Ok so I saw this amazing bambi sculpture (below) by Frederique Morrel in a magazine the other day and it took me back to the days when i was working full time on my exhibition (2007), knitting away at stag's heads (above) and guns and sewing up wall hangings and doing all sorts of lovely creative things *sigh*. And well it got me thinking about how funny it is when you think you are being totally original in creating something, when in fact 50 other people have already done it before you and have also actually done it far better than you anyway.
Working for Janet McGaw has been such a great experience. Not only is she an incredible
architect and academic, but she is always working on a myriad of interesting projects. Her latest residential project has been for a wonderful client and I have been lucky enough to work on this with her.
Some friends of mine from Moop Jaw were working on a clip for the band The Holidays and asked me to help them out with some of the sets. The song was called Golden Sky and the concept required some magical eggs to be made. These eggs had to be large, smooth (so no papier mache...) with a marbled pattern on them and able to be sturdy enough to be pushed off the edge of a building.
Photo by Louis Porter
A couple of months ago I did some work with the University of Melbourne to help out on a very important symposium on the practises, processes and politics of Indigenous place-making. I was taking photos of the speakers and attendants and was also fortunate enough to be able to sit in on the event. Creating an indigenous place in Melbourne is such an important and complex undertaking and it is something I am not even going to attempt to explain with my limited knowledge and understanding of the subject. But it is something I would like people to know about and perhaps also try and find out about. I wasn't able to put any of the pictures I took up on this blog but I have attached a link here about the event and what it entailed for those that are interested.
I spent the last week house-sitting for my wonderful friend Louisa in her beautiful home in a gorgeous inner city suburb of Melbourne. It felt like I was on holiday in my own city- it was fabulous! I was able to just hunker down and work away on my architectural projects without any distraction. It was any Etsy-loving woman's dream- countless cups of tea, Genius' Nina Simone playlist (I'll never tire of loving iTunes Genius. I wish I was getting payed for that plug...) and the sweetest little cat imaginable. I never realised how small a cooking repotoire I really need to feel sated, and just how much butter I get through weekly... (!?) So in order to pay my thanks to my friend I decided to make her a little card. My initial fashion illustration attempts failed miserably (A sure sign I am not drawing enough!) so I drew these two little birds for her instead.
I collaborated with a couple of my friends on this photo shoot, the Mumbai based film director and fashion photographer Rohan Michael Hoole and Melbourne based stylist Elice Blakeny. I worked on creating the sets and props (as well as offering some of my wardrobe and my hair and makeup skills). The concept of the shoot was of a lonely girl, some time in the distant future, ordering and making herself a robot best friend who could do all the things a friend did- knitting, celebrating a birthday, watching a movie etc.
I feel kinda bad. Asuka sits opposite me in the studio and I just put a divider between our desks. I just hope she knows it's because I want to put some inspiration images up around me and not because I don't want to talk to her. Because she is very nice.
Melbourne Winters are notoriously hideous- rainy, windy, grey, enough to give even the most emotionally stable SAD disorder. But this Winter has been particularly awful, especially considering that it actually started 2 months early. So what's a girl to do? I think the only way to manage the encroaching blues and insatiable appetite is to rug up and start knitting.
So i have finally been published in Vogue! Woohoo! Yep, my letter to the editor was published. I love that they titled it 'Modern Woman'. Fabulous. I didn't make the letter of the month but I blame that on my verbosity. I have simply been reading far too much (ever since i started a book club) and I have this habit of taking on the style of writing of the book that I'm currently reading. It's sort of like when you're at a pub talking to an Irish person and you realise you've started talking in an irish accent. Embarrassing for everyone all round. But, hey, it mustn't be all bad if i got published, right?
I once spent over $250 on knitting machine yarn. And I didn't even have a job. And then about 2 weeks later I went to the Bentleigh op-shop and found even better colours for $2 a cone (that's how yarn comes, in cones). Mustard yellow! Texta Orange! Aggressive Beige. It was all there- thanks probably, to someone dying. (Sorry, but it's true and I'm sure that whoever she is, she'd be glad I was using them well because her son/daughter OBVIOUSLY had no idea of their value.) I still have the yarn and it still comes in handy for all sorts of things. Including holding together bits of cardboard to make a computer stand.
I had been working with plaster for my job- creating different imprints into the plaster to test textures for a concrete wall which might have abstract fossils etched into it's facade. I was loving working with it as a material- it was just so much fun getting my apron on and my hands dirty and water everywhere (and I'm sure everyone in the studio was JUST as enthusiastic as I was about the whole process too). So I decided to keep the fun going by making these little brooches for my jewelery lovin (and makin) friend Bosco (http://francescaloveheart.com/).
I salvaged a stack of paper from an architectural firm I was working for a few years back after they changed their address and the letterhead went out of date. The paper stock was so nice I just couldn't let it go in the bin- so I chopped off the letterhead and ended up keeping hundreds of sheets which i decided to print on and use as letter writing paper and to make little sketchbooks with.
I produced this illustration for the exhibition 'Fundrailslinn' at the Helen Gory Gallery Prahran (Melbourne) last year.
So what do you get for the girl who has nothing??... Mmh there were probably so many things that Karina needed more than a flat pack bird sculpture but HEY they were just too boring to think about. So a flat pack bird it was.
