Antarctica - A progress report

Mt Terror, foreground, and Mt Erebus

I recently achieved a major milestone in my project to stitch a scale model of Antartica. The idea was to start with Ross Island, and see how it worked, felt and looked before deciding whether to tackle the big continent. Following historical precedent I have used Ross Island as my base from which to assess the task ahead, to prepare for my assault on the South Pole itself.

Ross Island, unmounted, (approx 26cm diameter)

Ross Island was easier to make than I expected, and I'm pretty pleased with it so far. I have stitched the whole island with its four volcanoes. I have yet to mount it, but I thought I would show you some what it looks like just floating, before I embed it in the pack ice and shelf ice of the Ross Sea.

blanket stitch detail

It's got a very dreamy quality in these photos, which matches the island of my imagination. I know that in real life Scott Base and MacMurdo Base are ugly industrial villages blotting the pristine white snow black rock of Scott Point, but I felt no need to mark their presence on my island.

There are a few faint blood stains in the snow, though blotted so thoroughly that not even I could find them again. Towards the end of my stitching I repeatedly stabbed myself with the needle, my blood falling onto the cotton and wool like watermelon snow, a pink algae that grows on snow and ice in the polar summers . Antarctica is not kind to those who love her; even an interpretation from afar is dangerous.

Mt Terror (foreground) Mt Bird (right)

But despite the inherent dangers and difficulties I am as compelled as any scientist or explorer who has been drawn so far South. I am almost ready to launch my attempt on continental Antarctica: I have my pattern pieces and I'm felting another wool blanket for the big base contours (my Kaiapoi blanket will furnish the highest altitudes). I anticipate many months of stitching through our Southern summer, months in which I can immerse myself in an imaginary Antarctic journey: hauling my needle by hand across the great white wastelands, climbing glaciers, traversing crevasses. I'll keep you posted.

Mt Erebus

Deep Time Writer’s Residency

Entrance to HGHS Artist in Residence studio, Malins Block basement

Days are divided into shallow gasps of quick time

by bells appointing high sided nests of focus

but I climb determinedly into tree time,

measuring my term in million year

increments of painted paper.

Majestic and inspiring trio of Redwoods as seen from the studio's northeast facing windows

In classrooms I tell the story of a rare visit

from an elusively generous muse;

how she punctuates the equilibrium of

my persistent plodding productivity

with the mysterious appearance of a poem

that enables flight, indeed, requires it.

Mysterious, aquarium like view from the studio's western window

I offer out a rainbow of papers

and share the magic of folding

never tiring of the irresistible transformation

from plain sheet to turning pages;

we harness that pleasure into poetry and

race to fill their books before the bell.

Deep Time Writer's Residency tunnel book, detail

In the studio at lunchtime

it’s all the sweet raucous intensity

of a dawn chorus in spring:

girls creating wild beauty, breaking

all the book making rules to

evolve new structures that

give me fresh courage to adapt myself.

Tunnel book (2/3 view)

In this dim green-windowed cave

under the science block

I study deep time,

grasping at immensity,

painting eternity purple.

Outside the school blossoms

with little coloured books;

we are swept by a virus of paper folding,

and poetry fading under our footsteps.

Deep Time Writer's Residency, unique book commissioned by HGHS

Exhibition at Hamilton Girls High School

Artist's books on exhibit at Hamilton Girls High School
(NB click on any photo to see enlarged details)

Although I've never curated before (other than my own work), I'm always up for the steep learning curve, so I offered to curate an exhibition of artist's books at Girls High towards the end of my Residency. With the help of my #1 Open Studio girls we got the show up today, and looking pretty good, if I might say so myself.

Human Rights themed books from Year 10 Art students

The exhibition consists of some of my work and many books created by students during my time at school. My contributions include Deep Time Writer's Residency, a tunnel book that I made to fulfil the school's commission as part of the Residency. I'm also showing various works in progress as photographs or as actual books such as my Residency journal and some 277 million years of painted scrolls.

Deep Time Writer's Residency, a tunnel book (more about this one in a future post)

The largest work in the exhibition is a collaboration between me and the students who've been coming along to my Open Studio sessions. We've made a lantern book with an abridged version of my favourite poem that I've written during the Residency, If Jellyfish Wrote History.

Jellyfish Lantern Book

The girls and I have spent several weeks folding 100 paper lanterns, some with the words of the poem, and some decorated to represent jellyfish. It's been a fantastic project and a dozen or more girls have contributed at least one or two lanterns, with a stalwart crew putting in many lunch hours of origami with me.

Isabel, Deahna and Aleisha have been loyal Open Studio participants since I arrived at school, and helped install the exhibition.

Other Open Studio regulars have their own book projects included in the exhibition. Of special note is Cheri's Tale by Jessica Imswary and Aimee McGregor who have worked very hard to complete their lengthy manga comic. Their good-humoured collaboration and mutual commitment to meeting the exhibition deadline has been outstanding.

Jessica and Aimee spending yet another lunch hour making their comic in my studio.

A spread from Cheri's Tale by Jessica and Aimee

Almost half of the student contributions have come from several Year 10 art classes taught by Jennifer Fernyhough and Nellie Ward Wallace. These classes made artist's books as their major project last term, using previous social studies research into human rights as their content. The intense subject matter (the Holocaust, Apartheid, slavery etc) and the devotion of many classroom hours has produced some very powerful and moving artist's books.

Jews in the Holocaust

Most of the other student books on show were created in Year 9 &10 English classes that I worked with for just 1-3 sessions. Hundreds of girls have made little books with me over the past 3 months and it was certainly difficult to choose just a few to include in the show. Almost all the books have original content: poetry or stories and illustrations which provide a light, playful contrast to the intensity of the human rights books.

Lots of little books from junior English classes and Open Studios

The school's senior students have been immersed in end of year assessments for most of my tenure, but I did get to work with one Year 13 extension English class. They made some wonderful books, represented in the exhibition by Baily Stewart's stunning 'A film guide to Psycho'. As with the best artist's books it is impossible for a photograph to do Baily's work justice: it harmoniously combines a variety of structural elements with a limited colour palette to powerfully convey her analysis of the classic film.

A film guide to Psycho by Baily Stewart, Year 13

The exhibition is up until 24 November and members of the public can view it during school hours. If you are in Hamilton please come to the Atrium in the Administration Block (the big glass building accessed from Ward Street). I'm sure you will be impressed.

Isabel Brooker made this scroll as an independent project

Live Action Artist in Residence

Jo Belgrave at Hamilton Girls High School made a little video about my residency to show at the school's end of year cultural evening. It's all filmed inside the wonderful spacious studio and shows me working on and talking about some of my works in progress as well as a few things that the girls and I have made during the residency.







And while you are in the mood to watch videos, check out these great little videos showing big handmade book projects in action.

Pictorial Webster's: Inspiration to Completion from John Carrera on Vimeo.

And for contrast you can watch these two videos about machine book production, one about 60 plus years old and one showing print on demand machinery in action.

Work in Progress - November Giveaway

In some ways an artist’s book can be more like a performance than like an ordinary book, both for the artist and the audience. For a start, they are often encountered in public settings and are rarely read in bed. More importantly though, artist's books can be multi-dimensional, sensual, time-based. Designing an artist's book is therefore a complicated process, taking into account at least seven inter-related decisions.

Click to enlarge this diagram

I think my best book designs are those that begin with the content, but sometimes a structural experiment or an inspiring piece of paper will launch a design which can hold its own.

The decision making process is iterative as each consideration has to be checked against the others. Design decision making require balancing conceptual expression against the demands of the materials, the requirements of different structures, the needs of an imagined audience and the limitations of my production capacities.

For me, designing a book to make as multiples for an edition has many more limitations and demands than designing a unique, one off, book. A unique book can be more elaborate and time consuming to make, it can use expensive rare materials, its content can be created by hand rather than printed or it can be very big. My unique books can be, and often are, experimental.

My editioned books on the other hand, should be relatively economical in both the materials and effort required to make them. Right now I’m in the process of developing an edition that was conceived when some very small images and some small pieces of paper were occupying my attention for different reasons.

My search for images of fossils to embroider exposed me to some beautiful electron microscope photographs of microfossils, and I decided to make sketches of some microfossils on small loose pages made from the creamy offcut strips left over from the history book edition.

As my stack of sketches of radiolaria and other microfossils gradually expanded, I began to experiment with miniature book bindings, reteaching myself neglected skills, since for many years I have favoured contemporary folded and adhesive structures over sewn ones. So far I have made seven miniature case bound books, each slightly different, as I experiment with variations and try to perfect my skills (and get quicker, since production speed is important to the economics of editioning).

Meanwhile I am trying to figure out the most economical way to reproduce the images, which I think may be to print them onto a single sided A3 sheet. That requirement in turn influenced the book structure which now involves sewing accordion folded signatures inside a hard cover. Single sided printing generally leads to more folding than cutting and the resulting folded foredges lends a pleasing thickness to the text block, giving more substance to the tiny book.

I will continue reassessing every aspect of the project until all the elements are in harmony, so nothing is final including the content. Happily I have no immediate deadline, so I can continue toying with the design until it is just right.

In the meantime, I thought I might share some of the bounty of my mini book binding experiments. Bibliophilia’s November giveaway is a pair of miniature blank books: two of the series I have made as practice. They won't be perfect, but they are cute! If you would like a chance to win a pair of tiny blank books, comment on this post before 18 November. I will randomly select a winner and make an announcement soon after.

Antarctica, Ross Island, Erebus: memory and imagination

Cape Crozier

This is part three of 'what I did in the holidays' but like the other projects that I worked on in the holidays this one is still work in progress and will be for some time. The origins and influences on this piece also go back many years.

My fascination with Antarctica was launched the first time I read Kim Stanley Robinson's novel, Antarctica. That book also (re)launched my enthusiasm for reading contemporary science fiction, so that for me Antarctica and imagining the future are inextricably bound together. Antarctica's human history is so recent and so sparse that there is a lot of room for speculative creativity on that vast white continent.

More recently I came across Ursula K Le Guin's brilliant short story, 'Sur', about a group of South American women making a secret successful expedition to the South Pole and getting there before Amundsen and Scott (but leaving no trace and telling no one so as not to bruise the great heroes' egos). I particularly love this comment by the narrator on seeing the mess Scott had left in his hut in after his first failed expedition: "... housekeeping, the art of the infinite, is no game for amateurs". (The women leave the dirty hut untouched and make their own shelter).

an island or a stack of pancakes?

I originally began thinking about using topographical information when I first started making visual art but I never really felt that my usual materials of paper and card were going to work. But now I have the Kaiapoi blanket which I like to imagine has visited Antarctica. If it hasn't, some just like it certainly must have. Christchurch was, and is, where so many Antarctic expeditions have been launched in a flurry of final provisioning, that surely the local Kaiapoi Woolen Mill (1878-1978) must have supplied some thick warm blankets, if not as official procurement, then to a crewman supplementing his personal kit in anticipation of the extreme cold.

I've cut my op shop felted Kaiapoi blanket (seen as Mars brooches and the ongoing fossil embroideries) along the 1000m contour lines of Ross Island to create a topographical model map, and now I am blanket-stitching it in white. Ross Island is arguably Antarctica's most significant nexus of historical, contemporary and imaginative power. It's where Scott and Shackleton wintered and launched their attempts on the Pole- their huts are still there, preserved as historical monuments (somewhat looted/cleaned). The main US and NZ bases (MacMurdo and Ross) are close by the historical sites and have the largest populations on the continent.

Mt Erebus

And towering over it all is Mt Erebus, a live volcano which has been in the news this week on the 30th anniversary of Air New Zealand's worst ever air crash in which 257 people were killed. With a population of only 3 million it was a national tragedy and like many NZers there was only one degree of separation between me and a victim. Those memories have made it difficult to consider Mt Erebus as a benign, neutral geographical feature. This weekend, on the anniversary of the crash I was been stitching the Mt Erebus portion of my Ross Island piece, honouring and grieving for those who were lost and who they left behind.

Mt Bird

Altering books with Bethwyn

(This post is part two of 'what I did in the holidays')

One of my objectives for this year was to do some collaborative art projects. I started the Response* book project which involved sending a blank journal out into the world for other people to fill in a page and pass it on until its full and comes home to me. Response disappears for months at a time, and then I'll suddenly (like today) get an email from a complete stranger on the other side of the world letting me know they're playing.


Earlier this year I collaborated with Dylan to create Daintree Calling, a video poem/digital story. And recently I collaborated with Alan and Katie to produce an edition of handmade books on commission for WSA. But my favourite collaborative project so far, and the one that I think will be the most long lived, is getting Frugal with the Bruegel with Bethwyn.


The name, getting Frugal with the Bruegel, comes from this bit of collaged cover on our first-started and most-completed book. We had one fabulous Brueghel reproduction and cut it up to create a frock, a hat and two priapic Thatcher fans out of it. We have started about half a dozen books, one of them mostly text and the others are all children's picture books. We are learning a lot about what works and what doesn't in this kind of altered book art: experimenting with scale, colour, themes and so on.


Why is this collaboration the most enjoyable of all my forays this year? I think it has a lot to do with what we each bring in terms of complementary skills, intentions, appetites, politics, materials and a shared cynical sense of humour leavened with an appreciation of cuteness. Even though we didn't know each other terribly well before, from the beginning of this project we have consistently found that one will offer a suggestion that is exactly what the other one was thinking. So it's easy to trust each other and ourselves, and the process becomes increasingly fluid, dynamic and playful. We laugh a lot, we like what we are making, and someday we might even show it off, but there's no hurry; which is part of what makes it work too.


*The Response blog, on the other hand has turned out to be a complete fizzer. A more successful collaborative blog that I'm involved in is our family's recipe blog, called Nourish Us.

Cute baby birds at Hamilton's Lake

baby coot

Its been raining and raining for weeks, but every now and then there's been a day of sunshine. One fine Tuesday I broke out of the studio and went for a walk around the volcanic crater in the middle of Hamilton, Lake Rotorua. I thought I might see some ducklings but there were none.

baby coot

Instead, the lake was full of dozens of baby coots with their bulging blue eyes, shiny red heads, and yellow ruffs. They are freaky little balls of fluff, and its hard to see how they will ever turn into the sleek elegant white faced coots parenting them so assiduously. Of course the adult coots have those weird scalloped feet, so maybe the freaky coot look just settles into their toes.

gosling

Also on the lake was a large family of goslings being herded around by a flock of doting adult geese. I know better than to get on the wrong side of a goose or gander so I didn't get many good pictures of them.

pukeko chick

But being seen taking pictures of cute animals meant people kept stopping to tell me where I'd find another lot of baby birds to photograph. I'm not sure I would have seen the discreet family of pukeko if I hadn't known to look out for them hidden in the rushes.

What I did in the school holidays... Part 1

The girls are back at school and the quiet spaciousness of my two weeks alone in the Artist in Residence studio is now sizzling with the vibrant energy of the students. What did I get up to during the holidays? Lots... with progress on some long term projects, taking up long desired or neglected directions and lots of creative play.


My biggest project at the moment involves painting 570 metres of scroll to represent the 570 million years of complex multicellular life on earth. It's a brain boggling amount of time, especially when the entirety of human history occupies the equivalent of about 3 millimetres on the end of the last scroll. I'm not adding text, image or even pattern to the paper, just washing it with colour and allowing the accidental artifacts of the acrylic ink off a soft fat brush to differentiate one stretch of paper/time from another. Some of it is quite luscious.


Also part of the Punctuated Equilibrium collection which includes the scrolls, but at the opposite scale of perception, I am making microfossil sketchbooks. I'm drawing microfossil radiolaria and foraminfera from electron microscope photographs. My clumsy sketches will be bound into tiny little hardback books, just a little too big for a standard dollhouse. I've made two mockup mini blank books so far, and will probably make a couple more before I am confident enough to bind my sketches to the standard I want. Meanwhile, the girls who visit my studio have been so excited by the cuteness of these tiny books that they are making their own during Open Studios.


These tiny books are the first case bound/sewn multi signature books that I've made for quite a few years and I'm having a renewed burst of enthusiasm for these kind of structures. This is leading me into experimentation with similar structure including a possible jellyfish book using plastic bags. I really want to use plastic bags because so many predators are mistaking bags for jellyfish and choking to death, allowing the jellyfish population to expand unimpeded. But plastic bags are a difficult book-making material, and I'm not entirely sure about my jellyfish book experiment.


I'm also working on a paid commission at the moment, to sew an edition of 1000 art bindings. Making such a big edition means breaking the process down to the smallest possible steps. Possibly my least favourite task is threading needles, so I do about 26 at time. To my delight, the plate of waiting threaded needles look a bit like a jellyfish diagram to my jellyfish hungry eyes.

Coming soon: Part 2 ('Frugal with the Bruegel' altered books) and Part 3 (Antarctic blanket sculpture)

Don't forget the Magnolias

Marcia sent this picture of the Friendship Tree in the Chinese Garden at the Hamilton Gardens

Life got in the way of giving timely closure to my Magnolia of the Year competition. It's been a challenging couple of months for me during this magnolia season, but their fresh beauty everywhere around Hamilton has been a frequent beacon of light and hope everytime I see them.

Bussaco Woodland at Hamilton Gardens. The white one in the foreground is M.stellata, the pink one is a cambellii or similar, and there's an evergreen m. delavayi from Geoff

Three local magnolia fans sent me photos, all but one depicting trees in the Hamilton Gardens. I can't decide on a single winner this year. So all three entrants will receive a set of five blind embossed fossils.

Blind embossed fossils

I recommend checking out their blogs: Geoff writes about the Hamilton Gardens where he works. Marcia, a beekeeper, shares her passions for plants, bees and all sorts of interesting things she does.

A stella magnolia from Marcia

Joan, one of my most talented book making students, doesn't have a blog but perhaps should. She wrote of her magnolia photo, "It is a Star or Stella magnolia and I love the tattiness of the petals. The flowers remind me of Tibetan prayer flags in the mountains. The petals blow in the breeze and scatter on the lawn and as always I am in awe at the bounty and ease within and all around me."

Joan's favourite magnolia is in her neighbour's garden