'the cluster of possibilities' - taking a leaf from La Dolce Vita

from the snow storm - December 8th Post image by Caterina at La Dolce Vita which is accompanied by text from Ralph Waldo Emerson's poem The Snow Storm.

following are 2 images from Cat who works with found materials gleaned from all over.

 The wonderful Caterina at La Dolce Vita has been posting from her home in Colorado some wonderful snowy images of late and today I thought I would share her Jan 7 post with you on thrifty living as it is a timely new year musing! Cat suggests that no matter what the motivation behind thriftiness is its a noble pursuit that brings VALUE to the fore. 
I am reminded of a wonderful french doco by Agnes Varda 'The Gleaners and I' that I saw a few years ago which travels through city and country-side in France, includes interviews with various people including psycho-analyst Jean Laplanche and French collage artist Louis Pons who calls his "cluster of junk.... a cluster of possibilities". This small painting titled 'The Gleaners' by Jean-Francois Millet (1857) refers to the act of collecting leftover crops from farmers' fields after they have been commercially harvested or where it is not economically profitable to harvest. Some ancient cultures promoted gleaning as an early form of welfare system.
Below are 2 examples from Louis Pons work - his beautifully named "cluster of possibilities"

Joute Pour Adulte 1961 Assemblage

La Point Sublime 1970 Relief


Also found at La Dolce Vita: 
One artist saw a New Year opportunity in setting up this this new blog to encourage purchase of 2nd hand goods and exchange and barter. read about Debrina's initiative at the bartercircle.blogspot.com - which lends itself to replication elsewhere.

Creative people often thrive on being great finders and foragers and it is timely we all have a think about the cluster of possibilities that are there waiting!

If you are in Noosa this month...

Embiggen Books: where science meets art is actually a fine art gallery as well as very appealing bookstore that I discovered earlier this year when spending a weekend in Noosa ( 2 hours north of Brisbane). This is quite a find in a coastal resort area of great natural beauty which attracts many for its fine beaches, parks, waterways and regional offerings. Embiggen focuses heavily on science, philosophy, environment and art (a reflection of the owner's passions)  has an extensive program of events -  guest speakers, writers and book launches, a book club, participation in the local non-fiction writers festival and art exhibitions. Its nestled between an organic cafe & store and a german bakery cafe on Wyeba Rd, Noosaville.  More images at flickr.  Read my august posts on Noosa here and here.


Last night I burnt the midnight oil finishing some paintings to send up to the gallery for a group show on for the rest of january. As the sun came up before I'd finished my tasks this morning I have not downloaded images or achieved too much with the rest of the day. Also very hot again I was glad to hibernate inside. I'll go up next week - I'll get to see the other works also on show - and make time  to enjoy some of the Noosa ambience, if its not too busy that is!
So... if you happen to find yourself in this part of the world with a spare half hour pop in to Embiggen and have a browse ...dont forget there's excellent coffee next door!







an art show in 2009 in the gallery -artist Ilsa Griffin

How to:

Just found this great post from future oriented BLDG BLOG on how to make a Seed Grenade. An similar idea was first put to me by a Melbourne friend Krysia Birman when she was studying Public Art at RMIT - 10 years ago I think - and I was at the time so immersed in thinking paint that the concept was somehow puzzling. I was devoted to growing things, mostly surrounded by people who loved their gardens, living in a city where it rained then quite often, things were green, parks and gardens were everywhere and a diverse and sophisticated food culture brought attention to knowing how to grow good food and how to cook things from scratch. 
     My role model was an extraordinary Polish woman, another Krysia, who'd survived the WWII era under great adversity, migrating in the late 1940's. She tended her very small Melbourne backyard with incredible care - my constant visits always started with a peak in the garden to see what she had brought to life. Herbs, vegetables, a fig tree, flowers and more unusual plantings vied for their time in the sun. Her kitchen a few steps away, the table always abundant and set for visitors, such were the things that coloured my sense of normality during my 12 years in this city. She and so many of her generation learnt as young children how to save seeds, how to grow things from seed and how to rely on their capacity to produce food.
     Krysia's stories of being hungry and seeking food from where-ever were sobering 50 years later as we tucked into plates of delicious offerings with encouragement to take more! And then there were the stories of her friends who would visit. So many lessons about cooking and community from her shaped these years even though childhood had steeped me in understandings of communal sharing and the gift of food.
     So when the other younger Krysia gave me her guerilla seed envelope it lodged a thought in my mind that germinated ever so slowly. I still have the small package she gave me....it represents so much more to me than it did then.
What made the difference?
Leaving this life surrounded by such strong focus on garden to table for a start. Leaving behind cultural diversity flowing out of 100s of stores of purveyors of ethnic cuisine, interesting cafes, fresh food market places dotted everywhere, traditions of inviting people to your table and sharing home-prepared food....frequent invitations that is!
Moving to where gardens were not so common, ethnic diversity had not been celebrated openly despite changes creeping in, where there were supermarkets and malls, not small businesses with diverse offerings, where qrowers markets were slow taking off and pizza in franchise boxes was often the food of choice at casual celebrations.  Normal came to look very different from what it had in the previous location.
It was not so much losing access to the abundance of great food that mattered. At first one thinks that its about that...but I did find new sources of goodness and things to be excited by. However it was deeply concerning seeing the horrendous gap between farm and plate, between knowledge and marketing driven industrialised food culture, between food heritage and the loss of relationship with it. Post-Industrial landscapes and less noticeable cultural bounty, the absence of prolific gardens everywhere and the dominant shopping mall phenomenon paved the way for thinking critically about what was missing, here where I was living and in the bigger Global picture. I guess I had found myself surrounded with what was actually the more dominant contemporary experience of food culture and relationship to the environment and it was as sobering as any of Krysia's stories.


The seed bomb idea has far more resonance now in the light of all this... for me its time has truly arrived. There are many related ideas circulating at the moment and certainly guerrilla gardening introduced possibilities for interventions and such that have broadened the understanding of citizen involvement in community and the environment where they live.

seed bombs found some time ago through www.inhabitat.com - great xmas gift size for the person who has everything!

culture futures at copenhagen

In a few days the Culture /Futures symposium kicks off in Copenhagen led by the Danish Cultural Institute and a partnership of arts organisations from around the world. Its based on the premise that the scale of the transition to the environmental age is so massive that just waiting for the right technological or political solution to show itself is not enough. It requires fundamental cultural change, and very fast change. Read more here from the RSA Arts and Ecology blog.
COP15 public events

Burning Ice exhibition.

100 places to remember before they disappear.

conversations with the earth- indigenous voices on climate change
These are 3 of 90 events on the official cultural program. This will open at the visit copenhagen site and you can click on the link there to open to COP15 events and then to the cultural calender. The link was faulty sorry!

Q: did art help to add the sheen to Dubai?

A: read William Shaw on the excellent Arts and Ecology blog to see his response and that of others.



A comment left on this post by contemporary art historian Reuben Fowkes suggests the Sharijah Biennial in Dubai is perhaps an extreme example of a general trend of art biennials being hitched to the marketing goals of cities or regions, with contemporary art mobilised as branding tool to boost tourism.
The Arts and Ecology Blog is well worth investigating - it feeds from the RSA Arts and Ecology Centre which was set up in 2005 by the RSA-  the Royal Society for the encouragement of the Arts, Manufacture and Commerce  in the UK. The Centre's head, Michaela Crimmin, says "Artists have always had a powerful relationship with the natural environment. Equally artists continually question and and re-examine society's notions of progress. We need their unique perspective on the enormous challenges ahead - on the relationship between environmental issues, and not least climate change, and people."
Read Reuben and Maja Fowkes fascinating www.translocal.org site for what looks like a very comprehensive take on contemporary art and ways it interacts with ecology. 
With a new year coming up, and time to pause, I wonder what will be thought up for 2010  that addresses the questions surrounding us at this time? 

Botanica Exhibition opens this week

Talented artist from this part of the world Nicola Moss is exhibiting artworks from the 'Family Tree' series developed during her year as Artist-in-Residence at the Brisbane Botanic Gardens Mt Coo-tha in 2009. Read Nicola's blog to find more information about the opening this thursday night, 3rd of December and viewing times up until Dec 6th. Also on her blog you can read about her newly printed book 'Layers of Life' which promises to be a wonderful document of her times spent at the Gardens this year. In September I posted on a guided tour a few artist friends did with Nicola in the gardens here. It will be excellent to see the culmination of her exciting year of Botanical discovery and delight in this exhibition....Nicola's website  is also well worth a visit.

DUNE: Arenaceous Anti-Desertification Architecture

model by Magnus Larsson

An adaptive proposal for Northern Nigeria

Images at Flickr

After viewing this TED video on Magnus Larsson's vision to turn dunes into architecture here  I then found that BLDG BLOG, which was mentioned on the previous post, had an extensive story in April this year here. The architect acknowledges the challenges of his vision but proposes the scale of the issue is such that it demands every effort be put into combatting the desertification given the possibility that a 3rd of the world's land mass may have become desert by the end of this century, whilst population continues to climb and resources continue to be squeezed. Its an impressive idea and one hopes to see something come of it, even if evolution of the idea is first called for.

plants without borders

Plants without borders: An interview with Sara Redstone by Nicola Twilley.

Bay leaves showing symptoms of infection

When visiting the excellent BLDG BLOG this morning I came upon a most interesting and lengthy post that's worth reading if interested in plant quarantine and the complex issue of species being threatened by imported pests. In a global economy of trading, travel and transport across borders plants dont have passports saying for example they're from China when they are shipped from The Netherlands into the UK - problems can result. Trading is often put before quarantine!.

Sarah Redstone is Plant Health and Quarantine Officer at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, UK - home of the world's largest collection of living plants. In addition to screening and isolating all incoming and outbound plant material, she is currently overseeing the design and construction of a new quarantine facility for the gardens.

She warns the public of the risks involved in moving plants around - bringing things back from holidays, especially smuggling things in from abroad. Wax candles, a jar of honey, a wooden sculpture also have the potential to become problematic. Campaigns to increase public awareness are timely and Redstone hopes once people understand they will heed the message "as we all share the same planet".

BLDG BLOG: architectural conjecture, urban speculation and landscape futures - written by Geoff Manaugh and the sister site: edible geography by Nicola Twilley

below: Electron micro images of seeds. Lamourousia viscosa (bottom) Franklin's sandwort (top) conserved at Kew's Millennium Seed Bank.

underwater sculpture

 The artist Jason de Caires Taylor's website is the place to go for fascinating details on this mysterious work. His sculptures "highlight ecological processes whilst creating artificial reefs and underlining our need to protect our natural world". View 2 brief videos of the underwater work - quite atmospheric and worth a look!

images above and below remind me of those National Geographic stories of archeological ventures all around the Mediterranean  as does the work above of Jason de Caires Taylor. Ancient amphoras were used in transportation all around this region...a 2006 thyme infused Olive Oil, and what was thought to be a salad dressing, was discovered in the cargo of amphoras...some still intact around 2000 years later.

Concealed, Discovered, Revealed

archive for june, 2008 - post titled Australia - weblog of Sue Lawty

In May I posted on this artist from the UK who had a residency at the Victoria and Albert Museum with an excellent blog which is ongoing. Recent posts refer to a trip to Australia. Below are a series of articles about the World Beach Project which has been a wonderful off-shoot from her former residency that engaged people around the world to join in and post back their images. In the last 10 minutes I have had trouble linking to her blog site...so if that is not corrected you can enter the web site as below or click on May above and hopefully that will facilitate the connection. Her writing is a delight to read - intelligent but very accessible, thoughtful and very rich in ideas to leave you pondering. Click on the images with text to enlarge for reading! her other work is exquisite so do take a look if you can spare a few minutes!

archive july 2007 - Sue Lawty

archive august 2007

God save Vivienne

'the only reason I'm in fashion is to destroy the word "conformity". Nothing's interesting to me unless its got that element' - 

Vivienne Westwood

'I like wearing a safari suit for shooting tigers in'

'its so important to look to the past. because people did have taste, and they did have ideals of excellence, and those things are not going to come unless people look to the past.'

excellent weblink to Westwood's 2004 Victoria and Albert Museum exhibition.

Read about Westwood's life here on Wikipedia.

This is an image from a video of Jonathan Ross interviewing Vivienne Westwood. To view go to Westwood's latest incarnation as political activist in response to global warming at the website Active Resistance where there are 6 videos to watch on the current preocupation for this extraordinary woman who says passionately on this video - "my duty is to understand the world I live in...because understanding it you have to help the world...what can I do...this gift of life... you have to ask what can I do!"

a walk in the wilderness

Visiting the charming "mes petites miscellanees" blog  from Marie-Es in France I discovered something that had to be shared this morning. Marie-E's blog celebrates colour amongst other elements and with a keen eye for less common images.


Introducing 'A walk in the wilderness' by Carmel Walsh who says of her shoes: "they are made with vegetable tanned leather, walnut wood heals, fabrics including caucciu covered organic cotton, linen. raffia, hemp, bamboo and cork to support the forms. Fun ideas spring to mind with my collection, changing the seeds instead of shoes with the passing seasons. It is my hope that in their second life they will decay and grow as an art piece."

In a world where 330 million pairs of shoes are thrown into land-fills every year, Carmel felt the need to make a product that would endure and try to find a balance between fast and slow fashion. She collaborated with a while range of suppliers to find suitable materials to meet her criteria. To read this article and see some excellent images click on Yatzer - an comprehensive weblink with the motto: *design is to share* started in 2007 by Costas Voyatzis.

string gardens

This concept is sensationally intriguing and works as an art installation quite brilliantly. I have yet to read up on the background to this project based in Amsterdam but you can find information  at ijmstudio   blog as well as at the string gardens  website.