Lost Aussie on the loose

Some Strange Recipe

Take some drywall compound pasted onto rattan, blend inks in generous measure, add one photo of a weird  light pole taken in a small town far far away in the Wilde Olde West of Arizona, baste in Photoshop for 5 minutes until tasty...and there you have one funky coloured piece of ...ARt?

The "ART" of Collaboration

I've spent the day catching up on house chores, unpacking and working on a few projects that were waiting on my desk, one of which was to create a digital piece with the theme of time.
I decided to use an angel image which taken from an original photo taken by Nancy Donaldson.  The last night we were in Phoenix the three of us started messing about altering photos which she kindly provided.  The altered pic' came out predominantly red and gray but I've rescanned it and tweaked it around in Photoshop (surprise, surprise) then added a few layers of painty red as well as incorporating a stock photo of a clock and blending the layers. I love the way it turned out - thanks to Nancy for sharing her pics!
...now back to unpacking!

To Infinity and Beyond..

.....well almost!
..as I've just returned from a fabulous 10 days in the state of Arizona!  What an incredible place.  The red dust, rocks and bright blue sky are so much like Australia that it almost looks like home..and the locals make you feel like that for sure!  Even the toasty warm heat made my freckles smile!

The first few days of my stay in AZ were spent attending Art Unraveled.  It was a great event, the classes were fun and it was especially delightful to connect with friends both old and new and put names to faces that had merely been blog addresses or names on a Yahoo group up until now.

The latter part of my stay in sunny AZ was spent with my art buddy Sylvia Luna.  She and her husband generously opened their home to myself and another crazy art-bird, Nancy, who hails from Canada.  For several days we buzzed around Arizona, shopping and taking art class in Phoenix before heading out to the "Wild West" to check out some neat little towns on the way to visit the Grand Canyon.
We had a great trip and a wonderful tour of places that I have never seen before.  The three of us gals were in Hog-Photo-heaven with our patient chauffeur stopping at all sorts of weird and wonderful spots in order to appease our need for the ultimate 'artsy' pic!

Pics of the Grand Canyon were a little less than successful but here are a few anyway.  It is such a massive sight that photos dont really seem to do justice to the visual impact that seeing the Canyon has.  Also it happened to be a wet and windy day up there...in the middle of summer...go figure!

I'll post more pics and info about classes and what not when I have finished unpacking.

Ciao for now!

How Will You Write Your Story?

I listened to an interview on Bravo tonight with David Duchovny.  Aside from being a very well educated and good looking dude, he posed one question, in response to another, that was very interesting,  and that is - "How do you want your story told? .. From the perspective of Victim or as something or someone else?...

Great food for thought!  Especially as I see so much angst, travail and anguish in many of the blogs i read.  Should we not just be content with taking the journey and accepting it's up's and downs?  Riding the wave so that the peaks and troughs mean something?  Seeing change and growth as just that and not some debit of our own personal space and comfort zone?

(OK, I'm in a contemplative mood, so shoot me!)

How will you write YOUR story?

(and yes, I deliberately snapped the BACK of the sunflower....just to be a bit contrary!)

From Photo to Finish

We headed off to Philly today with a list-long of chores and things to do.
A quick visit to PEARL Art store to pick up some last minute supplies for ArtUnraveled and a visit to Calumet Photography to check out printers.  I'm within inches of shelling out for a new wide-format printer, but if truth be told, more scared at the prospect of owning it and what to do with the work that I can create with it than anything else.  It's a monster puppy and will take print papers and  substrates that are 24" wide and goodness knows how long!  It could be exciting though!

Along the way I snapped some of my favoured urban trash pics.  The original photo is off some ceramic art on the side of a building in Philadelphia.

A little strategic cropping and some tweaks in Photoshop and it looks quite different... but fun nonetheless... and very much in the spirit of the City of Brotherly Love!!

Getting Ready

Getting my head around packing my bags (yet again) and heading off to Phoenix next week to attend Art Unraveled.  I'll be taking some fun classes and best of all meeting up with friends that up until now I have only known via the internet.

The last few days of my sojourn down there will be spent visiting with my art buddy Sylvia Luna ...can't wait!

I'm going to have to take a quick trip into Philly on the weekend to visit the PEARL art store to pick up a few things that are not general stock around here....And in light of recent airline events I am probably going to have to give my packing strategy a bit of re-think.  Other than that, I should be good to go!

From Paper to Digital Pen

I seem to have run the gamut of collage techniques in the last few days.  The Birds n B's is one of the good old'e goop and paper pieces, part of a series of 12 others created as part of an international mailart exchange that I have been doing for several months now.

"Seeing is Believing" is  a digital piece created from a couple of weirdly disparate photographs.  One, believe it or not, is of trees taken on the winter slopes in NC.  The other predominant pic is of some graffitti that captured my eye on my last trip to Philly!

I'm having fun with both processes.

A Little Like Alice

There are times when I skip between my two worlds that I feel a bit like "ALice".  Where the reality of one space and another are actually quite a mystery.

In the five something weeks that I was away, I have now misplaced half the things that I moved into the new house six weeks before I left.  It's almost like starting over...either that or I have a major Altzheimer's issue!

At least I am remembering which side of the road I am supposed to be driving on...well, most of the time anyway!

A Fat Book Affair

I've been working hard today at getting back into the groove of creating pieces that have a theme specific.

This is a 5"x5" page, back and front, for a collaborative production to commemorate Art N Soul 2006 to be held in Portland in October.

This may be Rev1, we'll see if the muse agrees.

Either way, it's going to be a fun re-union with many old friends and plenty of new!

Taking Care of Business

I'm slowly getting settled back into life here in DE.  Home chores to see to, dust bunnies to catch and just taking care of the things that the corporate dude can't do!

At the same time I am working my way through the stash of photos that I took while I was away, fiddling and tinkering with the ones I like as well as working through the list of art projects that have amassed in my absence.  There are also a few round robin journals that need working in and supply lists that need to be assembled before I head off to Art Unraveled in a couple of weeks time.  I probably need to think about making some trades for that too...never a dull moment!