Late August ... and the first month at the new place!

Its exactly one month since the last post here and its been eventful to say the least. A new home and studio slowly being set up!

Unpacking took precedence for a fair part of this month ... setting up the domestic side of life first then moving onto the studio! A few boxes had remained unpacked since the 2008 move from Newcastle... so I was very excited to discover some pieces that I've collected over years... rocks and odd eclectic things that store a lot of memory and make me feel at home just looking at them!

This string bag which I was given by someone living in Papua New Guinea many, many years ago containing small shells ... traded by local people for something they required. Its more or less a totem to me... like many things Ive saved not valuable in money terms but imbued with meanings that have come to me quietly and instinctively... making up a collection of things that have enriched my sense of what is important in life...often against the tide of regular notions of value and trade!

This whole process of packing up one home... waiting 5 weeks in limbo between homes and then slowly, slowly unpacking in the new space has brought with it hours of reverie and processing everything all over again. And again it would seem! It begs not just the physical movement but a very deep reconciliation with change and movement...dealing with all that is stirred up along the way.

Ive spent days feeling cloaked in a thick fog where it was as if I was lost or trying to remember something. Even finding my way around the house was a challenge and I found myself asking more than a few times if anyone had "seen the thing?

I struggled to remember more than I cared to realise! Dislocation it was ... even in the name of a good cause it was disconcerting!


An interesting undertaking has been collaborating in a brief artist residency project with 5 other artists on a school program at a special Art-Design Faculty in a Brisbane secondary school. This involved first up presenting on my homage to the seed project then going on to develop a simple but potent related visual exercise that could be developed into something suitable for exhibition at a special School event in October.

Signs and symbols around seeds and connected themes became the focus.

Individual works assembled together as a whole is something we are gong to expand on next week.

Its curious how these kinds of experiences push the consolidation of ideas and media to create something applicable to the context! ANd great to see how other artists are taking up the challenge!

loads of boxes in the new studio were slowly unpacked!

Walls were painted to tone down the mid yellow-green everywhere!

Lightening up the room was a must... and making use of 4 good windows for which I ordered off-white blinds to be delivered in a couple of weeks! Since this image was taken I seem to have made more mess again in more unpacking and trying to find room for everything! Still its a good process and their is a lot of motivation to have a fully functioning studio again!

Patience has been called on a lot... sticking at the time-consuming set up and tackling constant challenges in all this. I lost my wallet Sunday and after a huge weekend up the coast for a family weekend was feeling hazy about it. The police phoned to say they had it and today I rang the cafe on the highway who took it in to the Police to say thanks and ended up discussing the prospect of doing something about seeds for their new direction with roasting coffee beans.

Thats the funny thing about life at the moment... nothing is going in a straight line... but curiously some things are working out really well! Out of the blue, and quite mysteriously, some things seems to be lining up well... but just can't assume anything!

I'll be back as more takes shape... so see you then!