Where to find me: Recent Publishing

I’ve been lucky enough to have my have my work published twice recently. Doug Spowart re-worked his article from Imprint and it was accepted for the online journal, Bonefolder. The article is a review of the Southern Cross University exhibition last year, where my book Like Weather was selected for acquisition. It includes a lovely shot of my book, taken by Doug. It’s fantastic to have my work included in Bonefolder, as it’s part of the US Book Arts Web, and has an international readership.

The extra benefit of the article being in Bonefolder is that you can access it to read for free online, if you didn’t catch it in Imprint.

I’ve also had some of my ceramic work included in the recently published book by Jeffery B. Snyder, Ceramics Today.

They accepted five images, including the installation work, Wraith, and my porcelain book, Self (States of Change), which has just been in Mackay at the Libris Awards. Unfortunately I haven’t received my copy of the book yet, so I can’t be positive they all made the final cut, but I’m told it’s on page 240.

 

Finally, in case you haven’t noticed the widget in the side-bar, I’ve started Twittering.

I’ve thought a lot about whether or not to join in this silent cacophony, and despite initially despising the idea, in the end I decided that Twitter would be a useful tool for me.

I was convinced by the artists stories I read in The Unconventional Guide to Art and Money. It’s for artists who choose to conduct their careers primarily in the context of the internet, rather than going the traditional gallery route. It explains how to pull together all your online content, get your work out there and (for some, at least) make a living. It seems especially well-suited to the shy, the rebellious and the control-freak. And of course, by default, those who are too tired by 6pm to make it to all those openings in order to “network”.

So… I signed on to Twitter a couple of weeks ago, and began sharing stuff I thought might interest people. As well as providing another means of knowing within seconds when a new blog post hits the ether, I have found it’s a nice way to share the best of those links you come across in the course of your day but which don’t really qualify for a blog post.  I’ve mostly been posting links to inspiring art, art events or opportunities, as well as some about zen and de-stressing. If you’re interested in following you can sign up for Twitter here and find me as amandaw_w . Or not. I won’t offended at all.

Wraith on Video

Here's the video documentation I put together for the assessment. It's about two and a half minutes long, no sound. The close-up video shows some digital glitsching that actually added to the sense that a change was occurring. Unusual for a techy fault to work well!

More documentation: Wraith

Here are two more detail shots of my installation, Wraith. I was able to take much better photos this time because it was possible to walk into the space. The first time I showed the work it was on view from the street through a small port-hole. That provided 24 hour viewing but it was pretty difficult to photograph.

I promise I will write a bit about the process of installing and the work soon, but I've been racing around trying to tidy up the piles of junk throughout my house that always seem to accumulate when I have a show. I am pleased to report however, that my energy was really good while I was away in Melbourne and that now I've been back a week it feels safe to say that it doesn't seem as if I'm going to have a huge physical crash, like I usually do. Hurray!

Wraith Detail Shots

More images in coming days.

Wraith Day 2

Preparing for upcoming exhibition Pt1

This week I received some more good news about Like Weather, my flag book. It has been accepted into the Stanthorpe Art Prize, another national juried art competition. Of course this means I'll have to put together another copy to send off before I leave for Melbourne in about two weeks, but I think I've got the process sorted out now.

I've finally been able to make a start on some of the work that needs to be done to prepare for the exhibition in Melbourne. I have shown this installation Wraith here in Brisbane in 2006, but it is an ephemeral work using unfired clay, drawings and a projection, so this show will involve re-making a lot of the piece.

The first step has been to take another look at the projection. Last time I only had access to an (analogue) slide projector. During the time the work was up, (about 10 days from memory, but able to be viewed 24 hrs/day) I replaced the slide at least three times because it kept fading. I know now I could have had a glass slide made which would have lasted for the whole time.

At Kings Gallery I'll have access to a digital projector and DVD player, so I wanted to check whether there is anything special to do to prep an image for this. I used this article as my reference. According to the author, it's really not that complex but there are a some things it's wise to do:
1. make sure the size of your image (in pixels) is within the native resolution of the projector. I found this by searching online for the specs of the specific model the gallery uses.
2. set the dpi at around 96
3. if the projector you are using is not an LCOS (Liquid Crystal on Silicon) then increase the saturation of your image by 10%. The one at Kings is LCD, so I dutifully took this step.
4. sharpen your image tastefully. Always better to under-do, rather than over-do, in my opinion.
5. convert the colour space to sRGB IEC61966-2.1 because this is the colour space the projector will presume has been used. Leave your image in another colour space and the colours may not be as you expected.

So now there is only one other step. As the gallery uses a DVD player to provide the image to the projector, I have to save the image to a DVD in a file format that the player can read. To be honest I have to check this with the gallery, but I used Windows Movie Maker to save the image as an avi file. MM came with Windows XP and may also come with older versions of Windows, I'm not sure. It is incredibly easy to use, and amazingly I just gave it a try for the first time a few weeks ago when I made this video. At the time I thought I was just playing around, but it turns out that the couple of hours I spent then were actually really useful yesterday when I wanted to save this jpeg as an avi. With art, you just never know when something you've done "mucking around" will turn out to teach you exactly what you need to know.

So that's it so far. Well, all except showing you the image. So here it is, as it will be projected.

Using hair

For a few years now I've been fascinated by artworks that are made of or incorporate real hair. I remember the first time I saw a contemporary artwork made of hair. It was in 2005 in Melbourne and it was Helen Pynor's Shadowbreath (see above) I was quite bewitched by the work and found it hard to leave the gallery. The incredible human presence captivated me.
Ever since I have wanted to include hair in my own work. For the past year I've been collecting the clippings that fall to the floor every time I have my own haircut. Unfortunately, I wear my hair short, so there isn't a lot to collect and the pieces are only short. I wasn't really sure what I was going to use the hair for, I just knew that I would use it eventually.

A few weeks ago my mother had her long white hair which she wears in a French roll cut off. She is in her 80s now and for some time has been finding that brushing and washing her hair made her back ache. She always receives compliments for her hair and I think it was a tough decision for her to make, but in the end practicality won the day. When she told me she had finally done it, my first question was "what did you do with the hair?" Fortunately, her hairdresser (who visits her at home) had bundled it all up in newspaper before popping it into the bin. My mother was only too happy to rescue it and put it aside for me. She finds a lot of my work pretty mystifying, but she seems thrilled at the idea that she, in the form of her hair, will be making a powerful contribution to my work, and will "live on", as she says.

Access to some lovely long hair has set my mind spinning with ideas and I am trying to capture them in my diary lest they disappear into the black cavern that occupies the space formerly known as my memory. It seems to me that these works will form a more cohesive group with the ones I have already completed for my masters, than the book I mentioned here. So...despite the start I have made on it, that book is to be relegated to "future projects" for now.

It seems like an unfortunate disruption to the flow of my work, but I haven't had the luxury of a "flow" for a while...progress seems to be coming in fits and starts. I would have had to take a break from it for a while anyway, because I have to put together at least one more edition of "Like Weather" to send off to Mackay for the Libris Awards. I also have to prepare for an exhibition in Melbourne in February. I'll be showing an installation I exhibited here in Brisbane in 06 at the National Ceramics Conference. It's called "Wraith" and some of you may have seen the photos of the original over in my photostream on Flickr. There is also a little mention of it in the profile here. There will obviously be more as the date approaches.