visual art journal 2011...B

AWAKENING...
All the images in this set are showing my creative journey after viewing John Davis artworks in Melbourne, National Gallery Victoria (NGV) in October 2010.

My new creative journey commenced after I reflected on what raw material I had available to me, right in my own garden, on my return to Fremantle Western Australia.

The first images in this set show the complex structures of a branch that had fallen off one of my trees while I was in Melbourne. It is from an Australian Native Paper Bark tree called Melaleuka.

HIDDEN STRUCTURES REVEALED...
My thoughts played with the ideas of what structures where making up the complex branch and the need for large amounts of these that I would need to sustain my future large art projects. As I played with these ideas it dawned on me that I had to pull apart this branch and see exactly what structures were hidden in there and what size they would eventually yield.

I was very surprised to see that the entire branch reduced it’s self down into 12 piles (image “Visual art journal V” shows 10 of these piles). The sizes and shapes were determined by the original structure and all I had to do was follow the patterns hidden in the branch.

I now see that every tree has its own unique set of structures that all I have to do is follow their hidden patterns and they will dictate my artworks sizes and over all structures.

VISUAL DIARY...
It was about this stage of the creative journey I realized I needed to keep a visual record of this process. I had the images in the camera but no way handy to print them out in colour and this also meant I had to go and buy the book etc to create one. BUT, yes a BIG BUT was that this did not feel right. After I reflected on why it did not feel right it dawned on me I had the perfect medium in my Flickr account to record the creative process. Yes an electronic visual diary that could hold all my images and written documentation; Perfect.

As I created this visual diary it also made sense to put it on line. If I made a hard copy a few friends, who really do not get my art journey anyway, would be able to view it. But an online visual diary means others who do want to know the process and understand the creative foundation behind the work could enjoy it.

It has been my contacts on Flickr over the past two years that have played a very large part in supporting and encouraging my creative journey towards this new level I am now working from.

NEEDING TO BE SUSTAINABLE...
While I was working in my studio space filling up my buckets with recycled shredded office A4 white paper to create my first paper pulp mix I was listening to our Australian ABC radio.

The theme of that broadcast was directed towards the urgent need for humanity to find out where the timber that has gone into making each musical instrument had came from. The purchaser of a musical instrument these days needs to check where the timber was sourced from before they purchase.

The reason, as pointed out by the radio interviewer, that some manufacturers are buying these rare trees on the black market and destroying all last stands of the endangered trees.

These old trees where once in abundance and their timber is what gives the unique sounds to each instrument which the worlds populations of musicians have come to be dependent on.

The interviewer then came to Australia and interviewed some local Musical instrument manufacturers and asked them what they were using to construct their instruments. One of those interviewed spoke of how they were sourcing sustainable timber and as these new timbers give new sounds they were working with some prominent Australian musicians to write and perform music with and for these new sounding instruments.

It was then that I realised that my creative soul had been pushing me towards recyclable materials for over 28 years and only now was I totally immersed in that process. It was then that I looked back on those past years and saw all the little windows of when I was doing just that but never continued pushing further through those creations. I was now finally exactly where I needed to be working from.

ON THE PATH TOWARDS MATURATION OF ART AND ARTIST...
While I was still mixing my paper pulp and pondering on the radio show I had just listened to about "the need to be sustainable artists" my mind picked up the words of the next program that was focused on taking Opera out to rural Melbourne regions.

What first caught my imagination from this second radio program was the thought that in Victoria a town only an hour’s drive out of Melbourne was considered rural. Here in Western Australia, where I live, which must be close to the largest most unpopulated place on the planet with probable exceptions of the Goby and Sahara deserts.

An hour’s drive from my home town means you are basically still in the metropolitan area. Rural area here means a drive which can take from 3 hours to several days before arriving in a county town.

When I had finished contemplating this major difference of comprehension relating to place and distances my mind started to focus in on what the radio program was actually about.

The main issues being discussed on this program were about taking Opera to the high school community in Bendigo, Victoria Australia and how quick and easy it was for these students to, not only get what opera was about and enjoyed it but also how easy it was for them to create their own productions.

I found my mind shocked at these individuals being interviewed surprise at these facts. I had worked as a community artist for nearly 40 years here on the west coast of Australia and the major part of that time was spent developing creative programs around children and young youth. It was slowly dawning on me that this fact that children and young youth could do anything that they were set creatively with great creative understandings and comprehensions was not generally understood by others.

Now this got my creative mind juices flowing very fast I can tell you. As I continued to listen to this radio program while mixing my buckets of paper pulp and native plant vegetation it slowly dawned on me that there has to be something very important about what this reality means to me and all adult artists for that matter.

When the radio show had concluded I was struck by the main fact that these arts adult professionals were so surprised by the children and young youths high levels of capacity in grasping and producing these adult and sophisticated art practices means that this brings into question where is the arts levels excepted in the arts industries throughout the world needing to now be raised.

The big answer is yes. I believe the adult arts industry world wide is actually supporting and encouraging suppression of arts maturity expression in every arts field and has done so for the major part of the past 50 years world wide.

With all these truths rising up to the surface of my consciousness I am struck by what I have been shown over the past years and just never followed through on. Too busy trying to rid myself of past unfinished business and being a full time mum. Now I have been given the time and place to fulfil what the universe has been calling me to do all my life.

HANDMADE PAPER...
this grew out of wanting to explore paper-mâché bowls and constructions which I had wanted to create for some years but had failed many times while trying to create in clay...

I did some handmade paper making years ago and wanted to extend what I had worked on back then...

what I enjoy the most was mixing native bush plant findings like leaves and bark and flower heads into the paper mix and seeing what this did to colours, textures, forms plus design...

PAPER PULP CONSTRUCTIONS...
these are all exploitive at present...I have tried many shapes and colour and fiber variations to see what they dry like and what speaks the story I want to say...

REFLECTIONS..12-1-2011.
when we were children we needed the faces of adults to reflect back to us who we were and what our right or wrong behaviours were...

Now we are youth heading towards adulthood we can only get this same need to know who we are and why we are here from the sacred, the divine, what ever you want to call it....Great Spirit, God, Universal Power...we can not look to any other human for this validation when we are mature...only the sacred can tell us who and what we truly are and what capabilities we posses hidden within our soul...

WHAT WAS HIDDEN IS NOW BEING REVEALED