Smart Alex

I get my hair done at Smart Alex. Well. it’s really been Smart Brian for a long time now. Alex died about the same time as Diana. Like her, he was English, blond, and liked a bit of drama. I picture them up there, blond heads together… Diana is filling in Alex about life with the royal family. In this image, Diana has just told Alex a story. His response, which you can see she appreciates, is “She what ? She NEVER!”

This image was put together for World Aids Day. I still miss Alex for his stories.

Note: No disrespect is meant to the Queen. It’s just that this image always springs to mind when I think of Alex and how much he would have loved to have a gossip with Diana and know the inside story.

Nudity in art and the Bill Henson controversy

Recent events.

Last week was quite a week in the Australian art world, with ‘keystone’ cops raiding  art galleries. They’ll be burning books next. The police raided Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery - possibly the most prestigious commercial art gallery in Sydney.  What interested them was the work of Bill Henson who had an exhibition opening there. People have become very polarised, and there have been threats against the gallery. In a very small nutshell, Henson is an internationally famous artist who photographs adolescents, nude.

You can read more about Bill Henson here, and  more about the shenanigans on the Art Life Blog.  In this post, ‘Seven Days in May’ the writer talks about the side issues that the controversy has raised. Some of these issues cover subjects dear to my own heart, and may well be raised again in posts in this blog. (‘The Art Life’ is the art blog in Sydney – you have to read it to be in the loop).

Nudity – naughty or not?

One of the questions The Art Life raises is, “Can our society take the chance that some people might consider art works with otherwise principled motivations to be porn?

I was already wanting to talk to you about nudity in art.  Mostly, anyone who has been an art student, or taken life drawing classes, takes a bit of nudity in their stride. I clearly remember my first life drawing class, in first year at art school in 2002. My friend said ‘ I’m going to try to get around the back.’ and ‘I hope it’s a woman.’ Well, it was a man, and there is no back in life class.  (The green image is one of my life drawings from a recent class – not there for its merit, but merely because I can’t post without a picture!) For the record, life drawing is difficult, and once you start to draw, the body becomes just shapes, & you’re  concentrating on the drawing, so you don’t have time to think about the nudity.

Of course, there are famous nude paintings from art history – those have all been dragged up this week – Manet’s Olympia and Dejeuner sur l’Herbe.  Most people don’t turn a hair at these. However, it has been a source of surprise to me, how varied my friends’ reaction to nudity in art can be. I blithely assume everyone is like me – but it’s not true. Some are much much more conservative. Would they think Henson’s work was pornographic. I doubt it – but I’ve been wrong before. The ‘art world’ (what is that? …..the commercial gallery system?) knows about Henson – he’s been going for 30 years – but the general public on the whole do not, it seems.  But the ‘art world’ is more insular than it thinks. It appears the police hadn’t heard of Henson Does that mean they haven’t got their eye on the ball? 

So, what do I think about the Henson fiasco?  I think it’s bizarre that the police have become involved, and if charges were to be laid I’d think it was appalling. Nevertheless, I voted with my feet and skipped his exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 2005. Too many of my contemporaries were affected by child abuse, and I can’t bring myself to support anything that might lead the perpetrators to believe it is OK.

Speaking of the Art Gallery of NSW, I have an artist’s book in an exhibition there, starting on 18th June. You can see some images here and here.

Giving it a shellacking

Hi everyone,

Last week I was very lucky indeed. I was allowed to join a class at an art school I left three years ago. They were having a visiting tutor for two days – someone I’d wanted to learn from for a long time. He’s a printmaker and book/mixed media artist from North Queensland, Glen Skien. I had no idea what we were going to do, but we had to bring 10 signatures for a book, lots of decorative papers and various other things such as ruler, cutting mat, an awl, thread.  I was only able to join the class on the Thursday, because I work on a Friday now.  My lucky day! We made a BOX! I’ve never made a box before. My printmaker friends can all make boxes. Sometimes they get an assignment to make a series of prints, with a box to go with them.  I did up to 2nd year printmaking, but I did a book, not a box. On the Friday they did ‘case binding’ which I’ve done before. The tutor was great! Not precious about it at all – made it seem simple, and it was.

The sample box was a small upright box to hold postcards. I really liked that idea, because I recently participated in a postcard swap with Anita.  This page will show you Anita’s postcard to me, and  you can see mine here. Most of the students opted for that size box. The size was beautifully proportioned, and better still, useful! It was EASY to make. I was surprised – I thought you’d have to be mega-accurate – but no, not when you collage over the cracks.  I had all sorts of paper, but Glen’s advice was just to start and see where it takes you. So my box is a mixture of credit card paper (see Kelsey’s blog for the recipe),  paste papers,  itajime papers,  (see Gail’s blog for that), some lacy Japanese papers, and a black tiger-skin lino print on bright orange paper. Garish, huh? That’s where the shellac comes in – I’m putting on many coats of shellac, and it’s toned down to a beautiful golden glow.   

At the weekend I made another one the same, but this time I used joss papers and Chinese ephemera, including the wrapper from my precious bottle of Yu Yee Oil.  Some of the papers are of pitiful quality, but I’d noticed with some of the delicate papers I used on the first box, that with glue underneath & shellac on top, they were quite stable.

 

Blogging course

Hi everyone,
I’m currently doing a blogging course at lvsonline. Click on the logo to see! You can see the details of the blogging class here. I’ve done a squillion courses with them – well, OK, not a squillion, but HTML (2) Photoshop (6), Illustrator (2), Flash, Fireworks (2), Bryce, KPT, Painter, Digital Artists Studio, to name a few. I’m currently doing TWO courses (which is madness). At the moment I’m working on some web development, and although I know Dreamweaver, I’m learning it again from them. It’s for two reasons. One is that I need to get up to speed with Dreamweaver CS3 and the other is that when you learn from them, you get a thorough knowledge. Ask my friends about my Photoshop skills – all from lvs.

They are all 6-week courses. You load down a pdf file with each new lesson on a Saturday, then you do the lesson throughout the week. There’s a class message board where you can ask questions and meet with other students. You post any queries there and the tutor replies. The pdf files alone are worth far more than the price of the course. You know how much computer books cost – well the notes you get from lvs are the equal of any book. The price is right too – even for Australians. The first course is $US25 and any subsequent ones are $US20.

There’s a lot of cameraderie happening on the blogging course. We start very simple, and learning as we go. I’ve set up a blog on WordPress as part of the course.

Zines by zeniors

Last weekend I went to a Zine Master class at the Museum of Contemporary Art. What is a zine, you ask. It doesn’t rhyme with pine, but with magazine. Zines are photocopied, small issue (of maybe 10 or more) magazines.   Wikipedia describes it as “small circulation, non-commercial publication of original or appropriated texts and images”. It’s thought that the zine scene is mainly 15-year-olds, but that proved UNTRUE. While ‘zeniors’ is stretching it a bit, almost everyone there was over thirty, and some were a lot more than that.

Readers of my ‘old’ blog  will know that I make artist’s books. Though I like making them very much, it takes so looooong. Zines, I guess, are a ‘quick and dirty’ form of artist’s book. What is the difference? Well, there’s no difference really, according to one of the speakers.  For myself, I’d say that an artist’s book CAN be ‘unique’  whereas zines are always in an ‘edition’ (of more than one) – usually photocopied. 

There seemed to be a consensus among the speakers that zines are more creative and fresh than artist’s books. My personal view is that it depends which artist’s books you’ve been looking at.  ‘Fine binders’ concentrate on the craft of binding, and not on the content, so comparing that with zines is like comparing apples and oranges.  But zines are fun!  This weekend they will be having a Zine Fair at the MCA, as part of the Sydney Writers’ Festival. I plan to go. Participants in the masterclass were invited to bring along their zines to sell, and take part in the fair. I have my subject, my drawings,…….but no. Two jobs, two courses, and innumerable other things have prevented me from making a zine. Bad, aren’t I?  Should be able to make one in an hour. It’s just finding the hour.