Bibliophilia

Close up of Tui Mine

2012-01-27T09:40:00.000+13:00

View from the Tui Mine site, looking out over the town of Te Aroha and the Hauraki Plains

As part of the research I'm doing for my next mining project I visited the site of the Tui Mine with some friends this week. As it is the most toxic site in New Zealand and currently being remediated, there is no vehicle access, and many dire warnings about accessing it on foot. So we didn't know how close we could get until we got there. The walk up Te Aroha mountain was very steep, through some very beautiful native bush. There were a few birds about, but not many- which is not unusual for the middle of the day.

Tunakohia Stream, fed with water from inside the mines

We crossed several sparkling clear streams and rills, but despite the temptations of the beautiful water we tried to avoid contact with it, sharing our water bottles with Tara the dog so she wouldn't drink from the streams. After heavy rains, or when the mine site is disturbed (as it must be during the remediation work), these streams can be full of toxic heavy metals (lead, cadium, mercury).

Some rusty old mining rubbish lying around in the bush

As we got higher up the mountainside and closer to the mine site, we started to hear the roar of heavy machinery and even a muffled explosion. The lower level of the large area of the mine is the tailings dam which is the current focus of remediation work. I managed to get a peep at it through the trees, but could only see a small section of new tailings dam under construction. It will replace the crumbling old concrete dam left by the mining company when they flitted off leaving 90,000 tonnes of toxic tailings perched precariously on the steep mountainside above the little town of Te Aroha.

Constructing the new tailings dam

Higher and higher we climbed, and eventually came to one of the entrances to the underground mines of Tui. I thought recognised it from an old home video I watched at Te Aroha museum last months where a group of ex-miners revisit their old work place. This meant I could visualise the inside of the mine (dark, wet, dangerous, deep), even though the entrance is decisively blocked (not that I would venture inside a Tui Mine casually anyway).

Entrance to underground mine (top right). Tunakohoia stream flows right past (see it coming out of the bush just above the dog?)

The mine was abandoned 30 years ago and although the lush bush crowds up the edges of the site, nothing can grow on the cleared ground, so toxic is the earth. Looking at it, it feels very raw and new, but after thirty years, anywhere else would have overgrown the stream with vegetation.

Mine entrance, with water flowing out with bright orange sediment

The mine's water runs straight down the blasted cliff face to join the Tunakohoia Stream

Looking down from the mine entrance

I was very excited to be able to be right there, on the mine site, seeing with my own eyes the details and the context. I was particularly looking at the colours, because that is the decision making I'm immersed in at the moment with my mining project. I didn't see anything that looked like cinnabar, though the dark red lichen growing on many rocks is a similar colour.

The only life in the mine clearing are a few kinds of unfamiliiar lichens, presumably the kind that flourish on a diet of heavy metals.

We did find this piece of quartz stained with the same bright orange that flows out of the mine. I don't know exactly what the orange stuff is, but everything I've read about Tui suggests its a highly toxic mineral.

Tui Quartz

When NORPAC abandoned Tui so abruptly after the market for their dangerous product disappeared, they left a lot behind. A hundred tonnes or so of ore apparently, and the tailings of course. But the most visible/accessible stuff these days are all the bits of rusting kit and a few concrete foundations.

After we walked back down the steep mountainside, we drove to the otherside of Te Aroha town, to the charming historic Domain with its multitude of mineral spas. A luxurious soak in a warm outdoor pool was just what our sore feet and tired legs needed. When my fingers and toes were pale and wrinkled I finally felt cleansed of any contact with Tui's toxic legacy.

A weakness for colour

2012-01-22T16:32:00.001+13:00

I'm doing lots of thinking about what colours to use for the Tui Mine piece I'm designing. Although I am confident and enthusiastic about wearing and decorating with lots of colour, I think its a weak spot in my artistic practice.

In an attempt to generally improve the use of colour in my art and specifically work out what a palette for Tui Mine I'm trying to get more aware of colour combinations in nature and other people's art. These fallen gum leaves caught my eye, under a big old tree I was walking past. The leaves looked much more vibrant there, either the warm evening light or lying on verdant green grass. By the time I got them home they all seemed much more subdued. But I still like them, and am drawn to the soft crimson as a shade I could try to replicate for the cinnabar of Tui Mine together with the bright greens of the forest, and the ochre and silvers of the bare earth.

Barry Smith's Antarctica

2012-01-16T10:25:00.003+13:00

My friend Barry Smith, and his wife Catherine opened an Antarctic exhibition last week in exactly the same gallery (ArtsPost, Hamilton, NZ) where I held my Antarctic exhibition last August. Barry is a printmaker and Catherine is a painter and they have both been to Antarctica, most recently in 2006. Barry also spent the summer of 1959-60 working on expeditions down there, which he sometimes writes about on his interesting blog, Pukawaparadise. A couple of years ago, Barry allowed me to share a few of his photos from that period on Bibliophilia here.

Antarctica: Dreams and Discoveries includes five expressionist paintings of icebergs and blizzards on the sea ice by Catherine Smith. I was particularly enamoured with Barry Smith's seven woodcuts, which reference the events taking place on the ice a century ago as Amundsen and Scott raced to the Pole. In the photo above Barry is standing next to his print, 18th January 1912, which is very moving for Antarctica history enthusiasts for me, as it suggests we are looking over Scott's shoulder as he arrives at the South Pole and sees the Norwegian flag left by Amundsen who was first to visit, only a month earlier. All the poignancy of that moment is conveyed in the stark silhouette of the hooded figure and the bleak view in front of him.

My two favourite prints were the simplest. Cold Way to the Plateau, and embossed woodcut with no ink, no colour, just the relentless white of the paper and snow marked only by light and shadow falling across the texture of the embossing. Eleven Miles Short is all grey and grim, once again expressing perfectly the tragedy of Scott's expedition. Eleven miles short refers to the distance Scott and his party died from the nearest cache containing the food and fuel they desperately needed.

The story of Scott and Amundsen has been told so many times, in so many ways that you might think it worn threadbare as an explorer's socks at the end of his journey. But Barry's images are not interpretations of well known photographs, nor simply illustrating diaries or histories. His imagined perspectives are evocative and moving, satisfyingly authoritative and imaginative. I'm sure that even people unfamiliar with the tales of the Heroic Age will be stirred by the stark and simple beauty of Barry Smith's Antarctica.

Lucky number 7

2012-01-12T20:50:00.000+13:00

Today is the 7th birthday of this blog, Bibliophilia. Each year the quantity of posts is a little less than the previous year, but I'm proud that I've been keeping it going for so long without resorting to (much) repetition or memes or posts made up entirely of links. I like to think that Bibliophilia offers original content-rich consistency, if not reliable frequency.

There's certainly a small but intensely loyal cadre of readers who occasionally tell me how much they like what I do here. They tend not to comment much, and as I am an infrequent commenter on other people's blogs, its no more than I deserve. One advantage of not being a comment-heavy blog is I don't have much spam or trolling to deal with!

So thank you, loyal readers, those who let me know they are there; and those I don't know... who appear to me only as encouraging statistics. Feel free to say hello below if you want to. I do like getting comments here.

So what can you expect to see on Bibliphilia in its eighth year? More of the same as I have no radical changes of direction planned in my work, my life or this blog. I'm steering a steady course at the moment. The finishing touches are going onto my long-awaited gallery website and I hope to launch that soon, together with a freshen up of Bibliophilia's look. But that's about as much online excitement as I can handle at one time.

As for posts, I've got four major works in progress with deadlines in the first half of the year and so there will be plenty of incremental progress photos, and some conceptual musing. I'll probably share about some exhibitions that I visit, research that is stirring me, places I explore. The second half of my year is a bit of an open book at this stage, but I suspect there will be a little travelling on the horizon as I've got itchy feet that can't be scratched until I've completed the current work programme.

I originally intended to celebrate Bibliophilia's birthday with a list of links to my favourite posts of the last 7 years. But I haven't gotten round to pulling that together. So there's something else for you to look forward to. If you've been following for a while, is there a favourite post/topic from the past 7 years that you would nominate?

Tui Mine

2012-01-07T14:23:00.000+13:00

This is as close as its possible to drive to Tui Mine these days, and it was far too rainy a day to get out and walk (especially given what I know about the run-off from the mine entrances and tailings).

Te Aroha is a small town under its eponymous mountain not far from here. Both the town and the mountain have simultaneously fascinated and repelled me for years, and drawn me to write poetry and make art about them. The imposing physical environment, its social history as a spa, and more recent tragic statistics as the highest suicide rate in NZ have each begged a creative response that I have never yet been able to live up to.

Yet, when I recently read about the remediation of the Tui Mine, perched halfway up the mountain overlooking the town, all the ideas I've that have been floating in the back of my mind for decades began to coalesce with my current focus on extractive industries in general and mining in particular. Tui, and Te Aroha, sit on the other side of the Kaimai mountain range and a few dozen kilometers northwards of Tauranga, where the MV Rena continues breaking up in a dismal oil spill, already the subject of two large scale works in progress in my studio. I am now also developing a new piece to respond to what I have been learning about Tui Mine and its impact on Te Aroha.

The Tui Mine has nearly 150 years history of relatively unsuccessful mining endeavors. Some 80 different primary and secondary minerals are present in the quartz under the Tui claim. However, gold (which is certainly present) has resisted repeated attempts to extract it using each new technological development in the industry between the 1880s and 1930s. Finally, between 1967-78 a company, NORPAC, was formed to mine zinc, lead and copper from Tui which was sent to Japan for processing. The ore was so heavy that the trucks leaving the mine looked empty, even as their axels strained under the weight of the load. Mining stopped, and NORPAC went bankrupt, in 1978 when it was found that the Japanese workers were getting ill from the high mercury content in the Tui metals and the market disappeared. More than half of the mined ore remained on site, with nowhere to go. In those days, before the RMA required mining companies to clean up after themselves, NORPAC was able to take only the most cursory swipe at dealing with the toxic ore, tailings, mines and processing sites before literally disappearing from existence.

Now Tui Mine is acknowledged as the most toxic site in New Zealand, and a disaster of monumental scale that could occur with only a small seismic event or even particularly bad storm. Millions of taxpayer and ratepayer dollars are being spent to try and stop the surge of heavy metals that fills the streams every time heavy rain or careless visitors disturbs the site. And, more dramatically to prevent the potential of 90,000 tonnes of toxic tailings breaking through the crumbling dam left by NORPAC and sliding down the hillside onto the town below. The town's water supply was contaminated with heavy metals at up to 150 times safe levels of cadmium and lead from at least 1968-1979 and possibly intermittently since then.

It must be a huge relief to the residents of Te Aroha, and the local iwi with kaitiakitangi over the mountain to know that the Tui Mine debacle is finally being dealt with. I'm not quite sure yet exactly how my work will interpret these issues and the environment but I know that the red of Cinnabar, the toxic ore that made Japanese workers so sick, will feature.

Some of the toxic ore from Tui Mine, Cinnabar, or Mercury Sulphide. The distinctive red colour stains the water flowing from and past the mine site, and no plant life has grown anywhere near the mine in the 30 years since it closed.

Serendipitous snotty globules

2011-12-29T17:36:00.000+13:00

Snotty globules of oil-spill dispersant, hand-crocheted cotton with wool

After starching up the first batch of tea-dyed crochet dispersant, I realise I really have to stop describing them as spheres. They are lumpy, misshapen, blobby globules with little in common with actual sphere shapes. But to me they are beautiful, especially en masse. Each one is unique with its own wabi sabi character. They are like tiny crayfish pots or loosely woven baskets and obviously handmade. I'm very pleased with my globules of dispersant.

Starched globules stuffed with wool while they dry

I've also been surprised by my globules. How I get them from flat to round is with a homemade starch mix, not dissimilar to the wheat paste glue I use to make books. To hold their shape while they dry I stuff them with short-staple wool from an old pillow. It turns out that when I go to pick out the wool from the dried-stiff globules its almost impossible to remove all the wool, and strands of fluff line the insides like ectoplasm.

Last snotty bits of wool that can't be removed from inside the globules

Or snot, which is just the effect I want, because the dispersant used in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, Corexit, once mixed with oil and floating in the water is colloquially called snot. Back when I thought I was making spheres, I feared they would look too sweet and bubbly to adequately represent the horrors of dispersant's impact on ecosystems and human health. My globules are still pretty bubbly, especially from a distance, but this unexpected snotty quality, combined with the lumpy shapes is very pleasing.

I'm nearly half way through crocheting my 400 globules, and though the tea dying is quick and easy, the starching, stuffing and unpicking is very laborious. I pick as much of the wool filling out of each globule as I can, using a pair of long, medical tweezers. Its a good thing I'm so pleased with how they are turning out because I'm going to be spending a lot of time picking at snotty globules over the next few months.

Stitch oil, white and black

2011-12-19T09:16:00.003+13:00

I've got a couple of large scale oil spill works on the go. Pressing hard at their heels are some mining works I've got planned, just waiting for confirmation on deadlines before I reassess my stitching priorities. There's nothing to show for those but sketches and notes so far, but they are what occupy my minds eye most compellingly right now. Occupying my hands however, is "stitch oil, black and white" as the notes in my daybook record day after day.

The first oil spill work is an installation of about 400 crocheted cotton spheres of various sizes. I've finished about 160 so far. Because my policy is to, as far as possible, use second hand or waste materials my selection of crochet cotton is quite variable. Different weights and shades, different types of spinning and possibly different materials- its hard to know if any of my cotton isn't all cotton because almost none of the balls have labels. I'm having to use a lot of white because I keep running out of the ecru.

Anyway, to try and bring some harmony to this motley ensemble of spheres I will spend some time this summer dying them with tea. Here was my first serious tea-dying experiment. After the tea dying comes the much more fiddly work of starching floppy net bladders into shapely spheres.

The intention is to represent oil dispersants such as Corexit which was heavily used on the Deep Water Horizon oil spill in 2010 and briefly used on the Rena oil spill in the Bay of Plenty NZ this year. Dispersants are much more toxic than oil but have the attractive (to oil companies and politicians) ability to make oil spills invisible by breaking the oil down into plankton sized blobs and distributing it through the whole water column. Great for dodging fines based on the amount of oil recovered, not so great for the eco-system and human health and local economies.

Here I am holding up my big black spill (working title) which is about half of its intended finished size. Its the currently same height as me, 155cm or 5'0", short for an adult, big for a hand stitched piece. I wrote about starting this one in a blog post about cutting the paper pattern and blanket pieces? So far I have felted and stitched about two thirds of the fabric I cut that day when I ran out of grey blankets. Since then I have managed to acquire three more which should be enough to see this work spreading down the wall and across the floor of the gallery.

100 years since the first person at the South Pole

2011-12-14T11:40:00.004+13:00

The South Pole on My Antarctica (shown here while still WIP) is marked with a small pearly button

"So at last we reached our destination and planted our flag on the geographical South Pole, King Haakon VII's plateau. Thank God! This took place at 3pm. Weather was the best when we set out this morning but at 10am, it clouded overand obscured the entire sun. Fresh breeze from the SE." Roald Amundsen

Today is the centenary of Amundsen's historic achievement, being the first person to visit the South Pole, along with his four companions and 18 dogs. Amundsen is one of my heroes (along with Captain Scott who arrived a month or so later- I don't think we have to choose one or the other to admire).

Roald Amundsen is an inspiring example of single-minded focus on a lifelong dream. He did years of intelligent preparation including learning from the Innuit in the Arctic as well as other polar explorers and he employed the very latest technology available. His success is remarkable not only for reaching the Pole first, but for getting his entire party back alive, a feat that Scott tragically failed.

During the months I spent hand embroidering the continent of Antarctica I read and reread a lot of Antarctic literature and learned much about Amundsen. Pulling my needle in and out across the contour lines of the Axel Heilberg Glacier and across the polar plateau was a way of honouring this extraordinary man and the journey he started out on with seven other men and 86 dogs. Most of the dogs were killed for food along the way, and I wrote a poem for the dogs, because somehow Amundsen (like Scott) has proved too great a subject for me to write about,

Kermadec Expedition Exhibtion

2011-12-08T15:46:00.007+13:00

Pohutakawa bursting into bloom at Mount Maunganui

I first heard about the Kermadec artists' voyage on the radio just after the artists returned from their trip. My ears pricked up because I've been thinking for a while of making the Kermadec Trench out of blankets. The nine artists who participated included one of my favourites, Robin White, which made it even more special. Throughout the year I've been looking forward to their show.

The project involved a week's sea voyage in May across one of the least travelled bits of ocean on the planet. The work the artists have made since their voyage is now on exhibition in the beautiful Tauranga Art Gallery and I went to see it on Sunday.

Because I don't have my own car getting to Tauranga is tricky, so I formulated a cunning plan. To celebrate my birthday this week I didn't have a party or a dinner, instead I invited some friends on a day trip to the seaside with some art thrown in. Five girlfriends joined my little expedition and car pooled over the Kaimais to Tauranga. We all loved the exhibition, and went round the show several times, including after a break for lunch.

Robin White produced three enormous tapa cloths (I would guess at least 5m square) that hang in the main foyer of the gallery, filling the two story high walls. My jaw literally dropped when I saw them so big and so beautiful. Two of the tapas marked with Robin's characteristic precise and insightful drawings made using traditional techniques and the involvement of a village craft group in the Islands. They are gorgeous and perfectly sufficient on their own, but my favourite was the tapa with just two blocks of colour, ash black and ochre red, no images at all. In its simplicity, the work's strength is quietly insistent.

The other eight artist's included a couple who's work I'm familiar with and others I haven't come across before. The works by two of the other women on the trip resonated with me the most: Elizabeth Thompson and her extraordinary undulating deeply coloured pieces, very sensual and evocative of Kermadec's environments. Fiona Hall's sculptures and installations were stunning. I particularly liked the tiny screen (iphone?) playing inside a sardine can framed by a perfect tin fish. And her sculptures of bird beaks like icebergs of course.

The exhibition is on until February 2012, so if your NZ summer holiday itinerary includes the Bay of Plenty I strongly recommend going along to the Tauranga Art Gallery to see it.

After we had filled up on art and lunch our little party drove on to Mt Maunganui, where the sea was wild and the air stormy. Dozens of black-wetsuited surfers bobbed off shore and beyond them a flotilla of small yachts raced. It was too windy to sit on the beach and we walked around the base of the Mount, following the track I used to find traces of oil spill in October. There is still some oil on the rocks and evidence that the clean up operation is by no means complete. Next day I found out that the storm had caused the wrecked Rena to spill more oil into the sea, which has probably washed ashore by now.

The rain mostly held off for our walk, but started in earnest as we approached the hot pools. A consensus decision decided we should go for a soak, a truly blissful way to end a wonderful excursion.

Windblown and exhilarated, Stephanie, Meliors, Rachelle, Robin and Anna resting on our walk around the base of Mount Maunganui

Tipping Point in B-Block

2011-12-05T12:50:00.003+13:00

The University of Waikato bought my large embroidered appliquéd blanket piece, Tipping Point, from the Imagining Antarctica exhibition. I didn't know what they had decided to do with the work until a Facebook friend mentioned how much she was enjoying seeing it in her work place, B Block at the University. That afternoon I caught a bus to uni and found my way to the top of the hill, near Silverdale Road.

B Block is the Administration block, so more used by staff than by students (in my six years of study at Waikato, I entered the building only a couple times) . As I approached I could already see Tipping Point's strong contrasting geometry through the glass doors. The familiar nervous excitement I feel whenever approaching my work in a public place started fizzing in my tummy. The piece has prime spot in the reception area and looks very nice against the pale blue-grey wall.

This is currently the most easily accessible of my pieces*. Anyone can go into B-Block so if you are in Hamilton swing by Silverdale Road and pay a visit.

*My Antarctica (Ross Island) is also in a public collection, at the Waikato Museum but is not on view right now. Several of my handmade books are held in the Special Collection at the Auckland City Library, and can be viewed on request. And of course you can click the Recent Works link near the top of this page to see photographs of recent work including some held in private or public collections but most available for sale now.

New Home for No Mine

2011-11-29T08:23:00.004+13:00

No Mine is an Island, a large embroidered sculptural piece made earlier this year, but never exhibited has sold to a private collector in Christchurch. The collector tells me she first saw it as a tiny thumbnail image on the Meliors Simms- Handmade Art Facebook page, which she had found through her sister who is also a collector of my work. She tells me "I was captivated straight away" and started following this blog. One day she was Skyping with her sister, and mentioned how much she liked No Mine is an Island. Her sister happened to be storing No Mine and some other pieces for me and showed her the work over Skype.

When I found out she was interested in buying No Mine is an Island, I emailed her some high resolution photos and links such as this. Eventually, to my great delight and surprise, she did buy the work, my most significant sale to date (and no gallery commission). She and her sister have sent me photos of No Mine is an Island hanging in its beautiful new home, looking very fine. It must be one of the best feelings for an artist, to see a piece she has poured so much of herself into becoming a treasured part of someone else's life.

Inspired by this over-the-internet sale, and chastened by the collector's comment that it was hard to find decent photos of the work she was interested in, I have been working hard to set up an online gallery. It's an interim measure until I can get a 'proper' website developed (and a few more sales are required to fund that project) but for now at least, it's a point of reference to see the best of my recent work in one place, and find out how to buy it.

Just click the 'Recent Works' link near the top of this blog to see a page of thumbnail images. Clicking on individual images will take you through to a page about each piece, with additional photographs and all the information you should need, including links to old blog posts with the back story. Not all my recent work is up there yet so if there is something you would like me to add, please let me know. I've also added a profile page with a link to my artist's CV and page of information about how to purchase my work directly from me.

Enamel, Pecha Kucha and Nancy Campbell

2011-11-27T06:39:00.003+13:00

No Mine is an Island bleeding tailings into the sea

I was relentlessly positive going into the New Zealand's general election yesterday, but despite a great showing for the Green Party, we now have a new government keen on drilling deep sea oil and opening up new coal mines and a myriad of other ruinous policies. I'm trying to console myself with the thought that I will have plenty of local inspiration for making work about human hubris and folly in the environment. Cold comfort.

Rather than spending the evening following election results with increasing anguish, I dragged a bunch of friends over the hill to Raglan, a charming sea side village where I'd been invited to reprise my last Pecha Kucha presentation. It was my first PK outside of Hamilton and I was interested to see how Raglan's unique culture was represented. The emphasis was on environmental-themed creative projects rather than design per se. Rick Thorpe on his experiences bringing the Black Robin back from the brink of extinction (5 birds in the world in the 1970s, now over 250) and Jacqui Forbes on Raglan's hugely successful zero waste project, Xtreme Waste were highlights.

The Old School Art Centre was packed full of locals on a Saturday night. My own presentation which involved reading some of my poems accompanied by slides of my stitching projects, was well received.

"... a shimmering turbulence on the surface" or a lake of tailings

One of the poems was Cake, which has just been published in Enamel 3, a lovely little poetry journal published by Emma Barnes. Its about a dream I had involving cake and androids (the robot-human hybrids, not the gadgets) and I showed slides of work that looked a bit cake-like.

Ponting's Genius, about an early Antarctic photographer, was easier to illustrate with images from my Antarctic work. Miner's Cook of course has its very own illustrative piece No Mine is an Island. If Jellyfish Wrote History has enough linguistic imagery to sit with a variety of stitched pieces, none of which have anything to do with jellyfish really.

Evoking jellyfish with a couple of iceberg-colour test pieces

And speaking of being published, an interview I did with Nancy Campbell back in October is now up on her blog. Nancy is a writer and printmaker who is as into the Arctic as I am the Antarctic. Her blog is a delightful grab bag of Arctic, bookish and printerly topics all of which warm my heart.

I too was secretly taped!

2011-11-22T07:48:00.002+13:00

This John Key-John Banks teapot tape scandal* reminds me of a time I was secretly taped. I dined out on this story for years and still find it amusing. If only the PM had a sense of humour, he could be getting hours of fun from the experience instead of feeling harassed and looking ridiculous.

I was about 17 and hitchhiking on the West Coast of the South Island with another young woman, both of us done up in full punk regalia. We got picked up by a well dressed man in a tidy car who said he had to make some deliveries and did we mind a few detours on our way? Since our appearance on the side of the road generally attracted much more insalubrious rides, we counted ourselves lucky and enjoyed a bit of sight seeing on back roads in the sunshine.

As our journey continued I noticed first that the man was wearing pantyhose instead of socks under his suit pants, and then that he had a bra on under his business shirt. When he stopped the car to hand deliver a document I mentioned these unusual sartorial details to my friend and we speculated on the implications. Meanwhile she riffled through his box of documents to discover they were a kinky sex newsletter for West Coasters swingers. We muffled our giggles as the driver returned to the car and carried on.

At his next stop I looked down by my own feet, saw a tape recorder and said to my friend, 'hey, here's a tape recorder... and he's left the recording button on...' as I turned it off. We looked at each other in guilt, confusion and amusement and decided as soon as we got back to the main road we'd ask to get out and try our luck with another ride. We feared he might be cross with us for turning off his tape recorder.

I was, and still am, ashamed for sniggering at the cross-dressing driver who'd kindly offered a us lift and feel far worse about him being hurt by hearing our prurient amusement than I do about him secretly taping me. I'd like to say that I learned a lesson about circumspection that I've never forgotten but of course I still sometimes say and do regrettable things like everyone else.

However, when I chose an action (such as mean gossip) I am choosing its consequences. Whether or not anyone records or overhears my ill chosen words I have to live with myself. I could blame or shame myself (or whoever records or overhears me, if they do) but ideally I would apologise, learn from my mistakes and move on with the intention of doing better in the future.

Making a mistake like being indiscreet is an opportunity to demonstrate one's ability to put things right. It's a chance to show you can take criticism, be apologetic, generous and compassionate. Most of all its a chance to show one has a sense of humility and humour. At 17 I failed to express those qualities in the moment when it mattered. By telling the story repeatedly throughout my life I have used it to learn and grow, as well as have some fun.

In the current 'teapot tape' situation I see a powerful public figure demonstrating hubris, defensiveness and arrogance. He looks angry and scared all out of proportion to this event. In an election campaign based on promoting his personal leadership qualities rather than party policies, his response to this event reveals (if you hadn't noticed before) that our current leader lacks resiliance and the ability to laugh at himself.

To my mind there are a myriad of other reasons not to vote this man back into power (asset sales, coal mining, deep sea drilling, beneficiary bashing, anti-arts, ridiculously old-fashioned education etc) but if one were chosing one's votes based on character rather than policy, then surely this is a deal breaker.

*If you are from beyond these shores, it might help to know that New Zealand has a national election on this Saturday and much has been made of the 'secret taping' of a media-staged conversation between the current Prime Minister John Key and a candidate from another political party, John Banks.

Birdspoke

2011-11-17T16:17:00.004+13:00

Red Billed Gull

While in Auckland for Art in the Dark last weekend, I stayed with Rachelle Wood who is the artist behind Birdspoke. She lives in a rambling old villa set on a huge section planted to attract the birds that inspire her work. It is an oasis of birdsong and beauty near the middle of a big city.

Vintage lace 'window treatment'

Rachelle is doing some lovely renovations and her home displays her quirky, vintage and sweet tastes perfectly. Her style might be called 'shabby chic' and I like it very much. My mattress was in centre of the living room floor and when I opened my eyes there was almost a sense of vertigo under the extraordinary ceiling rose (complete with bursting pomegranates) set inside a large dome. Like any proper home, its heart was in the large kitchen/dining/sitting area which opens out onto a deck with views of fireworks at night and trees in the daytime.

One third of the fabric stash

But my favourite room is her studio which is small, perfectly organised and crammed full of potential for creativity.Her huge stash of fabrics is neatly arranged by colour, her tools stored in baskets from Samoa, and her vintage lace in old suitcases. I arrived feeling very annoyed to have left my crochet workbag* on the bus, but Rachelle quickly sorted me out with a hook and some ecru cotton from her stash so I could keep making throughout the weekend.

Bird embroideries and sewing machines

I've not met anyone besides Rachelle and me who crochets with this old-fashioned cotton that is so fine and fiddly. Rachelle shares my passion for slow making and hand stitching. She spends hours crafting each individual piece by hand to sell at craft fairs and on Etsy, Felt and Toggle.

A Huia plushie. Huia because extinct over a century ago because their tail feathers were so fashionable.

She also finds time to make pretty things for herself and her home. I love this work in progress (below), to stitch together old lace doilies into a window hanging. I can't wait to go back and visit again, to see the light shining through the lace.

*Complete with six precious completed spheres, two balls of cotton, crochet hook and second best scissors. If you find my little blue and green bag, please give it back!

Art in the Dark

2011-11-14T09:51:00.005+13:00

Stragagem Bilateral Carousel by Jasmax Grads was a nice spot to lie down and have a rest while gazing up at the lights

I caught the bus up to Auckland on Saturday so I could go to Art in the Dark, the second annual festival of lights in Western Park, Ponsonby. My daughter went last year (she is friends with the organisers and came over from Melbourne to see it) and I was so envious to hear her rave about its wonders that I had to go myself this time.

In the children's playground a long double slide was used as a projection screen to show film of children playing on that very slide, while real people also slide down. It was good fun to try and made me think I should play on slides more often.

It was fabulous, funky, fun to be wandering around an unfamiliar park in the dark with hundreds of other people, their children and dogs. Apparently for many Aucklanders this park (which I'd barely been aware of myself) is little used and perceived as threatening, even in the daytime. Art in the Dark reclaimed the space for two nights with light, sound and activities.

Rainbow Laser by Ben Clegg was best viewed from under an umbrella as the rainbow tunnel was projected through stage smoke and sprinkling water

I'm not very experienced at night photography and so my pictures are very poor compared to those on Art in the Dark's website and Facebook page. I recommend you follow the links to see better images than mine.

Some of the performances were so fleeting, so entrancing and so dynamic that I had no chance of capturing even a bad image. For example, Icarus by Celery Productions was a mysterious and marvelous swooping of enormous white angel wings worn by a man in a suit who flew utterly authentically up and down the gully. I found out later that the rigging is from the Vinter's Luck movie, and up the hill out of my view, a small poignant vignette was enacted between flights. Even without knowing any of that, Icarus was one of the favourite things I saw.

Another outstanding performance was When I Grow Up, in which a group of dancers with LED lights on their suits, danced on a dark hillside. There were no lights on their heads, and their arms were extended with lights to the length of their legs making for a very sci-fi, alien animal kind, yet with human movements.

Many of the pieces were interactive, perhaps none more so than the tree with envelopes by Ella Mizrahi. Envelopes hung from strings of lights draped around a big tree, and when we opened the envelopes we found dozens of different children and adults had contributed a drawing of what could grow on trees (sweeties, money, toys, fruit). We stuffed each drawing back in its envelope and opened another, enjoying the sense of connection with unknown contributors.

Black Gold- Memorial Tree Temple by Brydee Rood referenced my own current inspiration, the grounding of MV Rena on the Astralabe Reef in the Bay of Plenty and the oil spil.

Naturally I was very enthusiastic about the most textile-crafty work in the whole park: Knitting Luminaries. White (machine knit) fabric was stretched and twisted into sculptural forms like giant seashells crossed with fruit, suspended from a big old tree and glowing white white the tree was illuminated with blue. It was serenely beautiful and inspiring.

Knitted Luminaries by Kate Ramsay and Hyungin Yun

Western Park is very large and extends down a steep gully, with many big trees, so that there were surprises illuminating every twist and turn through the dark night. The whole experience was magical and entrancing and I walked around with a smile the whole evening. From high on the hillside, the lights of the Sky Tower and the almost full moon played along, becoming part of the Art in the Dark community, connecting our crowd to the wider city and outer space.

Paper pattern tree

2011-11-07T12:52:00.003+13:00

I've started on my next and biggest oil spill embroidered blanket piece. I used up all my stash of grey blankets and had to buy more as well- its going to be big!

I worked out the design in sketches, then cut paper pattern pieces to make sure they would fit together and work on the large scale I intend. I have a big roll of heavy kraft paper which I bought at the dump shop for $10 three years ago. Newsprint would have been more appropriate for a project like this, where I don't need to keep the pattern for future use, but the kraft paper is what was big enough and available.

As I cut each piece of blanket, and unpinned the pattern pieces, I draped them over my lamp stand. I like the sculptural look of the paper pieces so much I've left it up all week. It takes up a lot of my tiny studio/living space and eventually I will have to put them in the recycling bin, but in the meantime, its like living with a beautiful dead tree.

Exploring oil

2011-11-03T08:45:00.004+13:00

Since my visit to Tauranga, I've been exploring different ways to represent the tarry black oil sheening the ocean and washing up on the beaches of Bay of Plenty. Of my five recent experiments these three are the most successful; where I was working out concentric waves, waves lapping on the shore and an oily bird.

I find images of oily birds most heartbreaking, even as I grieve for all the other sea life and human lives damaged by oil spills. Seeing their graceful shapes and light as air bodies dragged down from the sky to be found as sticky black puddles on the sand is particularly agonising.

Working with wool seems to cushion my sadness a little. I'm planning a large installation piece that both responds to Rena's oil spill and cautions against plans for deep sea drilling off New Zealand. I'd like to honour each of the species on the casualty list, many of which are rare or endangered native species including petrels, dotterels, pengins, gannets, shearwaters and terns.

My bird experiment started off with layers of blankets felted into relief (above) with feather details stitched in (below).

Oil on Rock

2011-10-23T19:18:00.011+13:00

I visited the Tauranga oil spill today. Mount Maunganui beach was reopened this weekend and declared safe for swimming (with the caveat that you should get out of the water if you suspected oil contamination). So I wasn't sure if I'd actually get to see any oil, since all the other beaches in the Bay of Plenty are closed to the public.

There seemed to be lots of people on the beach: a salsa dancing demonstration was drawing a crowd, paragliders drifted down from the top of the mountain and plenty of folk were noodling around on the sand. I didn't see anyone in the water, but that may have been as much to do with the cool drizzly weather as fear of oil.

The woman at the information centre told me that I might be able to glimpse the stranded container ship, Rena, if I walked around the headland track and the sky were clear. There was too much haze to see anything but one of the naval vessels patrolling the exclusion zone, and the helicopters taking salvage crews to and from the Rena. But there were dozens of people walking along the track.

For the first section of my walk, I was going against a tide of local volunteers returning from their clean up clutching haz-bagged gumboots and talking animatedly as strangers do when a disaster unites them as neighbours. Tractors towed trailers loaded with sacks of oil, oily sand, oily shells and oily protective clothing.

I found just one little track that was not blocked with emergency tape. Taking advantage of a rare break in the crowd, I sneaked down to the water's edge to try and find some oil I could inspect up close. I've been thinking so much about how I want to represent this oil spill in stitching. My oil spill images last year were mostly inspired by photos from the Gulf of Mexico, but the oil in Tauranga is of such a different quality, I can't use that oil spill to represent this one. I didn't touch any of the oil I found, and I was careful not to get it on my shoes and track it around the Mount.

Rena's spill may be small compared to international spills. It's certainly tiny compared to what is possible if deep sea drilling were to happen off shore of New Zealand. But the fuel used in container ships is the nasty dregs of the oil distillation process, literally the crudest of crude oils. It looks exactly like tar, and nothing at all like petroleum or even machine oil.

The beaches are relatively easy to clean up, because the oil-saturated sand can be shovelled up. Clumps of oily shells and debris are picked out. The nasty gunk is hauled off out of sight to landfill and not even a stain remains.

It's fiddly work, cleaning oil out of sand, but the cleaner-uppers have done an amazing job. News photos from a week ago showed Mt Maunganui beach covered in thick black sludge and now there's no trace of oil to be seen on the apparently pristine white sands.

But off the sandy beach and around the headland is a different story. The oil still clings to rough rocks around the high tide mark.

Here the army cleanup crew has to scrape and scrub, which looks to be very slow and laborious. They are working very carefully, paying minute attention to each crevasse or stain on the rocks. Their work reminded me a little of my own slow, absorbing stitching practice.

Despite the hard work of removing toxic gunk, the crew I observed seemed in very good spirits. I think it must be extremely satisfying to be doing something so valuable, so tangible and so effective. After ten days, most of the volatiles have evaporated from the oil, and it no longer smells bad. In fact, the Port of Tauranga had a worse oil stench when I drove past it.

A couple of New Zealand fur seals lounged on some rocks just off the headland. Signs on the track assured us that they'd been checked and are free of oil. I saw a dozen or so seagulls, swallows and a tui on my walk, and heard a grey warbler, all in fine spirits. But I thought of all the sea birds that have been killed by the oil in the last couple of weeks, and those that have been saved but must be kept in captivity until their homes are cleaned up and out of further risk. And I thought of all the fish and other sea creatures that have already been poisoned, and those that will continue to absorb the toxic residues for years to come. And those very fish are what the seals eat. So I'm not confident at all that a nice clean beach means everything is fine now.

The salvo crew is working night and day to try and pump out the remaining oil on the Rena before it breaks up. They are apparently managing to move about 10 sluggish tons an hour, in conditions of extraordinary danger and difficulty. The huge cracks in the hull, the ship's alarming tilt, and the bizarrely disarrayed containers all suggest that it would only take a bad storm or a small tsunami (there was a brief tsunami warning yesterday which thankfully came to nothing) to send the remaining 1000 or so tons into the sea. We are all praying that doesn't happen, because if it does, the thick black sludge that has been mostly cleaned up since last week will seem like a drop in the ocean.

Oil in Water

2011-10-13T09:24:00.009+13:00

Seep I and II (oil washing onto shore)

Last year, I watched the devastation of the Deep Water Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico with horror and grief. I responded, as I could, as I do, by stitching. I made a series of work interpreting images of oil on water and beaches. Many of these works were included in Imagining Antarctica, to express my fear of what devastation such an oil spill could wreck on the pristine environment down there.

Seep I (detail)

My response to the environmental disaster unfolding right now in Tauranga, just a hundred kilometers from right here is just as horrified and even sadder, though the scale of the oil spill is tiny compared to the Gulf. The same storms that are breaking up the ship, churning oil through the water column and tossing containers onto the rocks are pouring rain onto my roof right now. The people on the beaches, breathing the toxic fumes and trying to clean up sludge speak with my accent and are part of the economic, social and cultural region in which I live. The fish, shellfish, birds, seals and other marine life being smothered, choked and poisoned are my neighbours.

I have a regular job in Hamilton and no car, so my desire to be in Tauranga helping with the beach clean up isn't practical, quite apart from there being too many volunteers right now. Instead, I'm directing my response into research and stitching. I'm particularly interested in the oil that doesn't stay on the surface or wash ashore.

The controversial toxic chemical dispersants used so widely in the Gulf, and apparently to little effect in Tauranga so far, don't magically dissolve or neutralise the oil. Dispersants break up the oil into small droplets that are distributed throughout the whole water column. This has the advantage of quickly making it invisible to the media and the public, but the disadvantage of being harder to actually remove from the water. Also the small toxic droplets bear an uncanny resemblance to plankton and other tiny invertebrates that form the main diet of many fish and other animals.

This week's bad weather, so ill timed to hamper the salvage and clean up in Tauranga, is also churning much of the oil into the water column, doing what dispersants would do, but without the additional toxic chemicals. Dr Norm Duke says “Petroleum oil will naturally break down – but this takes time and oxygenation. So, the longer the oil remains floating at sea – the safer it becomes. And, the rougher the weather – the better also."

Reseach scientist Nic Bax says “It seems that oil will eventually be broken down by natural processes including microbial activity. ...It seems to be a long-term process as oil has been detected in sediments a decade after oil spills have occurred. The more volatile components of the oil are typically considered to be the most toxic, but they are also the components that will boil off or evaporate most rapidly. Typically heavier crudes hang around longer are harder to disperse and have a greater visual and aesthetic impact... Dispersion in the water column will be increased in high energy environments (such as high wave action) which will dilute the oil … reducing its local impact”.

Slick I, detail (oil droplets floating on the surface)

Ever since the Gulf spill I've been thinking about how I could represent oil in the water instead of just on the surface. Gripped by the drama of the Rena disaster as it worsens each day, I've come to see that the crochet spheres I've been making to represent intangible phenomena such as ash clouds and nuclear radiation, can also represent the drops of oil dispersed through the water column.

So now I'm crocheting globs of oil-in-water, planning an installation and writing up a proposal. I've made 48 spheres from ecru cotton* so far and will need about 400 to to realise my vision for the installation. That will take me a few months of stitching, by which time I expect Tauranga beaches to appear mostly clean, oil-covered birds and seals will be less common and the media's attention to have moved on to the next photo opportunity.

My installation will be a reminder that although the surface may appear resolved, oil is still present in the water. I want my work to remind viewers that the toxic environmental hazards from oil spills last longer than what is visible and deemed newsworthy. I want people to remember this truth, as deep sea drillers prospect for oil off our coasts.

Work in progress for oil in water, crocheted spheres before they are starched into 3D

*I source my ecru crochet cotton from op shops, where there are often a few half used balls lurking, unloved, at the bottom of a haberdashery bin. If any of my op-shop-cruising readers would care to collect these on my behalf I will gratefully reimburse you.

Post exhibition analysis

2011-09-30T10:37:00.008+13:00

Imagining Antarctica exhibition at ArtsPost

I learned years ago that when someone asks whether an exhibition is 'successful', or 'went well' they generally mean 'did you make lots of sales?' Unfortunately , only a small proportion of artists have sell out exhibitions and as an 'emerging' artist it would be easy to get discouraged if that was the only or even best way to measure success.

Over my years of exhibiting I've learned to understand success along a number of axis including meeting my own exacting standards of quality, receiving attention and positive feedback, expanding networks and enjoying new opportunities, as well as making sales. By savouring and celebrating success in all of these areas I can be pleased with any achievements without being too disappointed by the things I can't control.

If I am able to look around just before people arrive for the opening and feel relaxed pride and enjoyment at seeing my own work, then I consider the exhibition is a success, no matter what else comes to pass. If I want to revisit the show during its season, and am able to look at every work without focusing on imperfections, then I have succeeded in satisfying my harshest critic.

I assess my success at receiving attention by asking whether my effort to get publicity were rewarded. Has the exhibition received attention from people beyond my own circle of friends and supporters? Is it reviewed? Am I mentioned in articles, interviewed, featured on blogs or otherwise given publicity that I didn't specifically seek by myself.

Positive feedback is collected in conversation at the opening, or later; comments on my blog or facebook posts, in emails from friends, acquaintances and strangers- I always make sure my contact details are easily available to take away from the exhibition.

I measure my expanded networks by counting the new names added to my mailing list, the new 'likers' on my facebook page, hits on and followers of the blog. Extending and reinforcing connections with collectors, curators, gallery owners and managers, art advisers and members of art organisations with influence carry extra weight in measuring success along this axis,

New opportunities that arise from an exhibit can include invitations to exhibit or submit proposals. My own pursuit of new opportunities is enhanced by being able to attach to my proposals the interviews or reviews associated with the exhibition.

Sales feels like the most difficult to succeed at, the thing I have the least control over and that I understand the least. At a minimum I hope to sell at least one work. If I can make enough to cover the gallery fee, I am relieved. If I make enough to cover all or most of the upfront expenses of putting on an exhibition, I feel richly rewarded. I look forward to a sell out show, to making a profit and to one day being able to support myself from making art.

Imagining Antarctica has been a success in all these criteria. My expectations were exceeded in every way. Examples include:

I returned several times through the month to go see my own exhibition, partly to stay in touch with the gallery and meet viewers, but also because I felt pleased and relaxed around my own work.
My efforts at achieving publicity were mostly successful, especially locally and on the internet. I was particularly pleased with this interview and this unsolicited review. I know of at least three more interviews/articles to be published over the next few months.
So much positive feedback! I've been overwhelmed with emails from people I don't know, or barely know who have taken the time to tell me how much they like the show eg "Just stunning - perfectly executed and quite moving."
On the opening night I was invited to participate in a group show of textile artists called Interlocked which opens this Sunday 2 October at Northart, Auckland.
Three works were sold: Tipping Point, Melt and Plume, covering most of my upfront costs and relieving me from the debts I'd incurred to put on the show.

Overall I've experienced a boost, not only to my bank account, but to my confidence and my reputation. It feels like Imagining Antarctica has helped lay a strong foundation for pursuing my next goals with courage and persistence. If I'd only been counting sales, I wouldn't be feeling so well resourced for the future right now.

A visitor to the gallery poses in front of My Antarctica taking advantage of the permission to photograph.
She's much more likely to tell her friends about the show now that she has a photo of herself to share.

An Evening Sunrise

2011-09-24T17:56:00.009+12:00

Its been a great joy to return to my collaborative altered book project with Bethwyn, Frugal with the Bruegel. We had a long winter break while I was caught up in preparing for exhibitions and she had a term and a half of teaching full time.

However, early in the year we had decided to enter some books in the Association of Book Crafts biannual exhibition opening in Auckland later this month, so that was extra incentive to overcome any inertia that might have delayed out altered book project further. We entered two books were more or less finished last year and two books that we finished this week. Here is one of the recently finished books, Sunrise, in its entirety.

I happen to be reading a lovely book by Diane Ackerman called Dawn Light: Dancing with cranes and other ways to start the day, which is a series of meditations on dawn through different seasons and in different environments. She is a favourite author of mine for peaceful, grounding yet uplifting prose. I also feel like this spring heralds the dawn of a new stage in my creative practice, as I prepare to lift my game up another few notches. So Sunrise is a very apt book to be sharing with you.

The base book 'Sunrise' was a perfectly lovely wordless meditation on a single dawn from a single perspective on a small rural village, in which a few quirky characters appeared. Bethwyn and I added an abundance, perhaps almost an excess of quirky characters and other additions to this, working on it in slow, occasional bursts for at least a year.

If I arrived at a Frugal with Bruegel session feeling anxious or sad, a couple of hours of gentle silliness with Sunrise would make me feel good again.

Sunrise is also known between Bethwyn and me as the Uncle George book because of our extensive use of a couple of 70s kids books in which Uncle George takes his niece and nephew to the zoo and tv studio. You can play spot Uncle George if you want!

Some of the best contributing books to Sunrise were old primary school textbooks and story compendiums with images by many different illustrators.

Dinosaurs and other prehistoric life from evolution (and creationist) books were the final touches to tie everything together in the last session.

Unlike the art I make with textiles which is very conceptual, deeply researched, deliberately planned and exactingly executed, Frugal with the Bruegel is spontaneous, playful, casual, whimsical, intuitive and often ridiculous. Which is not to say we don't have rules, but only for us to feel no pressure and have lots of fun.

The point of making Sunrise was to lighten my heart in the making. If it has a message its only perhaps to slow down and look carefully, because there's a lot to see in every spread. Not only the weird incongruencies I pasted in, but the original illustration beneath is full of interest too. Viewing these photos on a computer screen its probably not easy to always tell what I've added and what was there first. At this distance I'm not completely sure myself anymore.

You can see the real thing, along with our other altered book submissions to the ABC book exhibition at Lake House Arts Centre, 37 Fred Thomas Drive Takapuna, Auckland between 31 October and 20 November.

Bronze vs Clouds

2011-09-16T08:53:00.006+12:00

Here is my first finished little cloud. It's as big as two small balls of crochet cotton will yield, about 17x12cm. It casts lovely lacy shadows and spins in the breeze. I'm very pleased and want to make more.

I've started another cloud which I intend to be bigger, and more dispersed than this small ash cloud. I crocheted the first sphere while listening to a fascinating talk by Andy Lowe at the Waikato Museum about his experiences of installing Michael Parekowhai's incredible bronze sculptures at the Venice Bienale .

Micheal's huge bronzes weigh tonnes, literally. There was a piquant contrast between hearing about his heavy bulls and grand pianos being hoisted out of the Grand Canal and into the Palazzo Loredan dell'Ambasciatore versus the airy, almost weightless little cloud bubble taking shape in my hands as I listened. Of course packing, transporting and installing such crushable delicate pieces will bring their own technical challenges where ever they end up being shown, but I doubt block and tackle will be needed.

Eyjafjallajökull and Puyehue-Cordon Caulle

2011-09-09T12:40:00.005+12:00

Imagining Antarctica is up in ArtsPost for one more week, so if you haven't seen it yet there's still time. Since installing it three weeks ago I have been having a rest from blankets, and besides catching up on paperwork and housework what have I been up to?

I had the flu for a week and didn't do anything. But before I got sick I finished restoring, at long last, my Adana printing press. Yesterday I inked up for the first time and printed 75 new business cards for myself. It was fun to remember how easy printing can be, especially on a little, user-friendly press like the Adana.

As a reaction against my single-minded focus on blanket stitching land- and ice-scapes with heavy wool blankets for most of the past two years, I have been crocheting light as air little mesh spheres. I've had an urge to make clouds for ages: the aurora borealis of Antarctic winters, the radiation leaking out of Fukiyama, the volcanic ash clouds that have grounded planes around the world recently.

In my first experiment I used up a small hank of thick creamy wool which gave three small gorgeous cloud like globules. New wool is beyond my means at the moment (the exhibitions have left me with some debt) so I've been checking out the haberdashery bins in op shops hoping to find a big stash of a suitable yarn for one of my cloud making ideas. The first thing to show up was a couple of new balls of fine crochet cotton in variegated greys.

Crocheting cotton hadn't been my intention (too fine, too slow) but the grey shouted the volcanic ash of Iceland and Chile. I've been making mesh balls, sort of 360degree doilies in various sizes. To make them spherical I'm experimenting with various home made starch recipes and methodologies. When the crochet is soaked with starch I stuff it with green wool roving to hold its shape while it dries

The next step will be to stitch all my little spheres together to make a small cloud of particulate matter suspended in midair.

An event

2011-08-31T11:43:00.003+12:00

Bergs in foreground and Blizzard in background

Sunday afternoon's artist's talk and poetry reading event at ArtsPost for the Imagining Antarctica exhibition went very well. There were about 15 people in the audience, who seemed very attentive and asked good questions. I talked quite a lot about Antarctica and why it is meaningful for me, and how particular pieces in the show relate to my particular concerns. It was great to have the big My Antarctica relief map to demonstrate distances and identify places. Much of what I talked about is covered, more or less, in this interview with me published last week on Books in the Trees.

Part of my audience.
I've been unable to get a good photo yet of work on the wall behind them, the glass reflects the window light in the mornings so I need to go of an afternoon to document that part of the show.

I brought along a couple of props as well. My well-thumbed and much beloved copy of Kim Stanley Robinson's novel, Antarctica, which launched me on this creative path. I also did a small demonstration of how I needle felt the blanket layers to create colours and build height (and depth) in my 3D works.

Demonstrating preparing the wool for felting (this and photo above taken by Janice Meadows)

It was a treat to read lots of poems instead of the two or three max required in the group readings I participate in occasionally. I read my Antarctic hero poems, and some with evolutionary themes relating to the Deep Time work I showed last year along with others from the extraction series relating to my mining pieces seen in Melbourne earlier this month. And various unrelated poems of a science fiction bent. All 15 poems were written within the past two years, so even though I don't feel like a very productive poet (and certainly this year has been a bit dry on that front) I could see I'm not doing too badly, when they are all gathered together as on Sunday.

Me and My Antarctica (photo by Marion Manson)

Poems and Interviews etc

2011-08-21T13:51:00.005+12:00

I'm very honoured to have my poem 'Ponting's Genius' featured as the Tuesday Poem on Tim Jones' blog Books in the Trees. It's one of the Antarctic poems I will be reading on Sunday 28 August 3pm at ArtsPost, surrounded by my Imagining Antarctica exhibtion. As well as the Antarctic series I will be reading other recent poetry, mostly relating to same environmental themes that inform my visual arts plus plenty of science fiction poems like Cake (coming out in Enamel 3 next month).

And in the special bonus artist's talk portion of the event I will be discussing my visual art- the thinking behind this exhibtion, and my technique. Questions welcome (though you may find many of your questions answered in the interview that will be appearing in Books in the Trees later this week).

* * *

Here's some of the print media attention I've received this month.

In the Waikato Times Arts Page on 19 August. The lovely photo is by Jody Saturday, a photographer friend with an extraordinary talent for taking flattering portraits. Despite my wan, worn-out countenance lately she managed to make me look good, along with Melt. (The Waikato Times link takes you through to the full story)

In Riff Raff 3, Hamilton's 'edgy' arts magazine I got a full page of photos of my stitching.

Opening Antarctica

2011-08-19T13:11:00.007+12:00

Imagining Antarctica is at last successfully installed and opened. Its wonderful to see all the pieces I've made over the past 18 months finally all unpacked and hung together, filling the space beautifully.

There is more to say of course, but truthfully I feel a little shell shocked and completely inarticulate. The lead up to last night's preview was intensely exhausting and stressful. Right now all I want to do is sit in the sun and reread favourite novels.

If I had been up for making a speech at the preview it would have included a lengthy list of thank yous, worthy of an Oscar winner. My deep gratitude goes to so many people who have provided all kinds of support, but most especially to those whose help has been practical and/or saved me from crisis. Stuart Briden, Grace, Emily Rumney and Stephanie Chalmers each contributed with invaluable advice, materials, curation and/or installation and without these professionals my work would not look nearly so fine. Chris Fairly and Robin McIntyre have been tireless transporters and interested problem solvers. Lynda Johnston saved me from being buried under boxes of finished work by offering secure storage. Anna Littler, Sarah Oliver and Eleanor Lefever Taschen have all saved my sanity on more than one occasion in the past months. But most especially I must thank my parents, Norman and Martha Simms, for their ongoing generous assistance is what makes my life as an artist sustainable. Also they make really excellent opening food.

Box o' Bergy Bits

2011-08-12T12:57:00.003+12:00

The technical term for small icebergs is bergy bits. I kid you not. I am finishing off the last iceberg for next week's Imagining Antarctica exhibition. Already I have a box of seven completed icebergs, which I think of as my Box o' Bergy Bits. All the finished ones got measured, priced and labelled today. Whew. Another job ticked off my list.

Last iceberg, to be finished in the next five days.

F*** Your Donation

2011-08-11T11:41:00.006+12:00

Opening night

I've just returned from a whirlwind four days, three nights in Melbourne. I installed Spoil at the First Site Gallery at RMIT, attended the opening and then flew home. To cram all of Spoil into the checked baggage requirements of Air New Zealand, some assembly was required in Melbourne, so I spent several hours in the gallery stitching the stacks of gold coins to the acrylic mount.

Levelling the hanging gold

This was definitely the loveable problem child of my three pieces. Lovely assistant curator Kellie Barnes (who also let me stay at her house), patiently spent hours up a ladder with her arms above her head measuring and tying, while I stood at the base of the ladder, supported the work and complained about my own sore arms.

Kellie hanging gold

It was totally worth it, as the hanging piece looked exactly as I had intended and attracted a lot of attention at the opening. I was really delighted with how Kellie and Andrei Davidoff curated my installation with me, so that as visitors approach the main gallery down a long low corridor, they see all three pieces lined up. The gold hovering in the distance looks every bit as ethereal, science fiction-y and enticing as I hoped it would. The contrast between it and the low leaden weight of the grey spoil heap is balanced by the opencast Australia piece in the middle, which does not reveal much from a distance and required visitors to come close and lean in to see inside.

Spoil viewed from the gallery entrance

I enjoyed watching people engage with the installation at the opening. It seems to invite physical responses... not just your standard gallery looking pose. One guy couldn't resist touching all the pieces, but mostly people peered, bent, leaned, crouched and circled most satisfactorily. I tried to get people to tell me what they thought it was about before I answered their questions about my own intentions. Most people picked up the mining references pretty effortlessly, but there were also some food interpretations (cakes, kumara mash)- no surprise there!

Snow Progress

2011-07-25T12:13:00.003+12:00

I'm feeling a bit calmer this week than I have been for the past month or so. It helps to have cleared some finished work out of my tiny studio into temporary storage, and very reassuring to be chewing through my to-do lists. For example, the melt water tunnel piece (Melt) is now finished and mounted. I really want to make another one, more of a straight crevasse version, but I won't have time before the exhibition, so this one will just have to represent all meltwater features for the moment.

And I'm making good progress on Stragusi (another wall relief showing wind blown snow features). Now that I've worked with beautiful ice blues of Melt, my standard white on cream stitching seems a little bland, but the textures and patterns of this piece more than make up for the monochrome palatte.

Counting down

2011-07-15T08:52:00.006+12:00

Attatching Blizzard to its (hand-me-down offcut) acrylic mount using buttons.

Three weeks until the Melbourne opening, a month until Imagining Antarctica opens in Hamilton.

The momentum has definitely tipped towards completion. More work finished than not, more work nearly finished than merely started, more work begun now than not. But the work, both finished and unfinished, is pushing hard at all my limits; limits of time, money and most of all space available to realise my vision.

This is the point where it becomes impossible to maintain any illusions that I can operate independently or am remotely self-sufficient in my creative work. I gratefully accept all offers: storage, transport, materials, help, advice. Well, advice is always the most difficult to accept graciously, but I am trying!

The everyday challenges of life feel like an unbearable affont for slowing down the pace of my frantic preparations. Another flat tire on my bicycle, incorrect prescription in my new spectacles, damp laundry, spilled food, bills I can't afford, relentless rain or missed connections all seem disproportionally dangerous for the threat to derail my attention from the deadlines.

I'm on an emotional rollercoaster that feels rickety, precarious, desperate. But, underlying the fear and exhaustion are my memories of going through all this before. I've skidded along this same terrifying path and survived in the past. The memory of my proven capacity to do this is what enables me to sleep at night. I know the secret of success, which is to just keep going. To take the next step and the next step and the next, no matter how hopeless or pointless or useless I feel. Just keep going.

The swirly mustard beneath is an old quilt that forms an integral part of my studio equipment, propping up and/or protecting work as its made.

Melt in progress

2011-07-07T11:00:00.002+12:00

I know, I know, the one I'm working on is almost always my favourite, but this piece, called Melt, really is my current favourite. The luscious ice blues of the glacier's melt-water tunnel are so deep, so rich, so creamy yet pure, and this time its my best yet graduation of hues. The sensual curve of the tunnel's negative space lined with satisfyingly plump layers of needle felted blanket are irresistible. I feel sure that Melt will be snapped up as soon as the exhibition opens.

There is also an elusive nostalgia associated with this piece for me. The top layer of ice blue thread on creamy felted wool reminds me of something I knew as a baby- perhaps a bonnet. That's it, a white woolen bonnet with satin ribbons in a classy 1960's style, covering my baby-head against the Canadian snows.

Open Cast Australia

2011-07-04T08:24:00.004+12:00

The second third of the Spoil installation was completed the other day. The map at the centre and the images of flowers and animals and indigenous Australians around the outside are from a vintage souvenier table cloth. I sewed on tiny red beads to represent active mines.This piece is almost as big as the spoil heap element of the installation, over half a metre across (as the crow flies).

Stitching the rusty and golden brown threads onto orange blankets to form the sides of the mine, and beading the map reawakened my desire to someday make a leisurely roadtrip around and across Australia. My Cape York expedition a few years ago gave me a taste for the outback which has yet to be satisfied. I find the textures, patterns and comparatively limited palatte of hot desert to be as engrossing, in their own way, as the textures, patterns and palatte of Antarctica's cold desert.

Three views of icebergs

2011-06-28T11:41:00.003+12:00

Break Up (detail)

I've recently finished stitching three iceberg pieces. Break Up, the large 2-D embroidery is at the framers right now. An iceberg tip with two towers is has joined the box of other smallish iceberg sculptures (where it is the biggest in that collection).

Newest two tower iceberg tip

And the monstrous full iceberg with below water base is all stitched up, but my Plan A for mounting it isn't going to work. I like to lie awake at 4am and imagine alternative plans that can be achieved within the budget and timeframe. Suggestions more than welcome.

My iceberg base lolls about still unsupported

With all this bergy goodness in my life at the moment I was excited to hear Gabby O'Connor on Radio NZ National's Arts on Sunday programme talking about her beautiful iceberg art. I wish I had time to get to Wellington for a look at it in City Gallery, the photos on her blog are amazing! Her iceberg base is over 12m long and made out of tissue paper on a geometric structure. Stunning, grand, gorgeous! I'm in love. I hope my Wellington readers will go along to her show and then tell me all about it ( E!)

Beautiful ugly

2011-06-22T08:56:00.002+12:00

Here's my finished Spoil pile. One third of the mining installation for exhibition in Melbourne in August.

Colours for crevasses

2011-06-20T21:08:00.001+12:00

Choosing colours to make into crevasses.

Work in progress (Icebergs)

2011-06-16T11:12:00.003+12:00

After finishing my giant iceberg last month, I still have an appetite to make more, to keep exploring the forms and finessing the technique. Icebergs are much quicker to make when I'm not including the 70% below water. So these are just the tip of the iceberg.

Work in progress (Australia)

2011-06-13T11:03:00.003+12:00

Eight weeks until my August deadlines start tumbling onto me. Juggling multiple projects in every waking moment. Here's one of them, part of the Melbourne installation.

PS I am managing to update the Response blog more often, check that out too.

Response

2011-06-05T18:10:00.003+12:00

A contribution from Ampersand Duck, a letterpress printer based in Canberra, Australia

Two and a half years ago I conceived and launched a collaborative journal project called Response. I made a blank sketch book and invited friends and strangers to contribute a page or two. The book has finally returned to me, with collage, printing, writing, drawing, and paper crafts inside its covers.

Inside the book's front cover are the directions for participating in the journal project.

Response has its own blog, and I will be posting photos of the entire collaborative journal over the coming weeks, along with my own responses to the project. It is extraordinarily exciting to have completed a collaboration involving 10-13 people in 5 countries! The final stage of the project will be to edition the book so all the contributors can have a copy to keep. After that, I might make another blank book, to send out into the world as Response II.

The first pages were created in Melbourne in 2009.

Illusions of edibility

2011-05-27T11:33:00.003+12:00

I'm working on another mining industry pun piece, but this time the visual puns seem to be foodie. The stacks of gold coins above look suspiciously like macaroons. And the collection of yellow and gold threads I'm using to make them keep catching my eye as though I've left a mandarin peel on my work table (even though there's never any food on my work table, a rule I am foolishly more lax with around the computer keyboard)

Another element of Spoil, the mining installation I am working on (showing in Melbourne in August), is a big pile of toxic waste: the photo above is a peek at its peak. However, I am adding height to my layers of gloomy grey blanket with hidden lashings of fluffy cream roving, and every time I walk past the yet to be stitched pile with its layer of white wool on dark blanket my mind nags at a vague memory of making cream-filled layer cakes. It seems more like a remembered cook book illustration than an actual cake memory but I just can't pin it down.

Despite my temptingly tasty hallucinations I have no inclination to start making actual representations of food from textiles. So many crafters already do that so well; of whom the most admirable is Gretel Parker. The fabulous real and pretend cupcakes at her book launch are second only to the story of the wonderful party which moved me to tears.

A beautiful break up

2011-05-22T14:53:00.004+12:00

This week my iceberg-making has shifted from a close-up full-length 3-D model berg to an aerial view, looking down on the break up of an ice sheet.

Unless you've been hiding your head under a rock (like most politicians apparently), you surely know that if, or more likely, when one of the really great ice sheets at either pole begins breaking up, that's the tipping point at which sea levels are expected to rise dramatically and sea temperatures to shift decisively enough to oh, I don't know, reverse the Gulf Stream or something and then we'll really see climate change, oh boy.

It's not something to look forward to, my beloved Antarctica breaking up and melting away. But we'll no doubt watch it on Google Earth and You Tube and it will be breathtakingly beautiful as well as a terrifying portent of doom.

What I particularly enjoy about making this piece is that I carry around the individual bergs in a little bag and can stitch on them anywhere, any time. And now that I am starting to attach the finished bergs to the background and stitch in a cold, deep ocean between, there are many happy hours of nice and easy flat blanket stitch. After wrestling with two major sculptural pieces, this one feels like a breeze.

Iceberg Baby

2011-05-15T12:54:00.003+12:00

Coochie coo: dandling the upside down iceberg on my knee

People keep asking me what I'll be working on next, now the island is finished. The question seems strangely irrelevant, though I appreciate the interest expressed. Truth is I started working on the next thing the next day and that's almost finished now plus I've got another major project half finished, a third one just beginning and a clamouring sketchbook full of pieces that I intend to chew through as fast as I can this winter.

The big iceberg that I started making in January, then put aside for a couple months of single minded island making, will be done with stitching by bedtime tonight. There's still a whole problem to solve about mounting it, but there will be no more needle pulling thread through the soft fat layers and that is what signals 'finished' to me. Because now I have turn to some other bit of blanket to get my embroidery fix.

Every major piece I work on feels like my 'baby' especially when the end of making is hoving into view. But this big iceberg is more babylike than anything I've made since my daughter was tiny! It's about the size, shape and density of a swaddled infant. Resting on my lap as I stitch, it's not as heavy as a baby, but the maternal feelings are resonant with their object nonetheless.

More like a swaddled husky pub in correct orientation , or maybe an albino piglet?

The tortoise speeds up

2011-05-10T09:14:00.005+12:00

Followers of this blog will know that the slowness of my making practice is a key meaning of my work. Slowness means intentionality and slowness sets my art apart from slick and machine made things.

And yet, slowness is a rod for my own back. To put it bluntly, the price of savouring slowness is a limit on the quantity of pieces I can complete. The growing backlog of projects I want to work on stretches out for years. Slowness limits my opportunities to collaborate, to pursue commissions, to exhibit more and even to sell my work because there just isn't very much of it being produced. It makes it difficult to price my work appropriately and so what does sell pays only a couple of dollars per hour.

But deliberate slowness has been a protective mechanism. Psychologically, if not physically, I am still recovering from the six years when my dexterity and creativity was severely compromised by OOS, even though the symptoms have been minimal to non-existent for at least eight years.

I always worry that I'll 'get in trouble' for spending so much time on handcrafts, that my body will betray me again and I will find myself once more helpless, dependent and frustrated at my inability to express myself. So a commitment to slowness helps ensure that I pay attention to my body, keep it relaxed as I work, take time to stretch and alternate stitching with other activities, and balance work with rest and play.

In this context, my decision in mid-March to finish No Mine is an Island in time for a 4 May deadline felt dangerous and scary. I had been meandering along with the island at my usual relaxed pace for a month or so when the deadline was announced. Suddenly I was forced to assess how much was left to do and decide whether to try finish the piece in time, or just to give up on it for that purpose.

I estimated 36 days in which I could do substantial work, and at least 38 days of work required. Yikes! But, I really wanted the island to meet the deadline and there must be a margin of error for my rough estimation. So if I put aside all my other stitching projects (iceberg and ice floes) not to mention most other non-stitching, non-survival, activities and nothing went wrong, I might just make the deadline.

Immediately I put the island project into high gear, and everything else out of my mind. But for most of those six weeks I wasn't confident that I would succeed. The deadline was inflexible, my commitment to making high-quality handcrafted art could not be compromised and so the speed of my making had to change but without risking my health and ongoing capacity to work.

At about two weeks out from the deadline I started to feel confident I would make it, and in fact I had a couple of days to spare at the end as well as some relaxed social time-out in the last week. But for most of those 36 days I wasn't sure either about making the deadline or maintaining my body's health. The fact that I managed both, and that the piece is as strong and beautiful as I hoped, taught me a lot.

I learned that processed foods are not always the work of the devil, and that I can live with more mess and dirt that I thought. I learned I can satisfy my need to read without stopping my stitching, and the loudspeaker is my favourite function on my phone. I remembered that I can push myself through boredom and tiredness to keep working. I found out that I can replace some of my sleeping hours with minutes of hard exercise, for a similarly refreshing result. I learned I can trust myself to work hard and fast. I can trust myself to look after my health. And in the past few days I've learned to reward myself for hard work with extended joyful celebrations with friends.

Finally, as I return to the big iceberg and ice floe projects I put aside to pursue the island and its deadline, I realise that I have new, more efficient, work habits that mean everything I make can be produced more quickly now. As long as my preferred medium is hand-embroidery and needle felted blankets I'll always be one of the slowest artists on the block, but now I'm a little faster than I used to be.

No Mine is an Island

2011-05-02T11:19:00.002+12:00

The artist's statement for No Mine is an Island

"Look across the surface and down a mine that bleeds toxic tailings into the sea. Look within, beyond the obvious, behind the scenes. There is a complicated story underlying every thing we buy and all that we reject. The consequences of our consumption extend far, and sustain long, beyond our individual use.

We cannot fence off ourselves from each other, or from the air, the earth, the waters of our world. Whether careless or deliberate in our choices, whether in denial or awareness, we do not stand alone.

Let there be no mistaking: each imperfect stitch of cotton thread was made by hand, every layer slowly needle-felted from recycled blankets and un-spun wool. My materials are plants and animals but my finger tips became calloused from hundreds of hours pushing needles of steel, tempered from iron, mined from an earth left as scarred as my skin. "

No Mine is an Island includes a pallisade of 36 embroidery needles that I've bent or broken in the past 18 months of blanket stitching blanket sculptures. The needles are almost invisible unless you peer really closely at the rim of the mine at the centre of the island. My callouses are invisible too, but much treasured. Stitching is so much easier and less painful now that I have hard leathery fingertips.

Last glimpse of the backside

2011-04-25T11:17:00.004+12:00

I'm experimenting with lighting to try and get the colours to photograph. Here the greens are about right, but the blue and red are way off.

My island piece has a name now: No Mine is an Island. I was describing the work to someone* at a party this weekend and they made the pun first, and it seems the Right Title on so many levels. I do tend to assume all puns are bad puns, but surely if there are any good puns this must be one of them.

I have all but finished embroidering the two main components, island and ocean, and next will sew them together before mounting. On this last day before all the workings disappear I thought I'd share with you some evidence of my 200-plus hours of handstitching and felting so far.

I am unreasonably fond of the 'wrong side' of my embroideries. I think in my childhood I was impressed upon with the importance of the back of the work being neat and tidy, and I'm a little proud of my relatively ordered reverse.

The underside of the ocean. This is what the back of blanket stitch looks like.

The centre of No Mine is an Island is the deep crater of the open cast mine which extends below sea level by some 7cm. It may not be obvious to a casual observer but the depth of this negative space seems quite radical to me. In the same way I am eager to share the underside of my crafting, I am also eager to understand and share what is usually unseen: the dirty secrets of extractive industries, what is below the surfaces of earth and sea, and the unintended consequences of what we buy and consume.

My island mine is an imagined and generic representation of extractive industries. The raw red gouge of the mine and its tailings were inspired first by my dream/poem and then by images of iron ore tailings. Arguably not the most toxic tailings produced in mining activities, but irresistible because it looks like the earth is bleeding from a fatal wound.

The underside of my island, with the bottom of the crater appearing as a tower from this angle. In the foreground you can see a little of the felting as it reaches round the edge to the bottom of the plain cream blanket.

*I was a little drunk at the time and can't remember who the punster was, but I'm happy to give credit where its due if reminded!

Island progress

2011-04-18T11:48:00.003+12:00

Looking down into the mine. Can you tell that it's deeper than sea level?

This is all I'm doing. It seems like I might finish it in time, if I don't slack off.

Close up of the ocean surface.

The sea is the portable part of the project, though relatively bulky I still take it everywhere in a large plastic bag and pull it out to put in a few stitches whenever I can. The island is still separate and worked on at home: its much more awkward stitching and requires a table and superlative lighting.

Building an island

2011-04-11T11:22:00.004+12:00

I am entirely focused on my island project, frantically working towards a deadline, which I am not entirely confident I can meet. I stitch every minute I can find of every day. The rest of my life is uncomfortably neglected and I worry about the consequences but I keep stitching. It's a huge project, and inevitably more complicated in the making than it seemed in the planning.

Each layer of blanket, cut to the contour lines of my imagined island and its deep opencast mine, is needlefelted for colour and increased height/depth. This stage seemed to go on forever and unlike my iceberg sculptures, I couldn't start stitching until every layer was felted.

But finally I began stitching, inside from the bottom of the deep mine, up and then over the hilltops and finally starting down the ridges and gullies that are the sides of my rugged island. The mine's tailings seep down one gully like a blood trickling from a mouth, or lava overflowing from a volcano.

The vivid grass green of my island is very difficult to photograph accurately. Anyone who has flown into New Zealand from overseas would recognise the colour: New Zealand pastures are an impossibly bright green, more intense than anywhere else I've ever seen. This is the colour of my island, not the colours in these photos.

The island is hard to stitch because its 3D, so my needle is usually going in and out at awkward angles, there are tight corners and uncooperative gaps. The sea that it will sit on is easier to stitch, being flat. But it's huge and is the part of the project which most threatens my ability to meet the deadline. But these days I can do flat blanket stitch practically in my sleep, and literally while I read. Only turning a page interrupts my sea stitching, and only threading a needle interrupts my reading (right now, the very compelling Steig Larsson Millenium trilogy).

Munted

2011-04-03T16:49:00.009+12:00

Bethwyn and I finished our altered book responding to the February 22 earthquake in Christchurch. We are quite proud of our collaborative intensity and focus which went into the making, and of the finished product which successful captures our feelings as we witnessed the disaster from a safe distance, yet so close in our close knit country.

'Munted' is a wonderfully dry kiwi colloquialism for 'broken' and has become widely used even in formal situations to describe the infrastructure damage caused by the earthquake.

Bethwyn and I offer this collaged book with heartfelt compassion, respect and sympathy for everyone who survived that awful day. It is not our tragedy to describe, but we hope that by bearing witness we can contribute in some tiny way to the recovery process.

We have donated 'Munted' to the Many as One art for Christchurch fundraising initiative being run by Claire Beynon. You can make a donation (in any currency, of any amount) to go in the draw for this book, or one of the other exciting art works and books that have been donated to support earthquake recovery in Christchurch. Please do check out the Many as One blog.

Blizzard and Island

2011-03-25T20:19:00.006+13:00

Detail of Blizzard, a work in progress

Today I finished the stitching part of my Blizzard. There's still work to be done to mount it, but that will come later, after I've finished the urgent island I'm making to a deadline. The decorative/visible stitching of Blizzard had to be sewed standing up. Each long filmy piece of net curtain took its turn pinned to the cord that usually holds a noren to screen my sleeping alcove from the rest of the studio.

In order to see what I was doing on the translucent material, I had to work in daytime, with the panel between me and the window, so my thread was silhouetted against the light. Covering each panel with the Blizzard design involved a lot of stretching and bending while I sewed. It was tiring work, which I alternated with the demanding task of needle felting the layers of my island.

Now that the Blizzard is packed away for the moment, I've picked up another task to alternate with needle felting. I'm embroidering the ocean background for my island. I want a very deep blue sea so I'm using my bluest blanket overlaid with a solid ground of dark teal blanket stitch. The colour needs to be very rich and vibrant to hold its own with the intensity of the island colours and it's the largest piece of blanket I've worked on since I finished My Antarctica.

The timing of my switch from Blizzard to ocean stitching is perfect. Today is really the first day its been cool enough to make covering my lap with a heavy wool blanket appealing. The island is part of my Extraction series, with no relationship to the Antarctica theme, yet covering my lap with blanket takes me back to the pleasures of last winter's stitching marathon.

The island and its ocean, although based on a dream with no strong climatic or geographical links to reality, nonetheless reminds me of an island I noticed a couple of hours into my last flight home from Brisbane. Somewhere in the middle of the Tasman Sea, a dot of a gorgeous green atoll sits in a vast blue deepness. It looks absolutely nothing like the island I am making, but I don't have many islands in my memory that are as small and as isolated as this one, so that's the connection.

That island was one of the two most beautiful and unexpected scenes I've ever viewed from an airplane. The other was several hours of Northern Lights, aurora borealis, as I crossed Canada from East to West on an almost empty plane for an almost endless night. One day I might have to stitch those curtains of light too.

A tiny island somewhere between Australia and New Zealand.

Ephemera

2011-03-20T16:53:00.003+13:00

In between the very substantial pieces I'm working on, I've done a little experiment in the other direction.

This is what blanket stitch looks like without the blanket (or any other backing). It goes a long way to satisfying my desire to make lace.

I like the watery, airy, foamy, cloudy quality of this technique. I also like the stiff, sculptural texture that suggests many possibilities for stitching in three dimensions.

There is a delightful contrast between this kind of blanket stitch and the very dense, deep and soft island in which I use the same stitch to completely different effect.

Many as One

2011-03-14T17:48:00.005+13:00

My embroidered tessarolax fossil (framed) is now part of a wonderful art for Christchurch fundraising project called Many as One, organised by Claire Benyon- another artist with a passion for Antarctica.

The idea is that anyone can donate any amount and go into a weekly draw to win one of several works of art donated by diverse artists. My favourite is the wonderful engraved perspex by Lisa Roberts, another Antarctic themed piece. But there is an amazing variety of art most of which has nothing to do with Antarctica. I encourage you to go check out the site, click to make a paypal donation in any currency, and be in with a chance to win any of the exciting art works on offer.

Coccoliths, carbon sequesterers - LISA ROBERTS (Sydney, Australia)
Engraved perspex
120 x 65MM

I highly recommend Lisa Robert's website, not least for her fantastic Antarctica animations.

(This post brought to you by free WiFi in Garden Place, as the modem at home has died, and I don't know how soon it will be replaced)

Exploring colour

2011-03-08T09:37:00.009+13:00

Felted test of reds before stitching, sitting on blended greens before felting

I'm very comfortable working with an Antarctic colour scheme. White on cream, a bit of black with my white, shades of blue to show up the white, some more white, lots and lots of white... these are colours I can handle. It's not that I don't like other colours, as a glance at my wardrobe proves, but manipulating colour as an artist seems a lot more challenging than choosing what to wear everyday (and that can be hard enough!).

The rich earthy tones of my latest project are intimidating. I am creating an image from my poem, Miner's Cook so I knew from the beginning I wanted grass green and iron ore red. But what shades, and how to create and combine them with wool roving and embroidery floss?

Three base colours of left, blending in progress on right.

With three earthy and three grassy colours of wool roving I blended them by hand to achieve a variety of shades. The colours of the wool are then modified and textured by the not-quite matching colours of embroidery floss. This is all worked out by trial and error. My visual diary holds samples of each colour I mix with notes on the base colours that make it up.

Colour notes with stitched colour tests

Then I stitch a test piece that combines the wool shades with threads. The test pieces help me help decide which thread colours to use on which felted shades. Its a slow, thoughtful, demanding process saturated with uncertainty and doubts. After a long week of exploring colour I am finally hopeful I can start working on the actual island, which itself presents another set of new challenges on top of the ongoing demands of applying the colours, not least of which is a near deadline (something I usually try to avoid!).

Rapid Response

2011-02-27T20:57:00.007+13:00

What a week! Even at this safe distance, the emotional turmoil of bearing witness to Christchurch's earthquake and aftermath is draining. I can't imagine the exhaustion and trauma that my friends, and other quake survivors are going through- whether they have stayed or fled the city. My heart is full of aroha for everyone, especially those who have lost family or friends or home or possessions. Every news report brings tears to the surface, and I keep casting around for something useful I can do besides give money, and let my loved ones know they are in my thoughts.

Today Bethwyn and I met up for a Frugal with the Bruegel session of collaborative altered book making, our first in many weeks. We spontaneously decided to devote our session to working together on a single book, responding to the Christchurch earthquake. Without any particular preparation or planning, we began making a book which may turn out to be our most coherent narrative yet. Drawing only on our collection of old (mostly) children's books, which includes nothing specific to Christchurch, yet the result feels to us very evocative of our emotional response witnessing the earthquake from a distance.

Making this book feels cathartic and healing: a compulsion to channel survivors' guilt, grief and helplessness into creativity. Working with focus and synchronicity we got about half way through the project this afternoon and hope to have it finished in our next session, ready to auction off as a fundraiser for a Christchurch earthquake response fund. Here's a sneak preview showing some details from the spreads we've completed so far.

New Zealand is a small country, and everyone knows somebody that knows somebody. My prayers are daily with friends and acquaintances as well as the people who's faces or stories I know only through the media coverage. There's one of my oldest friends, a nurse at Christchurch hospital who lost their Kaiapoi home after the September earthquake; and her extended family which includes several other nurses. A young librarian I've known all her life, who's had to leave behind everything in her red-stickered home within the cordon. Her parents who are sheltering her and her only possessions - cellphone and purse- in the one-room country cottage where they live and work. Old friends posting facebook updates to let us know they are alive, who are shovelling silt and trying to keep their spirits up with intermittent electricity and no running water. The USAR workers from all over the world (how grateful am I to the international community?) including the father of a Hamilton friend who kept us updated with messages balancing the desolation of recovering only dead bodies from the ruins, with wry humour about consequences of the lack of showers.

Like many NZers outside of Christchurch, I have developed a profound sense of appreciation for my flushing toilet, hot shower, endless drinking water, electric power, cosy bed, smooth streets, sweet fresh air, fully serviced city and most of all, the solid ground beneath my feet. It may be a while before everyone in Christchurch can enjoy such amenities again. Bethwyn and I hope that our book can provide some small contribution towards Christchurch's recovery.

Imperfect Iceberg

2011-02-23T08:55:00.010+13:00

I can normally go for days, even weeks, without paying any attention to the news, but all too often lately a disaster which touches my world turns me into a news junkie. Today I am teary and shakey with fear and grief as I listen compulsively to the stories of survival and loss coming from Christchurch. I can't concentrate on anything, I keep jumping from one activity to another, all the time with my attention turned to radio and internet news.

A tragedy on this scale puts one's personal neurotic little dramas in perspective. At least today I have a day off from work to indulge my news addiction, and work has been the source of my neurotic drama recently. I've been on a full time training course every day; instead of my usual part-time evening routine which allows me plenty of time to manage my art work while staying relaxed, healthy and rested most of the time.

Full time intensive learning quickly exhausted me and I didn't have the resiliance to get through it without becoming very unhappy. I did manage to survive without getting physically ill, but only by withdrawing from almost all non-work activities including some that had been planned (and eagerly anticipated) months in advance. And that only made me feel worse. Yesterday was our final day of the training, and we spent the afternoon completely distracted by the earthquake news as it broke, increasingly more devastatingly.

The one saving grace of the past two weeks was my stitching. I managed to do a little bit of my big iceberg most evenings while watching junk tv shows so that its about half finished now. Stitching helped me relax, restored a little self esteem and positivity, but last night I couldn't manage more than a few stitches on the iceberg, because my hands were shaking as I flicked between Facebook, Twitter, the news video streaming websites.

Aside from the awful news from Christchurch city, the earthquake also managed to have a beautiful iceberg connection. The incredible blue of this newly exposed ice from Tasman Glacier is caused by its formation over hundreds of years as layers of snow are compressed and more and more oxygen is squeezed out of the ice (the blue faded to white within an hour or so of being exposed to the air). These layers of ancient ice hold the history of the earth's atmosphere with minute particles of volcanic ash, pollen and other traces that settled on the snows surface between one fall and the next.

Like a real iceberg, my stitched sculpture tells a story in its layers, tracing my emotional state of the last couple of months. The first few week's stitching is very even and tidy across the deepest teal shades of the graduated colours. I was stitching through a relaxed happy summer with plenty of rest and fun between each layer. This part of the iceberg showed the culmulative improvement in my skills in this technique since I started making layered blanket sculptures.

In contrast, the lighter aqua layers that I stitched in recent evenings and weekends around my full time training are relatively sloppy, uneven and careless. They show the traces of exhaustion, irritibility, anxiety, sorrow and shame. In the middle of all this I decided to restitch part of my early 'good' work because the colour change was too abrupt, so now there's a few layers of crude stitching through the centre of my earlier tidy happy work.

Fortunately, at about the same moment that I stepped back from the iceberg enough to notice the contrast between the stitching of my different emotional states, I was reaquainting myself with Brene Brown who's work on authenticity has been a great solace to me lately. So instead of getting even more upset and ripping out many hours of work, I decided to leave it in place to show the environmental reality of its creation.

Of course, I realise that the difference between my 'good' stitching and my 'sloppy' stitching isn't very noticable to anyone except another stitcher, or super critical viewer. After all my 'good' stitching isn't as perfect as I would like. You may not think it matters, but I always notice, and the uneven stitching will be what I see first and foremost whenever I look at this iceberg.

But when so many lives are devastated, not only in Christchurch, but in Libya, in Queensland, in so many parts of the world, it seems to me that to elide imperfection is to disrespect their suffering.

Donating to support Christchurch earthquake relief

Peering down the coal tunnel

2011-02-12T18:44:00.001+13:00

Jane Ussher's Still Life

2011-02-06T11:13:00.009+13:00

Still Life: Inside the Antarctic Huts of Scott and Shackleton is a magnificent book of haunting photographs by Jane Ussher. Not since Ponting have these buildings been so beautifully photographed. Jane's images of the huts deserted for 100 years and yet almost undecayed are strong enough to sit comfortably alongside the now iconic contemporary images of Scott and Shackleton's occupation. And as a book object, this heavy, cloth bound volume, with wide format photos in gatefolds at the centre of every black stitched section, is covetable.

Jane Ussher's slide show from the book.

One of my Antarctica projects involves some text which I have cut out of blankets. I always like to have a portable stitching project so I can work on it away from home. Icebergs and coal mining tunnels are bulky and awkward, but I can pull these letters out of my handbag anywhere, anytime and blanket stitch the edges while I talk or wait. I can even look at photos and stitch at the same time! Which gave me this idea...

"t" with cross next to Shackleton's hut

I'm stitching what is probably the most famous and poignant quote in Antarctica's short history. Captain Oates' final words as recorded by Captain Scott: "I'm just going outside and I may be some time". In the Huntsford-led campaign to undermine Scott's heroic legacy, this quote has been disputed, but I agree with Fiennes that the words were in character for Oates.

Anyway, I'm stitching each letter in random order so there's nothing much that makes sense from the letters completed so far, except this:

Positive space, negative space

2011-01-28T10:21:00.005+13:00

The blue/green blanket stash

I've been on a binge of building up my materials stash for all the work I have planned for the coming months. I've been buying blankets in many colours, and a whole kilogram of wool roving for felting! It usually comes in 5 gram packs so this was a major investment. I also bought a new set of felting needles for some serious needle felting and every now and then I think I might have enough embroidery floss to keep me going. But I use it up so fast I always seem to be running short of one colour or another.

After a very slow start on my big iceberg, its starting to become an object instead of lots of half worked pieces. The base of the iceberg is momentarily shaped a bit like a hat. Unlike a hat, this is a very solid piece and will end up quite heavy, so I'm reinforcing the blanket stitch and needle felt with some invisible internal sewing to hold it all together when its hung. It's becoming a very substantial object.

The very base of my iceberg, just starting to spread out and change colour as well as shape.

In contrast, I'm also starting to make pieces that are hollow, cutting away and stitching up from the inside instead of down from the top. It's taken me a few experiments to get this kind of negative space working the way I want. The brown piece is my latest, most successful, experiment with results encouraging enough for me to launch into making it for real, in the materials I've intended all along.

Experimental tunnel

Thrilling Science Reading

2011-01-21T09:02:00.010+13:00

Bibliophilia has become a bit of a misnomer for this blog over the past few years as book arts have taken a back seat to textiles as my favoured form of creative expression. But my love of reading books has not diminished. This year I intend to start sharing more of my reading with my blog readers, not least because books are by far still the most influential media I consume.

My summer reading so far has been mostly guided by what catches my eye on the Public Library's science shelves. These casual choices have kept my brain bubbling with unexpected connections, new insights and revived enthusiams. As a result I'm getting more purposeful in my book choices. Here is one strand of thrilling reading, I will share others soon.

The first frisson came near the end of the Kathleen Crane's riveting memoir of life as a woman oceanographer, Sea Legs. She underwent some incredible challenges to break into the all male world of oceanography, and had some incredible adventures on the high sea. Her passion for the deep sea floor ignited a spark in my imagination: can I use bathymetric data to make emboidered blanket representations of the bottom of the sea? This riveting idea led me to seek out an Philips Atlas of the Oceans so I could look at bathymetric maps, and the contour lines. Suffice to say I have started buying up blue and green blankets and I expect I will be blogging more about the sea floor.

My newfound passion for the deep drew me to Deep Blue Home by Julia Whitty. Julia Whitty writes nonfiction prose like a poet and savouring a few chapters before sleep each night is one of my great pleasures at the moment. Here is her describing a close encounter with an iceberg off the coast of Newfoundland:

Its skin is wind-polished to the luster of diamond, water -sculpted to sapphire, its form purely feminine, purely voluptuous, curves hewn hard in the foundry of the far north. Although the air termperature is cold enough to make us shiver, it is not cold enough for this relic of snowfalls past to survive, and a silver cascade of meltwaterpours from its summit down a chute of polished translucent turquoise. Crystal by crystal, its ice diminishes, collecting in a pool on the iceberg's saddle, where Arctic terns dip and splash, unfurling freshwater rainbows.Deep blue veins and track marks of gravel scar the ice, records of good years and bad years in the glacier world.

Can you see why I am in love with this book? I will be chasing up her other books as well, not only for their sea content, but for the delicious writing.

Six Years On

2011-01-14T10:56:00.004+13:00

Oil slick on ice

This week marks the beginning of my seventh year blogging on Bibliophilia. Some 750 posts over six years have traced the development of my creative passions from book making to letterpress printing to hand stitching textiles. Many posts also share stories from the rest of my life, other creative pursuits, friends, travel, play, all of which form a context and narrative to make sense of my life as an artist.

The nature of blogging is that only the most recent material is visible to the casual viewer . The disadvantage of this is my art-focused blog is not always presenting an art-focused face to a first time visitor.

However, since my original gallery website was lost many years ago when the long forgotten hosting service disappeared, I've relied on Bibliophilia and my Etsy shop to represent my art on line. Though each is wonderful in its own way, neither adequately does the job of a gallery website.

While I gradually work on overcoming my internet intertia as well as technical and other obstacles on the way to creating a gallery website, I have started a new Facebook page for my art: Meliors Simms- Handmade Art. I know that there are still admirable hold-outs who refuse to go near Facebook, and others who avoid it as much as possible, so it is not a long-term solution. But its free, its easy, its wonderfully interactive and for now, the best way of plugging my online gallery gap.

This Facebook Page will be a web site that is all about my art. Photos of all my work will be easily accessible by theme rather than chronology. I will also post links to the best from Bibliophilia's archives because I believe the knowing context of my work is crucial to appreciating the images.

This is a new project for me, and there's not much on the Page so far, but if you 'like' it, your Facebook wall will be updated whenever I add new material. Oh, and please share the link with your Facebook friends.

Sewing Marathon

2011-01-07T21:04:00.015+13:00

i love my collection of old wooden spools, even if the thread tends to snap on the machine

Here are the results of Thursday's 12 hour marathon sewing bee with Anna. It was a hot humid day so we took frequent breaks in the paddling pool to cool off. In fact we spent the whole day in our swimsuits and sarongs, which is the perfect summer sewing outfit as you can try on half-made garments for fit without having to change.

When I arrived, the machine was already threaded with turquoise so I jumped right in with altering a skirt into a dress, inspired by Bored and Crafty. The beautiful bright skirt which my Aunt Laura gave to my mother and she eventually passed to me was originally made by sewing circular tiers so there are no vertical seams. I've never seen a garment made like that before. It was a wonderfully full skirt, so when I trimmed the bottom 25cm, I had enough fabric to make the whole top of the dress, a matching hairband and still have some leftover for future fun. The finishing touch to my new dress is a beautiful embroidered applique flower from the amazing box of goodies that Helen sent last month.

This white skirt has been altered twice before at sewing bees and ended up shorter than I really wanted so this round of sewing bee the objective was to lengthen. I bought some bridal veil, cut it into two different widths and sewed them inside bias binding so I could attatch it to the skirt lining without getting the open weave of the veil tangled up in machinery. I also trimmed the outer skirt's hem with some ribbon to cover up the ugly yellow overlocking that I did last time. I'm not too keen on how the ribbon looks, so this long-suffering yet much loved skirt may yet return to a future sewing bee for more attention.

In an unprecedented flurry of attention to clothing I made a pair of shorts as well. These had been bright blue trousers which I cut off just above the knees and trimmed with part of an orange flowery skirt from Helen's magical box. The rest of the skirt I made into a drawstring potato bag.

set of four vegetable bags

In fact I was on a bag-making roll. I tentatively made a few net vegetable bags to take to the greengrocers and store fruit and veg. They are light enough to not add to the weight of my purchases, reusable, washable, pretty, close securely and open easily! They were also super quick and easy to make and I wish I'd bought more of the nylon net so I could have made a full set for myself and some to give away.

Inspired by the double drawstring technique I was using for all my pouch style bags, Anna was easily convinced she should make a lettuce bag. She used a wonderful handprinted Pacifica print tea towel and used it straight away to make our lunch salad.

Anna's lettuce spinning and storage bag

Anna spent the day altering patterns, cutting fabric and overlocking. I think she was deliberately staying off the sewing machine because I was in my usual obsessive focus and running the machine hot. I'd done most of my planning, cutting and pinning in the days before our bee. At Anna's suggestion I have discovered the wonderful world of free sewing patterns on the internet. I'm all keen to make this pouf, as soon as I find the right kind of fabric, but in the meantime I was looking for a peg bag pattern and found this.

I made three little blue baskets from scraps of quilting fabric passed on from Anna's friend Tai, decorated with sweet wooden hand buttons from Helen.

mini peg bag

I altered the basket pattern to make a slightly taller peg basket (it wouldn't hold a normal quantity of clothes pegs but I don't have very many). Anna was cutting out shoulder bags from these gorgeous floral print linen tea towels and offered me the offcuts: just enough for a short little peg basket.

It was a long, busy, fun, productive day and I finished ten separate items, almost all repurposing old clothes and off cuts. I also harvested yellow and purple beans and two kinds of peas from Anna and Chris' vegetable garden. We have gone in together to buy a freezer, so I have blanched the beans and frozen them into one- and two-portion sized bags to grace our shared freezer. Which is already well on the way to being an overflowing cornucopia of summer harvest: Anna and I picked about 8 kg of blueberries the next day, and Chris went fishing and caught four fish!

beans in a net vegetable bag

Pretty Chutney

2011-01-07T20:46:00.003+13:00

I made eight jars of chutney using the plums from my parent's tree. I'm not sure the chutney is going to taste so great, but I really like the labels, and the circles I cut out of a fallen-apart picture book to decorate the lids.

The gift of the blue knife

2011-01-04T20:39:00.004+13:00

I was given a beautiful, blue, very sharp, paring knife. It puts all my other knives to shame, so yesterday I cut my finger while peeling potatoes a little carelessly. It's a shallow but long and wide flap right across the side of the first joint of my right index finger.

Turns out its pretty much almost impossible to cook, clean up, eat or anything else without bending that joint, so it didn't stop bleeding (and throbbing) until I went to bed. This morning I built a little splint for my finger which is working a treat and allows me to type and do most things without pain or blood.

But not stitching. Yesterday morning I'd been out shopping for some long-awaited iceberg supplies and was raring to get back into my project. Before that had been several days of no stitching, partly because I decided it made sense to take a real break and rest properly but mostly because I didn't have all the materials or tools I need to move forward.

Now my break has been involuntarily extended because I just can't hold a needle comfortably or control it reliably. I could feel frustrated but I don't. I have plenty of time to complete the iceberg, there's no urgency driving my desire to work on it. Besides, it's really too hot to be covering my lap with wool blankets right now.

Luckily I can still wield scissors, so today I have been cutting and pinning in preparation for my next sewing bee with Anna. I'll be altering some clothes, making net vegetable bags (no more plastic!) and some other bits and pieces. I'm excited about trying new ideas and using some of the pretty fabric I've been given.

It always feels so self indulgent to use time to make personal and domestic things when I could be working on art to exhibit, so I tend not to. Today, this time out from hand stitching feels like a delightful gift from the blue knife.

First Steps in Crochet and other makings

2010-12-28T11:40:00.005+13:00

There are a few memes floating around the internet urging people to share influential books from their childhood or recent reading lives. I've never seen a 'how-to' book mentioned on any of these lists (or a recipe book for that matter) but I was recently reunited with one of the influential books of my life.

Bethwyn picked this up along with a pile of other old books to contribute to our altered book project, Frugal with the Brughel (have you noticed I spell the B word differently every single time I type it?). She had no idea that I would fall upon it with coos of delight and sighs of nostalgic rapture. I had no idea I would either, but every single spread was deeply familiar even though I can't have seen my, or any other, copy of First Steps in Crochet since at least the early 80s.

My first copy would have been well thumbed through the mid-70s, when I taught myself to crochet by laboriously following the excellent diagrams and instructions provided by the 'Editress: Patience Horne of Clackmannashire'. I don't remember actually following any of the patterns to make a 'dashing little bolero' or 'jaunty little hat'.

I suspect that even at a tender age I was more interested using traditional methods to make my own original designs. I do remember working a sky blue wool with the tension too tight, and my frustration at not having the manual dexterity at 8 or ten years to be able to satisfactorily manifest the creation I imagined. Even if all I ever finished was that wobbly-edged scarf I must have studied the whole book very closely to have imprinted it so deeply on my memory.

My first real success with a craft was knitting, which I took up some ten years later, after disappointing dabblings in sewing, embroidery and zine making etc. Penelope started making me a complicated fair isle pullover and then stopped at the sleeves, leaving the body for me to finish. So I was forced to learn to knit but at least I didn't have to cast on until I'd made a whole garment. I became addicted to knitting and didn't stop for about ten years until I'd made everyone I knew a jersey or a hat, and gave myself OOS.

Bethwyn was so thrilled at my delight in reconnecting with First Steps in Crochet, that she withdrew it from our altered book pile (one of our rules is that either of us can withdraw any book from contention for cutting up at any time) and gave it to me as a birthday present.

And then for Christmas Bethwyn gave me this even better gift, a badge made out of an old blanket label (I think it's the label from the blue blanket I used as the ocean background for Ross Island). I love it so much, even though when I wear it, everyone I meet peers at my chest and says 'Hospital? wha?'. The fabric in the background is the excellent bag that Anna sewed for me as a Christmas present. And below are some (just some) of the insane variety of cookies that my mother and I made together last week.

Happy holidays!

Below the surface

2010-12-21T10:11:00.010+13:00

Colour tests for underwater iceberg

I am beginning to make a new iceberg. This one will include the 80% of the iceberg hidden below the water. It's been very difficult to find information on and images of icebergs below water, but after several months of research I finally feel ready to begin.

All the iceberg tips I have made (including the current work in progress) are based on photographs; there are so many beautiful and detailed images of iceberg tips for me to copy. However, my below-surface berg will be based on a composite sketch, pulling together all I have learned, seen and imagined, without having a single reliable image to inspire me.

The Rayleigh effect scatters sunlight so that the further from the surface, the bluer the light that shines through ice. I'm actually basing my underwater ice colours on a description of a deep crevasse in Kim Stanley Robinson's novel, Antarctica where he says

...only the very bluest light made it down here, glowing from out of the ice in an intense creamy-translucent turquoise, or actually an unnamed blue unlike any other she had seen. (...) all of it a blue that could not be described and could scarcely be apprehended, as it seemed to flood and then to overflood the eye.

KSR's novel is the origin of my Antarctic obsession, my most thumbed literary reference (though I do double check my facts in my Reader's Digest encyclopedia of Antarctica). His book can be seen as a framework for the exhibition of Antarctic pieces I will have next August, for he seamlessly brings together the sciences, the human history, the current politics, and potential futures of Antarctica. These are the same themes that I am responding to in my work, and so it is no accident that the next step of my imaginary Antarctic journey is to go below the surface, below the entrancing and accessible tip of the iceberg, to explore the unnamed, the indescribable and the scarcely apprehended.

Snail mail joy

2010-12-19T10:01:00.013+13:00

Look what was inside the enormous box of goodies sent by my delightful internet buddy, Helen Lehndorf, a talented poet, crafter, performer, Flickr photo curator, brilliant blogger on sabbatical, now the best Facebook status updater out of all 500 million users.

I knew Helen was planning to mail back to me a DVD and book I'd sent to her and I assumed it was taking so long because she is a busy mother and creative writing tutor, with craft fairs to sew for and poems to write. I had no idea she was filling an huge box with a treasure trove of delightful treats.

Here's a small selection of highlights, for example...

A couple of sweet badges which I started wearing straight away: one handmade flower and one bird print . The fish is on a Frankie poster I have hung next to my desk at work. (Another Frankie poster was given to a young workmate who needed cheering up).

From left: cubes of exotic herbal teas, Helen's collaged cards some of which have already been dispatched to lucky friends; CDs of the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain, and the Crimson Club; and the DVD I sent Helen a while back called The Winter of the Beard. If anyone else wants to borrow my copy, you are welcome even if it's not returned in such lavish fashion!

Beautiful embroidered and beaded flower appliques- I have come back from Melbourne determined to wear more flowers (à la Frida Kahlo), an idea reinforced by reading Carol Kaesuk Yoon's wonderful book about the umwelt called Naming Nature: The Clash Between Instinct and Science. (I should say that nowhere in the book does Yoon offer any fashion advice, but rather she explains why humans love (representations of) the natural world and why it is so important to our psyche).

One of Helen's handmade bunnies in a cross stitched vintage fabric, now making friends with my Peter Rabbit bedspread. A stash of mostly orange fabrics. In my life of the past few years it seems to be the colour associated with creative transformation and so I have learned to welcome its arrival. Also a swatch of embroidery flosses, which I will make good use of you can be sure. I try and do all my experimental and casual embroidery with second-hand floss, though I end up buying new for the final works, to get the colours consistent.

A couple of paperbacks I look forward to reading this summer. Plus the return of Response (with the green on white letterpress cover), the collaborative travelling journal project I launched nearly two years ago. There are a couple of blank spreads left to be filled, if you are interested let me know. It's fascinating to look at how the contributors in three countries so far have responded to the challenge of the blank page. It's a beautiful book, and I look forward to sharing it on this blog when its finished.

Open Studio 2010

2010-12-15T09:58:00.009+13:00

Welcome to my Open Studio.

My Open Studio was a great success. Plenty of people came along, and most of them weren't even friends or family! Seeing strangers walking up the driveway clutching a clipping from the local paper gave me such a thrill. It was wonderful to meet some folks who have been following my art for years but not made personal contact before.

Some of the artist's books that I made between 2003-2009

The Open Studio was a chance to pull out a pile of older work which hasn't been seen for a while. I hung Membranes on the clothes line, and enjoyed watching it dance in the breeze- far more dynamic than it's ever looked inside a gallery. The Optimistic Heart remains a perennial best seller, and I'm down to the last dozen or so of the original edition of 400 (it was to be and edition of 1000, but water damage destroyed some of the stock, along with many of my personal possessions, in 2006).

The main attraction of the Open Studio was My Antarctica on its first public outing. My Antarctica is stored off-site so not even I get to see it very often. Spending a day in its company was a pleasure. Visitors stopped and stared when they walked in and saw it dominating the room, even just resting on the floor nestled in its dust sheet. I have recently confirmed a solo exhibition of Antarctic-themed work at ArtsPost in Hamilton, August 2011 so My Antarctica will finally get to hang on a big white wall where it really belongs.

Assorted wall art, book art, and embossed fossil tags displayed on my book press.

Two of the three Coral Portraits sold. They don't photograph terribly well, so I haven't put them on Etsy but if anyone is interested in the remaining portrait (the one on the right in this photo) email me for more information. The first of the embroidered fossils that were in my Punctuated Equilibrium installation sold as well (Sea Stars). The remaining three are still available in my Etsy Shop (or contact me directly).

A box of crocheted coral pins, a pile of painted paper scrolls and some recent artist's books

After looking (and touching with gloves) to their hearts' content, visitors were treated to chocolate cupcakes (recipe here) and homemade lemonade. On Saturday I had taken up a Freecycle invitation to pick lemons from an overburdened tree and they turned out to be the juiciest, sweetest lemons ever: making delicious lemonade. Some visitors lingered to chat in the shade outside the studio. A couple people departed only to return with mother or husband, whom they guided around the studio pointing out their favourite pieces.

It was a relaxed, sociable and profitable afternoon of sharing my work with interested visitors. Thank you so much to everyone who helped me get ready for it. The many days spent preparing and following up were worthwhile and I think I'll do it again next December. See you then.

Bethwyn Littler, with arms akimbo, my collaborator on the altered books project- we had a selection of works in progress for people to leaf through..

Melbourne Highlights

2010-12-09T15:46:00.007+13:00

I like the juxtaposition of beautiful old architecture against the tall shiny buildings. Not so much the murky Yarra.

Some of the best moments of my ten days in Melbourne were the ones where I didn't take any pictures. So the pictures here were mostly taken while waiting for trams or other quiet interludes.

So many lovely architectural details everywhere. Just somebody's house near Brunswick St.

An exhibition of historic lace at NGV didn't so much inspire as intimidate me. It was a reality check on the commitment required to make great lace by hand. Do I really want to strain my eyes, abandon all other media and devote years to learning making lace that is all but indistinguishable from really good machine lace? It was all very beautiful but sobering.

Unnerved: The New Zealand Project. (I didn't go to this exhibition because I figure I can see NZ art at home)

But I didn't stay sober for long because downstairs in the bookshop I found a book on art embroidery that so excited me and filled me with ideas for my next project that I read the whole book right there (too expensive to buy). Then I went to the Contemporary Landscape Photography exhibition at the Ian Potter Centre which was very satisfying- very large format pictures that challenge the scenery.

Multicultural Melbourne

Other great exhibitions in Melbourne last week included Self Portraits at the Ian Potter Centre and the Awards Exhibition for RMIT graduates- some very wonderful things to be see there including a wall sized painting of fountains and an interactive cloud. I went to one opening, at the Australian Print Workshop which was crammed full of beautiful prints and crammed full of people too, on a very humid evening. But I wanted to see their Albion and Columbian printing presses so I kept going back inside.

Cake and crochet in a cafe with Rayna- her first afternoon off without any babies all year.

Hubble 3D at the Imax theatre in the Melbourne Museum was fantastic and really did a good job of giving a visceral sense of the immensity of space. And the natural history wing of the Melbourne Museum was pretty fabulous too. Fossils... I've been so disappointed in my search for fossils in NZ museums but here was everything my heart desired. I also loved the collection of taxidermy animals that was so beautifully curated that it completely changed my thinking on such things.

Window shopping on Smith Street (I liked the irony of the taxidermied birds right next door to the vegan shop)

Who knew vegan shoes could be so seductively elegant? (I took this one for you Sarah and remind me to show you the boots as well)

Most memorable meals in Melbourne: dinner with Louise and Alex at Rice Queen; lunch alone at Don Too, the Japanese noodle bar recommended in a guidebook that I was glad I sought out; dinner on my birthday at Mamasita: we had to queue to get in but the Mexican food was exquisite and the service exemplary; Portuguese pizza with Dutch Rob in a very Euro-feeling laneway; Book Club potluck with Louise's friends on her living room floor (milk cherries!); breakfast on my last morning in the back garden at Mixed Business in Clifton Hill.

Sukiyaki at Don Too on Little Lonsdale

Several meals consisted entirely of fresh, ripe, in-season mangoes: a whole 'nother class of fruit from those we eat as imports. Also, special mention must go to the European cake shops of Ackland Street, St Kilda. I tried to try them all and over a couple of days enjoyed a cherry danish to die for, macaroons too heady to share and a pecan tart piled high with sticky crunchy nuts. Oh, and I mustn't forget M. Truffe and the small, exquisite bar of chocolate so divine I keep tasting smaller and smaller crumbs because I never want it to end.

Rice Queen on Smith Street where the entire staff seems to consist of my daughter's friends and there was a live band on Friday night.

Other things to like about Melbourne. It seems like a lot of people in Melbourne ride bikes like mine, not sporty but stepovers with baskets- very nice. Also lots of car drivers give way to pedestrians.

In St Kilda the dedicated cycle lanes were beyond impressive.

So many, so good, bookshops. I could have spent all my time and all my money in the book shops. But, uncharacteristically, I also spent some time and money on pretty pretty clothes- the best selection was Stella's who was just clearing out her wardrobe with a rack on the street outside her flat.

Window shopping on Gertrude Street (I took this one for you Anna)

I went to Bikram hot yoga sessions three mornings. Whew! I wish we had Bikram in Hamilton. Saturday's flea market at Fitzroy School- although it was sickeningly hot out in the sun, I couldn't tear myself away from the delightful bargains. On my last evening Louise took me up six flights of stairs (no elevator) to the Rooftop Cinema where we sat in deck chairs in the open air and when it got dark watched a movie (Youth in Revolt) against the sparkling lights of the looming skyscrapers.

Rock gods can be a literal description

2010-11-26T12:01:00.005+13:00

I decided not to post my gushy fangirl ravings about seeing U2 live to this blog, but if you are really keen you can check out my photos and commentary on Facebook.

OK, just one photo here, because you begged me.

Shelf- An exhibtion of small objects

2010-11-24T11:19:00.004+13:00

Looking through the window of Katherine Pigott's cardboard house three stories tall and each interior perfectly and delicately drawn and painted.

I'm honoured to be included in the roll call of well respected artists in this group show at The Framing Workshop in Silverdale, Hamilton until 19 January 2011. We were given the brief to make an object to fit on a shelf 165x165mm and the diversity of responses is satisfying. All so different and every piece a small gem.

The piece on the left is a resin water balloon

Left is a found deer sculpture that has been dressed, centre is Ann Bell's shishiro vessel, and right is a fascinating assemblage.

The Framing Workshop is one of the classiest galleries in Hamilton (and one of the smallest). This exhibiton, curated by owner Sarah Marston and artist Gaye Jurisich, is one of the most satisfying exhibitons I've seen locally this year (am I allowed to say that if I am included?).

I toyed with idea of making an iceberg with the tip on top of the shelf and the 80% underwater hanging below the shelf. This artist was the only one of us to actually use the underside of the shelf, and so wonderfully.

Unfortunately there wasn't a take home catalogue and I didn't document the artist's names as I was taking these photos. Sorry- if you see your work let me know names and links so I can acknowledge.

I submitted four icebergs and there are a pair displayed in each window

Punctuated Equilibrium in Store

2010-11-20T15:00:00.007+13:00

Embroidered ammonite fossil

As the end of the year approaches, I am reviewing my achievements of 2010. One of my proudest was the installation 'Punctuated Equilibrium' at the Waikato Museum earlier this year. Almost all of the elements of the installation were actually created (or at least begun) during my 2009 residency at Hamilton Girls High School but I'm counting it as a 2010 achievement as that's when the project was completed.

Embroidered crinoid fossil

It felt quite poignant to un-install 'Punctuated Equilibrium' earlier this month, but I am thrilled to be sharing all the individual elements again in another form. As a 'site specific' installation, this combination of works won't be shown again outside of the Vitrine. Instead I have added each of the pieces to my Etsy shop. If you liked my embroidered fossils or the microfossil sketchbook, you can buy these now, just as they were exhibited.

Microfossil micro-sketchbook

Deep Time, the 570 metres of paper scrolls representing 570 million years of multi cellular life on earth is also for sale, as individual scrolls. You can pick and choose among your favourite colours (not all the scrolls have been added to the shop quite yet, so if the colour you want isn't there, just ask). I love the idea that someone will draw or write on the painted paper, or collage on it or with it, creating a new other life for these unusual books. Of course if you just want to have a pretty cylinder of colour sitting on your shelf, or unroll the paper to make your own installation, that's going to look rather fine too.

Blue painted paper scroll (Deep Time)

The 500 or so woodcut blind embossed fossils in brown kraft paper are also for sale. I'm suggesting them as sets of 10 paper ornaments or gift tags (and have attached hemp twine for ease of attachment. Of course these woodcuts are still available (on luxuriously creamy paper) in the Five Fossils artist's book as well.

Embossed fossil ornaments or gift tags

AJ Seely Gully

2010-11-18T14:08:00.005+13:00

The sign says 'second biggest kauri 37 years old'

The other day I heard a radio programme about ecological restoration happening in the Hamilton area, and one of the sites discussed was the AJ Seely Gully which is in my neighbourhood. I have noted the entrance before but not yet explored it as the path appeared steep narrow, muddy and generally unformed. But the weather this month is all hot and dry so a scramble down the track doesn't seem so intimidating as in the middle of a rainy winter. I suggested to Robin that we go check it out last weekend. So we did and this is what we saw.

Not exactly a bridge, but a board walk over what would often be mud. The sign says 'careful'

It's not a big area, and its a nice easy walk when the ground is dry. The land is private and the tree planting the 50 year project of a local man who decided to restore bush long before it became fashionable. There are some impressively big trees only a few years older than me, that he planted. Best of all were the wonderfully quirky hand written signs. Worst of all was the rubbish, though Robin and I picked up most of what we could and carried it out of the gully.

'Miro, note clematis above'. We looked and looked but couldn't spot any clematis.

Deconstructionist Delight

2010-11-12T12:13:00.005+13:00

Beads salvaged from Soul of the Sea. Even the most of the snippets of thread go in my scrapjar as future stuffing.

Bulky old unsold works of art, no matter how beloved, are a millstone. I don't want to keep putting them out to galleries because there's always new works I want to show. Keeping them in storage is inconvenient and expensive.

Thus one of the most effective cures for the persistant existential angst plaguing me this spring has been deconstructing pieces that for whatever reason have passed their used by dates. It is extremely satisfying to be actively engaged with the materials, solving logistical problems and clearing the decks for new creativity. I am determined to salvage as much as possible for reuse.

Being gentle to the planet is a central concern in everything I do, not least in my art practice. Deconstructing my work is giving me fresh insights into how I can improve my art footprint in the next pieces I make. I am most pleased with my latest dismantlement which resulted in only a handful of gluey threads and some sticky tape from the packaging going to landfill. Every thing else from the work itself, the hanging hardware, and the packaging will be reused.

Shroud for King Tutankhamun/Soul of the Sea

My latest act of deconstruction is a piece with an illustrious history. It started its life as New Shroud for King Tutankhamun and was selected as a finalist in the NZ Art Guild Art Award in January 2008. It went from that exhibition straight into storage while I set off on my Australian adventure. Later that year when I set up my Etsy shop I renamed the piece Soul of the Sea and it continues to be my Etsy item most frequently selected for Treasuries. So often has it appeared in various mermaid-themed collections that I became quite blase. Last year I touted the piece around a couple of local galleries and Soul of the Sea enjoyed a few months in a prominent postition in the Thornton Gallery, then went back into storage.

Watercoloured die cut circles straight from the Sea

It is always the handwork that I love most about my art. Taking apart the Soul of the Sea brought back the happy memories I had of every stage of its original making: hand painting offcuts of water colour paper, diecutting them with my daughter on the Chandler Price press, pricking the holes, stitching the circles together with beads and finally building the elaborate packaging that has kept this fragile piece perfectly intact through its travels.

Inside the packaging I made out of cardboard from windscreen boxes, masses of bubble wrap and duct tape

As a finished object I was pleased that it was so well liked: as a finalist, as a Treasury frequent flyer, inviting much attention in the gallery. But I also was mostly frustrated that it never sold and so had to continue to be stored. If I had a big enough house I would have happily hung it in my living space. If I was close to anyone with enough wallspace I might have given it away. But now instead I am all afire with new enthusiasm to be beginning again with stitching the circles.

Post Sea circles, tidied up and ready to be stitched again.

This time I will make an edition of smaller Soul of the Seas, that are mounted on a rigid backboard and can be easily and affordably posted overseas. It will be so much easier to spread the love of the original piece in affordable and postable packages. And I get to do a whole lot more pleasurable making without having to buy any new materials!

The small pile in the foreground is going to landfill. The cardboard will be repurposed (for the third time in its life) to make a solar oven. The bubble wrap will come in handy, though these days I prefer to give it away rather than use it to package art.

Out into the world

2010-11-09T11:13:00.003+13:00

Icebergs for Shelf - An exhibition of small objects opening 19 Nov at The Framing Workshop in Hamilton

It's an ambivalent moment sending work out from my studio to a gallery and I'm doing it twice this week. Ambivalent because exhibiting is the point of my making and yet it feels so risky. I'm never completely happy with what I've made, the minor imperfections glare out at me almost obscuring the bigger picture. By the time I've finished making something I've learned how much better I could make it next time, and its hard to believe that not every viewer will have as critical an eye as my own.

But out my pieces go, with the gallery fee I can ill afford, with the artist's statement I've sweated over, with my hopes and wishes that it will provoke thought, conversation and affection in many people; and (please God) an overwhelming acquisitive desire in at least one person with the means to satisfy themselves. Sending away my work marks the end of what has inevitably been many hours of pleasurable production, into an environment where those hours of effort are not necessarily valued. It's risky, so I'm ambivalent.

Coral Threnody for the Textile Show opening 13 November at The Depot Artspace in Devonport

Spring programme

2010-11-02T10:18:00.005+13:00

Poor neglected blog! I've been navigating a delicate recovery from existential angst, not a process I wanted to expose to the harsh light of the internet. I'm not angsting over 'what's the point of trying to be an artist?' anymore. Now I'm just getting on with it; which is much more fun.

But I'm too busy to try and craft a narrative about anything, instead here's a partial list of what I've been up to:

reading Ranulph Fiennes' biography of Scott and thinking about the Scott poem I want to write
un-installing 'Punctuated Equilibrium' from the Vitrine at Waikato Museum
finishing preparing two years' worth of tax records for the accountant
watching with despair as my 'money-put-aside-for-taxes' goes for yet another dental bill
eating rice bubbles
avoiding Twitter which I find oppressive and confusing
experimenting with kefir milk grains
enjoying bicycling in fine weather for a change, the air smells so sweet
cleaning dirty old letterpress type
cuddling alpacas at the A&P Show, also viewing bunnies, horses, sheep, goats and cows
finishing the icebergs for the Shelf exhibition later this month
finishing a present to take to Melbourne at the end of the month
reading Pie#02
reworking 'You are an Agent of Change' into two 'new' pieces
reworking 'Breathe' into costume jewellery
growing a small vegetable garden in pots (dwarf beans, cherry tomatoes, spring onions, lettuce, parsley, coriander and calvo nero)
hanging out with my parents
sewing with Anna
my day job which is really an evening job ie the non-arty stuff that pays the bills, or would if the bills would stay under control
starting a commission for an edition of two handmade artist's books
watching the Beatles Anthology series and listening to a lot of Beatles music
wearing skirts most days, and getting sandal tan marks on my feet
moving 'My Antarctica' into storage
planning an 'Open Studio' day on 12 December, everyone is invited to my place to come and see new work (including 'My Antarctica' which I will bring out of storage for the event), enjoy birthday cake and hopefully buy some handmade books and stitched pieces

Getting my hands dirty

2010-10-27T13:40:00.005+13:00

A row of freshly brushed lower case 10pt c's

I bought myself some lead type the other day. There's two fonts, a 10pt condensed sans serif that I haven't identied further yet, and an 18 point Gill, which, if I could only own one typeface would be it. Bonus! They come in a funny old cabinet with only four of the original 10 drawers, so lots of empty spaces (which I have plans for).

But first job is cleaning and sorting my new type. It looks like they are complete, nearly unused founts, but instead of being correctly sorted into their upper and lower case drawers*, they all are crammed into the upper case compartments. It's a long slow process removing each complete set of letters from its tiny space, checking and cleaning them and then putting away into their traditional place. Fortunately there's not much pied (mixed up) type, or it would be an even slower process.

The before photo

I'm guessing that my new fonts haven't been touched much, if at all, for the better part of 50 years. Transfering the accumulated filth onto my fingers isn't so bad as some type drawers I've cleaned where there was as much mouse poop, insect carcasses/nests and unidentified sticky stuff as dust and wood shavings. At the rate I'm going it's going to take about 12 hours to complete this project. And then I can start thinking about finding a printing press to use it on!

The after photo: clean 10pt lower case a's

*Printing geeks: mine are not California cases

Take Two Eggs

2010-10-17T13:16:00.003+13:00

I am busy doing lots of stitchery and even secretly working on binding an edition on my own. But the most fun, interesting and photogenic thing I want to share about is still my collaborative altered book project with Bethwyn. We had a grand session yesterday working on our Man and Woman Books. I think the photos speak for themselves.

Man Book and Woman Book

2010-10-08T11:23:00.005+13:00

After a winter lull, Bethwyn and I are back in the swing of our collaborative altered book project, Frugal with the Breugal. We are being very good about completing unfinished books (of which we have many) before starting anything new.

The book I'm focusing on right now is our "A Man Owner's Manual" aka the Man Book. The base is a 1950's British car owner's manual altered with a 1960's men's hairdressing textbook and 1950s knitting patterns. Bethwyn is focusing on our companion Woman Book which is based on a gardening book and incorporates something from almost everything in our ever growing stock pile of sources. Our self imposed rule for these books is no colour but lots of sillyness. We seen no reason that anything we do should make sense.

PS Click on each photo to see the details.

A spring sketch crawl

2010-10-05T11:09:00.005+13:00

Storm battered poppies in ink

It's been ages since I've been to a sketch crawl. The WSA has taken over the organisation so competently that they've been trundling on throughout the winter quite nicely thank you very much; while I've been staying home and keeping warm. But last Saturday was such a perfect warm Spring day and I couldn't resist an excuse to be outside in pretty Parana Park. The Waikato River is still very high, up and over the banks and flooding the footpath in places.

Every time we moved to a new sketching spot I chose a different type of pen or pencil. I had carelessly brought along the journal that is almost finished so I ran out of pages after an hour or so and then had a snooze in the sun.

My best sketches were of flowers, but I also drew boats, butterflies, people, lichen and an aeroplane on a plinth.

Red hot pokers rendered in a novelty multicoloured pencil souvenir from the Cairns Regional Gallery.

Sewing Bee with Anna

2010-10-01T09:31:00.014+13:00

Boring, but extremely useful op shop blouse ruined with bike chain grease on the cuff, restored by cutting off the cuffs, hemming the sleeves, and adding the cuff buttons to the placket: more buttons= less boring

At this stage in my life I don't have much interest in clothes, although they were something of an obsession during my teens. A life-long tendency to yo-yo between size 12 and size 16, a lack of money and other preoccupations have steered me into considering "clean, comfortable and weather-appropriate" to be my most relevant sartorial considerations. Thus I have ended up with a second hand wardrobe that conceals, more than reveals, my sense of who I really am.

In the past couple of years the only items of clothing I have sought out and bought new for pleasure rather than necessity are rainbow stripey socks. These are the clothes I own (and wear frequently) with which I can most associate a sense of expressing the self I aspire to. To me, these are the socks of a free-spirited, playful, hippy-chick with an exuberant creative optimism and I bought my first pair while living in the rainforest. These days my socks are usually hidden under jeans, giving me a similar frisson of secret self to that suggested by magazine ads promoting sexy underwear concealed beneath a power suit.

However, recent exposure to a couple of women around my age who dress beautifully with little reference to 'fashion' or excessive spending; and reading Linda Grant's The Thoughtful Dresser, have me considering my wardrobe more critically as a potential expression of my identity. (You may notice that I cannot name a single sartorial blog which has had any influence on my shifting attitude to clothing. Please feel free to suggest inspiring links).

Anna is the friend with the most influence on my shifting attitude. I've never seen her in anything other than beautiful rich colours, flattering cuts and luscious textures. Her style is completely her own and seems to perfectly express her passions for children (she is a kindergarten teacher) and sustainability; and a sensual yet practical generosity manifested in gardening, cooking, crafting, nurturing and fun. It's not that I want to dress like Anna (though we like the same colours), it's that she's made me reconsider the desirability of dressing more like Meliors.

Every few months Anna and I have a sewing bee at her place. She has a sewing machine and an overlocker and I am gradually overcoming my fear and loathing of such equipment. These sewing bees are almost the only time I do anything creative relating to clothing. I don't mean by this that I make clothes from scratch, though I did once make an apron out of a table cloth. Rather, I mend, alter and, lately enhance, clothing acquired from frock swaps, op shops and hand-me-downs.

Hand me down merino pullover with uncomfortably tight crewneck cut down the front to make a cardigan and trimmed with leopard

Anna and I have completely different approaches to the sewing bee experience. It's her house, and her school holidays, so for her our bee is part of a continuum of several days of sewing. She pulls out her entire and extensive stash of fabrics and clothes-to-be-worked-on and can happily spend hours considering creative possibilities for that stretched t-shirt or this embroidered tulle. Her sewing day is punctuated with numerous long phone calls with friends and family, the provision of endless cups of hot juice, tea, snacks and meals and frequent patient rethreading of the sewing machines.

Meanwhile, by the time I've got to Anna's, I've gone through my own small stash and chosen a pile of potential projects to bring with me. I launch into the first inevitable hemming task as soon as I arrive and work without stopping until lack of chocolate has me weak and shaky. Then once refueled with my drug of choice, I continue until I've finished or the light is gone. As I'm not naturally inclined to moderation or balance I benefit enormously from Anna's generous and distracted hostessing.

Yesterday's sewing bee was distinguished by some experimenting on my part, to expand my pragmatic wardrobe with some clothes that I might choose for pleasure in their look and feel, rather than for being tidy. This experimentation is exemplified in my use of the bundle of leopard print plush scraps I pounced on at our last frock swap. My enthusiasm for this fabric stems from fond memories of a vintage leopard print swing coat and matching pillbox hat I wore through several teenage winters in 1980s Dunedin. No matter how tacky leopard print may be considered in the mainstream, it has a special place in my heart, and now once again, in my wardrobe.

Plain red skirt from frock swap taken up and decorated with applique cat in leopard print

Toxic tailings

2010-09-27T11:32:00.004+13:00

More stitching... this was inspired by an aerial photograph of the tailings lake of a open cast copper mine in the Atacama Desert in Chile. The byproducts of such mining operations are sludges of poisonous chemicals so nasty they won't even blend together but instead sit on top of each other in pretty patterns.

This will be part of a larger, more complicated, work concerned with mining. I'm a bit ambivalent about the mining project so I'm also making a lot of lovely icebergs simultaneously, to balance things out.

Birdie Bowers' Hat

2010-09-21T11:07:00.003+12:00

I've written another poem about an Antarctic hero and Harvey Molloy has published it as his Tuesday Poem this week at Molloy Notebook. I am honored to be included in the Tuesday Poem project (for the second time), and to be invited by Harvey, who I respect very much.

I was also pleased to see my name included in the Tuesday Poem roll call on Beatties Book Blog, but not so pleased that Graham Beattie managed to spell both of my names (and one of the names in the poem's title) incorrectly. Sigh.

Birdie Bowers' Hat

Birdie Bowers was universally loved
for his old-fashioned virtues:
hard-work and loyalty, the most
stoic and cheerful member of Scott’s party,
he was the kind of chap the Empire needed
and chewed up
and spat out.
(...)
Read the rest here.

Also, while you are indulging in some poetry, check out this poem I really like by Olivia Macassey called They Say In a Healthy Economy There Should Be 5% Unemployment, or What Has Social Welfare Ever Given You?

Making icebergs

2010-09-18T18:03:00.003+12:00

I just can't find the motivation to write at the moment. All I want to do is stitch. So here's some photographs of my icebergs to keep you going.

Iceberg #1

Iceberg # 2

My foam work surface, just starting the second iceberg. Needle felting and embroidery

Almost finished second iceberg. See the fleece being needle felted onto the circle of blanket- its the softest thing in the whole world just before I sandwich it with another blanket and sew it all inside.

"Careful Considered Production"

2010-09-10T10:15:00.003+12:00

Rachel Kent, judge of the Bold Horizons National Contemporary Art Awards, speaking about her selection process. I was so thrilled by what she had to say about the place of craft in contemporary art, that I didn't mind not winning.

Tip of the Iceberg

2010-09-05T09:29:00.005+12:00

Four months ago I dreamed about making an iceberg in the form of a tiara, or maybe a crown. In my dream it was twilight shades of blues and purples. Subsequent research identified my iceberg as a combination of the types called "dry dock" and "pinnacle", fanciful fairytale ice structures sculpted over time by wind and waves. Unfortunately my dream didn't include directions for how I could make this wondrous object. Would it be embroidered, quilted, felted or crocheted?

I have imagined all of these possibilities, rejected most, and trialled a few. Finally I seem to have found the method which will work: a variation on My Antarctica technique which favours height over breadth with substantial needle felting and loose embroidery. Its taken quite a bit of unpicking to get this far, but I finally seem to be back in the zone.

Reluctantly I abandoned my dream colour scheme and reverted to the white on cream materials that are left over from my first Antarctic projects. I have a policy of using the materials I have on hand rather than buying new where ever possible, and the blue/purple spectrum is almost entirely absent from my floss stash. Besides, I'm confident about my white on cream scheme, and think it worth forgoing the risks and uncertainties of experimenting with colour at the same time as experimenting with technique.

I'm using my beloved Kaiapoi blanket and with every stab and stitch this weekend, my thoughts are with the town of Kaiapoi just north of Christchurch, evacuated after yesterday's earthquake. My dear friends Sharkey and Sean live there in a little old house which has miraculously survived, when many of their neighbour's homes haven't.

Miner’s Cook

2010-08-31T10:20:00.003+12:00

Flying in, the sea is dark and demanding.

Our island appears like a jewel and grows

green until we circle to land,

then I see the red sore gouged at its centre

and my bile rises as the plane drops.

On the ground I am lost in the chaos

of unloading in a sudden dark that hides everything

beyond our beams. I’m looking for the bread,

fresh bread brought to last this first week

but by the time I’ve found it the loaves are gnawed to stale crusts

and I’m in despair with a hungry crew to feed.

I must push my fear and sorrow

out into the dark and be grateful when our neighbours,

the whalers, come over the hill with roast meat.

I stumble asleep among crates of food

and dream of home but when I wake up I’m still here

and a relentless dawn calls me to breakfast for thirty.

For days of sorting supplies and learning a new kitchen,

fuelling men between their shifts,

all I ever see is the grassy slopes sheltering our camp,

a wink of water behind us and a sky full of strange stars.

Finally there is time for a walk, up the hill:

I see again the bleeding gash I am feeding,

and vomit into the grass.

Editioning- The Movie

2010-08-24T08:37:00.003+12:00

Editioning from Meliors Simms on Vimeo.

It's taken exactly 13 months to finish making my short film about making an edition of 100 books on commission. I wrote about the experience last year, and actually put a rough cut together straight away, then stalled on finding a soundtrack. Then I recently discovered The Serious Ukulele Ensemble, and their music is so perfect that I could finish the editing quite quickly.

Playing in the snow and mud

2010-08-22T09:22:00.007+12:00

Almost Antarctica, except for the ski lift cables.

This week I went away for a little break, mostly because after spending so long with the idea of Antarctica I wanted to see at least a little snow made of frozen water instead of wool and cotton. The nearest place to see snow is the mountains in the middle of the North Island of New Zealand, about three hours drive from where I live. I persuaded my buddy Robin, who has a car, to take a few days holiday with me. I didn't have to twist her arm very hard at all.

I thought that once up on the mountain I'd be able to narrow my focus and squint a little and maybe be able to imagine myself in Antarctica. Unfortunately, wherever I looked there was always some bit of greenery, or if not greenery, some building, road or ski lift. But it didn't matter, because there was snow, and some of it was blowing into my face in a very cold wind, and that seemed pretty authentic. Also Robin brought along a blow up sled, and that was very fun!

Three seems to be the optimal number on the Twister sled

After Robin and I took a few hilarious uncontrolled slides down the slope, she wondered how many kids could fit on the sled. Playing on the edge of the sledding slope was a group of children from Ngaruawahia Primary School who didn't have sleds or skis or snowboards. Watching them play on Robin's sled was even more fun that sledding ourselves. After a couple of hours in the snow, in conditions that could be generously described as stormy, we retreated back down to the Chateau for port and hot chocolate by the open fire, eavesdropping on rich people's complaints about the poor skiing conditions.

Taking a stroll to the Falls

But it's a truism that the weather in the mountains is changeable: the snow clad golf course we stomped across on our first day was melted to a green swamp (dotted with snowmen) on the second. And while we were recovering in luxury from the blizzardish morning, the sky suddenly cleared giving us the rare sight of all three mountains cloud-free. Ngarahoe, aka Mount Doom in Lord of the Rings, is such a perfect volcanic cone that I had to take about a million cliched photos of it. I don't know why, since I've chosen Robin's photo of me to illustrate.

The best thing about our little break was the hot pools at the Oasis in Tokaanu. The Oasis is perfectly adequate budget accomodation that I've been visiting for at least a dozen years. Guests get unlimited use of the on-site hot mineral pools and there's nothing like a hot stinky soak to ensure a very good night's sleep. The volcanic mountains and the hot pools are all reminders that the earth's crust is very thin here, and the landscape rather volatile.

On the way home we visited the Craters of the Moon, a geothermal feature consisting mainly of steaming holes in the ground.

My favourite part was a really big crater with shapely Chinese-looking rocks thrusting out of bubbling mud pools and steam vents, covered in lush primordial greenery.