mojo thoughts + 21st century conundrums

I think I may have my printing mojo back. It's been a while. But sometimes I think it's good to step away and do other things. It can be quite conducive to letting the creative juices percolate.

Today's carving session was musically accompanied by:

1. Holly Throsby
2. Jen Cloher
3. The Jezabels
4. Sarah Blasko
5. The Be Good Tanyas.

A fabulously talented combination of Australian and Canadian musicians indeed! And really good to do some intensive carving to. In case you ever wanted to know.

Now have you heard about all the Pinterest fuss going on? It seems the web is full of debate about Pinterest inspired copyright and digital identity crises at the moment. And here I was thinking it was just pretty eye candy. To be honest though, the first time I looked at Pinterest (about 2 weeks ago) I found one of my woodblock prints pinned there without any reference to me, the creator or to where they'd pinned it from (my shop). I was a bit annoyed when I saw that. Then after I signed up to play on Pinterest I realised that when you click on a pinned image it takes you back to the original source so you can see who owns it. Eventually. I was still cross that the original pinner hadn't taken the time to mention who owned the print though. And then on Twitter I noticed some artists saying a big thank you to people who had pinned their work because they'd receive enquiries as a result. And one person I know sold a painting due to the publicity it received on Pinterest.

Then Flickr made some moves in response to the Pinterest copyright debate. They disabled the pin function on copyright protected Flickr images.

So it seems that it's a bit of a complex situation. A real 21st century conundrum.

Any thoughts?

two worlds fusing

With the publication of this article in the International Journal of Art and Design Education my various worlds have fused together. In a good way, that is. But fused together all the same. It's taking some getting used to.

You see I wrote the article about this world, our world - art and design blogland - a world I've been part of since 2007. But I wrote it as an article for publication in an academic journal. Because, and you might not know this, academia is the other world I inhabit. So in a funny way this has been coming for a while now - the two worlds I am part of fusing, melding, joining together.

So what's the article about? Well friends, stringent copyright rules prevent me from giving too much away here. The abstract tells you a little. I titled it 'Art and design blogs: a socially-wise approach to creativity'. So that tells you something also. I used an ethnographic approach to writing it, as someone who has been in this community, our community, for a long time now. I wrote about what I observed over many years by being a blogger in the world of art and design. Over the years I've noticed some really amazing things about the art and design blogging community and I wanted to share this with an academic audience. I wrote about how social it is, how practice is shared (not secreted or hidden away), the support that exists for each others' creative practice, the kind of generosity that flows on a daily basis and the sense of community that has developed over the years as a result of all of this. I also wrote about creativity and the approaches to it that I have witnessed in our community. And I observed all this specifically through 25 blogs that I have read closely for many years. These particular blogs were at the heart of my ethnographic study (blog names were not mentioned in the article of course).

Why am I telling you about the article? Why not just read it? Well yes, you could, of course, if you have access to a university library and therefore can download it for free. Otherwise you will have to pay for a copy via the journal itself because frustratingly, that's the way the academic publishing world works at the moment.

So if you do get to read it I hope you enjoy it. I also hope the academic audience I wrote it for will learn a lot more about our community, because let's face it, what's not to love?

UPDATE. Good news: I've just discovered the journal publishers have an online library where at the moment, you can access my article for free. Click here to go to the library. My article is the 4th one down the list under 'original articles'. Love to hear your thoughts on it.

recommended

Carolina | especially their brioche french toast with stewed summer fruit, mascarpone and mint. An old shoe repair shop reinvented as a cafe on Nicholson St, East Brunswick.

IQ84 | Murakami's new 3 volume-fiction piece. In paper form it comes as a massive 1000 page hard back brick. Not easy on your arms, hands or hips when reading. Go the ereader version if you can.

Hibiki-an | for beautiful Japanese green tea. Nothing available in Australia compares to what they have on offer through their online shop. Try their sencha range. The sencha karigane is very good.

Holly Throsby. Especially her album 'Team'.

in the heat:

| cold cherries straight from the fridge

| Maggie Beer's Quince & Bitter Almond ice cream

| gin & tonics with slices of lemon or lime and lots of ice

botanical and textile happenings

I've been drawing. Without realising it I've been absorbing the garden and the summer weather resulting in the production of botanical sketches. Which then morphed into a set of three botanical cards printed on post consumer recycled card stock.

And this morning I was able to hear and meet Clara Vuletich speak at Harvest Workroom. Clara's the designer in residence this week at Harvest (visiting Melbourne from London) where she's focusing on the idea of 'local cloth'. She showed us the ideas that she's worked through over the week in both visual and verbal forms. We were also able to hear her talk about her interest in social innovation in textile design. Really fascinating and inspiring stuff! Clara's blog 'love & thrift' can be found here. Enjoy the rest of your stay Clara and thanks Harvest for a fab session!

GOMA & the drawing room

In my travels north I visited the Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) in Brisbane to see the Matisse exhibition. The show is a large collection of his drawings and prints and while I'm impressed that such an extensive exhibition has made it all the way to Australia, I wasn't all that fussed with it. Maybe I'm not such a Matisse fan?

BUT the best thing by far about going to GOMA to see the Matisse show is the Drawing Room at the end of the exhibition. It's amazing and very beautiful. The clip above gives you an idea of what they've done at GOMA to encourage people to sit down and draw after seeing Matisse's work. Both pen and paper and digital formats were on offer for people to draw with. And there was even a model lounging on a gorgeous sofa for life drawing. Everyone was loving it! It was incredibly inspiring to see so many people in the Drawing Room sitting down and, well, drawing. Kudos to GOMA for organising this.

And if you want to interact with the technology from the Drawing Room at home just click here. You can email it to a friend afterwards if you like.

So maybe just skip through the show if you're not much a Matisse fan like me and hop on into the Drawing Room for some drawing and inspiration and a few moments of real beauty.

2012

The succulent flowers in the back garden are in bloom again. Some have even started drying out and fading to pink (from orange).

The new year is here and I'm feeling quiet. I'm resting, reading, gardening and playing lots of spelltower. I also just did a huge driving trip up north totaling 4ooo kms. That's a of lot of music listening and singing time!

So 2012, year of the dragon. What do you have install for us all. Eh?

a market worth its salt (& pepper)

The Harvest Xmas Market was so wonderful last year that you'd be completely mad (IMHO) to miss it this year. But get there early; it's going to be packed & crazy & super fun! And just look at the line up of talent.

18th December.