard and they all jabbed themselves in the finger. I am reading this as: 'Everyone in the workshops had the situational awareness to follow a visual prompt and the resilience to continue after receiving negative stimulus (pain) from a task'.
A few scribbled out the "I did not like" section of the comments. The sincerity and vehemence they did this with was uplifting.

The Diagrams. 

     

Happy faces! There are less of these, because not everyone was comfortable with drawing a picture. I promise! Nothing like this:

...which I found in 2010 when I was recycling some old visual art journals. Who drew this and where they are now will always be a mystery.

The reflection.

Next time;

• Parental surveys
• Photos of finished works
• More targeted questions/drawing prompts for specifics i.e. I found _______ difficult, my favourite part was _________.
• Regular surveys so answering them is not new, I noticed some found it scary/confronting
• Encourage parent participation/assistance in student surveys for a more varied response
• Help with sounding out words, not spoon-feeding the information from a blackboard

Adventures in Papergirl, now complete.

P-p-papergirl! A due date that had seemed quite far away at the start of the year got very close very quickly (and was also pushed fowards a month...or am I losing my mind?) but I got what I wanted to get into the exhibition and that was held on Friday, 1st June 2012.

It was a lot of fun! Off into the world, my works go.

The travelling book collective

A couple of months ago I signed on to made. creative space's Journal Project and have been lucky enough to convince three other artists to collaborate with me on this via the post.  Tonight, I've finished my section of the book and over the weekend I will be bundling it up with some bits and pieces and sending it on to Joeli Art in Melbourne.

Here's the itinery:

And here's some process:

Getting back into stitchery at Toowoomba Brown Owls in May (it's a brain)

Heart, eye, brain, hand

The book

Completed cut-outs

Page one of finished work

Page two. As you may observe, I wasn't precious with lining up the cut-outs.

Pages warping, book out of shape.

Fortunately, this passport-sized journal fits comfortably in a flower press

Tonight this book will remain in the flower press, the recent wet weather has actually left the whole book feeling....softer? The pages were warping/curling from the damp air and applied glue.

My leg of this collective project has been both trying and rewarding. I have learnt from experimenting with different media during creation and in the process of putting it together at the end. On Monday, it leaves my hands to continue being manipulated in unforseen ways. Exciting.

I used to draw once....pt 2.

...and I stopped for a reason. But that reason is long past, and hopefully this trip down memory lane will be beneficial to re-starting.



Drawing project semester one, year two:

Painting project semester one, year two:

Drawing project, self-portraits:

Connector pen self-portrait, 2007...ish?

Gimp-tastic, in graphite

No prizes for guess what I think is my most noticable feature.

One side left intentionally blank

Fun fact: For this pose the model was looking directly at me, almost glaring, for the entirety of this sketch (15 mins). His penis was too.

Who's that handsome fellow? Someone fell asleep during one of my all-nighters.

Goofing around with ink and nib

 

I like the noise the nib makes. Scritchy-scratch



Realisations from this are:

I need a better camera, because I do a lot of fine detail. Even just to loan one, sometimes. Should get my finger out on that one.

One way that my drawing lecturers were right was to make using low-quality paper an important aspect of my making, or to use high-quality paper.

I should be drawing one picture every day. Well, what am I waiting for?