wrestling....

I just posted on book art object blog how today has been a good day - I've been hard at it in the studio  working on one of my BAO edition 2 pieces.... (about time I can get back to making stuff! phew all the work/worry of the farm takes its toll!)

here are a couple of sneaky peeks of what I'm up to...

'paper wrestling' inkjet print proof...

 

 typewriter text

very sneaky peek of how these bits go together
(oh it's a tricky pic all right... giving very few clues about how this actually appears... hee hee hee)

I'm aiming for quite a large (for me!) edition - 25 books and a couple of artists proofs.... that way I'll have enough for each BAO recipient (8 or is it 9 peeps?), one for the poet - Claire Beynon, a couple to have as gifts, 2-3 for exhibition duties (I'm thinking ahead....  our first BAO experience showed me how important it was to have at least one book set aside just for this purpose).  The remainder (if I have any!) I'll offer for sale.

I'm hoping to get seriously stuck into things now that I've worked out all the details (I've already completed all the inkjet prints, typewriter text and prepared many of the paper signatures.... I'm on a roll!)

Now if I'm REALLY clever I'll get this first piece finished and photographed to offer for selection in Books... Beyond Words (evolution) book arts award .... by the weekend (gulp!)... And in the coming weeks I'll get the whole edition completed.... well that's the plan...

....

big day on the farm...

It's been a monumental day for everyone on the farm.....

today was the first day of the new dairy....

(I spy Sass and EJ hiding in the wash room - checking out all the excitement

I spy the Very Big legs of the Very Big girls! )

I am quite tired - it's been a stressful day, week, month, year!

And now the real challenge begins for me:

How to integrate 

my passion for this land,
my whole-hearted belief in permaculture as the only way to operate a farm,

  my desire to impart in our kidlins a sense of loving respect for animals and land,

and to juggle all the different aspects of my life (art, garden, study, farm, KIDS)
with my farming man's need to MAKE THIS NEW VENTURE WORK!

(oh boy)

** I have posted many more pics and the complete tale of the first big dairy day here

....

the hill...

I ventured into Bega yesterday .... 

the highway was still closed at 'kisses lagoon' - but the town was open for business as usual...

I stayed to catch the opening of 'The Hill' at the Bega Valley Regional Gallery.....

'The Hill' showed the outcome of four local artist's short residency in Broken Hill.... and each artist trying new arty territory....

attending the exhibition opening was a nice way to finish off a pretty wet and worrying week in the Bega Valley.... and arty lovers were out in force

I only had my itty-bitty camera with me... and my batteries decided to call it a day after 2 pics... so this is all I can share....

 Poppy Benton 'rainbow avenue' series - steel sculpture

foreground - Poppy Benton 'capra hircus' - bronze, steel, stone, glass 

background - Lorna Crane 'flow' - series 5 scrolls and 'river road' video

You'll notice that I didn't take any pics of flood damaged parts of town.... I just can't do that .... it is so sad to see households with all their goods piled up in garbage bags... or the old ambulance station - as I drove past I saw paramedics doing a valiant job of cleaning up their station - what a mess!  Power poles are all higgilty -piggilty, huge trees are dumped in the middle of sporting fields...  the most distressing site for me was 'Pearce's flat' - the river flat paddock of a farming family on way to Bega.... the whole paddock has had the topsoil stripped off - a giant slash through the land.... I have heard of other farmers who have lost fences, machinery, roads, and worst of all - their soil and some of their animals....

I feel for them

...

rainbows...

Sams Creek paddock.... yesterday.... around 5pm...

Sass: "Hey mum come quick - a rainbow has landed in our paddock"

EJ: "quick mummy quick! - lets go get the gold!"

Sass: "there's not really gold at the end of the rainbow, is there mum?" 

EJ: "is SO!"

Sass: "is not... it's a miff, isn't that right mum?"

EJ: "dad says there's no miffs allowed on the farm... 'cause strange girls can make the cows sick... 
anyway - can we go slide on it instead?"

*smile*

....

damp...

Since I posted about the arrival of the new Big Girls on Monday morning things have really hit the fan big time down in our part of the world..

Many of my aussie friends may have seen news footage of floods in our area (the Bega Valley for those trying to connect the dots)  - indeed yesterday Bega experienced one of it's biggest floods (second only to the 1971 monster floods) - but the thing that made it quite a shock was it all happened so fast - yes it was raining, the river was climbing a bit... even the BOM was caught unawares (at 10pm monday night they were issuing a minor flood warning, with a vague 'but we don't know what to expect'.....  just after 4am the Brogo river was just 1m under the record set in 1971 and the Bega river hit official major flood level... something nice to wake up to eh?)....

Kim - a bloggy (and local) friend has captured some pics of what Bega looked like yesterday.... and you can see them on her delightful blog.......  PHWORRRR!

The highway was cut by flood waters in numerous places and the area (especially in Bega) has sustained major damage .... Bega Cheese and numerous other businesses took a battering,  houses did go under (just look at Kims pics.... poor buggers in Bega)  - and we are aware of farmers who are having one hell of a time (I've seen some pics from fb friends of stranded herds on Jellat Jellat flats - beautiful river flat land between Bega and Tathra ..... poor girls...)

We had nothing like that nastiness here at Sams Creek....

But then we don't experience flooding the same way as the flatter parts of the district (and we didn't get anything like the rain that fell slightly to our south and west ....) We expect we've lost some fencing close to Narira Creek, and the access road to 'Alanbar' (Phil's farm) has been badly damaged - but 'tis nothing in the great scheme of things (all stock - including the new and newer Big Girls are fine and dandy)

Yesterday it was a beautiful sunny day.... (even as flood waters were inundating Bega
just 50kms to our south....). We had no power for more than 12 hrs, (which for us means no water either... grrrr) and no phone - the kids stayed home from school just to make things a bit easier for the system, and later in the afternoon we spied this beauty...

I'm fairly confident it's a Black Jezebel - the first I've spied at Sams Creek

Last night as we heated up soup on the BBQ, drove to town with jugs to get drinking water, lit candles, and went to bed early, we were all mindful that our situation was just a minor inconvenience - How dreadful things must be for the poor folk in Japan....

.....

thinking, doing, being a farmer's wife....

I've been finding it difficult to try to post something with so much other 'stuff' on my mind.....

Like worry for the folk in Japan - as if it's not enough to contend with earthquake and tsunami and after-shocks ... everything about the unfolding 'drama' at the Fukushima nuclear power plant is just gob-smackingly dreadful.....


dreadful

(now is not the time to go into the pros and cons and blips and blops of nuclear anything - but I will say - I've long been a NO NUKES girlie.... enough said)

Like many of you, my thoughts are with everyone in Japan.... may your country and people heal quickly.

My thoughts are also on a HUGE project closer to home....

Over the past few months a large structure has emerged on my partner's farm.... (some of my bloggy friends from have been following the progress of the project over here) - but here's a brief pictorial for everyone else....

yes - you guessed right - it's a damn big dairy

 this is my farming man
checking out the pit in his brand spanking new 20-a-side, swing-over herringbone dairy
(no I don't feel confident rattling that off... I hope I got it right)

 I have spent so many sleepless nights over the past couple of years thinking and worrying about this project (but worry is not very productive eh?)..... So when the project started back in October last year - I headed off to complete my Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) - and this way I imagined I might have a positive and practical way of being involved.... whilst also remaining absolutely true to my beliefs in a greener, more sustainable, holistic way of undertaking farm/life.... (it remains to be seen how things will go.... and how I'll cope with the early mornings... I don't have much longer to wait until I find out - FP expects to be milking the new girls in just over a weeks time..... GULP!)


Last weekend I set up a small book piece in the pristine dairy pit...

(no one every said being a farmer's wife would be easy..... but my man also says - it's not so easy being partner to an artist either... especially when I have the tendency to do things like this!)


.....

bicentenary...

guess what 

this is my 200th art & etc post 

and a bicentenary requires at least a little celebration don't you think?

will you settle for a couple of bits a bright news and a few more pics of my SotE work instead?

 detail 'closed book' installation - SotE 2011

'closed book' - installation

16 world book encyclopaedias set in a circle on compass points, 15 beach rocks, 1 half brick and one small river rock -
Bermagui headland 2011 SotE

‘panton volvit plenus orbis’ – (everything turns full circle) second version

 SotE small sculpture show installation

 

Circular bookforms created from discarded atlases

and the good news stories?

I've shared on the BookArtObject blog - that I got word today that our exhibition proposal for Impact 7 was successful (wheeeeeee - we're off to the international multi-disciplinary printmaking conference this year hosted by Monash Uni in Melbourne)

I didn't add in that post - I'm also heading to the event as a solo arteeest - I've been selected as part of the 'open portfolio' bit of the event as well (wheeeeee)

oh and did I tell you - my loooooong book 'serpens volumen - arcus pluvius' (rainbow serpent book) has been short-listed for the inaugural Manly Library Acquisitive Book Art Award  - so it will be wheeling its way to Sydney this week (I wonder if the exhibition visitors have as much fun with the beastie as we girlies managed...)

I packed up 'codex interruptum' today

and for the first time in a very long time I have time to enough to breathe and enjoy the glorious autumn days (watch out garden - here I come!)

** thanks everyone (including all you anonymous folk lurking in the corners)
for dropping by, reading my ravel, and sending vibes of support over the past 200 posts
xx

speaking...

I've not long returned home from a talking gig at Sculpture on the Edge.... I was one of the 'keynote' speakers at the sculpture symposium and this year's theme was 'Monumental v/s Ephemeral - the changing face of sculpture'

(phew! them's fighting words!)

I was invited by Jan Ireland (the force behind SotE) to speak - obviously representing 'team ephemeral'... I thought it might be useful to jot down and share something of what I said (I did not present a completely formal 'paper' or closed speech - when giving any presentation I tend to write a few notes to myself - to keep me on track and to highlight specific collections of words that I fancy... and then I go for it freestyle! so (taking from my notes) this is a somewhat modified version of what I presented  - including a few of the pics from my powerpoint I used to highlight my cause.......

My name is Rhonda Ayliffe... and just in case you suspect you are alone in are scratching your head and wondering what I might be doing talking about sculpture -  fear not - I'm surprised too. Generally, when asked to explain my art-making, I say I have an inter-disciplined practice (and this way, no single medium or art form has to take the blame for what I do!)

I'd like to start my chat today by briefly noting my bemused concern about the wording of this year's theme.... 'monumental VERSUS ephemeral'? 'the CHANGING face of sculpture'? really? I'm not convinced...

Arguably humans have always made ephemeral art objects.... and ephemeral works have certainly existed alongside monumental, monolithic sculptural works... and long after monumental works are no longer viable, I suspect the ephemeral will carry on. There is nothing either new, nor changing about the monumental and the ephemeral in sculpture and today I will be talking about an idea I'm currently exploring through studio practice.... and how/where the ephemeral sits within the scheme of my making.

First - some parameters and definitions - just for the purpose of this discussion.... 
monumental = BIG (be that in size, scale, or money) and permanent (think stone, metal, clay)
ephemeral = fleeting, impermanent... (oh and I'll add something else to this as we go on)...

now its time for a bit of time-travel .... I'd like you all to cast your minds back.... imagine eras/ages/civilisations/countries from long ago.... Egypt, Mesopotamia, Inca, Mayan Aztec, Ancient China, Greece and Rome... (you get the idea)

Now as I rattled each of these off, I'm sure that many had immediate visions .....  

(ahhhhh time to wheel in a bit of 'death by power point'! you'll have to just imagine most of the images... of pyramids, the sphinx, large stone sculptures, stepped pyramids of the mayans, greek marble human forms..... that rushed by as I pontificated....)

I contend that monumental sculptural work (and I include here architecture - the ultimate monumental sculptural form) -  has gone hand in hand with the rise and rise of an empire... or what is generally  considered 'civilisation'.... so let's think of the pattern that has repeated itself in all these ages and geographic locations: as military leaders or religions or economies have risen to power,  gaining access to a wealth of resources, so we have seen the emergence and ascent of monumental sculpture. 

 

and what is the purpose of all this large, permanent monolithic structures? 

garden ornaments anyone? 

hardly!

monumental sculpture made a monumental statement about power.... be that political, military, economic or cultural domination - make no mistake, dominant powers celebrated, consolidated and reflected their dominion through monolithic structures: monumental sculpture was part-propaganda, part-PR, but always ALL about power.

Even as the Renaissance saw both the rise of the merchant class and the idea of the artist as individual genius, the monumental art game continued. On and on - unto the Industrial Revolution (now the real game of colonisation and dominion over lands and nature on a grand scale could begin...) on to the modern then post-modern era (and nothing much changes folks) sculpture became a tool of colonisation - and then globalisation, the icon of so-called 'taste' or 'class', the weapon of the wealthy, the spoils of the battle... 

monumental sculpture uses monumental amount of materials and money, created monumental abuses of nature..... to make a monumental statement about - well...  monumental power (and greed).

Heck - Given enough resources an artist can even move mountains (think Turrell and Roden crater) - or create a fitting bauble for the bling-bling art collector...

BUT

just as monumental sculpture has been the centre-piece and sentinel of cultural domination... so too do they serve as monument and remnant of cultural demise. 

what then of the ephemeral?

first I'd like to put ephemeral into two piles - just because something is impermanent doesn't mean that it's not monumental in scale, resource-use or money....

Chirsto and Jean-Claude's wrapping of Little Bay is a spectacular example of what money, (arty) muscle and a bevvy of willing minions can accomplish.... go forth young people! dominate that landscape (bugger the crabs and little creatures.... we're making GREAT ARRRRRRT!)

Nope, I'm thinking about the other pile of ephemeral - I'm thinking about work that is less complicit in purpose and product with the dominant past art paradigms - and definitely not the sort Christo and (puppy) Koons and Co. create.

 I'm thinking about ...

* work that touches the earth lightly (Long, Fulton..... and more!)

* work that engages with the environment and may create a dialogue of sorts (Nash... and more!)

* work that exists beyond the gallery or museum (guerilla knitters... and more!)

* or extends into the practical (artist-as-family's food forest and chaco kato's compost cylinders from CERES .... and more!)

and that's the territory I like to think my practice is heading....

'closed book' - installation - Bermagui headland 2011

world book encyclopaedias, borrowed beach rocks, brick

(well this was the basic structure of what I hope and think transpired.....
I was too busy watching out for incoming rotten fruit to be sure!)

.....

boating...

Up at 4.30am to drive over to Bermagui

I launched my collection of origami encyclopaedia boats in a little waterway at low tide...

go forth my little boats..... 

 

discover new country....

but the flotilla seemed more comfortable hugging the shore...

 maybe the very big boats made them nervous....

 some simply could not cope with the pressure and rapidly sank to the bottom...

in a couple of hours time we are returning to the little waterway with the prawning net

and the kids and I will gather the fleet together

bring it home and compost the remains...

for now the odd bystander may or may not notice the collection 

bobbing up and down, listing, 

dashing themselves against the rocks,

sinking...

(hmmmm... surprisingly like me really!)

**update**
we're all cleaned up now
(I KNEW there was a reason for having kiddies - my own private slave labour force!
they had a blast climbing over the rocks, finding and collecting the spent paper boats)

....

sculpture on the edge (and me too!)...

I've just been back over to Bermagui - to Sculpture on the Edge - and installed my quirky small ephemeral piece on the headland and had a quick looksee around the place....

noice eh?

(names and details to follow - as soon as I can get my hands on a catalogue!)

its a hive of activity on the headland - 

as Yuri and Chris prepare their works for this evening 

(it's opening night celebrations don't you know... and these boys are preparing for 'fire' works...) 

Yuri is making a large clay work piece that will be fired in-situ (which will no doubt be fascinating to witness) - I've just left him mad at work, building the base (wire, rocks, covered in clay/charcoal mix) Behind him are a few of the volunteers that are helping to assemble the work (more should be arriving right now as I'm typing...) These folk are building sausage-like structures from hessian...

.... which are filled with charcoal lumps.

hmmmm curiouser and curiouser......

Yuri is actually aiming to build something resembling a GIANT koala scat created from local clay....

Yuri is a passionate koala-survey creature - and knows MOUNTAINS about our local koala populations... interestingly we've just been comparing notes over the past week - his focus is the Mumbulla koalas - and of course I'm interested in the creatures next to me in the Kooraban...
 

I was tickled all sorts of colours this morning when he whipped out a container of koala scats he's collected in the Mumbulla forests..... you really need to smell this as I'm sure you won't believe me when I tell you it's lovely! (it's just like sweetened eucalyptus)

further down the hill - Chris is creating something else....

 its only in the early stages of construction right now 

but just wait until dark ......
 

Chris shares my passion for fiery things.... and even shared with me his 'super-secret-special recipe' for getting things seriously fired up....

 

(nope, I'm not telling what's in the mix - but let's just say - mythbusters would approve! hee hee hee)

oh and of course as well as headland things - there's the small sculpture show in the hall to peruse....

 mmmm boats.....

mmmmm feathers!

mmmmmm 

now I must get my presentation for sunday under control

thinking all things ephemeral...

sneaky shot of part of my piece up on the headland.....
I've already had my first visitor/admirer... 

I think that's a good sign

.....

busy busy...

I am so over-worked, over-committed, over-tired and over-stressed right now
I'm not sure I can type straight...

Here are our cats: Boots (grey boy), Dante-the Dreadful (chocolate boy), and Rocky (blue-point boy)
they have a much better grasp on things.....
why worry when food is plentiful, the blankets are soft and warm and you have the comfort of friends....

 

Sculpture on the Edge opens tomorrow - and after travelling back from the regional swim carnival (250kms away..... nothing is close around these here parts... but this is what you do when you have swimmingest fishy kiddies) I had to wheel it over to Bermagui and install one piece for the small sculpture show (a variation of an installation at my solo show... which of course took more than 4hrs to get up..... oh boy) Tomorrow I'll be installing another something (an ephemeral book/sculpture/ conceptual piece for the headland... here's hoping it's easier to get together!) and Saturday I'm unleashing my 'secret' piece (hint - be in Bermagui after 8am, and before 12pm...... yep it's going to be a truly ephemeral something..... I already know it's going to be a bit of a challenge...)

and I've somehow got to scrape out some time to prepare my bit for the sculpture symposium on Sunday....

hmmmmmm

I'm not even going to THINK about all the other things that are supposed to get done at the same time.... (right now it's 11pm and I'm washing clothes.... )

anyone know where I can find a few extra hours in the day?


no I didn't think so..... (I hope all my friends in blog-land and around town just bear with me for the next little while... I AM thinking of you all - I know you're all busy busy too)



sigh


next time around I'm coming back as one of our cats!

...