Portraits

 The local art group is having a portrait show and I braved myself did my first portrait and entered it. Technically, I suppose it isn’t really my first portrait, but it’s my first portrait of someone who I know and definitely the first time I have shown a painting of someone else to the public.

It isn't very good, but I did it and it does kind of look like him. It's our builder who has a really cool face (and also couldn't really say no when I asked if he was OK with me taking a photo to paint). 

I was also mucking about with a gelli plate, which is fantastic for doing weird sort of monotype prints. I did one of him with leaf printing in the background - the leaf printing turned out cool but then I tried an image transfer of a photo, and that didn’t work out so well. In fact I tried it several times and this was the best of the bunch - I entered it anyway!

I also entered this ink blot transfer portrait, on a gelli plate print background. It was squares and cross hatching which kind of reminded me of the windows he's been fixing :) A thematic piece.

I sat on the desk one Sunday morning at the exhibition and it was really fun - the exhibition is an excellent mixture of the genuinely wonderful professional and the amateur. Also the realistic and the abstract, paintings and photos, two and three dimensional. We had a lot of locals in to see who they could spot but also a few pleasantly surprised tourists. Yay for small towns. 

Dad in his other natural habitat

We were planning to take Dad to the beach, but it became a bit involuntary when the builder discovered a leak in our main sewer pipe, where the old clay meets the new plastic just past the house. Which is a lot better than it could be, but also required at least two days of not flushing or showering ... so we bailed to the beach. At short notice.

There's a bit of gardening that needs doing down here too, crosswords to finish and of course lots of lovely walks on the beach. No fish to catch, but that is an ongoing story. 

Visiting

The gap in posting is because I've been hanging out with my Dad who is here on holiday. He is a keen gardener and we have put him straight to work - edging beds, chopping things down and providing advice. So Much Advice. We are even following some of it. Number one came out for the night and to see Grandad, which was lovely - although an honours presentation was looming followed by the final report next month. And then uni will be done! So much hard work.

Dad and I made a dead hedge down by the driveway fence (in an area where nothing grows). I've been contemplating this for a while because I hate taking sticks and things to the dump, but they're too big and twiggy to compost easily. We can chip them, but our chipper doesn't like very dead and dry things, so you have to chip quickly after cutting ... and doing things quickly isn't really our strength.

So we put up star pickets and wooden stakes, then piled branches and cuttings in between. I thought it would look horrifically messy but it doesn't look too bad - and it's better than the barbed wire fence behind it. I plan to extend it as far along as we have material, with the idea that it will be a hedge that attracts birds and insects, and a bit of visual interest between the garden and the driveway, and it should break down over time. Maybe. It's all an experiment!

And here is an actual harvest of broad beans. These are the seeds I planted in the new no-dig bed under an oak tree on the western edge. I was surprised when they sprouted, amazed when they grew and astounded that they have actually produced a crop. They did not get watered, weeded, fed, sprayed or protected. We had broad beans for dinner and they were delicious.

The king parrots have been coming in close for food, which entertains my dad no end. They are a very Australian bird both in call and plumage.

Finished after ten years

This quilt has been in the cupboard of shame for ten years. As part of the studio organisation I said to myself 'finish it or throw it out' so I did a very bodgy job whacking it together and now it is done.

It ended up in the cupboard of shame because I decided on elaborate quilting in the same colour as the material. So I did the orange quilting, then some of the purple ... then started butting up against quilting I'd already done and realising it was MILES from flat, and there was absolutely no way to fix it. 

It was going to pucker and look dreadful if I kept on with the quilting so I put in a dim dark place and forgot about it. 

I didn't unpick or fix anything - just gave it the minimal possible straight line quilting in the ditch and put binding on it. It still operates as a small blanket, and I do still like the colours, but not really a triumph. I didn't even name it.

Sydney

On Saturday my Dad arrived from NZ for a visit, so I drove up to Sydney airport to collect him. Given it's a three hour drive I made it an overnight stay and found a hotel in the middle of town and played tourist for a couple of days.

The weather was glorious and Sydney put on its sparkling best. I haven't wandered round Circular Quay and the Opera House for years and years, and it is lovely. So many tourists from all sorts of places - including some questionable videoing. The influencers certainly weren't there last time I visited.

These giant rocks are an art installation and inflatable! You can walk among them and push them ... it's quite surreal because they definitely look just like rocks. Lots of kids who thought it was hilarious. 

I also did a bit of shopping and went to the Musuem of Contemporary Art. The art was disappointing, half their galleries were between shows and closed, but the cafe was lovely and I could sit and gape at the hugeness of this cruise ship. The bulk is quite astonishing.

And to the Art of Gallery of NSW which was amazing. I like their contemporary Australian collection which always throws up something unusual. 

And most importantly Dad made it on the plane and off the plane and survived the in between bits! And also the drive back to our place, where he is already making free with the secateurs. Wonderful.

Pretty spring things

Here's a better post than garbage - the beautiful spring flowers that we are surrounded with at the moment. I weeded (some of) this garden bed today. It involved crawling around under that blossom tree, which was very pretty and smelled very nice, but also involved lots of bees and showers of petals every time I moved.

The ranunculus that we planted as part of the big bulb order are popping up here and there.

There are heaps of these lovely purple bulbs, I can't remember what they're called.

The ajuga are flowering - I even went and bought some more at the garden centre. It is very odd to buy plants at the garden centre because you get one or two or even ten tiny little plants ... and they just vanish into the expanse of our garden. I am more used to chopping back, ripping out and cutting up than planting teeny little things and cherishing them.

The hellebores are absolutely thriving.

And so much blossom. Beautiful. It rained solidly on the weekend which was wonderful and very much needed. It was the town's arts trail weekend so we went out to a couple of open studios on properties out of town. Incredible art but mostly incredible locations and landscape: one carved out of a big farm right next to the Shoalhaven River with an enormous sky and one in a foggy rainforest valley backing right onto the national park. Even in the terrible weather we're glad we went - a good excuse to explore the neighbourhood.

Piles of shit

There are piles of crap everywhere in the garden and it's driving me mental. I am trying to be relaxed, because they are all absolutely necessary to projects-in-progress, but I don't like it. I sometimes move the piles from place to place, which doesn't really help, but lets the grass recover and reduces the risks of snakes. 

There is a lot of wood that we may well use in the future in projects, and which will be stored neatly in a 'spare wood' place.

The builders leave whatever they are using in one spot.

And pile their rubbish in another.

Anything that needs to be undercover is on the back verandah.

A large pile of crusher dust appeared last week, which I'm sure will be very useful, in a few weeks. I am mentally noting all the spots I will have to re-seed in autumn.

This pile of stones has already been useful, for drainage around the foundations, although it has spread for metres in every direction off its tarp.

And the pile of terracotta pots that I have been using to plant things in but somehow the pile is not getting any smaller. Not shown are the literal piles of shit from the builders' three dogs. We don't mind the dogs, they are all very friendly and lovely, but they do tend to drop a celebratory turd the second they arrive. So that's my rant, I am trying to look at the bits that aren't a mess, and there are lots of very lovely spring scenes at the moment. Which I will post about next time, when I'm more cheerful.