After the storm - beauty and/or destruction?

 

I have been progressing some elements of my pieces for the Vessel exhibition. My pieces will reflect a tragic side of the fishing story of the Scottish Highlands - including the loss of life through storms. The photo above was a bit of an accident - Fiona had put our rainbow of hearts in a circle and when I came to photograph some of the formed hulls (melted metal) I combined them with the rainbow - the contrast between a gentle rainbow aspect of rain shower with the destruction that could occur in the form of hulls of wrecked boats. 

In all I have formed 12 destroyed hulls and 4 smashed hulls. Some photos of the process of cutting off excess metal follow.

And photos of the pieces after grinding and then polishing with a wire wheel.

It was good to get this aspect of the work done.

Love, peace and feminism

 

Though I was in the workshop today progressing a few small pieces for the Vessel exhibition I thought today I would share a few photos of our pop up letterpress shop at the Communities in Control Conference in Melbourne. 

This year we decided to take some of the posters and cards that represented our main themes of work over the last 12 months. As it turns out they included: war and peace; equality and feminism; and love and kindness for oneself and others. 

Anyway a few images of our setting up and what we had on sale.

Love, peace and feminism are good themes to have I think.

Melbourne morsels

 

Fiona and I have just returned from a couple of days in Melbourne where we operated a pop up letterpress shop at the Communities in Control Conference. Great conference with inspiring speakers. Maybe a few photos from our pop up shop another day.

Today's post just shares a few morsels that we experience as we walked the streets both during the day - including seeing the gorgeous big crow in the photo above - seen on our early walk in Melbourne this morning.

And at night.

We are pleased to be home in our Maleny cottage - but sadly we left a dry Melbourne to return to grey and rain - bit sad that Maleny really is living up to the reputation of being rainy Maleny.

Pop-up letterpress shop

 

Fiona and I have the opportunity to do a pop-up letterpress shop at a conference for a couple of days. This has required doing a quick assessment of what we could take, display and hopefully sell.

This is a short blog post just shares images of some of the bits we are taking; and some of the preparation and packing.

We are also taking a few gifts for friends including the pendants below.

So we will see how it all goes 0ver the next couple of days.

Prototypes

 

Amongst other things, today I played with a few prototypes that have a nautical theme - sails and waves (prototype small scale wave pipeline above) -including a prototype of a sail form incense dish as you can see below. 

Earrings also got a run as you can see from the prototype below - might have to be a bit smaller - I will consult with Fiona.

However, the main task was to see if I could form a double wave (wave pipeline really) from sail blanks. For the test piece I cut sail blanks out of copper from an old hot water system.

The final piece could be considerably larger - but you can see I have riveted the forms in an overlapping pattern; and then curved the riveted piece  over a pipe held in the vise.

As a protoptype I think it has worked - the final piece will include sails blanks that have been ground hence have contrasting edges. Some additional photos of the earrings and incense burner bowl follow. I think I will ensure both the earrings and bowl have more texture in the final versions.

All in all a good day in the workshop-studio

Mist, moisture and other matters - including orchids

 

Well it is official - we are quite over the rain in Maleny - it has been quite constant in all forms - from misty to torrential as you might see in this blog post; but then again it can lead to some gorgeous images of droplets, such as on the orchid above, and shadows etc.

First a few random images of morning mist.

Torrential showers.

Birds in the mist.

Shadow on the wall as I did my rites and lichen on a black painted power pole.

G's orchids in a very damp orchid house.

Even though we are over the rain we can still find beauty.