secret postcard sale

Anna M R Freeman

Kim Rugg

J A Nicholls

Nicola Gresswell

Mary Fedden

David Mann

Janet Tod

Norman Akroyd

Carol Ho

Katherine Cuthbert

Rachel Smith

Steven Ling

Nicholas Jeffrey

Richard Morphet

Bruce McLean

Patricia Davies

Sue Timney

Jessica Akerman

William Wood

Tony Alcock

Dominiqe Fleichmann

Vanill Beer

Gill Robinson

James Unsworth

Jeanette McCulloch


Helen Murgatroyd

Jane Gifford

Bruce Russell

Jennifer E Brown

Jaime Gill

Trevor Sutton

Justyna K Kabal

Gill Robinson

Ayaka Nozama

Peter Kalkhof


So what is this Secret Postcard Sale? The RCA - Royal College of Art (UK) annually holds a secret postcard sale of annonymous entries which I take is not so secret and in fact rather well-publicised. At www.itsnicethat.com I found a reference NOV 24/09 to this show with the website link to the 2,700 postcard images from which I have selected one's that caught my eye. When you open the website above find the link to the rca (pale blue) and click that to bring up the 2,700 images you can look at! Seriously! 
I was curious enough to do so. The images are small - one can save favourites and what I was keen to discover is how these small works would speak to me out of the myraid on show. Also fascinating is to look at the subject matter and the treatment of colour, compostion and so on in these small works.
I am always interested in what it is that makes a composition feel right in a work, whatever the size -so here is a great opportunity to see what works for you!

A recent find and another recently rediscovered

UPDATED POST: 10.9 13:

Just found all the images by artist E J Hauser I'd posted were missing so have deleted links I'm sorry.

EJHauser is a painter whose work I came across through Dear Ada tonight from a post on Dec 8, 09. Dear Ada consistently provides interesting leads which can be pursued in order to discover more on the artist featured. EJHauser will have a new website it looks like - it would be great to glean more of this artist's work and background.

Now for something worlds apart that I wanted to share before i forgot!


I happened to watch an ABC TV documentary on Australian artist  Elizabeth Durack just last week.  Born 1915 she lived to 2000 and spent formative years in the western Australian Kimberley landscape in a lively family with pioneering grandfather Patrick Durack immortalised in her sister Mary Durack's book 'Kings in Grass Castles'. Her sensibility was described as part australian, irish and aboriginal. Certainly her childhood was unusual for the times given the close interactions of daily life with the indigenous people who were part of their lives. She and her sister Mary wrote and illustrated books from early times together. The documentary honors the sweep of this remarkable woman's life - someone who found herself going where others didn't. Below are some works from an excellent website set up quite recently providing a glimpse of the panorama that was her life!

Mt Bagara, an active volcano, and up the road to the mine.

War and peace  1947, painted when Durack was based at Ivanhoe station , East Kimberley, WA

No images available at this time of the Eddie Burrup paintings. Please Note... the website for this artist is presently unavailable _ Sophie: noted January 2010!

John McDonald art critic for the Sydney Morning Herald wrote in 1997 that "her Eddie Burrup paintings represent an extraordinary creative leap for an artist in the twilight of her career...they sum up a lifetime's experience with Aboriginal people and have been made with consummate skill...they may yet be accepted as some of Elizabeth Durack's most important and original works".
Despite the fact she was the centre of great controversy over the identity of the Eddie Burrup works it would be a grave mistake to overlook her enormous legacy to the cultural heritage of Australia - long before it was fashionable she was challenging perceptions of this land and its people. A great overview on her website is well worth a look!

damn I wish I thought of that

I'm jealous of Carylann Loeppky  is a post from THE jealous curator which I just found through the lovely Nathalie at Nathalieetcetera.blogspot.com whose blog image below is of snowfall in Montreal where she lives and creates. Looking at her images made me feel nostalgic...although I must admit I have spent less than 10 days around snow in my life! These past few days it seems many North Americans have been posting images of the snow whilst we are coping with the heat here. This cosy cafe looks quite inviting!                                           
anyway...back to the jealous curator whose blog description reads 'a collection                                                                            of art work that inspires and depresses me. I know its good when I'm left thinking                                                                              DAMN I WISH I  THOUGHT OF THAT'. All the painted portraits are from Carrylann                                                           Loeppky - I do love that wall of mostly miniature portraits.

a painter for our time and only our time...

Richard Wright: winner of this year's Turner Prize
This title was taken from a review by Jonathan Jones of the prize winner of this years Turner Prize at the Tate Britain. It refers to the ephemeral nature of this work which will be painted over at the end of the show despite the painstaking work in its creation.

Read a wonderful post on the Turner prize winner this year by Deborah Barlow of Slow Muse. She has included 4 reviews from the UK art press. To read more on Deborah and her work click about where an interesting quote from Robert Hughes informs the idea of slow in relation to art. Deborah's posts consistently stimulate further thinking long after reading them. There is gravitas and a depth of engagement as befits the title Slow Muse.
I just found this particular translation of a poem by Rumi at Slow Muse - July 2007 which I have (and love) from another source:


The Guesthouse
This human being is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.


A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.


Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.


The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.


Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
Rumi

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!

concrete + time + ocean frontage