The weekend in Cairns

Ive had a most productive weekend in Cairns. Started with a trip to town Saturday for a slow start, breakfast and a wander, then shopping to stock up for the next week or so which will be very busy. 

This is a work on Linen I've been working on today. Approx 140 cm x 80 cm I worked on the large table out on the verandah all day... the edge is frayed and stitching in brown linen thread contans the fabric. I've used a clear gesso so it is archivally prepared and will be finished with a similar layer of clear glaze. It could be framed or simply mounted on the wall. I like how portable this kind of work is...highly suitable for working on the move!

I posted at the Studio blog about it and added other images so you can skip over there to see if time permits!

 Saturday morning...
     at the lagoon by the sea in Cairns. Its a free public pool and isn't fenced off, is surrounded by parkland and BBQ's and people enjoying this space! And it overlooks the Ocean. Love that there are places under cover where you can sit in the shade and loll about in the pool!

There's a Saturday market down at the shore. A wonderful person I spoke with was Helen, originally from papua New Guinea. This bag, called a billum, was very special. It deserved several photos just to show the amount of industry involved in a piece like this.

She has a stall at Rusty's, a wonderful fresh food market I have been to once a week. Saturdays are very lively at the market and surrounding street full of cafes.

I was in awe of the work in this billum... Helen shrugged off the work,,, but did admit to it taking months using a similar technique to that used in net-making for fishing in Papua New Guinea.

The pattern is also stunning and the dyes are from plants.

The price tag was $150... worth considerably more I am sure you will agree.

I was sorry not to be able to make that purchase I can tell you!

I have a very small billum given to me when I was about 20 ... it contains small shells and is one of the most precious things I own.

Breakfast today... Papaya, which I love, and Biodynamic yoghurt with a most unusual ingredient... Davidson's Plum, an indigenous fruit that is edible and known for its excellent nutritional qualities.

I also met farmers at the Tanks Market at the Botanic Gardens

 

on Sunday who grow Vanilla Beans and produce products for market.

So much around here to explore. I've got a lot of painting to do in the next week, now that I have settled in and found my stride...  but will hire a car to make a trip to Mossman Gorge to visit a lovely indigenous artist I met on my last trip.

Bye for now. Have a good week wont you!

south of here!

A quick post... found an interview I really liked at Design Files with a very inspired guy... Joost Bakker. When In Melbourne In January 2009 doing a one month residency at Victoria University I was able to get along to the fab cafe that was temporarily set up at Fed Square...close by to the wonderful Ian Potter Gallery and much more.  

I have some photos I took ... but in order to post tonight and get some sleep...very quickly...these are from Lucy at design Files.. click above to go visit!

From design files:

An interview with Melbourne florist/event/installation creator Joost Bakker . His incredible sustainably-built pop-up bar/cafe The Greenhouse was installed at Federation Square over Summer. If you didn't get a chance to visit, you might remember my coverage and photos here. It was SUPER amazing. Like, Milan-Design-Week-style amazing, or Marije-Vogelzang-style-amazing...! Temporary design projects on this scale rarely happen in Melbourne, which is why The Greenhouse won my heart (and so many more!).

Anyway as you can imagine, at that time Joost was super busy, but luckily things have calmed down slightly and he has kindly taken the time to do an interview! Yay! It's great to learn a little more baout Joost - he's been featured a lot in the media (remember that Vogue Living feature earlier this year showcasing his beautiful home?), but I feel in this interview Joost has really given us a more personal insight into his motivations and the passion behind his work. :) Aren't we lucky!?

For more background info about Joost check out his website - lots more photos of his stunning floral pieces and larger scale installations. 
Tell me a little about your background - what did you study and what path led you to what you’re doing now? 

Migrating to Aus at age 9 had huge influence on me. Learning the language and culture, but the most profound impact was from learning, watching and being involved in our family business- growing flowers. My father tried planting all sorts of different varieties of flowers, this was important to watch, this way of trying to make different things work, testing assumptions. They became successful and the business quickly evolved, I observed sheds, greenhouses, glasshouses being constructed around me. The most complex construction happened in '97 it was a glasshouse from Holland. That set my thoughts in motion about different housing, more efficient ways of doing things.

You have gained an incredible reputation and received many accolades for your unique approach to floral design and installation. What were you initial plans when you first embarked this career? Did you ever expect to be working on the great variety of projects you are now so well known for?

No I definitely didn’t expect to be working across the different variety of projects that I am now, and I definitely didn’t plan to be working as a florist. For as long as I can remember I've always questioned how florists worked and always thought about different ways of doing things and being true to the product/materials. Having an understanding of the effort that goes into growing flowers makes you aware of their total beauty. I began wholesaling flowers and the whole journey evolved from there. 

Also check out the current Joost venture:

The importance of Soil

Nothing is more important. Soil feeds us and everything else in this world. It filters the air we breathe. Its billions of microbes, bacteria, fungi and minerals keep us healthy!

Growing plants in healthy soil is simply logical. Creating healthy soil out of waste is even better. This is truly sustainable as 70% of our waste is organic.

By using compost worms and bio-char we’ve created healthy soil. Consider that one teaspoon of worm castings can contain billions of microbes, bacteria, fungi and minerals.

Combining this with Bio-Char (waste turned into carbon using pyrolysis) and compost made from green waste, pine bark and coir provides plants with all they need to be healthy.

Unlike most herbs and flowers, our Herbs and flowers, have not been harvested. They come with the root system intact which means they still have their life source with them.  Without this root system a plant is dead.  Our plants are alive, full of energy and nutrients.  Beautiful blooms providing you with clean air and herbs with nutrient packed leaves.

These plants are grown in Urban Crop soil. Not a fertilized soil that takes copious amounts of fossil fuel to produce. Urban Crop soil is full of life, so our plants go home with you, complete with their own little supply of soil.  This is their fuel so they should be kept in their packaging for the duration of their stay.

Our Flowers and herbs are not pumped up with water.  So they won't collapse into a shrivelled slimy heap within hours of getting them home. Urban Crop herbs will love to sit in your kitchen for a week or two, ready for you to harvest as you need them.  Urban Crop flowers will produce the most extraordinary blooms that will dazzle you for longer than any cut flower.

Urban Crop plants believe in an after life.  So when they have been consumed, or flowered as much as they can, you simply put the plant, packaging and all in your own compost. Or bring it back to us for composting. 

Today...

... actually yesterday now... last thing before bed a quick little post on my day...and wouldn't you know it... its after midnight!
Q: So why this first photo below?
A: Because I live next door to a school tennis court and this morning when I was trying to catch a little more shut eye I had to listen to the very loud, surprisingly competitive conversation of two tennis coaches. Let me tell you ... this was louder than usual...and I heard every word... did I want to? NO! And the sky wasn't blue either like the day I took this photo!
Not to worrry! It was a painting day in my home studio and nothing was going to put me off. I had my porridge with bananas and currants and headed out to my fav Cafe for a delicious coffee and chat and bought some of their amazing organic sourdough rolls to bring home.

Here you can see my shot of a recent visit there... with toasted organic roll, buttered and spread sparingly with much loved australian condiment -vegemite. For me too salty when its lathered on!
Simple... coffee 3/4 full...not too much milk and strong quality Italian style brew! Brewbakers is the best by far in my area for this sort of thing! And conversation abounds here... good people coming by!

Home again and to the back verandah is where I paint when I want good light - this time of year its heaven...cool but never too cold. Even with a bit of rain its still a wonderful place to work. Summer-time it can be  ridiculously hot... so one makes the most of this time of year!

I like this quote below... I have posted it before... ages ago... but its never  a waste of time to be reminded of this! Today though it was a matter of simply getting on with what I'm working on... with some time given to going back through the wonderful book I have dipped into quite a bit this year -"Rainforest fruits of Queensland" by William and Wendy Cooper. I keep borrowing it from the Botanic Gardens Library - at $300+ its not something you rush off and buy BUT I will say its spectacularly worth it!

One does not just dip into this book ... one kind of climbs into the rainforest layers of it its so dense and magnificent. On reading of a species that may be found in the Clarence valley of NSW where I grew up I go off into a reverie of trying to recall the bush and places where I might have seen this or that.

...work in progress and the Homage to the Seed journal I'm keeping above and below - the Cooper rainforest book I mentioned is also open above. I was very keen to get on with painting but felt the need to go back through the Cooper book, freshly documenting, with very quick sketches and brief notes, some interesting forms in the the capsules and seeds of various species. I'm loving this way of becoming more familiar with the biodiversity of the rainforests and similarly rich habitats... recognising the enormous numbers of species and seeing the variations that can occur just through this simple research is so fascinating to consider. Tonight, noticing an indigenous version of nutmeg and reading that it has little scent led to wondering about the extraordinary discoveries that people made through Millennia, the risks when identifying if something was edible, what properties it had and so on.

I'm finding ethnobotany more and more fascinating and realising that its piecing together some of my own various passions for knowledge that to date didn't seem to link that well.

I also came across a fascinating read Hybrid: the History and Science of Plant Breeding by UK based Noel Kingsbury that was published only last year by University of Chicago Press at the Garden's Library this week.

 I'm still hardly scratching the surface of this no doubt timely book - all 492 pages of it. Its contains a series of topics that as they get closer to the present day heat up in terms of potential for controversy. I am noticing the writer's sustained attempt to address these topics with thorough research and due consideration. Still too soon for me to have formed a strong view of his take on current political implications of what is occuring in the complex field of genetics, patents and such. I will say that his coverage is immensely broad  but there is some clearly controversial material which I just noticed on his blog Noel's Garden Blog he owns as "unfashionable ideas".

The sense I did get in reading his book is that there is perhaps not a huge amount of material around that seriously attempts to cover this broad spectrum of human history on Plant breeding. So whilst some things made me sit up sharply and want to pick a fight I was having to address how little I knew of what was being raised and I found it a welcome book for bringing to the table a great many enormously relevant topics.

Well...so much for a quick post...still its been a great way to wind down, and reflect a little on this day just passed.

Ciao! S x

You may click on the image below to enlarge.

time out down south... part one

 

Ferdinando - his story coming soon on the homage blog...

... more on these thongs and where i found them next post!  Sydney was rejuvenating ... and both old and new... more soon!

exhibition opening weekend of April 17 and 18

Images posted here below are from the just opened Homage to the Seed Exhibition at Embiggen Books and Gallery at Noosaville, 2 hours north of Brisbane. Friday I drove through heavy rain on the road up the coast - squalls of rain continued till today ... but did not dampen spirits. My charming hosts at the Gallery soon had order made of various artworks, lists of titles, prices and such and I put my mind to visiting local places to drop off flyers and seeing what was happening about town.

A beeline was made next morning to the Eumundi Market - a delightful excursion. I made a point of visiting stalls where local people were selling organic produce, some even selling seeds they'd collected from their harvest. I collected names, stories and contact details and decided I must return. For the gallery opening I bought lemon myrtle-infused olive oil to go with artisan bread from Brewbakers (fav Brisbane bakery) my home made dukkah (seed-food!), a bunch of fresh lemon myrtle, thai coriander which smelt fabulous, small orange persimmon, rosella branches with fruit still on, beetroot flavoured cornchips, wasabi crisps, tiny dried figs, pumpkin seeds plus my own labneh - yoghurt cheese - rolled in dukkah). Dont ask me why I did not photograph this colourful spread with flora and pods arranged on a handprinted cloth !

Conversations with growers and producers led to invites being issued to the exhibition and subsequent offers on their part to promote the Homage to the Seed project through their networks. With this exilarating start to the day the up-tempo mood remained over the entire weekend really. The 3pm opening Saturday was well attended by friends and new connections from afar ( special thank you Laney!) and some wonderful people from the local area whom I was delighted to meet. Even some of my young students from last year were able to come along as they were up for a weekend trip to the coast! It was excellent to have Phil Cameron from Brisbane Botanic Gardens  in attendance as he was able respond to queries on the Millenium Seedbank Project which was an  important stimulus for this particular show.

There are so many things I could add about the amazing chance connections on the weekend. It was one of the most rewarding experiences I've had showing work to date - the animated discussion, particularly after the artist's talk Saturday, led to wonderful ideas being cooked up and addresses exchanged.

Sunday morning catering was left to the excellent neighbouring cafes  - Organica on the left and the German Bakery on the right kept everyone happy. I was getting reports on the amazing range of goods at Organica, but never made it in ... although I did enjoy an excellent coffee from there ! The  easy atmosphere of people coming by for an hour or two over the day offered the chance to get to know new people and catch up with friends and family. Others are invaluable in helping one see ones own work more laterally. After an intense month or so in the studio where I was spending more and more time towards the end - barely talking, maybe listening to a little Radio National, it was the reverse situation all weekend where lack of sleep and adrenalin kept me talking rather a lot more than usual.... and of course the wonderful visitors  who brought great stories and experiences of their own to share.

Its getting late so I am leaving with you with a series of art works which should enlarge on clicking for your perusal - sorry about the lack of titles and such. I must retire.
Warm thankyous to those able to come along either Saturday or Sunday - I dont think I missed out on a decent chat with any of you...and wasn't this Gallery/bookstore the perfect destination for the weekend!!!
To my blogosphere well-wishers...you were missed but not forgotten...thank you for your kind words all!

...the tired but happy artist with sister Jana (right) Sunday afternoon

... this last image was snapped at the end of 2 wonderful days of visitors to the show. Books and journals had been put to much use whilst talking to the viewers about work and ideas behind various paintings. The bookshop atmosphere was so conducive to this... with quiet browsing areas where some took the journals for a quiet read. This for me was a highlight of showing in this wonderful venue. Unorthodox perhaps but satisfying by all accounts, especially anyone seeking an introduction to the work or a look into the ideas around it. With the Homage journal containing many small and quick scribblings and sketches from the Seed Lab at the Botanic Gardens this mode of presentation allowed for far greater insight into the residency project which was the central purpose of this exhibition.

Photos courtesy Warren Bonnet at Embiggen Books with additional images courtesy Steve Kozak.