NEWS: Seed.Art.Lab internships (ii)

In this post I am going to introduce you to Sam Zaleski, a 15 year old student at Kelvin Grove Secondary College in Brisbane who I am very pleased to say will be coming to Seed.Art.Lab once a week when she can during her school holidays to participate as an intern. I thought it would be interesting for both Sam and readers to give her the guest blogging role here today as I am rushing about getting various tasks done and its an orientation day for Sam!

So . . . w e l c o m e  S a m !

Sam:

"I met Sophie earlier this year, at her old house,  in May with my family - my mum and twin brother. 

I instantly found her work interesting and inspiring. I liked the idea of how she used one topic and expanded on it. So in Sophie's case it was the seeds. 

I had shown her my portfolio and flicked through some of her journals, getting a feel of her artistic space. I really enjoyed it and had a great time looking at all her creativity within her studio. As soon as we arrived home, I'd quickly reached for my own art journal and drawn some little creatures that were growing in my head the whole time we spent with Sophie. I was to say at the least, very interested in Sophie's artworks and wished we could meet again. 

Later on I got the news about the internship and happily accepted.  During the period of time between May and December I worked really hard. I met a few people that are with in the borders of the art world and they gave me some tips on how to get my name out there and improve my drawing style and skills over coffee. One of the illustrators I had the pleasure of meeting was Gregory Rogers.

Codochi - made up creature

I worked on my first written and  illustrated book titled 'Amelia Scott and her Dreams' which is basically about a little girls dreams and what she gets up do.The mediums I used were felt tip pens, ink pens and colouring pencils. In her dreams Amelia goes on adventures with impossible creatures, all with the company of her trusty teddy bear. I created the creatures from my imagination and they were heavily influenced by Colin Thompson (a famous illustrator + author), certain ideas in my head and a obsession with weirdness and  scary things. In my book I was determined to make the creatures as unique as possible, which included their names. I came up with names like; Chi, Codochi, Wagari and Drainwrench.

Amelia and The Wagari tribe

I am about to start selling it for the christmas holidays, I got my first customer pre-ordering the book last week. I'm very excited. since then there have been a lot of interest from the pupils at my school and also from the community of my old primary school. During the time I was illustrating, I would be glued to my desk,  if I had to go out, my work would come with me. I was determined to make it excellent and so therefore didn't leave it alone unless I had school or had to eat. I would rush home everyday after school, eager to resume work immediately. For those reasons the book only took me two weeks to finish. I now have a strong passion towards illustrating and aspire to do it as a career.

Amelia flying her airplane with a Codochi

I've been working on my second written and illustrated book for about eight months now. The mediums I'm using are graphitint pencils, watercolour pencils, graphit pencils and rubbers.  It requires way more detail in each illustration and sometimes it can take me hours to perfect each illustration. A lot of the time i'm so eager to draw so i have no breaks. I only have breaks when I physically can not do it anymore because my hand is so numb and I can't feel it. 

But I'm not complaining, i'm loving illustrating this book and already planning my third. My second book is called 'The story of Doris Cummiski'. It was influenced by a conversation I had with my mum in the car. I seem to remember the conversation landing on the unspeakable topic of when my mum turns 80. My brother and I joked that we would dump her in a retirement home. That's all I needed to trigger my brain with an idea. That and extreme boredom. Later that night I had to go to one of my mum's dinner parties and of course I had to bring my Art journal. It just started as a elderly character but then the character clicked with the conversation from earlier and I was away!

Doris Cummiski and her two children

 I've been obsessed with this story for the last few months now. To put it nicely, my second book's original purpose was to wind my mum up (as she is the main character)  but it as it turns out, it has become way more than that. This book is about a 'frail' grandma who has just gotten too annoying for her families own good. So her family drops her in to the closest retirement home. Doris finds herself fed up as soon as she's trapped with in the prune-juice smelling retirement home. She was trapped. In Doris's eyes, this was the worst thing imaginable. She wasn't going to have any of it. She pulls on her night gear and goes on mini adventures to keep herself entertained and renew her freedom. Some of her adventures include meeting the Queen and skiing. 

I've grown quite attached to this project and have been regularly updating my facebook with what's been going on in my life art wise. For this reason, my name is gradually getting out in the world, my artwork is getting a lot of attention and lots of artists are contacting me. I have a mentor - like artist / graphic designer who is really helping me out. She's based in New York and is telling other artists about me in America.

Just a few weeks ago my art teacher's daughter said she absolutely loved my first book 'Amelia Scott and her Dreams'. She also said that she wanted me to do this job for her as a professional illustrator but she had to run it past all her bosses. The job was in America, so I would've had to work from home. Unfortunately I missed out on the job, I was really close to getting it. If it was an Australian- based job, I would have gotten it immediately. I'm just glad I was even considered and now if they ever need me in the future, they know where I am. In the mean time I've been focusing on Doris Cumminski. I have more time now because the school year is officially over. I'm getting my second book prepared now for the exhibition i'm participating in with a couple of other girls. I will be showcasing my port folio, individual A3 drawings and illustrated books.....some of my work will be for sale. Doris will hopefully be a finished book by then, if not I will display her as a work in progress. For now though I am working as an intern with Sophie. Very exciting stuff!

So a run down of this year for me, art wise;

-  Started having extra art classes outside of school. The lessons range from 2-4 hrs, depending on what sessions I want to go to.
-  Met Sophie
-  Shared my work with various artists and authors
-  First written + illustrated book and finished it
-  Realised I wanted to be an illustrator so i have been working hard towards that
-  applied for loads of illustrating jobs.....no success
-  attempted to get in to an art school (Queensland Academy of Creative Industries), again no success
-  started working on my second written + illustrated book
-  Updated portfolio with loads of drawings (that makes over 80 now)
-  Got considered for the illustrating job in philadelphia, USA
-  Got in touch with Joh Moller, (a australian graphic designer that works in New York City.)
-  selling my art work and getting lots of interest (more people know who I am know and i'm building
   myself a reputation for my art)
-  Internship with Sophie

Kirby- She has been sold a few times for $25

 NOW:
-  getting ready for the exhibition at the start of 2014.
-  working on 'The story of Doris Cummiski'
-  Internship with Sophie
- starting to set up my very own studio
- getting my portfolio polished up and ready. (I'm going to be trying out for the year 11 art excellence
   program in the middle of 2014 at my school)
- fixing up 'Amelia Scott and her Dreams'
- Selling my artwork via facebook (for example, my A3 drawings can go up to $25.)"


See Sam's illustrations at her tumblr site here!

And a big thank you to guest blogger/intern Sam!

I've just returned late tonight to read this post that Sam busily typed away on in my studio this afternoon. Today I had a long to-to list, emails to respond to and things to organise that meant I really did hand over to Sam to write this blog post and organise some promo things. She went on later to create a tumblr site to load up her illustrations and all in all we had an excellent day at Seed.Art.Lab.

I've only just caught up here now with what she wrote and its fascinating how much I'm reminded of the 15 year old me ... all the enthusiasm I had in that era for creating... always with a sense that so much could happen if I only worked really hard and kept thinking about what I would like to try for.

Did you find yourself thinking about this?

Writing to artists in New York wasn't something any of my peers and I talked about in my sleepy country town school years. Perhaps others did those kinds of things... but the biggest thing I remember anyone ever aiming for was to win a Rotary Exchange Trip to go and live overseas for a year and attend school in another country.

So in part I was totally with the adventure Sam was sharing here ... yet in another way I found myself thinking.... maybe "a little of what she's having" could be a good thing! Optimism, imagining anything is possible, stretching oneself, aiming high. Unselfconscious pleasure in working and being paid for one's creations.

I remember that pure energy of doing little projects to produce things that I could take delight in selling. It was a really fine balance of activities. An age old relationship between making and selling in order to keep making and living. It does have a lot of integrity as a lifestyle.

Sam reminds me her desire for success and good sales is not born of wanting simply to become wealthy or famous as much as both might seem pretty appealing at 15 ... but to live a creative life and keep it flowing and buoyant. A good message just at the very moment I'm rethinking the balance between all the parts of my work... research, painting, thinking time to generate ideas, residencies, community and public engagements. 

The use of the internet to connect, research, discover, learn, communicate and share ... is something Iv'e been keen to plug in to over the last 4 or 5 years. I've wanted a studio that could serve in part as a hub, a space for collaboration and engagement with ideas and people... and I've desired a place with room to store things, work on various project at once and withdraw when necessary for solo time.

The new space offers all those things and is nudging me to take a punt on setting things up in a fluid, light and experimental way to see what works and what might come! So far so good. It's becoming the kind of place that new and interesting things feel possible. 

I feel very deeply this era we are entering demands we do more than talk about sustainability and have recycling bins. Actually moving into different ways of being, working and connecting to make more happen that is enriching and beneficial with less seems smart and timely. It's up to each of us to play around with ways of doing that. And talking about dreams with a 15 yr old is not a bad place to start! When reading her list of things she has done this year I noted with interest she included what she had tried to and also what hadn't worked.

And that she made another list titled NOW that suggests she's not put off by what hasn't worked but keen to prepare for the next set of goals and efforts! Bravo Sam!

Something to ponder... how would you define the year that's been and what will be on your list for NOW into 2014 ?

Thats something I'm definitely looking at the moment! Best wishes to all passing by here!
Sophie

Taking a line of thought for a walk + an online shop!

Art-making often begins as a young child with a simple line scratched in the sand, or dirt, a line 'taken for a walk' on a page... thanks to Mr Klee, or a line of thought that gets us wanting to try and visualise it in some tangible way later in life perhaps! 

And maybe returning to drawing a line is an elemental human act that can reminds us of our earliest scratchings and links us universally to ancient gestures that live within us. We are many things even though we think ourselves so modern, so contemporary, so hip or current and new.

But what if we are always in essence that young scribbler, or a tribal being making a mark in the sand... even if we have forgotten our essential selves, or our tribal ties or lost our way amidst the clamour of "now". We can get awfully caught up in striving and keeping "the wolf from the door", in honouring our undertakings or stretching our vistas.

When we put our hands in the earth to dig, weed or plant we remember something from the long 'now' ... or perhaps when we walk a hill, or swim in a body of natural water... get connected with earth physically. 

Maybe drawing lines is a way for entering the long-now!

Around 2004 I was doing a lot of putting hands in the earth, tending my garden which I'd grown from scratch starting 2002.

Often immersing myself oat this time in the ocean, and ocean pools, watching movement in water and shifting visual imagery from being inside this vast body of water... I would go from this immersion and engagement with looking, back to my studio, and take up a colour and make lines that spoke to the sensation of having being there. A daily or frequent baptism ... a routine plunge that somehow also simultaneously plunged me into the long-now, the body of never-endingness that is the ocean in our minds at least.

In the early 2000's we weren't thinking of plastic oceans every time we dipped our toes in the universal pond. Whether we consciously know it or not there is much in our heads now when we encounter the long now and the everyday thats tiring our psyches and begging questions be answered.

But I digress... and will come back to lines and line-making by showing you this 'drawing-painting' of mine from early 2006. I'd been working my way through 4 years of abstractions in line, shape and colour in the studio at the house that became my first ever real home-of-my-own in January 2002. Ruminating on New Science at that time, emergent thinking on the role of dialogue, dipping into some ideas from Rudolph Steiner, reading a great smattering of ideas and writers ... all whist working (almost full) time teaching across curriculum in secondary school... my mind thus being variously soaked in some rather far-reaching ideas.

Perhaps thats why this work evolved as a means to distill something of the disparate influences and experiences... and if swimming in a fluid mass that is the ocean was the way to dissolve the hard edges in my world then maybe these art works were the means to map the process somehow.

I like that the lines here as crossing over, meshing and touching but separate too. Coloured circles create form but remain transparent enough to perceive whats co-existing with the layers of lines... lines that form squares ...   circles and squares in dialogue and moving!

Form and formlessness in co-operation. There's quite a message in that dynamic tension. This work above is essentially a twin to the 50 x 70 cm artwork that won a prize in a Regional Award show. Similar works, one a 120 x 120 cm canvas, the other a 10 x 10 cm miniature, were highly  commended and I missed the Awards night due to my car breaking down and deciding to stay home and have a glass of wine in my studio because ... why bother going anyway!

A closer view...

In the morning I was contacted with news I'd won a generous prize, and picked up 2 highly commendeds. I remember reacting as if it had happened to someone else... how nice for her I kept thinking. Although it was exciting and confirming to have an eminent art professional judge the work as worthy, and later encourage me to commence a Masters of Fine Arts ... in time I found I was needing to break out of the confines of these lines that were holding something in that needed to be released.

That created confusion from some close observers who weren't expecting me to want to move on from here at all. I'd been acknowledged for this work and needed to build on it surely! I talked to numbers of people at that time and sound someone my age who'd worked on startlingly fine work and had to give up after constant eye strain. Perhaps the close-ups show why my eyes were starting to feel it and why I instinctively decided to save myself further eye problems. I'd already worn glasses since age 6... and the feeling to have the line be more fluid... not just describe fluidity from the arrangement of shapes.... but to get that line moving gain became more of a necessity.

Yet I look back on this time and cherish the remarkable way deep immersion in cultivating a garden and swimming in a vast panorama lit up or added dimension to my thinking process which was then channelled into studio practice to arrive at works such as this. It interesting to note that being younger and more physically engaged resulted in work that was this abstract.

I started assembling this post at 5.30am on waking this morning. A chance to think through the series of works I was assembling to put up on my new Online SHOP.

This shop is a first step... so more of a viewing platform for people to then email me about works. Because I've been slow to set it up Ive ended up emailing photos of available works to interested people in the last week whilst I sort the material to put online. I've really got to get that up to date and decide whether Big Cartel is a good way to formalise my tentative step into online selling after Xmas.

So... would I sell this work above when it represents such an important phase in my developing practice and is now virtually the only remaining work like this I have. Instead... I can make Limited Edition prints if needs be I realised. That's been a great avenue for sales of more affordable work... or making something available where I've not wanted to part with an original.

And so... to the shop.

Click here to visit the site for the Seed.Art.Lab shop. 

Its a simple Tumblr template that works reasonably well for viewing works individually and addition of notes + details. As a place to start it feels fine. Ive been in two minds for quite a while about putting work up online.

But now that I have a new studio with a good gallery space on one side and I'm continuing to run a project that pulls me to work in several different directions, including taking on residencies and some teaching work, it seems like a store that can be managed around various commitments might be ideal.

Ive been finding which of the works on paper to sell as originals over the weekend. Then there are the quality archival Limited Edition prints to add as well. Plus some works on canvas and linen to put up.

Here are some works I've brought out:

30 x 24 cm - watercolour and coloured pencil

30 x 24 cm watercolour and coloured pencil

Series of 3 works each 45 x 15cm - mono print, lino and paint 

I think this one has a new owner!

Next: a series of 3 hand coloured limo-prints...  32 x 24 featuring my totem seedpod based on the blackbean.

Next: Series of works on paper 60 x 42 cm... Unique prints also painted and some just paintings on paper. Most based on QLD Rainforest fruit seed-capsule motifs.

the stripes return

 A series of work on paper 30 x 42 cm

each work is 30 x 42 cm... image taking 2 works at a time

working with different colours is a revelation at times... 

in tropical plants one sees a lot of this striking pink

bold lines

This is a larger work on paper 70 x 50cm... in acrylic and ink

larger work with close-up below

Five lino-printed works beautiful cotton rag paper

 a close up reveals the appealing edge on this paper

And to finish off this one is on a very lovely but lighter paper so I won't be 

putting a big price tag on it. Once framed it will be be quite a durable work.

                    Its a large work and has so much rhythm in it I would love to see it framed!



NB: Limited Edition archival prints will be available for this work "Sensitive chaos II" in several sizes on high quality watercolour paper. Inquiries welcome for any of the work shown here.

I have to go off to purchase some fascinating plants that have been set aside for collection... I wish you a peaceful Sunday and week ahead!


Last thing ... I found a simple little quote to sign off on this weekend of remembering one of great light who walked this planet:

Let there be work, bread, water and salt for all.

Nelson Mandela

Responding to words and ideas that resonate...

Since finding his writing in the mid 90's Ive often picked up a book, poem or quote by Ben Okri and more often than not would discover an idea that resonated or spoke to work I was doing at the time. I've borrowed his words for titles of artwork frequently and painted works where I've included his text.

From Wiki: Ben Okri OBE FRSL (born 15 March 1959) is a Nigerian poet and novelist.^[1] Okri is considered one of the foremost African authors in the post-modern and post-colonial traditions^[2][3] and has been compared favorably with authors such as Salman Rushdie and Gabriel García Márquez.^[4]

This small booklet is an example of employing the text in a visual mode. I loved the way the colour worked against the mat brown paper and the white ink text speaks out of the dark ground. I produced several booklets like this around Xmas and one friend who received this gift found the same deeply effecting quality in his words that I do... so was touched by the potency of word and image!

The pile of artworks on the left are what I worked on earlier this week... 50 watercolour
works on 300gm cotton paper completed as a series in 2 very long sittings!

'Mental Fight', in part inspired by William Blake, was published in London in 1999 excerpts were  featured in the London Times as the new Millennium approached.

I found these excerpts this morning which give you a taste of the work which I have mined on many occasions for the dense material it contains. 

Mental Fight: An anti-spell for the 21st Century

By Ben Okri

A few selected extracts

Already, the future is converging with the past.
Already the world is converging.
The diverse ways of the world
Will create wonderful new forms,
Lovely cultural explosions
In the centuries to come.
Already I sense future forms of art,
Of painting, sculpture, humour,
Already I sense future novels,
Plays, poems, dances.
Already I sense the great orchestras
Of humanity, a world symphony,
A world jam, in which the diverse
Genius of the human race -
It's rich tapestry of differences -
Will combine, weave, heighten,
Harmonise all its varied ways
And bring about a universal flowering
In all the vast numbers of disciplines
And among the unnumbered people.
Already I can hear this distant music
Of the future,
The magic poetry of time,
The distillation of all our different gifts.

Will you be at the harvest,
Among the gatherers of new fruits?
Then you must begin today to remake
Your mental and spiritual world,
And join the warriors and celebrants
Of freedom, realisers of great dreams.

You can't remake the world
Without remaking yourself
Each new era begins within.
It is an inward event,
With unsuspected possibilities
For inner liberation.
We could use it to turn on
Our inward lights.
We could use it to use even the dark
And negative things positively.
We could use the new era
To clean our eyes,
To see the world differently,
To see ourselves more clearly.
Only free people can make a free world.
Infect the world with your light.
Help fulfill the golden prophecies
Press forward the human genius.
Our future is greater than our past.

We are better than that.
We are greater than our despair.
The negative aspects of humanity
Are not the most real and authentic;
The most authentic thing about us
Is our capacity to create, to overcome,
To endure, to transform, to love,
And to be greater than our suffering.
We are best defined by the mystery
That we are still here, and can still rise
Upwards, still create better civilisations,
That we can face our raw realities,
And that we will survive
The greater despair
That the greater future might bring.

From "Mental Fight - an anti-spell for the 21st century", Phoenix House 1999

(Reprinted by the Community Development Resource Association - www.cdra.org.za)

'This epic poem by Booker Prize winner Ben Okri is an intimate song of rage and restoration. It speaks to each new moment and each person, like sunlight or like pain. It is an anthem to our ascending dreams, and a hymn of inspiration.' Google Books

This is not the complete work...  just a few pages!

His words prompt much contemplation...

driving home some big themes we often don't care to think about

Today I was reminded of the still immensely relevant call to us he made around the new Millennium to remake the world with vision and courage for the unknown future coming at us. 

A friend who works tirelessly as an advocate for the future of a fairer, healthier Food System in this country has been chewing over some big questions... some of which aligns with the work I do through Homage to the Seed ... and some simply because of our common human experience and concerns over the future colliding with the planetary civilisation we've cultivated being so out of step with the limit's of nature. 

I find it critical to have these conversations whether or not others care to.  Just as we don't want a bad news diagnosis from our doctors we don't really want to hear the Science community telling us of the quickening of this ailing planet. I understand the resistance... but will always argue that not responding makes it far worse than the effort to be in the conversation and acting on overwhelming evidence that we must do something. Being in contact with Plant scientists, reading news coming in from all quarters leaves me in no doubt as to the scale of concerns.

"Within my generation, whatever climate we were used to will be a thing of the past." - Nature study lead author Camilo Mora

More here... if you dare!

Quality discussion allows a greater sense of resiliance and connectedness to result than does digging in and turning away from what's ahead. Instead of a dull dread gnawing away somewhat unconsciously it means I get to participate in solutions, in the development of cultural and educational responses that can grow and support change on all levels. 

I feel very much drawn to this as one might be drawn to nurture one's precious child. Its one thing to paint, to be an artist... the much bigger picture that calls me however is a desire to put what I do, as an artist, as a human being, in the service of something far greater than a personal career. 

If all one did was listened to news from Science quarters it could be overwhelming. Mind you there are  scientists who are hugely engaging,  variously involved in tremendously exciting ventures, working in a multitude of ways that can inspire and certainly offer a fresh sense of perspective.

Turning to the poets, the deep explorers of other frontiers of thought is a counterbalance for the science... both are necessary, both matter!

The '50 paintings on cotton paper' series

210 x 100 mm sized 300 gm paper 

they came in a package of 50

Interesting to observe where some work succeeds 

in having a life-force about it... and others do not.

this one seemed to go somewhere else

these paired works offer contradictions

I particularly liked this pairing

and broke out a little below

 introducing the purple here

I spent two long days working on this after most of the previous week's distraction of fighting a virus that really zapped my energy. This painting series was an unleashing of sorts. Listening to Radio National at length, hardly breaking away from the work to push the most out of this simple motif, the limited colour palate and a heightened desire to make really animated small works that could speak for something intangible and strong that was pre-occupying me on some level.

The best result in the making of 50 small works was a growing fluency ... not unlike what it used to feel like after hours practicing at the piano working towards the accomplishment of something more difficult. I liked the brain-work of the exercise... wandering off on tangents of thought or staying very present to the making of compositions, trying out numerous approaches to bring rhythmic variation, spacial depth into the works... or alternatively paring back, reducing down to essences, going linear, delicate, minimal. 

Finally last night I managed to commit to the design for my new business card ...spending hours designing then ordering a series of postcards, business cards and so on in preparation for the upcoming Studio launch which will be held on Saturday November 23rd. If you are in Brisbane that weekend and would like to come along ...watch this space for further info or email for details here.

The card introduces a new departure... I've mused for months on what to call the studio. 

With a plan to build momentum for setting up engagements with others I wish to promote my base as a multi-dimensional work and interactive space. Focusing on Plant Science, dialogue on Biodiversity in eco-systems and cultural terms plus Art concerns and seed + plant collecting I toyed with the idea of the laboratory.

Clearly it communicates an intention to give the exploration of Science space and that is a good place to start for the next phase of my work.. 

Seed.Art.Lab took some getting used to ... and I have had months to consider it... but now as I seetle my mind on where I'm heading it feels like the next stage of a venture whose time has well and truly come. The dialogue between disciplines, knowledge bases, between people of different backgrounds, ages, persuasions and interests is important as never before. 

Rejecting the unfamiliar may be a strong tendency for we humans.... but building the kind of complex 'response-ability' that is critically called for at this time takes courage and willingness to look into the unfamiliar. One approach to the new is quiet considered enthusiasm or I guess run and hide ... I for one will be very excited to attempt to keep the dialogue open and the cross-pollinations richly rewarding in my very new 'laboratory'!

Here goes!

Best to you all who come by and take time to read...  its much appreciated!