Bigger than I could blog

Hi.  How are you?  Isn’t it amazing?  It’s 2011.  And I meant to write this post yesterday to mark the New Year but as is the fashion in my current life as never before: here I am , late again.

So what happened here?

Last year became enormous as did I.  As my pregnancy progressed, I got slower and tried frantically to fit in more and more before the baby arrived.  It was a time for doing, not time for reportage.

And now Matt and I have a son, Arthur who is nearly 8 months old.   He was mostly born at home, in our kitchen with a quick dash to hospital in the last 40 minutes where a careless (lady) obstetrician pfaffed about too much and too roughly with a ventouse and in the end my midwife says I pretty much pushed him out myself at 20 minutes past 12 on the morning of May 8.  He is a tiny Taurus Bull, born in the year of the Tiger who we refer to as the King of the Bears.  Grrr.  Snort.

Parenting is every joyous cliche I have ever heard and more and Arthur is a funny, exquisite, calm, stoic and generally delightful little boy who likes books, drumming, dancing and rabbits.  I think I speak easily for both Matt and I when I say our lives are far greater with him in it.  It has been so enjoyable I simply haven’t wanted to tear myself away in order to put into words something that might simply be indescribable.

I have decided not to return to work and instead, stay Mama-at-home/Artist-at-home and am slowly starting to make that combo work.  It means financially life is rather slim but I have been here before when I first found I needed to retreat from the cycle and I find I need and am happier with less and less as time progresses.   The investment in spending my time growing vegetables, ideas, images and a person is proving infinitely more gratifying.

Around me in 2010 people were born and people died.   I welcome all you fascinating creatures who have arrived with open arms and to those who left, I just dearly wish I had the opportunity to say goodbye or to ask you to reconsider your journey before you set off.  Everyone leaves a ragged, raw hole when they go.  Everyone.

Despite these sadnesses I thank you 2010 for witnessing me turning 40 , for the 10 year marker for my marriage but most overwhelmingly for Arthur.

Soon I will post some brief catchups on what DID happen after I stopped recording but looking ahead, placing one foot in front of the other, and despite my tendency not to, this year some resolutions became clear as I showered away the last dust of 2010: to remember fun and how to have it; and to put an end to waste – wasted resources, money, emotion and time.  I can and will cut back on all of them.

I wish you all the best for this year, whoever you are.  Be as happy as you can and remember that aching void that would exist if you did not.

Happy New Year.

x

…and…

Tricky Walsh also designed this beautiful web-poster.  Musn’t let it go to waste…

replacing the Snowglobe rabbits

…beacause I left the originals at the Auberge in Montreal.

Our kitchen has been a veritable plague for the last 3 days.

First day installing today.  Wish us luck.

new house, new life, new town

before the rain came (cont.)

before the rain came

…we got in some nice sunny Autumn outdoorsy time.

our house is the easter house

more about "prancing", posted with vodpod

I got a Terry’s Chocolate Orange which goes magnificently with my morning coffee. Health care routine be damned (yet to write about that but I’ll catch up).

Working very hard on something but soon all will be revealed.

Enjoy your loved ones, your holiday and your chocs.
Love from my house.

xxx
p.s. excuse clicky vid sound. Shot on my still camera and test driving Facebooks video application. I love how impressed Matt is with Gino’s ‘prancing’.

My three favourite guys

Happy World Animal Day everybody!

missing in action

Yeah… so I did an awesome job of catching up and keeping in touch right?

My excuse is that we’ve both been battling minor illness and less minor cases of both homesickness and the general sads. Sometimes what keeps rattling around in your brain is ‘if you can’t say sumn’ nice, don’t say nuttin’ at all’. That equals silence.

However it also means that once you come to verbalise (or text-ualise?) where you’re at, you are past the worst and on the up; back to appreciating the amazing opportunity you have.

The illness and depression have been incubating while we both hammer away at trying to produce some quality work out of our time here. While Matt has completed the work his Marie Edwards scholarship brought him here to do, he always planned to do more.

In my case, having made the investment in this trip out of my own pocket (scraping every last penny), I had been despairing that I could make no art, and that I would have wasted not only dollars but the whole opportunity and in doing so, have also passed on some awesome opportunities that were going back home (I’m looking at you, ONO Project. Looks like Pip and Kate organised an amazing event. The documentation is great. I want to live in a Scot Cotterell room!)

This worry is put to bed with a cold cloth on it’s feverish brow today (I wish I could say the same for myself) as Matt and I launch the small exhibition space at the end of the second floor corridor (Angela planned to call it the Squeezebox Gallery but she’s been away for the weekend and I have yet to confirm it’s name. Francois who works here, laughed at us bustling around in there yesterday and said he calls it the ‘Royal Suite’) with our tiny show entitled Of heaven and earth.

It’s a work each basically.

Matts work The Lull is rather a meditative thing. A narrow but human proportioned alcove, fitted with LEDs, emulates the star pattern in the night sky over Australia, complete with Southern Cross. It’s artifice is completely transparent, with each star constructed from an LED wrapped directly around a flat cell battery, and the space framed theatrically in proscenium style with red satin curtaining. It emanates a strangely soothing electrical buzz.

My own work (pictured above) is a diorama of roughly collaged, standing rabbits on cardboard that rests under a projection of snow falling upwards from a large tree. The effect is very much like a snowglobe, so that is its name.

I have shot a lot of snow here. I have written here before about how crazy I am for it. Anyone who knows me or reads this blog will be aware how crazy I am about rabbits too. The making of Snowglobe has been a fairly simplistic attempt to be happy, you see. I found an old 70′s era book on rabbit care in a secondhand store with lovely large photo’s and, in the absence of what I thought of as inspiration but with a burning need to just ‘make something’, I started to collage and mount them, almost just as a cheery silly decoration for our room as much as anything. Something to make us smile.

When Matt solidified the idea for The Lull and it became clear that an exhibition would happen, I brought all the bits and bobs I had made and shot up to the space and threw bits together until something went ‘ping’. It works and it makes me very happy indeed.

It’s only a short-run show. Just a week, but there will be a ‘Fermissage’ (Angela’s made-up word. It doesn’t feel right to call it a vernissage when it’s a closing.) on Sunday.

We’ll hop on a plane and head home the following Wednesday, dusting our hands together with art-satisfaction and dreaming of our own home.

summer buns are like no other buns.