The Big Reveal: The Great Library of Alexandria

The good news is the wall bed has been installed in the studio and I am slowly getting the rest of the room back in order. This is a chance for a bit of a spring clean, so things tend to progress slowly as I sort through everything and try to part with some! When it is all organised and looking pretty I will post a photo or two.

In this post I thought it would finally be safe to post images of my latest Book Art Object edition, as I think that everyone must have received their copy by now. I have decided that the best way to show off books is in a video, and as I now have my website to keep up to date as well, I spent some time this afternoon putting one together. I don’t usually use much in the way of transitions or effects, as I don’t think they usually add much, and in fact used badly can be rather comical. However in this case I used a few and I think they help to give a bit of an impression of handling the book and turning it in your hands.

 

 

And in case you are interested in details, here is a close-up of the colophon.

 

I also want to let you know that over on the Book*Art*Object blog, the call has gone out for our next edition. So if you think you might be interested in joining in the fun, pop over there and take a look at the details. Making an edition of ten plus is a challenge, but we are a friendly and helpful group, and I guarantee you will learn a lot from taking part.

Finally, I’d like to thank everyone who has visited my blog this year, and especially to those kind and encouraging folks who commented. It is such a delight to hear from you and I am always thrilled and surprised when your feedback comes through. If anyone has been thinking of commenting or sending me an email, but hesitated in the past, please know that I would love to hear from you!

I wish you all a happy, safe and loving time this festive season, and hope to see you here again soon. xxx

BAO edition finished & other progress

I’m very happy to be able to report that this week I completed the edition of 10 books for Book*Art*Object inspired by an extract from “Art & Lies” by Jeanette Winterson.(Yes, they are curiously square in shape for books, aren’t they?)

Four are currently winging their way overseas to members of BAO in the UK and the US, so I’m holding off a full reveal here for a couple of weeks until they have arrived.

We’ve also been lucky enough to have the “Art & Lies” edition acquired by the State Library of Queensland. Helen Cole, from SLQ, saw the work exhibited at the Impact conference and that’s where the deal was done! There is also some discussion with Alicia Bailey from Abecedarian Gallery in Denver, Colorado about exhibiting “Art & Lies” there! This is a very exciting possibility and if it comes off, will be my first step onto the international stage.

I realized that I haven’t posted the text by Winterson here yet. So, in case you haven’t seen it over on the BAO blog, here it is.

300BC. The Ptolemies founded the great library at Alexandria.
400,000 volumes in vertiginous glory.
The Alexandrians employed climbing boys much in the same way as the Victorians employed sweeps. Unnamed bipeds, light as dust, gripping with swollen fingers and toes, the nooks and juts of sheer-faced walls.
To begin with, the shelves had been built around wide channels that easily allowed for a ladder, but, as the library expanded, the shelves contracted, until the ladders themselves splintered under the pressure of so much knowledge. Their rungs were driven into the sides of the shelves with such ferocity that all the end-books were speared in place for nine hundred years.
What was to be done? There were scribes and scholars, philosophers and kings, travellers and potentates, none of whom could now take down a book beyond the twentieth shelf. It soon became true that the only books of any interest were to be found above shelf twenty-one.
It was noticed that the marooned rungs still formed a crazy and precarious ascent between the dizzy miles of shelves. Who could climb them? Who would dare?
Every boy-slave in Alexandria was weighed. It was not enough to have limbs like threads, the unlucky few must have brains of vapour too. Each boy had to be a medium through which much must pass and yet nothing be retained.
At the start of the experiment, when a book was required, a boy would be sent up to get it. This could take as long as two weeks, and very often, the boy would fall down dead from hunger and exhaustion.
A cleverer system seemed to be to rack the boys at various levels around the library, so that they could form a human chain, and pass down any volume within a day or so.
Accordingly, the boys built themselves eyries in among the books, and were to be seen squatting and scowling at greater and greater heights around the library.
A contemporary of Pliny the Younger writes of them thus:
[here is a chunk of latin that is never translated. JW at her most scholarly & impenetrable... but would look great in calligraphy, Ronnie!]
There is no system that has not another system concealed within it. [my emphasis] Soon the boys had tunneled behind the huge shelves and thrown up a rookery of strange apartments where beds were books and chairs were books and dinner was eaten off books and all the stuffings, linings, sealings, floorings, openings and closings, were books. Books were put to every use to which a book can be put as long as it is never read.

Jeanette Winterson, Art & Lies (London: Jonathon Cape, 1994), pp. 4-6.



STUDIO

The other lovely news I received is that our wall bed will be installed on December 20th. You may recall this post from a couple of months ago, mentioning my plans for doing up my studio (at last!). 

Well, having a wall bed, instead of the current single, will allow me to have a lot more shelf space above the bed. Storage has been a problem in this little room ever since the air-conditioner was installed, which meant that small bookcase that sat on top of my desk had to go. Here’s where some of that stuff has been patiently waiting for a “real” home for some months.

I didn’t want to leave you with a photo of my mess, so here is the plan I’ve drawn up for the studio. I am hoping I might be able to squeeze in a small comfy chair for reading between the bookcase and the built-in, but time will tell. 

If you see any glaring problems, please do comment! Your thoughts, as always, are gratefully received.

Priorities!

If there is one thing that I thought having CFS/ME had taught me, it is how to prioritise.

And in some ways it has.

Having been out of the workforce for a long time, I only recently learnt the modern approach to prioritising. You know, the old “urgent & important”, “non-urgent but important” etc paradigm.

 

I know, I’m probably the last person on the planet to hear about this, but now I know.

The thing is, when your energy is low, often it is only the “Important and Urgent” things that get done.

And that’s not how it’s supposed to work. The ones that theoretically fall off your “to do” list are both not important and not urgent. You manage to plant those seedlings before they die and to clean the windows before it becomes embarrassing that you haven’t!

But it is amazing how far and how long you can stretch you definition of “unimportant”. Really!

However, there is another factor that comes into play when you haven’t been in the workforce for a long time. I look around my home and I can see that I have developed a pattern of always trying to choose the most functional option (I wasn’t an occupational therapist for nothing). It feels as if I can’t allow myself to have the beautiful bookcase, if the cheaper (and uglier) one will do the job.

Silent conversation in my head

Will this fit in the space? Tick.

Is it affordable? Tick

Pause. Looks.

God, it’s ugly!

Oh well, never mind. At least it’s here right now (as opposed to some beautiful but cheap version which may or may not exist somewhere.) It’s good enough.

And often it may be. It’s true that not every item you own has to be a design classic. Lots of stuff just has to do a job.

 

The trouble is that I think I may have trained myself a little too well. It’s become a challenge to allow myself to choose something I like, rather than settle for the most economical option. And you can’t surround yourself with stuff you’ve “settled” for, without it having an effect on you.

The other side of that is that sometimes, with a bit of work and elbow grease, you can make something very inexpensive into a treasure. But extra work and elbow grease aren’t plentiful around this house, so that’s not usually a realistic option (think about those poor seedlings I’m trying to get planted before I head to Melbourne).

All of this of course is pertinent right now because I’m planning to do up my studio. Even though this needs to be a functional space, I do want it to be somewhere I love to go. I spend a lot of time in this room, and I want it to  draw me in. So I’m saying here, out loud, for you all to hear: I’m going to try to choose comfort and beauty. Oh, and function!

And the mystery item is....

.... an etching press. Carol and Sara did very well with their guesses - you know me well!

At the moment it has a bit of superficial rust from living out in a shed, but it was reconditioned a few years ago and is very solid. All the moving parts operate smoothly and easily, so it's really just in need of a cosmetic clean-up, some oil and grease for lubrication and some new felts and it will be ready to go! So far I've spent just over $400 including transport and I can't believe my luck! I've had an eye out for more than a year and this is the only one that I've seen on offer that wasn't $2000+

By the way, if anyone out there has any advice about caring for this little beauty, I'm all ears.

I'm back - and awaiting a new arrival

Just a quick post to let you all know that I'll be back in posting mode again in the next few days. I want to thank-you all for your patience while I've been off-line.

To keep you guessing about what's been happening, I've posted a photo of the studio where I've been moving things around and clearing some space for a new arrival. What could it be? Any ideas?

Installation - wip

At the end of August I made a short trip to Melbourne to present at a tutorial and to see my supervisor at RMIT Uni. The trip went well, and it was great to have a space to set up my installation work and get a much better feel for it.

Although I have s p a c e in my workshop, it is definitely a garage, and it does seem to suck the emotion out of work, and make it hard for me to tell whether things are working as they should. A huge white room like Marion Borgelt's studio would be great, but even a small blankish space like the one in this video would be fine.

This is the work I presented for critique (sorry it's a bit dark). Or I should say, I tried to present this work... I set the work up the day before the tut in order to try out a few different spaces and arrangements, and discuss it with my supervisor. Unfortunately the next morning when I arrived with the class and the course coordinator we discovered that a somewhat overzealous cleaner had "tidied" away the crucial shards from the floor! Ah well! It seems that what consitutes art, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder....

Thankfully I took the time the day before to document the work. The photos, together with what was left of the work enabled people to give me some valuable feedback. There is a bit of tweeking to do, but generally the work went down well and I'll be able to include it in my masters.

Back in the Studio

This week is my first back in the studio. Things are serious as this semester is my absolute last chance to complete the masters. Despite the pressure I'm trying to enjoy myself, and I am looking forward to some dedicated time making.

I'm also trying to keep a bit of balance - I have set aside 1 day each week to spend with my husband, as well as a weekly visit to my mother plus 1 other social "contact" each week. I am aiming for 3 solid days of working, (of course, when I say day, I mean "CFS day" which is highly variable, but for me is a maximum of 4 hours work, starting somewhere between 11am and 2pm) and the remaining day is for whatever seems most pressing that week - it might be physical rest, it might be housework or cooking, or maybe more time in the studio.

I am hoping that the time with my husband and friends will de-stress me enough to allow me to keep this up. I guess I will know how I am going in a few weeks. I know 3 days working doesn't look that much, but I know my limits, and I know that the pressure can get to me pretty quickly. I start to feel exhausted and then the migraines start. Will it be enough? I honestly don't know, but I know I'll have to be disciplined and intelligent in my approach, as well as having a good dose of luck!

Anyway, I was pretty happy with the progress I made this week. I tidied up the clay pages you saw here, and loaded the kiln for the bisque firing. For those who aren't familiar with firing, the bisque is the first firing, to around 1000deg C. You take the temperature up slowly (about 90deg C per hour) until you have passed the critical point of 573 deg, where crystal inversion occurs. After that you can take the temperature up more quickly. Once the firing has reached temperature, you turn the kiln off and go away. You have to let it cool naturally until it reaches a temperature where you can handle the pieces in your bare hands. Any over enthusiasm in opening the kiln before it has cooled, may result in your precious pieces cracking at this stage.

Well, I was patient. I was very patient. But still the firing has not been completely successful. Quite a lot of the pages have cracked, and I'm not sure why. Fortunately I made nearly 3 times as many as I need, but even so I'm not sure that I have enough that I am happy to use. I had heard that Imperial Porcelain is inclined to crack, but I presumed this was in the forming. As I had few problems at that stage, I thought I was in the clear, but perhaps it is a problem in firing.
If there is anyone reading who has any suggestions, I would be pleased to hear from you!

For now I'm off to bed, and tomorrow I'll take another look at the slabs and see if there are enough....I only need 8, so keep your fingers crossed for me.....

In the meantime, here are a couple of my photos from the trip. The first one was taken in the garden at Borthwnog Hall and the second is at Avesbury Circle in England. The yellow is a field of rapeseed behind the girl.

Setting up the ceramics workshop

It mightn't look like much but you've no idea how happy it makes me to be able to report that today the electricians came and installed my kiln. It has been stored away at my m-i-l's since the middle of 2003 when I moved to Melbourne.
While they were here I had them install the hanging light (full spectrum tubes) and the hanging power point too. With the doors open, the daylight in the space is wonderful on a sunny day, and now the light will be good on overcast days too. It will also be good when I'm working on week-ends and feel like I need a little more privacy from the neighbours.

I don't know what the problem is with me and studio's with views? I just can't seem to luck onto a picturesque space....and this isn't the worst of it - over to the right are the bins! Still, I'm not complaining - I think the very fact that I finally feel up to establishing a proper space for ceramics again is a very good sign.