Don't give up on peace

 

Fiona and I spent time with the letterpress yesterday printing our peace weather grams to send out for International Day of Peace in September. Why so early I hear you ask? Well we needed to get them printed, dry and posted before we head off to Scotland.

I really like the opening  and following photo because they demonstrate the ephemeral nature of weather grams; but also seem to speak of the fragility of peace. On Ken's sculptural chair you can see worn weather grams from a few different years that have fluttered to the ground out of our magnolia tree.

This year I have chosen to print - "don't give up on peace". Given all the wars created by weak bully boys  it would be easy to just say we can't do anything - but we can - individually and collectively we need to push for peace through our individual efforts and by pushing our own politicians.

Following are a few images of the printing process and outcomes.

And a couple of Fiona and I at work in our micro but very functional printing space.

May we all continue to push for peace.

Stone bridges and a boat

 I have decided to try my hand at recording a few very old traditional stone bridges in my postcard sized watercolours. But as the title says I have included an unserviceable fishing boat to make up the four you can see close to being finished in the opening photo.

The flooding photo is a close up of the small stone bridge that was part of the original road that goes past Armadale village. These days the bridge it totally overgrown by gorse - very intense and dense yellow flowers.

Some progress photos follow.

I will finish these four in the next week.

Family, flowers and frolicking platypus

 

Over the weekend we went to the coast to catchup up with F's family from Brisbane. It was a beautiful blue sky day resulting in many refections on the ocean as you can see above; and contrast of the trees with the sky.

The flower images below are from a few walks. Given we are in the depths of winter there are few flowers but still  enough to cause one to pause.

On our Sunday walk F managed to photograph a platypus and cormorant feeding. The cormorant follows to platypus to gather what the platypus has stirred up - good team work!!

I managed to take a reasonable photo of the platypus!!!

Hearts, stars and leaf butter knives

 

A good day in the workshop working on melting, moulding and stamping metal - hearts and stars; and making leaf butter knives.

Opening photo shows a stash of stamped hearts that will be gifted to those you need them. The hearts are stamped with: go gently, hope, love and care. 

Following are some stars that will also be gifted to remind each of us that in our own way we are stars.

When I was sorting metal to melt I came across a bunch of larger brass and copper hearts - I gave them a polish as you can see below. They will probably make their way to Scotland and be offered for sale as paperweights.

A couple of other melted metal images follow.

For the Pop Up Art Show I wanted to make some leaf butter knives from salvaged silver-plated brass. In the past I called these leaf forms-objects pate knives - but in reality they have many uses - including spreading butter, cutting soft cheese, spreading pate, spreading jam.  I made five as you can see from the photo below.

A couple of process photos follow.

So all in all a good use of time - good outcomes.

Fishing boats and crofters cottages

 

The furnace was in full operation today - melting salvaged Selangor pewter and forming wee boat hulls and cottages. I salvage, chop up and melt Selangor pewter objects (goblets and mugs) as they don't have lead content.

The opening photos shows four wee boats (8.5-9cm long: and the photos below show four wee cottages  (about 3-3.5cm long). You can see the imperfections on the cottages - each is cast individually in sand - hence sand textures in the metal.

The boat hulls are poured into a graphite mould I cut; and the cottages are poured into metal moulding sand. The boat sails are made from salvaged patinated copper. Some process photos follow.

The boats and cottages will make their way to Scotland and appear as part of the Pop Up Art Show in the Armadale Village Hall at the end of August.

Cloud layers, birds and floral beauty

 

The clouds, colour and light in the above photo lasted for a brief time - but what beauty in the layers and colours.

Over the last week a few birds have made their fleeting presence felt including the juvenile cormorant, king fisher on a rock and duck on a roof in the mist.

The wet weather continues resulting in dim morning light but offering droplets.

May beauty continue to uplift us.