New Video + Seed Survey + Workshop = busy times at Seed.Art.Lab

Hi again,

      It's Sam,

I'm here for another exciting work day with Sophie after a very long road trip holiday over Xmas and the New year. 

My second time coming back to work has been just as eventful as my first last week. Unusually, last week we got together on Saturday because both of our personal commitments during the week had as running around like mad people. We decided to just run a work shop where we kind of did our own thing. We started off with sepia ink, painting with twigs and experimenting with different textures using seeds. 

All day Saturday I had a creature of some sort bouncing around my head so I let it out. I was quick to grab some water colours and some of Sophie's white ink. I could not of been happier with the end result. The picture below lets you have an exclusive sneak peak into the making of my creature and what happens when Sophie and I are working in the studio. Next to it is another one of my creature known as a 'Wispa'.

Sophie and I  were hard at work creating last week! An enjoyable 
peaceful time where we could both relax after our busy weeks.  

To see more of my artwork you can click on to  My Tumblr OR if  you are interested in any of my work feel free to email me here  and if you'd like updates on what i'm up to, you're welcome to like my facebook page.

We started  work today with a much needed staff meeting in a very creative and quirky cafe called the Shutter + Brew.

Sophie had fun distorting the picture to emphasise how quirky and unique this cafe really is!

Sophie and I talked about our survey that we set up late 2013.  Unfortunately we were very distracted with holidays and my being away so now we are back there is ONE WEEK to go before we will draw the prize. 

ENTER HERE to fill out the SURVEY FORM which will be sent to us with your answers and email address.

The Survey is really worth while ... and all results will be a great help in establishing understanding what people know about seeds  and current issues ... a very useful thing for the work of the Homage to the Seed project.

Just by filling in a few questions for us, you could win an original artwork by Sophie. You even have a chance to be in the running for the same prize if you share her new video! Enter Survey here.

I also want to tell you about the WORKSHOP Sophie has coming up on Wednesday 29th January. 

Because this workshop has not been publicised but arranged quickly to suit keen participants... we can offer a LAST MINUTE truly special price of $100 if you confirm HERE NOW and pay on booking ... there's two seats left at $100 each... normally $130 for a whole day starting at 10am.


DAY:   Wednesday, 29th February

TIME: 10 am til 4.30 pm

WHERE: 48 Meemar St, Chermside, Brisbane

WHAT YOU NEED: bring lunch to share ... morning + afternoon tea provided.

                                   Art materials provided + you can bring your favourite art mediums   

                                   + art journal/drawing book if you have one in progress.

FOCUS FOR WORKSHOP: 

Choose and research a favourite rainforest plant/fruit/seed pod ... ask Sophie re this!

You will spend the morning exploring various printing, drawing and painting techniques using any or all parts of the plant as the subject matter. 

In the afternoon you will work with these exciting approaches and ideas to produce a concertina style artist's book made from fine watercolour paper. 

Concertina book created by Barbara at 3 x 90 minute workshops I conducted
during a mini-Residency at Springbrook in December : Read more here.
Barbara had not created anything like this before. 25 yrs since leaving school
where she had not experienced being encouraged artistically. It was really
impressive seeing her observation shills out to good use... art classes would
could easily bring considerable satisfaction if she decides to continue on.

The work will then be documented onto a NEW Tumblr site celebrating seed and plant biodiversity...  for the purpose of building a body of colourful, informative work based on Australian plant species that can be shared with others. It will be important to know or discover the botanical name of the species you plan to work with... there are many places you can get information online if you are unsure about this. There are 2 Mac computers available for doing research in the studio.

Several participants booked in already have some work experience in the Botanical realm... not necessarily with art-making however. This  class is for anyone interested in learning more  ... no previous experience is necessary but of course is welcomed too!

journal pages from Springbrook

There is one last thing to share... 

Sophie has just had a VIDEO produced by the Global Crop Diversity Trust which was released this week. 

It takes 3 minutes to watch and is a survey of her various artworks with an audio recording of her work on Seeds and Biodiversity. She wrote all about this at her STUDIO blog here.

              To WATCH click on this U-TUBE link here:
    HOMAGE TO THE SEED, THE CROP TRUST AND ARTIST SOPHIE MUNNS


Anyone who shares this video for Sophie will go into a draw to win one of her recent watercolour works... so please leave a message here or email us if you share this online anywhere so you can be in the draw for FEBRUARY 1ST!

NB: SURVEY + VIDEO SHARE prize
is a water-colour work from this series!

Have a good week everyone and I hope to talk to you all soon!

Sam

Working large again ...

 Getting onto larger canvases again has been a good development over the last week in the studio. This first image shows the tentative start on the fresh canvas on the left.

I did have an idea of where I wanted to go with this... but not quite the colours.

I wanted the work to be loose and the linen surface to show through... that I was clear about.

After some consideration I decided I didn't want to persist with this cobalt blue.

I used Sepia ink to wash over the cobalt blue paint to tone it down considerably. The colours started to settle as a consequence of that.

'Seed collector's notations' 90 cm x 100 cm, acrylic and ink on linen

This is the painting more or less finished... four days later. I'm tempted to finesse a few areas... so I say more or less finished...  lightly!

close up of the work

The title struck me early one morning. I was thinking how these small symbols, dots and marks are like records, the documentation of seeds saved and counted, but not just in one place, by one person though. These notations are like inscriptions across time... the act of recording that countless people through history have done in order to take stock of seeds being saved. Long time inscribed in notations representing seeds.

In linguistics and semiotics, a notation is a system of graphic or symbols, characters and abbreviated expressions, used in artistic and scientific disciplines to represent technical facts and quantities by convention.^[1][2] Therefore, a notation is a collection of related symbols that are each given an arbitrary meaning, created to facilitate structured communication within a domain knowledge or field of study.

Standard notations refer to general agreements in the way things are written or denoted. The term is generally used in technical and scientific areas of study like mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology, but can also be seen in areas like business, economics and music.

'Seed collector's notations' is a name that settles on this work so as if it had been painted with that in mind form the start. NB: This text come from Wiki... please google Notation to find this page!

Noun[edit]

notation (countable and uncountable, plural notations)

1. (uncountable) The act, process, method, or an instance of representing by a system or set of marks, signs, figures, or characters.
2. (uncountable) A system of characters, symbols, or abbreviated expressions used in an art or science or in mathematics or logic to express technicalfacts or quantities.
3. (countable) A specific note or piece of information written in such a notation.

   
   

The next work from the week is this one below. Drawn to work in colours I associate with the rainforests of far north Qld I began this work by creating blocks of colour onto which I began by hand-printing the motifs in alternating colours.  

Lino-printed seed capsule cross-sections of the species Ternstroemia cherryi. 

Image found here.

The attraction to this symbol is partly in the balance of the 4 sections containing the seeds... and that in this abstracted interpretation of the actual seed capsule they form loosely a figure 8 or, one could say, an eternity symbol.

So as a symbol this is both universal in this form and particular in its direct reference to the species 

Fruit, side view, cross section and seed. Copyright W. T. Cooper
Image from here

Its been a while since I've worked with such intense colours ... it was something of a leap of faith. 

Today I attempted to photograph the work which is close to finished. 

I found it virtually impossible to get a photo that gave the correct proportions ... so with these shots I didn't worry about that. The composition is defined by the horizontal selvedge in the top section of the work. I had some linen fabric that wasn't quite the right size so in the end I made the fabric selvedge joins part of the composition ... something that's been a compositional device in my work for a number of years in some works, emphasising the natural fibre and a certain rawness.

Image taken in my studio gallery

'Ode to the Cherry Beech - Ternstroemia cherryi'

This image was the best as far as capturing the textural qualities of the work. All I can say is that its a painting best seen in the flesh for true representation of colour, texture and composition.

It's at that point I could call it finished but I will sit with it first!

Time to get some more stretcher frames and keep working whilst the inspiration's there.

Sepia ink and a week away!

Sepia ink was the substance that took my fancy when deciding what art materials to take on the recent mini-residency I undertook at Koonjewarre between Xmas and New Years. Although I packed up all kinds of materials to take along something about the darkish brown ink possessed my imagination.

"I was much interested, on several occasions, by watching the habits of an Octopus or cuttle-fish ... they darted tail first, with the rapidity of an arrow, from one side of the pool to the other, at the same instant discolouring the water with a dark chestnut-brown ink."

Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the Beagle

I'd quite forgotten that Sepia ink came from cuttlefish... not sure if it still does but I did very much like the hue and quality of the sepia I used!

Boxing Day I packed and went to the mountains 90 mins or so south of the city where I live. Springbrook National Park is a stunning destination and I'd not been there in 5 years and before that it was about 20 plus years since I'd stayed there so it was my good luck to have studio space on the mountain at a Retreat where I could work.

I wrote more on this at my Studio blog last week and I posted on my Homage to the Seed Facebook page regularly during the 6 days I was up there at Koonjewarre. 

Journal pages, working with twigs dipped in the Sepia ink.

Journal pages ... I was really taken with these 

Black Wattle seed pods that were so maze-like.

Stunning walks are abundant in this region.

 bush walking led to all kinds of magnificent views 

yet i loved the details as well as the grand vistas!

I gathered some small fruiting branches from a Rainforest species

and placed them over a quick drawing of the same species.

I liked noticing all the lines in these images

Candlenuts are a species I'd like to know more about. Late night

drawing I explored rainforest fruit species online... keen 

photographers documenting Far North Qld rainforest species

Carnavalia aralifolia ... actually from an 

image found on the internet from Far North Qld.

Loved this unique fern at the site where 12 of us went to volunteer 

clearing the invasive species Aristia, known also as Blue Stars. 

                  

This grass below was noticed in the area where we were weeding.

I pulled together this series of images that emphasise

 line and also tonal contrasts, mostly in Sepia. When

downloading images tonight I could see more clearly 

what had captured my attention and its struck me that

I was also seeing this environment in a much drier

state than my other trips. It can be such a wet spot!

I set up a temporary studio and offered 4 short 90 minute

 classes to those in the camp running whilst I was there.

Drawing these acacia pods was intriguing!

A few of the class participant's artworks...  it was a group of

 7 who joined me for the drawing class at the studio over the 

week, most of whom are never involved in art of any kind. It 

was exciting to see how much they relished working visually!

A concertina book made of beautiful watercolour paper was

an ideal challenge for many new to drawing and making.

Using twigs dipped in the Sepia ink was a popular 

approach to drawing. Various people tried this approach 

with gusto and returned each day to work in this manner. 

It was an ideal medium for the class to draw the seeds 

collected around this particular location.

Being able to easily visit stunning scenic

 sites nearby was such a treat. 

This tree below was massive, however it was 

damaged and the lower trunk was all that remained.

More linear complexity...    

                     

And a message noted down in one of the class session by a participant...

The focus of classes was Seeds and Biodiversity...  seeds were collected from around the grounds and  the Studio was lined with artworks and material relevant to the theme. 

We had two guest speakers over the week in this class. Also in residence was Peter Lawson whose career and subsequent years have been spent working around landscape and conservation, including Marine conservation as well. He spoke for well over and hour and we asked questions and clarified our understanding of the background to his experience and how in step his work has been with the unfolding of some major conservation themes in Australia. 

He started off at Forestry school around the 60's and talked about influences and perspectives on conservation that existed at the time and how he moved from Forestry to Conservation, Forest and Lands and then to Conservation and Environment over decades as the portfolios evolved and new departments were formed to deal with the increasingly sophisticated understandings of natural resources and how they best be managed and sustained. In the 90's a move to Qld took him into new work agendas and projects. Currently he is still involved with the Springbrook National Park through a connection with the Springbrook Rescue Project.

This dense and stimulating dialogue, and another similarly informative session with Deanna Scott talking about her extensive work in Bio-security within her Qld Govt role, provided an incredibly informative background to our exploration of seeds and Biodiversity in the workshops. 

Arrangements to go to the mountains in December were quite late in the making ... and I am very grateful that a plan that started out in a light-hearted chat evolved into such a poignant, educational and high quality experience. We discussed Eco-tourism whilst up there and its growing relevance... access to volunteering, education, projects and such. One has to wonder at the alarming waste of opportunity given how much movement there is on the planet and how often engaging more deeply with a place is passed over.

The same people who gave or engaged in the talks,  and took part in my workshops were also volunteering at the Springbrook Rescue Project down the road on New Years Eve. There was plenty of time for people to disappear and do what they wished, or go walking, or take off somewhere for afternoon tea even... but what was clear when I left was the way there had been a real engagement with place.

I arrived home late yesterday afternoon and have been missing this extraordinary region, its dense vegetation and wild weather changes all day long, the wallabies and the cool... low clouds hugging the mountain for part of the week. Today I downloaded photos, took care of some business but otherwise spent time catching up with my thoughts and processing this wonderful experience in the mountains.    

I've many more photos but thought I'd stay in theme here at this post.

Sending you all my very best greetings for a Happy New Year and a wish that your 2014 be a year to remember for a number of truly rewarding and uplifting reasons!
                   

felices fiestas!

found at twitter...

Its warm here and even though I'm not at the beach this feels like a fitting image to share with peeps from the northern hemisphere.

Its actually late here as I type ... the end of christmas day... so I've added this image looking into my studio and house. It seems all the neighbours are away. We are still getting to know the neighbourhood so its an eerie feeling. Our former home always had more people around and late night revellers to boot.

SEED.ART.LAB studio is closed for a week. Back after New Years!

Whilst I don't speak spanish I do rather like the notion of joyful festivity... and I think it a good wish to send around the globe when we don't all subscribe to the same creeds, religious or cultural festivals. As many have a holiday at this time of year and the same calendar is quite common around the globe its a punctuation mark that means something to all of us ... whatever that may be!

We chose to stay in this year... a new home makes it appealing to do so. We'd have been at my niece Lara's in a flash if that didn't involve a busy freeway trip for 90 mins or more. On top of travelling south tomorrow one's 83 yr old mother voted to avoid the roads and Lara agreed it was wise. This year we celebrated her marriage to the lovely Dwight and 10 days ago were up for her 30th birthday and an announcement she will be having a July baby. So we will visit in January for sure... and come July keep us away!!!

Imagine my mothers delight when her 5 yr old great grandson William, son of Lara's brother Tristan and wife Renee, phoned this morning to say his Mummy was having a baby. Olivia, my mother sat outside all morning counting all the July birthday's there'd be in the family with such relish! As her birthday is July 31 she hopes either Renee or Lara will bring her a very special birthday present!

It's been a pleasant day and I've pottered a bit in the kitchen... very low key nibbles today which in the heat is great. Red papaya for breakfast. Simple things laid out for lunch... and this afternoon a taste of home-baked goods given as gifts this week.

The Panforte was made by Jane's mother Vivienne who's mother is Italian and no doubt they have cooked this panforte recipe for years. The other tiny Xmas cakes were from Olivia's friend Stella who is quite famous for her brilliant cooking I'm sure. She is the only person I know who takes her treats to cafe owners she befriends so they can try her wares. The love her... so do we! She's young 80+

 year old and gift giving small treats is something she does all the time!

There other thing I'm doing is sorting things to take with me on a little mini-residency for 5 days.

My rationale in taking this short opportunity was to look into lining up a longer stay with hosts at Koonjewarre and Springbrook Rescue - part of the Australian Rainforest Conservation Society.

Their work consists of:

Springbrook Rescue” is a multi-stage project to protect and restore the World Heritage rainforests of the Springbrook region in South-East Queensland, Australia.

It involves seven programs:

1  acquiring land to expand the World Heritage area

2   restoring critical habitat and landscape connectivity

3   community engagement in World Heritage protection, presentation and restoration

4   science programs to guide restoration and monitoring

5   protecting World Heritage through better governance

6   presenting World Heritage values for their protection and community well being

7   partnerships to realize a shared vision

NB: text from website page!

Because I'm tagging along this week on a pre-organised camp I am doing a lovely exchange with them where I have a generous work space and I will offer 90 min classes over three mornings to 10 or more people. I will focus my seeds and biodiversity art classes around the work being done onsite to weed out invade species and restore the bio-diverse landscape which is deemed a Biodiversity hotspot.

Its come at a great time as I have been working non-stop to set up the new studio and introduce my plans for Seed.Art.Lab, and importantly, after months this year spent in limbo whilst relocating homes, these past 6 weeks have seen a spike in income that was... how to put it... absolutely about time.

click here to visit

I am so thankful to the support of a great many people who have visited, sent messages, made purchases at my online shop or in person, shared my project with friends and importantly set ideas up for next year so that there will be ongoing events, workshops and such.

Going backwards $10,000 due to stalled projects, expenses and new studio set up costs saw me holding my breath and anxious to turn that situation around. $10,000 is peanuts to some but I know many artists see it as something considerable and we don't like to spend when we're not earning.

Being able to get back on track makes me incredibly grateful for each and every bit of support and kindness that came my way. I am finishing 2013 in a far better place than when it started actually ... and despite the unnerving panorama of global challenges which I do, by nature, take very seriously I feel my faith in the kindness of many absolutely assures me of the colossal numbers of wonderful people on this planet that want it to be the best world it can be for all.

Recently starting "internships" at the studio has been a surprising joy. I've long enjoyed working with teens and children but it was an incredible stroke of luck that two separate conversations led me to intuitively put forward the idea of work experience to Sam and her mother back in May, and to Jane when I met her finally in person at my opening weekend after helping her in March with research via email.

That we decided to call it an internship was a mutual decision between the girls and I. They've been coming once a week for 5 or 6 hours. The focus of their time is spent between my projects and their own, depending on what else is happening at the time. They both wrote blog posts for me on their own artwork and their individual experiences here at the studio as they come on different days and have not met as yet.

Read Jane's post.

Read Sam's post.

We discuss what it means for them to be in a studio, slowly observing the full gamut of my particular art practice, getting glimpses into challenges and down-sides as well as the wonderful aspects of this vocation. Both families are delightful. Sam's mother put it to me from the start to ask 15 yr old Sam to help with anything useful for the studio business. This was liberating as I then knew there was a very clear understanding of my role.

Sam's father, until his recent untimely death, had an international career as an award-winning Architectural Illustrator so her understanding of a Studio Practice is very much about conducting a professional life and a business as much as exploring the depth and breadth of one's creative life. What has been exciting to see in her is that she understands the pragmatics of this vocation but is also utterly whimsical and enamoured with expressing her creative passion. Her joy in art-making is infectious!

Jane ushers in a kind of energy and experience that is different but equally inspiring. She brings me ideas every time she walks in the door. Have I thought of doing so and so... what about this or that? We laugh, talk and work on some of the tasks that she has essentially reminded me of the importance of.

Time soon passes and its been great to see her shift out of her heavily academic Year 12 mode of thinking and art making and into a period of  freedom from academic direction... to realise there is now a window of opportunity for her to make marks and put down ideas that she feels like exploring... certainly at a least until she takes up University if that's what she chooses to do next. There's a fluid exchange... we go between working on something for my deadlines to thinking through things of importance to her quite effortlessly.

Ideal really for school students ... much of their direct experience of art at this point is more likely the busy school classroom, generally without commercial context or broader world engagement, apart from referencing ideas of artists. Perhaps if they were doing 5 days a week for a month or longer all this would be a different experience. But one day a week gives a solid grounding in the studio reality and 6 days to go off and ruminate on that and find whatever they might like to explore inspired from their time in the studio.

More days are planned for January and I look forward to that.

One thing I want to share before I sign off came up lately when approached by the Global Crop Diversity Trust re an image for their Christmas greeting. As a not-for-profit they were interested in connecting and doing Homage to the seed promotion in exchange for non-exclusive use of the artwork. Having followed their organisation since 2010 when my project was taking off it was an inquiry I was delighted to follow through on.


This was one of the artwork images I sent to them... 'Perennial Symbols from the Botanical Realm I'.  It was decided to crop a section of this work for a closer view suiting the card the were going to have printed and also send via email!

Original work: 120 cm x 60 cm... one half of a dyptich.

To read more about this go to the Homage to the seed blog post I wrote this week where I described the way this painting evolved over two long years.

The cropped section below is now available as a Limited Edition print from my Seed.Art.Lab online shop here.

You can call my mobile on 0430 599 344 if you have inquiries. Or leave me a message on how to contact you! I've been organising to use Paypal so that makes it easier at the online shop.

It seems like a good note to end the year on really. To be able to share my artwork with the organisation that works at every level to conserve the seeds of the crops we rely on everyday all around the planet is a satisfying thought.

And tomorrow I go up to Springbrook National Park for a 5 day residency where I will be focusing on Seeds and biodiversity whilst learning about the efforts being made by Springbrook Rescue Action                                                                              to restore land from invasive species and also deforestation that occured decades ago.  

I'm finding myself falling asleep at the key board after rather a long day... so I'll be off for now.
Christmas blessings to followers of this tradition and my warmest wishes that your holiday be a great pleasure everyone!!

Image found at Springbrook Rescue