Some great news for me this week & Google London

This week I heard that my Bologna book (which you can see here and here) was chosen to be acquired in the Southern Cross University Acquisitive Artists’ Book Award. Tara O’Brien who chose the acquisitions  said that these books “achieved a high level of sophistication in the synergy between form and content”.

I am delighted about getting recognition for this book, because I put so much work into it. You can see the other acquisitions here.  Congratulations to Amanda Watson-Will, who is the only other winner that I know personally (through blogging). Amanda has written at more length about the exhibition and truly says that we were were in great company. It is a real honour to have our books chosen. It was Amanda’s first book. My first book was acquired by the Meadowbank College Association.

The drawing above was for the Virtual Paintout blog, where your image must come from Google Street View. I took the little yellow man for a walk around Pimlico where I spent a part of my misspent youth as a receptionist in a hotel there. I lived in an apartment next door to the hotel, in the building on the left. There was a back way out of our building in the street behind, and we sometimes could smuggle our boyfriends out that way if necessary.

Bologna book finally finished…..meets deadline.

Thirteen days of rain and finally today is sunny. I’ve finally finished my Bologna book, photographed it, and it’s ready to deliver in time to meet the deadline for the exhibition. Aaaaaaaaargggggh. It took so long.

Bologna is one of my two favourite cities in the world. (The other is Barcelona.) When I saw a wonderful Peter Lyssiotis artist’s book of Paris at the AGNSW, it was very abstract to me, who doesn’t know Paris at all (I’m a Rome girl). It gave me the idea that I could make a Bologna book, which would also be an ode to red, and possibly incomprehensible, unless you know something about Bologna. Each page is painted, in a sort-of faux fresco in many layers of acrylic paint and medium like the red buildings in Bologna. Then I let the paint cure before working on the images. On the cover I have used three colours of bookcloth to abstract Bologna’s famous towers . The endpapers are copies of an oldish map of Bologna I got on ebay, scanned, printed and treated with shellac. The book starts with the things that Bologna is famous for – not only ‘la rossa’, but also ‘la dotta, and ‘la grassa.’ The book begins with the lighter side of Bologna, but then becomes political and ‘dark’ and leads towards ‘la strage di Bologna.’ Bologna is full of arcades, and I have made stencils from photos of the light and shade that is created by the pillars. The image with the arrows is where the book begins to become political. The arrows point right and left (destra e sinistra) – the choices in politics, and the arrows made by the stitching on the spine reflect this too. And guess what is behind the red blind when you lift it up?

Bologna La Rossa

This is the first preview of my artist’s book about Bologna. The thing about Bologna is that it is RED. Both visually and in politics. I was inspired to do a book about Bologna, when I went to the Peter Lyssiotis exhibition in the AGNSW. (It’s on in Brisbane now.) He had a book about Paris and the content was somewhat obscure to me, not knowing Paris well at all. So I am doing a book about Bologna, where the content will be obscure to those who don’t know Bologna. But it will be colourful! I have prepped all the pages in various colours of red and ochre in many layers.I told you yesterday that Kelsey has a tutorial on her blog for credit card papers. The paper that I have used to represent the explosion was made with Matisse Magenta and Yellow Deep. I already had the inkjet transfer of the train on the page, and I used the credit card paper to represent flames.

I first went to Bologna in 1975 and fell in love with it. One thing I remember was that my baggage was searched at the railway station. That was just unheard of in those days so I asked the man why they were doing it (in Italian, and I was very polite). Not like “Border Security.” Of course those were the days of the Bader-Meinhof gang and Brigata Rossa, so they must have been expecting a terrorist event. Five years later came la strage di Bologna . I was in Bologna again more recently, and I still love it. So I decided to do an artist’s book. It’s coming along slowly. Time I got on with it!

Kind Hearts and Coronets

Mellanie gave me this Kind Heart Award. I must say it was very kind of her. Now I need to pass it on to up-to-five people.

Kelsey must be top of my list for her generous sharing of tutorials on her blog. I learnt the credit card papers from her, and right this afternoon that has solved a problem for me of how to visually portray something in my artist’s book about Bologna that I’m in the middle of making. Kelsey was also very generous with her knowledge of inkjet transfers.

Carol is next, for her help with marbling, choosing a printer and a myriad other questions I ask.

Rah for his helpful information about the Tombow pens.

Lorraine for pointing me in the direction of a great bargain in Albrecht Durer pencils on Ebay Australia. Which in turn made me aware of watercolour pencils on ebay & I got another massive set at a bargain price.

OK – there are six! Kate for being so generous with her time, effort, and attention to detail in the new Watercolour Pencil CD. Also for being generous in answering question on the Everyday matters sketching list.

Luckily I saved this post. Save now! I wrote it in the course of the afternoon, because I had to look up links etc. At 8pm – boom – the power went off – totally unexpected after a sunny day. It was nearly dark, but not too dark for me to get down my long hall & get the candles on. The lights were out for over an hour, but I was happy. I recently upgraded my phone to one with an MP3 player. Then even more recently I got a pair of tiny speakers on ebay, so there I was, by candlelight, with Putumayo Presents: Nuevo Latino and a glass of Sunshine’s vodka.

My second tag in a week

OK there are SEVEN questions to answer this time. It is Celia who tagged me. I visit her blog often because she makes the most amazing things.

1. My most recent career before becoming a full-time artist, was as an I.T. project manager for 20 years – on mainframe systems in the corporate world.

2. I once worked for The Millionaire Factory for more than 6 years. It didn’t make me a millionaire and I must say I didn’t enjoy it.

3. When I worked in hotels, the most well-mannered guest I probably ever met was Yehudi Menuhin. I found that the really famous people- those who pretty much lived in hotels, usually treated the staff as human beings.

4. Colleen McCulloch the famous Australian writer, lived in the hotel for 6 months, and was always lovely. Once we were checking Miss McCulloch out at the same time as the Premier of Manitoba, and the computer died. It could have been ugly, but in fact both of them were far more worried about not being able to pay their bills than about the inconvenience.

5. I have one brother, who lives in New Zealand (yes, in that place.)

6. I never met my mother’s parents. She had married a divorced man – my father.

7. Newtown, where I live is very cool place. That’s why I’ve posted another page from my artist’s book. The three festivals are Feastability, the Blue Moon festival ( a goth event), and the Newtown Festival which is held in the park at the end of my street. I can’t go out in the car that day, because I could never come home. Have a look at the gallery for that one. It’s a real doggy event.

Ten Thai Restaurants

I haven’t been getting much drawing done, because I am working on an artist’s book to teach. I decided to use mostly collage for the content, because I don’t want to frighten off students who think they can’t draw or paint. The book is a circle concertina I learnt from a book by Alisa Golden. I started to make handmade books from these books and I’ll always be grateful to her for that. I find her books quite easy to follow. The paper will be BFK Rives. I love it!

It will be an eight week course at Artwise, the Amazing Paper Shop. My sample book is about Newtown, where I live. The main street is a restaurant strip and is known for the many Thai restaurants, hence the title, “10 Thai Restaurants”. I’ve chosen this for a subject as, being the local area, people will be able to relate to it. However, the students will be making a numbering book of their own, with their own subject matter. It will have 9 double page spreads, plus the cover, so that’s a lot to do in eight weeks. Need to keep it simple.

I’ve been through all my collage bits looking for suitable stuff. Also been through my two Lynne Perella books, as a refresher for various techniques to use. They are such useful books to have. And another book The Complete Guide to Altered Imageryhas some interesting techniques. The book I bought at Basement Books last week, when I was with Alison, is a useful one for book artists, Graphic Idea Notebook. It’s a type of sourcebook of ways to put ideas across visually. I’ve not seen anything like it before.

I went out with a friend to draw on Thursday but it was cool, not quite raining and very very windy. We’d have had to hold our sketchbooks down. It wasn’t a nice day to be out and about. We went to Elizabeth Bay House to see the Linnaeus art+nature exhibition. It was interesting from a history-of-printmaking point of view but not so interesting visually.