I suppose it is too late to wish you all a Happy New Year!

I am beginning to settle into my new life - and am loving it! I've never lived in the country before, but have for many years had a desire to do so eventually, and have been talking about making this move - to Castlemaine - for about ten years. So, it has taken me a while....
I'm currently driving to Melbourne once a week for a couple of days work, and am really enjoying it; getting to see the countryside in the best light, particularly the early morning, but early summer evenings are lovely too.  I've begun to realise why so many artists are drawn to the landscape as subject. I'm beginning to feel quite emotional when I reach the hills as I near home - after only a few months!
And although I've still two or three fairly major things to organise - particularly getting a shed lined and insulated and transformed into a decent studio - I do have a small studio space in the house and have started playing around pretty regularly with ideas and media.  I visited the studio of a new friend, a local artist, and we had a lovely couple of hours of show and tell, which inspired me to get back to making books.
So I made a gelatine/glycerine plate, pulled out some book works-in-progress and have had a few sessions playing.
I'm quite pleased with these experiments and beginnings.

 

I am also currently working something to have a small presence in the Castlemaine State Festival in March - having a lot of fun cutting circles from prints.

 

I've got a month or so to fill that white shoe-box with circles.  It's a looking back at my printmaking up to this point.  Seems a reasonable thing to do, with everything changing...and moving made me realize what a lot of work I have sitting around in boxes and folders. 
I'm very much steeped in Leonard Cohen lyrics/poetry at the moment, as I'm reading another biography - I'm Your Man, by Sylvie Simmons - given to me by one of my lovely sons for Christmas (although he didn't actually choose it. You get the best presents when you buy them yourself!)  The biography is the best I've read...and it makes me go back to the songs, listening closely.
So the shoe-box of circles of prints will be titled after a Cohen song - That Don't Make It Junk. The lyric goes, 'took my diamond to the pawnshop, but that don't make it junk'. These are all quite flawed diamonds - mostly student works, proofs and unsuccessful prints.
I also had one more miniprint edition to send off in January - for the Winged Messengers Exchange, which will be exhibited at Hahndorf Academy in the Adelaide Hills during Adelaide Fringe Festival. Proceeds from sales will go to the Bird SA conservation fund. Some more information and images can be found here.

 

There are birds there! See, four of them, on the wire, (another ongoing Cohen-esque theme in my work), and it's not the first time, either, that I've used the 'Counting Crows' rhyme!

Just a second...and other print exchanges

It has been a busy year!  Buying and selling and moving house - from the Melbourne to central Victoria, and a trip to Japan, has meant that I haven't had much time for making art.  I did, however sign up to three or four mini-print exchanges, which was a great thing to do, as at least I did get a few small things made.  I moved here almost three months ago, but with the trip to Japan just 2 1/2 weeks later (which was a pretty crazy thing to have organised...but the flights were so cheap!), and then a short trip to Perth to visit my son who moved there earlier this year, I haven't even managed to set up my studio properly yet. It's all been very positive, of course, so I'm not complaining...  Hopefully by the New Year, I'll be all set up and ready to go.
But to finish the year, I thought I'd post images of the prints I made for the various exchanges.
They are all linocut prints and I had to keep them fairly straightforward, in terms of process.
Firstly there was the Magpie postcard exchange, organised by the Printmaking Sisters (Annie Day and Robin Ezra) from NSW.

 

More information and images of all the postcards can be seen here.

 

Next was the International Print Exchange, a long-running, unthemed exchanged organised by greendoorprintmaking.org. See more here.

My print a simple image of an armchair - 'Waiting'.

Next was another themed postcard exchange- Bears and Blooms: Postcards from the Edge of Extinction, organised by Bittondi Printmakers Association in Adelaide.  My postcard is of a small orchid, the Robust Greenhood Orchid, previously believed to be extinct, which was recently discovered to be growing near Bendigo, not too far from where I'm now living.

Most recently I posted off my twelve prints to the US for the huge exchange organised by The Sketchbook Project. The theme 'Just a second' seemed to offer so many possibilities. I considered my second-place medals from my teenage calisthenics years, some sort of stop sign (just a minute, hang on, wait up...), but was attracted to the idea of second-best. Perhaps - just a second-best friend...but I went with 'Just a second-best dress', partly because I have a bit of a collection of images of beautiful vintage dresses.

Because I was so pushed for time, (aren't I always!) I forgot to take photos before I posted them off, so this is a proof.
I'm quite in awe of the organisers of all these exchanges, who dedicate so much time, energy and organisational skill to each project. In most cases there is an exhibition of the prints and usually one print from each participant is used for fundraising.  It's a wonderful thing to do! Yay for the www!

Another print exchange print

 

Earlier this year I decided to participate in three or four print exchanges.  This is for the second one - a  Print People exchange. Relating to the series A Taxonomy of (Art) Cats (read more here.), for these small-print exchanges I've decided upon hybrids - cats that combine elements from two or three sources.  The form of this one is based upon a work by an anonymous 19th century American printmaker working in a naïve style, with markings from a 17th century woodcut from an English publication, The Historie of Four-footed Beastes, compiled by Edward Topsall; and Barbara Hanrahan (Australian printmaker and writer.) I bought myself Annette Stewart's biography of Hanrahan for Mother's Day and it arrived in time for me to incorporate the dotted chest/underbody markings she often used. I hadn't realised that there were cats in a lot of her prints. If you don't know her work here is a link to some of her prints, held in the Art Gallery of NSW. (oh, now that I look, there are lots of cats!)  I read most of her books, both novels and short stories, years ago...think I'll have to dip in again after the biography.

 

 

Print exhibitions worth seeing in Melbourne

In the last couple of days I've seen a couple of print exhibitions well worth recommending. On Thursday night I dropped into Handheld Gallery for the opening of Janet Neilson's Close to Home.  Handheld is one of my favourite spaces in Melbourne. Run by the lovely Megan Herring and her partner Adrian, it's tiny and focuses on artist's books and small objects.  (I feel really embarrassed...as I typed that, trying to think of Megan's surname, I've only just realised why she publishes her own books under Little Red Fishy...Herring!)  The concept of the exhibition is that the artist doesn't have to go far from home for sources of inspiration/subject matter.  The works are mostly books or book-like objects, including two small series that recycle books, with pages intricately cut with the tracery of bare trees. Trees are also rendered in strong, graphic linocut prints and moodier collographs.  I particularly enjoyed the concertina book - inspired by the weaving of one of Neilson's neighbours - of collographs and woven paper elements. The folded 'flat-pack' linocut prints of cheeky magpies are also pretty gorgeous. Can't resist a magpie! See a couple of tiny prints by another lover of magpies here. http://bridgetfarmer.blogspot.com.au/
and images of the exhibition at the Handheld Gallery blog http://handheldgallery.blogspot.com.au/2012/04/close-to-home-at-hand-held.htmlrk
And then on Friday I wandered about in the beautiful Melbourne Autumn sun and got to Port Jackson Press to  see  Groundwork, an exhibition of prints by Belinda Fox, whose work I've long admired, and collaborative works by Diana Orinda Burns, Robyn Gibson and Kir Larwill, three printmakers from around Castlemaine in central Victoria. The large-scale multi-panel collaborative works are fabulous, with simple motifs, a boat and a chicken(?) wishbone, repeated over a minimal woodcut surface - layered to created a rich surface, with strong, spare imagery.
See images at http://www.portjacksonpress.com.au/exhib.php?ex=ls1000270pjpa19083333
Dropped into 69 Smith Street as a couple of etchings by Keiko Murakami caught my eye. Her exhibition, in the front gallery is called Hanga which is apparently the Japanese word for print. She must be one of the most active printmakers around!  She seems to have solo exhibitions every couple of months.  I really like the works based upon the natural world, particularly the amusingly titled Just hanging out in Melbourne, with lots of fruit bats hanging in a tree, with the dome of the Exhibition Buildings in the background.  You can see it here, http://www.etsy.com/listing/92673553/just-hanging-out-in-melbourne-original
Lastly, I went to No Vacancy Gallery at the QV Centre to see the Asia Pacific Mini Print exhibition.  There are 4 small prints by each of 53 artists, so there is a lot to see. There's a good range of work, from 17 countries, of a very high standard, as, I think it's an open entry exhibition. There are five prizewinners, with a very decent prize pool of $25,000.  Mezzotints did pretty well, although prizes also went to works in other media.  I was very impressd with the hang - must have been quite a task to hang over 200 works.  My only criticism is that there is no listing of the printaking techniques used.