A nanny-goat and a red wall....

I completed the 'goat-woman' piece yesterday after working obsessively on her for the past week....the paint job was more difficult on this piece because she has mostly smooth surfaces on her skin....it's not as interesting as lots of wrinkles but there still needs to be some subtle variations or it comes out looking too flat. I think what finally brought it to life was painting in the blue veins just visible on her breasts and the backs of her hands....her skin is almost white so this added some believability, I think.

I still can't believe my luck in finding the perfect hair for her. Initially, I had planned to give her some beautiful, long, white Tibetan lambs wool locks, but on trying them out they almost cancelled out the horns and really were too white for the piece. Rummaging through my collection of hair (only a doll artist could write that sentence!) I found a small piece of fleece that was exactly the right size and color.....it is a near perfect match for the linen fabric of her dress. The 'crook' was an afterthought....she needed to be holding something and I have no doubt that she would not hesitate to use it as a weapon, if provoked!

I've also included a photo of her 'unclothed'.....the lower part of her body is lamp base, one of several that I picked up on sale at a craft supply place. I'm really enjoying these 'pedestal pieces' and have found the absence of color to be oddly liberating. I find that I'm thinking about things in a way that I haven't before. I've always thought of my sculpting as drawing with clay, but this feels even more so.....although there is less to convey the mood of the piece, there is somehow more.

The last few photos are of the downstairs gallery space and my delicious red wall. It still needs its final coat, as do the now cream plinths, but already the room is lifted. There is so much dark timber down there, it really needed some lightening up.....the black plinths were just too heavy and the beige walls too bland. The carpet cleaner comes on Friday, so hopefully will be able to start setting up on the weekend. Will post more pics then.

Now, it's back to the sculpting table.

Till next time.

So much to do, so little time....

It's just under three weeks until the SALA Festival and things are finally starting to come together. This will be the first time that my new "gallery space" will be open to the public and so I am anxious to not only have some completed work for people to look at, but also to have the (very small) space looking its best. To that end, we (my husband & myself) have been re-painting walls, re-painting plinths, cleaning and polishing timber work, having carpets steam cleaned, framing prints and drawings and generally running ourselves ragged on the weekends and evenings, which is the only time we have to do this stuff. I was starting to think it was all a bit much until about an hour ago when Guy completed painting the main feature wall.....it is now the most delicious, opulent red I've ever seen and I am totally in love with it....I keep going downstairs just to stare at it and picture how wonderful my new cream plinths and 'white themed' pieces are going to look in front of it. As far as interior decorating goes, to me there is nothing more exciting than putting 'big color' on a wall. It has completely transformed the room and given me a space in which I'm proud and excited to display my work.

The top three photos are my newest completed piece and the horned woman underneath is further along now and will be completed early next week.....another 'white' piece. The little goblin at the bottom was a diversion and will most likely be a full sculpt, although I probably won't get back to it for a few weeks.

So, the plan is to complete the horned woman, create one more white piece and finish the lifesize goblin I built a couple of months ago, in that order, before July 30th. Oh, and then there's the designing and printing of new cards, brochures, bookmarks etc, updating the website, re-painting the porch with non-slip paint so I don't get sued if someone takes a tumble in the wet weather and at least a dozen other things that aren't even remotely interesting but still need to be done.

I figure if I reduce my sleeping to a few hours a night and forgo any semblance of a social life, I might just about make it.

Till next time.

Eight years gone in the blink of an eye!

Over the weekend I embarked on the daunting and long overdue task of sorting through and reorganising my 42 GB i-photo library. While the task itself is tedious and time-consuming, I am now seeing a light at the end of the tunnel and as a result, my photographic documentation will be much easier to manage in the future.

As I can't share my newest creation at the moment (it's the secret Schaffas!), I thought I'd post a few pictures of some of my work from 2002. How the time has flown! I remember this period as a turning point in my sculpting.....while still heavily influenced by Froud (and let's face it, I still am) I felt that as my sculpting improved, I was better equipped to depict 'personality' in a strong way.....something that continues to be of paramount importance to me.

I'm thinking of re-visiting some of these pieces, to see how I'd interpret them now......there's a freshness and exuberance here that I remember feeling at the time. Might be fun to try and re-capture that.

Till next time.

Some news!.....(and monkeys).

Once again, despite my best efforts I have failed in my goal of blogging at least once a week. As a result, this post is going to be a bit all over the place as it's been a busy couple of weeks with several pieces of news I'd like to share.

The first is that I will be exhibiting at Imagine Gallery in the UK in October 2011. This is incredibly exciting for me and even though it seems like a very long time away, I have already begun making plans for pieces and will be working exclusively on these by the end of August this year. This is a beautiful and highly regarded gallery and I am honoured to have been invited to show my work there. You can visit John Foley's blog about gallery life by clicking here. I am hoping to travel over for the exhibition, so I hope that those of you who can will come along and make yourselves known. Final dates etc. are still to be determined, but I will keep you updated here and on the website.

I am also very happy to have been asked to customize a "Schaffa" for this years fundraising exhibition. The photo at the top of the page is the template that each artist receives, to do with what he will. No prizes for guessing the theme I'll be going with.......but we have been asked not to reveal the final design in its entirety until opening night (again, date not yet finalised), so all I'm giving away are these two early stage close-ups. The pieces will be auctioned for charity and exhibited here during the SALA Festival and then travelling around Australia. Very exciting!

Speaking of SALA, I will be having an open studio during the Festival, mainly to make people aware of my new location, but also to show some new pieces and of course some works in progress. I always enjoy chatting to visitors during this time, so I hope to see some of you here!

Over the past month I've also had a 'work experience' student from the local high school spending each Tuesday with me in the studio. Shannon is a very talented 15 year old who is interested in sculpture and digital art and she has been learning some skills here with me while working on her own projects. This has been a thoroughly enjoyable experience all round and the fact that Shannon has Asperger's syndrome has made it all the more rewarding to watch her achieve her goals and take pride in her work. I'm continually amazed at what a hard worker she is, ploughing on even when the work becomes repetitive and (dare I say) boring. I've taught many adults in the past who could learn a thing or two from this young girl's perseverance and commitment.

So all in all a busy few weeks! I'll be adding a 'news' page to my website soon, which will have all of the details of upcoming events as they are finalised.

The bottom two pictures were taken last week at Adelaide Zoo, a short but fun day with my friend Linda that was filled with mad scrambles for photographs, unwanted reflections, potato wedges, lizard vomit and beautiful animals who smugly turned their backs or disappeared entirely whenever we approached their enclosures. Out of the hundred or so shots I took, I was most pleased with these two.

Till next time.

Warning! Long-winded post with too many pictures.

I have to admit I've been in a bit of a funk after our return from Melbourne two weeks ago. Each time I visit my home state of Victoria, and in particular it's bustling, vibrant and fascinating capital city, I find it harder and harder to leave it behind. I was born in Ballarat, a beautiful, historical town only an hour or so from Melbourne, but my family moved to South Australia when I was very young, so my earliest memories of Victoria were formed some years later when we went on holiday to Melbourne.....I was twelve and I fell in love with the city instantly. I've visited Melbourne many times, but over the past few years we've been exploring more of Victoria and it seems that each region we visit is more beautiful than the last.

This most recent visit started out as a birthday gift from my husband, to take me to see the Ron Mueck exhibition at the NVG. We soon decided that we would take our two youngest, Grace and Noah, with us as they were only babies last time they visited Melbourne.

So, we started out in the city with the incredible Ron Mueck exhibition. I took far too many photos to post (more of them are on my facebook page) and we were also unexpectedly fortunate that the "Mary and Max" exhibition was on at ACMI as well. Adam Elliot is an extremely talented Australian film-maker and the exhibition was a showcase of puppets, props and drawings from his stop-motion masterpiece "Mary and Max". We were all so excited by this exhibition that we went back twice and now Grace has decided that she wants to be an animator! Since we arrived home she has been busy working on the characters and sets for her first animation experiment. We also visited the Melbourne Aquarium, Museum, Luna Park, Lygon Street and Southbank. We took a day to explore the Mornington Peninsula with it's gorgeous coastline and beachside towns and on the drive home went through Daylesford and the Macedon Ranges and stayed (unexpectedly, because Noah became extremely car-sick on the winding roads) overnight in Halls Gap in the Grampians which is the most spectacularly beautiful place I have ever seen.

While it is always nice to come home to your own bed and of course to friends and family who are close by, I would be lying if I said that I wouldn't prefer to live in Victoria....especially if I could bundle up everyone I'm close to here and take them with me! However, we will be back there later this year for the Tim Burton exhibition......!

And so I've been working my way out of my post-holiday 'funk' and have built a new little guy who has just caught a faerie (of the tiny, winged variety) and isn't quite sure what he's going to do with it. I've also posted a drawing of a very 'Froud inspired' goblin which may or may not make it into three dimensional form. I'm trying very hard to incorporate more drawing into my work days and am particularly enjoying charcoal, which is odd because it's a medium that I truly hated in my younger years....the grubbiness used to really bug me, now I love it....strange.

Till next time.

New goblin & new website up and running!

I am officially exhausted....I completely forgot how much work it is to get a website to a reasonably workable state....even with the joy of the iWeb templates. The most frustrating part of the whole thing is that while I can get the site looking lovely on my Mac, not everything translates as well on a PC.....which means I can't have reflections, some fonts or other twiddly bits (I believe that is the technical term) that I really like. Despite this, I'm pleased with how it looks. I've retained the easy navigation of the old site, but added in some nice options like slideshow on the gallery pages.

I've decided to open a shop page on Big Cartel for small items like cards and bookmarks and I hope to have this up within a few weeks (there will be a link on the website 'shop' page). To me, the site looks cleaner, brighter and less cluttered. I'm sure there will be adjustments along the way and of course the site will grow as more new work is added, but for now it's another task struck off my list.

The little creature pictured above is called "Bristlecone" and he's a Common Pine Goblin. You can check out his page here.

Hope you enjoy the new-look site. Please let me know if you experience any problems with it and I'll do my best to rectify them.

Till next time.