something 'out of the box'

This week I've been making a small something for 'out of the box III' at the Bega Valley Regional Gallery later in the month - and yes I know the photos I'm plonking here are really, really terrible.... my long thin things are a total pain to try to take a quick shot of (and I'm too lazy to take a proper pic at the moment)

Ready Reckoner

The work I'm submitting is a 'book' of sorts - created from the pages of an old Ready Reckoner (and of course I've given the piece that title) - with percentage and interest calculations covering the pages (ahhhhhh remember the days before the pocket calculator - it was such bliss to get a calculator in later high school and hand in forever those dreaded logarithm tables....uggggh!).

The piece is a bit over 3m high/long but folds down neatly to fit into a small Aust Post gift box (which is the whole point of the exhibition!). The pages have been backed with tea dyed muslin (I don't like the harsh white of store bought muslin... by immersing it in a big tea brew the cloth develops a colour similar to the old book paper)

After creating a single long column of old pages and muslin, I collected images from which I carefully cut paper stencils - these were used to put all the images onto my 'book'

detail

It's quite amazing how detailed and resilient a paper stencil can be - well you can see from my dodgy photos that I created stencils of various animals, and bugs, birds and butterflies (these are mostly at the top of the work) - and two focal images: a line of soldiers, and a large beetle.

After the painted images were dry I got out my trusty sewing machine - threaded it with red and then green thread - and sewed up a networking storm! (I DO so love a good network... as an image or an idea..... I've long had a fascination with diagrams of networks - like those explaining ecosystems or computer configurations or DNA sequencing.... )

bugs detail from toward the base

I hope that it gets a sympathetic hanging in the space - I'd like to have it pinned on the walls - with the top of the work as close to the ceiling as I can get someone to climb!.... but as the display will be out of my hands, it will be interesting to see what treatment it receives... not to mention what reception it gets!

ahhh well - that's the lot of the artist isn't it.....