Friday, September 24, 2010

If I was in Budapest

I would definitely be going to this....





I don't know whether I have any Hungarian readers but if I do, I encourage you to go have a look

Flora Vagi was Manuel's assistant at the summer academy but I had admired her work long before I met her. Indeed, I own one of her brooches!

Flora Vagi - brooch

Jet lag has released it's grip on me but the PAED (post amazing experience depression) is lingering
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Thursday, September 09, 2010

Enmore fundraising auction

To all my Sydney readers: Git along to this...



wow. I'm renowned. I'm chuffed
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vernissage

Great word vernissage. It means: "a private viewing of paintings before public exhibition.
ORIGIN French, literally ‘varnishing,’ originally referring to the day prior to an exhibition when artists were allowed to retouch and varnish hung work." from the dictionary on my computer's dashboard.

If I didn't think I was going to sound pretentious, I would start to use it from now on instead of "opening".



This is just a photo of Flora's shoes. And of the floor in the studio where the landscape architects were working. It was the old smithy and I thought the floor was beautiful.



And this was the entrance to the room where we were exhibiting. It's a time-line of the process of the workshop. If you look closely you can see the bright red Australia from our first project.




I know it all looks kind of empty but I was taking photos very early on and then forgot (had too much to drink) to take more photos when the crowds turned up.


Here is the set up for the still life workshop that I mentioned in the previous post



and a close up:


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The End

You might have guessed that I am post-posting.

Yes, I am back in Melbourne and as I was lying awake at 4.30 this morning, I thought that I might as well use my extra jet-lag time to my advantage and catch up on the blog.

The intention project was our last project and the one that we got the most time to work on. It ended up being only about a week as we had to allocate 2 days to setting up our exhibition.

At the end of the summer academy there is an open day with all of the studios open for the public to come and have a look at what we've been doing. It is not supposed to be an exhibition as such, more an open studio, but a lot of the courses set up exhibition style displays. We thought it best to put on an exhibition as a studio tour wasn't really a great way for people to see what we've been doing - our work being so small and all. One of the painting courses was about still life and they had left the still life props set up surrounded by the large canvasses that the students were working on (I've got photos for another post).

The room we used for the exhibition had wooden slab lined walls which I thought was going to be problematic but we managed to put together a cohesive and elegant show (if I do say so myself!)



This is Sooyeon Kim's work in the foreground and the photo gives you an idea of the space. That white stuff in the background that looks like snow is a huge pile of salt!



A close up of one of Sooyeon's pendants - leather, gold, thread and pearls



Peter Sahle's work.



and a close up of one of the brooches - silver, gold leaf and coral (?)



Satita Rojpojjanarat




and a close up. This is a bangle. We are doing a swap.



Elisabeth Reichl - laminated paper neckpiece and acrylic ring with gold tag. The neckpiece was bought by a collector which we were all very excited about.



yours truly.



Jacqueline Santos



and a close up - paper and paint.



Yamuna Valenta - textile and marbles



Yamuna again - copper.



Lucia Rizzieri - silver, copper, textile and paint



and another close up. You can see that we were quite creative in overcoming the problems with the wooden walls.



Anja Eichler



one of Anja's morsels - silver, gardening gloves and something spiky!



Samira Götz



and my favourite work of hers - felt, silver and thread.


Melanie Sinnhofer's work was a display of photographs as her work wasn't object based...



false eyelashes



silicone

And Wolfgang Löffler



press the button and...



various materials



and the guillotine ring. If you tap the red bar on top, the razor chops down and shazam! No finger!

Not really, there's a stop built into it but it was quite difficult to release it while you were wearing it.


More photos can be found over at the Jewellery and Other Stories blog.
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Wednesday, September 08, 2010

Intention project finale

Here are some of the last pieces I made.  They came at the end of the project and are less illustrative of my intention but I was having so much fun with the wood that I couldn't help myself!



a brooch which was an exercise in composition. It's about 120mm across.




three views of a neckpiece (and another three awful photos of me)







Here's a close up of how I strung the "beads". I drilled 2 holes about 15mm deep into either end of the 'bead', then strung two drilled 10mm lengths of dowel onto the thread and tied knots at either end, and then glued them, knot first, into the drilled hole.

The glue is still wet in the photo but as it dried, the plugs of dowl blend into the plywood much better
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Happy Birthday Stephen

Stephen was the indispensable tech guy at the summer academy. He got things when you needed them, he fixed things when they broke, he provided the entertainment at the afternoon openings at the academy and he knew where to get the best pizza in Hallein.

He also had a birthday in the last week so we all made something for a chain that was put together by Manuel...



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Intention project part 3

After discovering the beauty of plywood, I went on a bender. And I was still able to incorporate elements of steel. The following are the compositions that finally made it within the "frame" of my intention (Manuel used this term a lot and it was very helpful as we all tended to get carried away and move away from our orgininal intention).

I never would've thought I'd be using wood. It started as a means to make quick models but it turns out that it's materiality was perfect to communicate my intention.


a brooch - 300mm long


a neckpiece (fittings not yet attached) - 300mm long


another brooch - 300mm long


another neckpiece - 300mm long


another brooch - 300mm long


and another brooch - 300mm long


fun with the linisher



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Saturday, September 04, 2010

Yes. I'm a tourist

On our final weekend in Hallein, Elisabeth, Lucia and I jumped in Anje's car and drove to Vienna.


I think I deserve some congratulations on my bravery in sharing such an awful photo of myself.

Here's something we saw on the way...



And some things we saw when we got there:

SUNSHINE!!!


and the view from the Leopold Museum




My favourite Schiele from the collection at the Leopold Museum



The Hundertwasser house



a giant moth



a miniature jeweller's workshop in the window of a jewellery supply shop



and Dick files

Unfortunately Austrian shops very strictly observe closing from Saturday Afternoon to Monday morning so I couldn't have a better look around. It was interesting to see a jewellery supply shop at street level though.

Elisabeth lives in Vienna and she and her fella Philip (and their dachshund, Gonzo) very kindly put us up in their beautiful apartment in the 7th district, which is a very interesting and creative part of Vienna. I want to live somewhere with a staircase like this...



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