new tattoo

I've been meaning to post for a month or two now about my new tattoo! Only thing holding me back was waiting til I was in Brisbane to show my Mum before I put it online for the rest of the world. Heh. She took it pretty well - good on you Mum!

This was my first tattoo, after wanting one for about four years and even chickening out in 2006 after having the picture drawn and an appointment booked. Being a pretty normal girl, I am afraid of pain and commitment, ok?

The drawing which I eventually went with was almost decided upon on a whim - I booked the appointment for the tattoo three months in advance and had an artist drawing a bear for me - however she became very busy in the lead up to my appointment and we couldn't resolve the drawing in time. So I had about three weeks to go and no drawing!

And then - brainwave. I was in Brisbane visiting my Mum and looked through some old albums of photos I took in 1999. There were so many photographs of houses. Not houses I knew, but other peoples houses I saw in the street. Then I thought about artwork I made in 2004. I put architectural drawings of houses into collages I was making for my school work at uni. Flash forward to 2009 and I was still obsessed with other peoples houses. I walked around the streets I lived in Melbourne and took pinhole photographs of houses I saw. And I realised what I really want a tattoo of is my lasting obsession of the last ten years. A house.

So, of course, when I started thinking about who would have drawn the 'right' house, I thought of Melbourne artist Catherine Campbell. A very talented artist whose work I have been admiring since I first saw it in Melbourne a few years ago. I remembered seeing an exhibition about a year ago that contained a beautiful old house adrift in a woman's hair. I found the artwork on her portfolio site, emailed her, and got her blessing to go ahead with the tattoo all in the same day.

And so a few weeks later I went in and had the house inked.

It wasn't til afterwards that I thought about how badly the tattoo could have gone if my tattooist wasn't able to render all those straight lines perfectly. Luckily, Jai is an incredible tattooist! He made a few changes to the original artwork, as you will see in the images below. The delicate shading is probably the finest alteration he made to the image, but he also added a wintery gust of snow which he wanted to reference the blue waves in the original picture.

I love my house. I have had it for about three months now but it still sometimes surprises me that I went through with it! What also surprises me is how much attention it receives. This is no exaggeration - almost every person I meet either socially or just buying milk at the local shop compliments me on it! I had three client meetings this week and every single client asked me about it. Luckily I work in an industry where it's not career limiting to have an arm tattoo!

So here it is!

And here is Catherine Campbell's original artwork:

The Mountain Waits

I have decided 2010 is the year for getting organised.

Organised with my art practice that is.

I'm working on a new series called Tiny Pieces, and I hope to exhibit it in 2010 in Melbourne.

Here's one of the works which I have finished lately:

The Mountain Waits in my Etsy shop.

mountain rock

I have started a new artwork this week. It's a collage of a very epic mountain, and it's easily taken me longer than all the other new work I have made lately. Which is only fitting since it is a mountain!

I'm looking forward to seeing it through, I think it might be in a style that I could make a whole series out of, which is kind of what I have been hoping to figure out. Excited about doing something new.

In other news, we have two weeks between shows with the band so I will be having less late nights for a fortnight. Probably a good thing, I am not very good at dealing with tiredness! One night of bad sleep and I am pretty much useless for days.

hold on tight

I keep waking up very early in the morning thinking about feathers. As a result, a new collage.

It is available in my shop in an 8in and 12in version if you like it.

we float aloft - new print in shop

I made a new artwork over a couple of rainy, windy Melbourne afternoons in the past fortnight. I have listed it for sale in my shop here.

If you need a better reason to quit smoking than your own health

Child labourers in Malawi, some as young as 5 years old, are forced by poverty to pick tobacco. Working conditions are so poor that the children absorb nicotine through their hands equivalent to smoking 50 cigarettes a day. They are paid the equivalent of US1.75 cents an hour.

The majority of European and North American tobacco companies purchase tobacco from Malawi to use in their cigarettes.

Further details of the report, carried out by Plan International, can be read here:

https://www.plan.org.au/mediacentre/mediareleases/plan_exposes_malawi_child_tobacco_pickers_50-a-day_habit

On a positive note - Cadbury chocolate is now fair trade! (Which kind of makes me sad in a way, that I have been loving their chocolate all my life and not ever thought about the people involved in its manufacture).

monday morning

I have just read The Little Prince for the first time. It is so sweet and profound. I picked it off my housemate's shelf last night when I couldn't sleep, and finished it just now. What a great way to recover from what was a pretty awful day yesterday.

I've caught a cold. Today is usually one of my work from home days, but I think I will spend it in bed, rather than working on art projects. Annoying. I found an Alfred Hitchcock DVD collection in the loungeroom which has 45 movies on it, so I'll be pretty busy with that I think.

I finally processed a roll of film shot on my Anny (plastic camera from the 60's). It's a Diana clone, so it takes 120 medium format film. I am thrilled with the vignetting and rich colours. Half the roll was taken in 2005, the rest in 2009. More Anny photos on flickr.