Edwin and Angelina the newts.

The author collected a pair of newts from a neighbouring pond.

'They fondled each other, waltzed round their glass home, played hide-and-seek among the pebbles, and became so tame, they would eat any day from their keeper's hand. Alas! a day came when that keeper had to leave home for a short time ; in other words, the aquarium must be left to the tender mercies of a housemaid more zealous than wise. So when I returned, there was much to hear, though rather less than usual to see, for Edwin had disappeared altogether, and Angelina had laid a golden egg, which the foolish housemaid swept away by mistake!'




'No wonder the poor thing pined for the loss of husband and child ; indeed, she died at last, I thought, of a broken heart, and was immortalised in spirits of wine, with a suitable epitaph written on the label outside an old scent-bottle.'

*Images and text from:
S.M. Crawley Boevey, Chapter II, 'My Aquariums', Sunday Reading for the Young, Wells Gardner, Darton & Co, 1892

Koala Shoes

As a kid growing up in the 1980s I collected stickers. For a while anything with a sticker would make it into my sticker book (which I still have) including the labels from fabric softener, shampoo and assorted fresh produce. On each visit to my local shoe shop I got at least one Koala Shoes sticker. I only ever stuck the ones I had doubles of. The rest I collected loose and there are a lot of them. Here are scans of the most adorably dated ones. I'm not sure if they still exist as a brand.


These ones predate my own collection and were bought second hand at some point. However the one on the lower left was much later, maybe early 1990s?


Celebrating Australia's win of the America's Cup. He's so cute! I drew koalas like this for a while, with those eyes. Willy, Australia's mascot from the LA Olympics in 1984 looked a lot like this.


So 1980s :)


In the late 80s they changed from the circle, tabbed shape to squares.

It's rather ironic that most of the koalas - and this goes for the rest of the series as well - aren't wearing shoes!

More on the Rhone Glacier and vintage postcards

I previously shared some vintage postcards here, one of which was of the Rhone Glacier.
Here is a tunnel through it:

c. 1925

Here's one through another glacier which doesn't look a lot safer to transverse.

c.1925

This is what a modern tunnel through the Rhone Glacier looks like: a nice, even board walk and lighting included!

Finally here's a sad little postcard from Geneva's Bern Zoo bear pit, which fortunately is no longer open. The photograph looks slightly doctored to me, with three of the bears having extra sharp edges and the corner bricks in the wall is a bit curvy when I suspect they should be straight.

Bear pit at Bern's Zoo, c.1925

Bern has a history of bear pits and bear keeping but they no longer keep the bears in pits. Bern Zoo's new bear enclosure will open later this year. It will feature growing vegetation and a river from which they can catch live fish. In captivity, it doesn't get much better than that. More here.

[smiles] Doing a spot of research to enhance the posts featuring images has been very interesting indeed!

Horace the Helicopter, illustrated by John Ryan

Horace the Helicopter is by Eileen Ryder (copyright is 1958 but no year of publication is listed) with illustrations by John Ryan. I believe this is the John Ryan, creator of Captain Pugwash who died yesterday. The time period fits and the drawing style of human figures in particular - I know I haven't included many - is the same. It's fitting that I should decide to share these pictures now, even though I had no idea who he was or that he had passed away. I couldn't find other images or information on the net for this book so now here they are!

Horace is a little helicopter who realises how special he is, even though he isn't a big plane, through a series of helpful tasks. I bought this charmingly illustrated book a few years ago from an op shop. This is a selection of my favourite pictures (wrap around text has been removed) from it.

'There was once a little helicopter called Horace who lived in a house [sic] on an airfield.'

'... he was very lonely at the airfield because the other aeroplanes
did not speak to him very much, and they used to make fun of him ...'
'... Horace belonged to a man called John ... '

'It looked very pretty, but Horace, all warm and snug in his hangar,
was glad he wasn't out in it.'

'"But it's snowing," said Horace. "I don't like snow, it's too cold."'

'It got colder and colder and Horace began to feel a little tired
because he was carrying such a heavy weight.'

'All the other planes were so busy that
he hardly saw them for the next two or three days...'

'Then he painted a big cross on the side of Horace's cabin.
"Now you really look like an ambulance," said John.
"I wonder what the other aeroplanes will say," said Horace.
...they all agreed he deserved it...
Horace thought he would always have the cross on him, but it wasn't very good paint, and the next time he went out in the rain, it all washed off.
"Never mind," said Horace, "I was an ambulance with a big cross on me, just for a day."'

Ruth Cobbs, Lands of Desire

My favourite illustrations by Ruth Cobbs, who also wrote the accompanying text called Lands of Desire, from Chatterbox. Details at end of entry.

'Where the Golden Apples grew.'
The Hesperides were the three maiden daughters of Atlas. Though they were supposed guardians of the golden apples they presented no resistance to Hercules. After slaying the serpent he took the apples. That's a bit of an anti-climax but Cobbs wrote this part of the original text much like that and with no mention as to why these apples are special.

These are no ordinary apples of course. They offer immortality. There are more interesting versions of Hercules'/Heracles' apple pilfering which explain that and the back story. Stealing these apples was Hercules' eleventh task from the twelve he had been set.

'Suddenly a waterspout came upon them.'
The True History by Lucian, was deliberately as far from the truth as possible. In his story they travelled for eight days atop a water spout, three hundred and fifty miles above the earth. To a modern layperson who is aware of the limitations of our atmosphere, this sounds fantastically high particularly for natural propulsion. It is, converting to approximately 563 kilometres. The ozone layer is between 20 to40 kilometres up. 563 km is in the ionosphere a.k.a. space. Accordingly, the voyagers land on an island that turns out to be the Moon. The story gets weirder as you go along including another island made of cheese in a sea of milk, a war with the Sun and being swallowed by a whale 200 miles long. The True History has been cited as the first example of science fiction. Read the start of it, online here.

Image accompanying the story of the Irish monk, St Brendan, and his seven year journey to a distant paradise. Read about his fabulous journey here.


Original images and text from : Chatterbox (1926, Children's Annual), published by Wells Gardner, Darton & Co., London 1926.

Liquid Desire & Destino

Now on at the NGV is Dali: Liquid Desire.

We went last Wednesday and my recommendations are:
Buy your tickets online there was a huge queue;
Hold off seeing it for a bit longer because you're pretty much queuing for the whole show, waiting in line to see stuff.
Patience is a virtue and you will need it. Unless you're like me and pop your glasses on, cut in when something grabs your eye and take them off again, plonk yourself right in front of it to drink in every detail, because goddamn it I want to see it properly now I've forked out $23. I want to see the legs on the ants and every little line he drew.

Good show though unfortunately I had already seen more in Spain and that's hard to live up to especially since there was so much installation art over there. My favourite jewellery piece, The Royal Heart, wasn't brought over due to its fragility and is represented by a looped video instead. I can't help but feel some of the best stuff wasn't included. That's probably because my memory of where I saw something in Spain is a bit befuddled and it wasn't part of the Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí collection. Being a culture vulture, I visited the best museums Spain has to offer and there's a pleasing quantity and quality of Dalí . I've probably seen more Dalí than any of my friends and acquaintances.

A little gripe I have is that the first gallery's traffic flow continues to be a bottle neck. The other galleries allow a freer flow of viewing that allow you to get a little bit lost but in a nice way, despite the overall linear path of the show. Reader, has it been like this for every Winter Masterpiece show at NGV International? I don't know because this is only the second one I've been to but it happened last year at the Art Deco one as well and it wasn't as crowded.

I was left intoxicated and numb by the art at the end. I couldn't say whether it was good or brilliant. I had to go away and think about it: a little of both due to lack of freedom to drink it all in properly. Nonetheless it is definitely worthwhile. I was awed in person by works I haven't seen before including the small and meticulous portrait of Gala with lamb chops, the photography, and disintegrating atomic series. I loved Destino. If only it were longer [sigh].


Not sure how long this will be allowed up, so savour it while you can.

Now with more stuff!

Listening to: Zero by Yeah Yeah Yeahs from It's Blitz!

Regular readers may have noticed it looks a little different here since the weekend. I grabbed a new Blogger Template for Dummies aka those of us who use trial and error to tweak html [points at self]. I fiddled with it, adding handy new gadgets [points to right side of screen] and a slightly different colour scheme [does game show hostess waving hand]. I hope you like it and that your meerkat clipping experience is enhanced [cheesy grin] by the option to click a reaction if you just want to show you appreciated* something, new archive format, Google search function, labels list, and rolling blog roll via my Google Reader list.


* The blogging process is spontaneous for me. I blog about stuff I care about, things that grab my fancy. It's always nice to know if the reader enjoys it as well. Little bit of feedback of this sort gives me a better idea of what you like here and what I could spend more time covering.

Depp on Letterman

In an interview with David Letterman, Johnny Depp about his 10 year old daughter
"I also see little boys starting to line up, to date my daughter ... and I fear for them."
*lol*

Complimentary and Complementary

Here's pair of phrases I've come up with to help me remember the difference between complimentary and complementary
Complementary things complete each other to create a greater whole.
Compliments are ideal.
Makes sense doesn't it? Hope that helps you too :)

Big show coming up: Slide Rules Have No Place At My Party.

This is one of several of my new, sculptural works that will be featured at Brunswick Arts Space from next Friday.

Lime and Soda
mixed media, framed sculpture


Lime and Soda, detail showing scrimshaw

Lime and Soda is about how the increased amount carbon dioxide in the atmosphere affects our oceans. The ocean naturally absorbs carbon dioxide but if it continues to absorb at the current rate we will see acidification. This affects the entire ocean food chain from the tiniest creatures upwards due to the negative affect on seashell integrity. The scrimshawed, seagull craniums depict a carbonic acid molecule and the degradation* of a seashell in simulated, acidified ocean water.

Slide Rules Have No Place At My Party.
An exhibition of small scale sculpture and other media.
Curated by Monica Zanchetta.
Opening July 17th, 6-9pm
17 to 31 July 2009
Brunswick Arts Space
2a Little Breese Street
Brunswick, Australia
Gallery Hours: 12-5 Thursday to Sunday

I will post images of artwork from this show when it's over, here

For those of visiting the show at any point, please note that from my bat sculptures, 10% of the proceeds will go to the Tolga Bat Hospital in Queensland. So you can help a poor artist AND an orphaned or injured bat!

*Based on photographs from National Geographic, 2007. Click for further reading

Sam Leach - The Margin

Sam Leach, 2009
Reflected Magpie
oil and resin on wood

The above is my favourite piece from a solo show by Sam Leach. The other two reflected animals exhibited are also rather clever although everything in this show is worth slowly perusing. Leach's art is extremely disciplined, perfectly detailed, moodily lit, strongly composed. His pieces are small, so no area of the artwork is neglected of a first class level of finish. I also like how they are coated in resin. It lends the works a greater sense of permanence.

Anyone looking to invest in art would do well to buy one of these. You know how you can tell an artist is going to be big? I was right about Ricky Swallow. Anyone with that amount of skill, a certain personal flair and style, and getting media coverage is going to do very well. Leach also has a piece in the Archibalds, and recently in Mute Relics & Bedevilled Creatures: Constructing an Antipodean Curio Cabinet (finished) at Counihan Gallery next to Brunswick Town Hall.

On until the 27th. Click link for further details.

Images from the new Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland film

OMG OMG OMG! [spins about giddy]
Wow these are awesome! [mind blown]
Images from the new Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland film
&
Character shots here.

John Williams, illustrator

John Williams, 1923
Who will win?

The slight Oriental influence in this illustration, particularly in the deer and river, is rather lovely. As a composition it's really interesting in terms of where the foreground is. The flow line as the eye travels over the work is pleasing.

I couldn't find anything about this illustrator or further works due to the plethora of 'John Williams' on the internet even when adding a few extra bits of information to the search. If only he had a quirky name! So in lieu of other works and recognition on the internet,
[tips hat] here's to you John Williams.

Original image from : Chatterbox (1926, Children's Annual), published by Wells Gardner, Darton & Co., London 1926.

Black + White (Shades of Grey)

I have 3 paper collages in the upcoming Black + White (Shades of Grey) show at Pigment Gallery in the CBD. None have been exhibited before and one was created especially for this.

Left to right details from;
Hopping Mouse,
Wild World,
Spectacled Bat.



Opening night: Thursday 25 June 5.30 – 8pm
25 June to 11 July 2009
Pigment Gallery
Level 2
Nicholas Building
37 Swanston St
Corner of Flinders Lane.
Enter via Cathedral Arcade, stairs or elevator.

More of my art here.

My Japanese Ceramics Part 1; Pink Fish Salt Shaker

How many items does it take to call a group of things a collection? Three or four is probably too few, so I won't claim that I have a collection of Japanese ceramics. One of the many things I appreciate in Japanese art is the way the artists capture the essence of an animal in a depiction - the following being a good example.

I'm not sure how old this solitary, Japanese salt shaker is. Circa mid 20th C? It's one of those random quirky objects my father or brother got at a market, I spotted and claimed for my own. I like: the fluidity of its form; the typical piscine, pouty facial expression; the subtility of the glaze. I did a spot of googling and found a complete pair in black. Generally salt shakers have fewer holes so at least this confirms I have the salt and not the pepper.

London Tubes, 1926

Building a London Tube Station Tunnel.


Building a London Tube Station Tunnel, detail.


An underground Wonder
'These intricate tubes (near Mornington Crescent, London, N.W.) were so accurately laid that when they were joined up (after being started from each end) they fitted within a quarter of an inch. A hundred and sixty trains pass through them in an hour between North and South London.'

Original images and text from : Chatterbox (1926, Children's Annual), published by Wells Gardner, Darton & Co., London 1926. Artist unknown

Why small, why not make bigger pieces?

Often people ask me "Why small, why not make bigger pieces?". There are several reasons both practical and creative.

The creative reasons take the lead for me. I have always liked little things, and details ever since I was a child playing with bugs in the garden or in the classroom with the doll house before school each morning. Many of my favourite artists create small/detailed art. So suppose I have a tendency to conceive of these things since it's what I enjoy. Secondly the found materials I regularly use dictate the scale of the piece in my mind. Proportion and scale are very important to my way of thinking.

The practical side is that thinking about petite projects and making them is easier when you're doing most of it at a desk the size of an A1 page, and other parts on a home workshop bench. However it's more of a happy coincidence than the studio environment actually dictating the scale.

Lastly, the reason many artists choose to work on a smaller scale - particularly painters - is that you can achieve a greater quality of finish over a smaller area, in a quicker time. This allows the artist a lower selling price based on hours put into the work, thus making the art more affordable to those who would like to own it.

Small Works 09 at BSG

I have 3 pieces in the upcoming Small Works 09 show at the Brunswick Street Gallery. This is an open entry show - similar to the annual Linden Gallery Postcard Show - for all media within a 30cm x 30cm x 30cm size.

Left to right, details from:
Roost (mixed media sculpture),
Anatomy of a Loss (mixed media collage), &
All Thing Dark and Beady Eyed (mixed media sculpture).

Small Works 09
19 June to 2 July
Brunswick Street Gallery
Opening Night: 26 June, 6pm onwards
322 Brunswick St, Fitzroy 3065

More of my art here.

Federal Palace Hotel a.k.a. Federal Coffee Palace*

Image source: unknown contemporary magazine/newspaper advertisement c.1897+ Engraved by A.C.

Built in 1886 as a temperance hotel on the south western corner of King and Collins streets, the Federal Coffee Palace served all manner of beverages except alcohol. Its construction was instigated by a leader of the temperance movement in Victoria, James Miriams. It was the finest coffee house in Melbourne attracting visitors from around Australia, the rich and famous including international visitors. The abstinence movement had waned by the early 1890s. In 1897 a liquor license was acquired and it was renamed the Federal Palace Hotel.

The building's design was the result of a competition. The first prize winner, architectural firm Ellerker and Kilburn designed the exterior. The second prize winner, William Pitt designed the interior. Some of Melbourne's finest Victorian buildings were Pitt designs including the still standing Princess Theatre (1887), the Rialto and Olderfleet buildings (1890). The Age newspaper at the time was full of high praise for the building deeming it one of Australia's 'most splendid'.


The lobby interior, entrance from Collins Street*

The FPH was pulled down in 1972-73. For almost seven years after this it was used as a car park before being developed into an office block.

In the 1960s and 70s it was popular to pull down Victorian buildings deemed too large and old fashioned, and replace them with modern office blocks. We lost so many superb Victorian buildings this way though fortunately the National Trust and general public now value and protect our architectural heritage from further erosion.


*Information source, interior image and recommended further reading:
Latta, David, Lost Glories: A Memorial to Forgotten Australian Buildings, Angus and Robertson Publishers, 1986

Heads Will Roll

Listening to: Lucid Dreams by Franz Ferdinand from Tonight.

I saw this clip for the first time this morning and I couldn't take my eyes off it. I like the homage to MJ with an edge and especially the use of red confetti. It's a really catchy tune as well. I shall have to check out more of the YYYs because I liked the last clip* of theirs I saw on TV and am unsure as to how much of their stuff I have actually already heard!


I'm loving...
...Franz Ferdinand's Lucid Dreams from Tonight.
The outstanding, punchy, bass heavy synth arrangement, particularly in the instrumental at the end of the album track really does it for me. I found a live version on You Tube but it lacks the synth [pout]...

...Ladytron's Runaway from Velocifero
Quite a contrast to the YYYs' clip for its lack of colour. It's funny how geometric black lines can still resemble the slow flow of blood.



*Zero which is also from It's Blitz!