"the world is alive, I could feel it"

I have this image of myself reaching up, 2009

The words in the title of this post were found at the top of Amy Wilson's website almost hidden in the  lush water-colour painted leaves. This website is a delight to visit - I'm drawn to world's created by those who dare to conceive an independant system of thought or visual response to their world. It is less important for me the genre, the format, the 'style'of work, the materials employed that whether there is a rich core to the work ...what is being plumbed in order to produce and offer something to the viewer.
...this is why my own blog is by nature so eclectic  -  it simply gives me space to log the many and various things that absorb my attention...whether in passing, or in an altogether more intense and lingering way.

Now to the splendidly original Amy Wilson... the  reason I am posting here today. See Amy's blog too!

I am thinking of the blurring of the space between things, 2009

I am thinking of having a million choices, 2009-2010

I thought endlessly about creating a place to hide, 2008

we walked along the edge of the river, 2007

IT TAKES TIME TO TURN A SPACE AROUND....

It Takes Time To Turn A Space Around, 2010, is a 10” x 280” seven panel drawing by Amy Wilson that was commissioned for her first public project. The 150’ outdoor installation is currently on view in lower Manhattan’s West Thames Park and is part of the Downtown Alliance’s Re: Construction Program.

Working from the artist’s original drawing, a printed exterior grade vinyl banner was created and secured to a portion of construction fencing which surrounds a future park and playground.  Wilson’s image is one of her iconic girls fixing up a field by cutting down old growth and weeds and planting flowers and trees.

Although Wilson’s work normally contains handwritten text, the installation at West Thames is a version in which no text exists. At the gallery this month we are exhibiting the final version, which incorporates the narrative taken from stories and observations about the artist’s life.

THIS PROJECT IS SPONSORED BY BRAVIN LEE PROGRAMS:

It Takes Time To Turn A Space Around, 2010, is a 10” x 280” seven panel drawing by Amy Wilson that was commissioned for her first public project. The 150’ outdoor installation is currently on view in lower Manhattan’s West Thames Park and is part of the Downtown Alliance’s Re: Construction Program.

Working from the artist’s original drawing, a printed exterior grade vinyl banner was created and secured to a portion of construction fencing which surrounds a future park and playground.  Wilson’s image is one of her iconic girls fixing up a field by cutting down old growth and weeds and planting flowers and trees.

Although Wilson’s work normally contains handwritten text, the installation at West Thames is a version in which no text exists. At the gallery this month we are exhibiting the final version, which incorporates the narrative taken from stories and observations about the artist’s life.

BravinLee programs are sponsoring this event

BravinLee programs opened in the spring of 2006 with a commitment to drawings and works on paper. After 15 years of having a "traditional" gallery Bravin and Lee have chosen to specialize. BravinLee programs will privilege and concentrate on this single complex and beautiful art form.
BravinLee programs will work with emerging, as well as established artists. Strong working relationships with other dealers is crucial to their program. The gallery looks forward to mounting simultaneous exhibitions with their colleagues and offering a platform for artists to exhibit their works on paper. In addition to project oriented exhibitions they also represent several artists and act as their primary gallery.

POST SCRIPT:

NB:  It was lovely to her from the artist herself. I found a certain point of connection with one of Australia's most well known cartoonist's, Michael Leunig, who is also a painter and printmaker among other things. He has also brought controversy to bear on certain subjects a times...much can be found at via Google about he and his work or visit his website .
Amy Wilson's work is hardly not in the same vein - but there is an interest in human vulnerability and what makes people feel certain things that I think is running parallel. And for this reason I think it is important - what is being voiced and depicted is of substance and does in fact matter!

Leunig quoted Debuffet in an article - Love in the Milky Way in The Melbourne Age Newspaper 2 years ago:

Jean Dubuffet once said a fascinating thing about the world of art and I trust he would forgive me if I applied his words to human society:

"They outdo themselves celebrating a sham art in order to stifle true art. This stifling is the task of the public authorities of culture in well-governed nations. When the pompous platforms of culture are erected, and awards and laurels come raining down, then flee as fast as you can, there'll be little hope for art."

Well ......Lets celebrate diversity of views, of art making, of ways of being as Mlle Paradis did so well in this post last week!

And I'll leave you with this image from her post... Thanks MP!

favourites...

...they've been boxed away under the house for 2 years since I moved house ( and life interstate!) ...I unpacked them to take to the Japanese Teahouse at the Gardens on Sunday... I have drawn these, painted oils of them, drunk teas and coffee from them and they remind me of home and friends far away.... Now they will be used for drinking tea with new friends since they've finally been unpacked!

MAPS PART 4: Aboriginal Australia

Click to enlarge

This remarkable map was developed by Dr David Horton and the Australian Institute of Aboriginal amd Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) in 1994 and you can read more here at inquiryBITES if you go to the top right hand sidebar and click on The Critical Classroom then in the left sidebar under Categories go down to Topic: Map of Australia for the story.

Its remarkable for many reasons...  critically because it reminds non-indigenous Australians like myself immediately of the deeper story of this continent - the one that was certainly covered up very profoundly during my school days.

These sites are highly informative in the area of eduction for teachers of Aboriginal and Torres Straits islanders and for all interested in topical issues past, present and future in this community. Read about the two women behind these sites under 'A brief Story of Us' on The Critical Classroom site . Leesa Watego and Lisa Buxton are clearly extremely active in in their various fields and Leesa is a very media savvy woman indeed... She seems to have an impressive foothold on the net - read her google profile to see what I mean! It must be a busy household... 4 children and partner to Vernon Ah Kee who you can read about here referring to when he represented Australia at the Venice Biennale last year. You'll find a valuable introduction piece to read here at the Sydney Morning Herald to put you in the picture on this exceptional artist. I posted something here as well on the Homage blog in February on a Urban Aboriginal Artist Collective called proppaNOW that this artist is active in here in Brisbane.

Now for something very unique discovered at one of Leesa's sites. 

Sydney Rock Art Engravings found through Google Maps: sorry but these dont open on clicking!

One that I looked up on the google map took me via the engrossing SYDNEY ABORIGINAL ROCK ENGRAVINGS weblink to the Elvina Track Engraving Site at Kuringai National Park.

The photograph above shows the aboriginal "emu-in-the-sky" constellation in the sky. It won its creator, Barnaby Norris, third prize in the prestigious 2007 "Eureka" awards.
To see the "constellation", look at the dark dust-clouds, not the stars!
Below it is the emu engraving at the Elvina engraving site, in Kuring-Gai Chase National Park, near Sydney The constellation is positioned above the engraving as it appears in real life in Autumn.

 You will find a link to aboriginal astronomy here as well so it is worth hopping over to look over this magnificent site. Posting this prompted memory of so many things... like the once-in-a-lifetime-trip I took to Aboriginal Rock Art Sites all over NSW - 18 years ago - as cook on a 2 week camping trip for a dozen people from all over who were attending a conference in Townsville on Aboriginal Rock Art following this tour. We spent 2 days at sites very close to Sydney - but I would have to search for papers to be sure now this was one of them.
What a memorable trip!

Well that is the last post for the time-being I will dedicate to maps. There is so much to explore just here.
I hope your have enjoyed this wild journey around the globe (and into outer space) in these 4 posts!

.

mappa mundi - 'sheet of the world'

map: ORIGIN early 16th cent.: from medieval Latin mappa mundi, literally ‘sheet of the world,’ from Latin mappa ‘sheet, napkin’ + mundi ‘of the world’ ( genitive of mundus).


The past two posts have contained maps and this one is no exception except here we go back centuries and see historical and imaginative works that contain absorbing histories. These images all come from the admirable Jane Librizzi at The Blue Lantern weblog. Click on the title of each image to go to the excellent posts at this blog.

The Walled City of Paris























Parma: Walled City of the Etruscans - 15th Century fanciful map of an old city dating back to the Bronze Age, c 3000 BC - June 4th Post. One of the commenters to this post on the Blue Lantern referred to the Etruscan Museum outside Florence which I remember making a point of going to a long time ago, having lightly touched on this wonderful culture during school days and having a lingering fascination years after seeing the lively frescoes and artifacts in text books.



















Image below found at www.themysteriousetruscans.com



Tomb of the Bulls Detail, Tarquinia


Fanciful Cities: Franco Fortunato - 5th June post contains wonderful images and information that includes references to the artist Fortunato, the Italian poet and writer Italo Calvino and the family of Jane Librizzi from weblog 'Blue Lantern'.

speaking of mapping things...

I n s p i r e d  by Monday's post on artist Shannon Rankin - a extraordinary re-interpretor of maps - I was fascinated to visit The Long Now Blog this morning. Clicking on 'long term art' led me to some wonderful finds.

The first is titled Solar Beat and allows us to hear the kind of music our Solar System makes!

Click on Solar Beat - a project by White Vinyl Designs that uses a virtual Orrery as a type of music box to see what type of music our solar system makes…  also at the April 5 post at The Long Now Blog. Go visit...its worth it!

The next mapping project I have for you is Maps of Deep Time from April 20th on this same blog. To enlarge these Maps for proper viewing click here ....and at the same time check out this unique blog that is from a Foundation given to 'Long-Term Thinking' - and isn't that a damn good idea! 

History of Major Contagion map by Haisam Hussein. Also by Hussein is this Telling Tales Map below.





The Art of Knowing graphics by Joyce Pendola follows;




A little about The Long Now:

What's with the name?

The term was coined by one of our founding board members, Brian Eno. Upon moving to New York City, Brian found that "here" and "now" meant "this room" and "this five minutes" as opposed to the larger here and longer now that he was used to in England. We have since adopted the term as the title of our foundation as we try to stretch out what people consider as now.

Guidelines for a long-lived, long-valuable institution:

• Serve the long view
• Foster responsibility
• Reward patience
• Mind mythic depth
• Ally with competition
• Take no sides
• Leverage longevity

I have actually thought of other additions I could make on this theme of Mapping I've recently discovered... so I'll save them for my next post and get out into the sunshine now on this slightly chilly morning and warm up whilst eating my bowl of porridge! Back soon...

a penchant for maps...

Tonight I was clicking through some places I like to visit but haven't for a while. You know how it goes - one minute I was at some obscure but fascinating site, then at Huffington Post, then the guardian.co.uk which lead to BLDG BLOG and a wonderful post titled NEW WORLD ORDER which I noticed at the end credited Data is Nature , another wonderful must see site/blog if you have an interest in how art may cross-pollinate with science.

New World Order features -
             "Artist Shannon Rankin does amazing things with maps. Treating them as mere pieces of decorated paper to be manipulated—clipping out spirals, folding crevassed roses of ridges and faultlines, pinning up confetti-like clouds of circles and zigzags—she creates "new geographies, suggesting the potential for a broader landscape."  TEXT: Bldg blog


















Please do go across the post for a much more comprehensive introduction to this wonderful artist. You'll find the link to the artist's website there as well. Maps have a strong lure for many ... however I found some interesting directions being taken in this particular artist's work. Some time ago I found a blog dedicated to artists using maps .... I'm reminded to go back looking for that!

*About DataisNature:


Dataisnature is a weblog of personal and recreational research containing information and links covering the following topics - Robot Art, Algorithmic and Procedural Art, Computational Aesthetics, Glitch Aesthetics, Vj’ing, Video Art, Computational Archaeology and similar subjects. My impetus behind this weblog is to share and collate my findings in a central repository and publish for the benefit of interested communities.

events, events and more events....

I dont know about you but there seems to be a lot on at the moment. Someone said to me the other day that when you live in a hot, humid climate it makes sense to load everything on to the calendar at this time of year... its our winter...there are few holidays this time of year and so it is the time when things get very busy...and why not!
Before I tell you about these (local) events I am going to quickly find and post some images that appealed to me this week and you will see why!


...first up...I am going to come along with Mlle Paradis next time she goes to this place....













anyone else coming for the trip? Im not going to tell you where it is...go look here! She has a lot more wonderful places to take us up her sleeve!

....and after that exertion ....

how about this....




or even better really...for all those books waiting to be read.... the perfect spot...




these images come from Robyn at the lovely garden rooms. Pop over now and see more on this delightful (For me just now - escapist) theme!
This window reverie image made my heart leap...perhaps it reminded me of a wonderful home I had in Melbourne over 15 years ago now...or maybe just the aesthetic of absolute rightness about the parts that make this stunning whole - its the kind of beauty I adore in spaces... I want to be there... even though I dont know where is!

OK..now that I have gotten that part of the post out of the way....get ready to write in your diaries.... if any of you reading this actually live in this same city as me... its social calendar time!

I just looked up the website and it is fabulous.... not only that ... I have a CD of music by this musician that I love and have often had classes draw to it so I am really, really disappointed that I have a dinner to attend this friday night when this wonderful show will be on at the Botanic gardens for the World Wildlife Fund.  w:   www.linseypollak.com 

The Extinction Room

The Extinction Room is a solo music performance piece by Linsey Pollak. It is a sound  piece creating music from the sounds of endangered & extinct animals. In this performance of approximately 45 minutes,  the audience will wear blindfolds  and be taken on a journey into the Extinction Room….. a sound archive of endangered  and extinct species …… the calls of animals that no longer exist……or may soon not  exist. These sounds cry out to us in perhaps a more immediate and emotive way than  words can describe. They are a cry from the animals that share and have shared this  planet with us. This is an audio Library of loss, of despair AND of HOPE…….because  we can do something about it if we act NOW This is a solo performance using live looping (a process using real time instantaneous  recording of each layer of music) playing an Electronic wind instrument that plays  the  sound samples of animal calls. All the sounds used are animal calls and nothing has  been pre-recorded……it’s all being created as you listen. NEXT:

and last but not least:

If you pop over to my studio blog you can read much more on this and the venue... This is opening on June 18th and I will fill you in again before then... I am artist no: 4 in the pick-a-box. This will be a lot of fun so come along you Bris-based people...I'll see you there!

PS still painting but enjoying the process... 10 artists over `10 days... very doable!
caio,
S x