House full of rainbows

Our house has a lot of louvred windows and the louvres have beveled edges - just the thing for creating rainbows.  We often have rainbows reflecting in different parts of the house - usually in the early morning and later part of the afternoon - when it is a good sunny day of course.

That is all a longwinded preamble to the fact that I wanted to say the house was full of rainbows last week; and they appeared in the oddest places so I thought I might share the photos below - I think some will make you smile. None of the photos have been altered or enhanced.

Barry Smith © Sink with rainbow

Barry Smith © Water-kettle with rainbow

Barry Smith © Potato in bowl with rainbow

Barry Smith © KM's art piece with rainbows

Barry Smith © Coffee plunger with rainbow

Barry Smith © Rainbow in the printer

Barry Smith © Soft rainbows on the wall

Quite a happy accident to have a house that often offers internal rainbows - they make us smile.

Light Jewels - Steampunk light catcher

Every now and then bits of my collection of found and given objects suggest a new piece to me. Recently Graham gave me a box of bits he had bought for $3 at a garage sale - it all looked pretty uninspiring until it was sorted. Two pieces caught my eye: a very dirty and rusted piece of light gauge rail track; and a very rusted and worn jewellers holding device (called a spare pair of hands?). On seeing these bits I knew they had to come together in piece as part of my Light Catcher Series.

Barry Smith © Light Jewels

So there you have it in the photo above - a new light catcher called Light Jewels - referencing the jewellers holding 'thingy'; and the fact that it creates rainbows of light. The bits took quite a bit of polishing to give them new life.

Barry Smith © Light Jewels - with a touch of Steampunk

As you can see from the photos above the piece has a some recycled switches, brass nuts etc - gives the piece a bit of an industrial or steampunkish look.

Barry Smith © Crystal with mountains

The crystal to catch the light is bound to the pincers of the jewellers thing by stirling silver wire with an ornate end - thought a photo with the mountains in the background was in order.

Barry Smith © Rainbows on the floor

Barry Smith © A scatter of rainbows

And it has lived up to its name - the photos above are all refracted light creating light jewels on the walls of the house from sunshine streaming in through the glass doors.

Barry Smith © A light jewel on the wall

The circular rainbow was reflected on a wall about 6 meters from where Light Jewels was sitting on the floor in the sunlight. The photo is untouched.

Autumn Leaf Litter

As indicated in my post to celebrate my 300th post I committed to drawing a recipient of the Autumn Leaf Litter below on Friday (today Australian time).

Barry Smith© Leaf Litter

In all there were 16 people in the draw. Names were written on scraps of paper, folded, and put into a Tibetan Singing Bowl.  Because quite a few people were in, I decided to offer a couple of single leaves for the second and third persons drawn from the bowl. Fiona drew out out the names.

Barry Smith © Anodised leaf - copper

Barry Smith © Anodised leaf - green

As you can see the recipient of Leaf Litter is Luthien. A leaf each will also go to Valerianna and Jennifer. If the winners could send me mailing addresses through my Contact at the top of the blog - the leaves will flutter your way next week.

Thanks to all who were willing to take part in the giveaway and for continuing to take an interest in what I do and for providing affirming and supportive comments.

Go well and create well; and enjoy the colours of winter in the southern hemisphere and the colours of spring in the north.

COMA exhibition

On Friday night the COMA exhibition 'between the lines' was opened.  Some 30 plus artists accepted the challenge to do small art pieces (150mm square for 2D pieces or 150mm cube for 3D pieces). Each work were in some way based on a book the artists had read.

The exhibition is displayed on glass shelves in a prominent corner of Rosetta bookshop thanks to the owner Anne. The exhibition was opened by Ken Munsie - COMA coordinator and general herder of artistic cats. Interesting idea of bringing art and book together. And a compact exhibition - just shows that you don't always need the big gallery to create and exhibit.

Ken's piece - wood and hand made paper

Fiona's piece has a red dot

There were a few red dots on opening night. And the opening crowd enjoyed a wine or two to celebrate the event and gathering.

I was asked about my iPhoneography so I obliged with a quick demo.

Celebrating the moon

Though today had more work-work in it than Fiona and I would have liked, we did manage to do a little art as well - Fiona continuing preparations for the workshop on Sunday; and I decided to make one last personal shrine to go into the mini exhibition we are having at the Up Front Club (opening on 16 June).

The piece below is simply called Shrine to the Moon. I had thought of calling it A Shrine for the Moon Goddess but that seemed a bit OTT.

Barry Smith © Detail - Shrine to the Moon

Barry Smith © Shrine to the Moon

 This shrine has a lot of history associated with it. It started life as a small silver plated drinks carrier, a couple of roughly rectangular and very ornate drinks trays, a couple of old and badly stained brass washers, copper rivets from Japan and a brass dome 'nut' from the old city centre in Hanoi.

Barry Smith © Testing leaves and bowl on STTM

I still need to finish the shrine; and put a solid ply backing on it. I am also trying to make up my mind what metal I will use for the offering-incense bowl and maybe accompanying leaf. Fiona thinks maybe brushed aluminium; but brass could pick up the central brass nut and washers and copper could tone in with the copper rivets. What do you think?

And by the way if you haven't visited the Giveaway for Autumn - possibility of 'winning' a little litter of leaves.

Giveaway for Autumn

I suddenly noticed that I had passed 300 blog posts; and I want to maintain a bit of a promise to myself that I would celebrate each 100 post with a small giveaway.


What better way to celebrate the closing of Autumn (we are soon to head into winter) then to give away a little leaf litter. No precious metal - three leaves reminiscent of autumn tones made from old anodised aluminium canisters and trays.

Barry Smith © Leaf Litter

If you want to be part of giveaway just stop by and leave a comment - could be about the beauty of leaves or Autumn or whatever. On the Friday 3rd June (Australian time) I will draw a name out of a bowl and publish the recipient of the Leaf Litter.

And how stunning are the colours.

Barry Smith © Colours of Autumn

Barry Smith © Colours of Autumn 2

And I loved the fact that the moon was still visible against a cold clear morning sky.

Barry Smith © Autumn morning and moon

And the bare fingers of the Frangipani silhouetted against the evening sky.

Barry Smith © Reaching for the sky

Best of luck with the giveaway.

Creativity takes many forms??

Since being home we have been doing things around the block to reclaim it after being away on and off for the best part of two months. So part of Saturday and Sunday was given over to: pruning deadwood out of the citrus trees;  harvesting produce (oranges, limes, lemons and pumpkins); and barrowing and spreading 1.5 cubic metres of mushroom compost onto the veggie patch - to be dug in for our winter garden.

But Fiona and I were also working on organising bits and pieces that will go into her packs for the course she is running next Sunday with the Gold Coast Calligraphers group. As her blog post indicates she is introducing calligraphers to the art of working on a range of non traditional mediums.  Fiona needs at least 20 of each of the mediums to make up 20 material packs. Thought I'd share a few of the bits I worked on simply because the timber grain etc looks good.

Barry Smith © Huon Pine - end grain

Barry Smith © Fiona's HP Stash

Huon Pine (45X45mm) cut into 12mm thick blocks, finely sanded on end grain and two coats of eco timber oil.

Barry Smith © Oak - end grain 

Barry Smith © Fiona's oak and cedar stash

Barry Smith © Oak stash

Thin (5-8 mm) sheets (120X150mm) of silky oak and red cedar - long grain - again finely sanded with two coats of eco timber oil.

Barry Smith © Fiona's brass blanks

Barry Smith © Brass blanks - detail

Brass rectangles (15X75 mm) from old jardiniere - buffed and polished edges - to be stamped.

I think the participants are going to have a bit of fun - Fiona will be giving them the opportunity to experiment with about 10 techniques.

Rust lust on Friday

Though the day has held many thing I did get an hour to complete the piece, Journey 2, for the COMA exhibition.

I have still referenced the Snow Leopard by Peter Mattehiessen but for Journey 2: the ‘pages’ represent chapters of a life. The ‘thread’ that weaves through life’s chapters represents the turns and choices or life’s journey. The ‘pages’ are stamped with the words: journey, turns and choices. 

Barry Smith © Journey 2

Barry Smith © Journey 2

Barry Smith © Journey 2 - detail

>Bit of a new thing for me  - I have used bookbinding waxed thread (courtesy of Fiona) to create the thread through the piece - I have used 7 threads combined into one to reflect the seven pages - a sacred number for life. Our lives are made up of many threads.

Barry Smith © Thread

Barry Smith © Journey 2 - detail

Barry Smith © Threads of life

Barry Smith © Threads of life

And of course I have enjoyed bringing rusted metal together with salvaged worn wood.

3D piece for Between the Lines

In an earlier post I showed a 2D piece I had done for COMA's 'between the lines' exhibition.

Fiona and I had a coffee with Ken today and he said he could do with a couple more 3D pieces.

So after an afternoon of 'work-work' I spent a couple of hours in the studio-garage and made a start on a 3D piece - photos below - Fiona said,  "very book-like Barry".

Barry Smith © Journey 2

Barry Smith © Journey 2

Barry Smith © Journey 2 - detail of rust

Still a bit of fixing, finishing, embellishing, adding a couple more elements etc to do. I have put the rusted iron back outside after wetting it so it can cure - at least overnight.

Setting moon

Today we got up before the moon had set - so what a great opportunity to have photographed the full-moon last night and then captured it as it set this morning. Why rise in the darkness I hear you ask - answer so Fiona could go to circuit class at the local gym.

The photos are grainy of course as I had the iPhone's 'zoom lens' wound up to the max - though I think it does soften and distort the image in a good way.

Barry Smith © Moonset

The Moonset gave way to a soft quiet awakening of the dawn in the cloud filled valley below our house.

Barry Smith © Sunrise over Glasshouse Mountains

Barry Smith © Sunrise over Glasshouse Mountains

 Early mornings can have their own soft magic.