So Not A Princess is Moving!

Greetings dear readers, it’s been a very long time indeed since I last posted. What can I say – I just needed a break, even before the pandemic played havoc with all our lives. (You’d think with all the extra time on hand during Melbourne’s numerous lockdowns I would have being posting more, but no – I was not so inspired.) Considering I have not been posting for years however, I am pretty chuffed that people are still reading, and some of you are visiting direct – thank you so much, that’s very encouraging!

I have some news now though: So Not a Princess is moving (insert fanfare of trumpets):

As of 6 January 2023, my erstwhile domain name will be obsolete, but both the Style and Sketchbook blogs will survive intact at helenaturinski.com. Those of you with an eagle eye may have noticed that SNAP is already directing to the new domain name.

This website will briefly continue to look like this until the migration to Squarespace’s upgraded platform is completed, but when the transition is complete, you will still be able to click through to the blogs from the homepage.

There may even be – gasp! – some new content for your viewing pleasure. Until then …

Oops!

Hellooooo again! More errors to apologise for! I’ve realised that the subscription urls have changed, so if you previously subscribed to the Sketchbook, you will be receiving a ‘page not found’ error. I am so sorry! (I think so many exclamations are warranted in this instance!)

I’m in the process of fixing this with some technical help from my host provider (it’s not so easy, because I’ve updated all the internal links over the whole blogs), so hopefully this will be sorted in the next day or two.

In the meantime, you could re-subscribe with the new url (just hit the subscribe button over on the right there under the first menu) which will fix the issue immediately, or just keep going back to the home page and clicking to the journal from there.

Thank you for your patience!!

(PS. Yes, as opposed to drawn me in the previous post, that's the real me above with new haircut – one hand was holding the camera!)

Layering Dreams

I am excited to share the news that I am taking part in a group exhibition at Brunswick Street Gallery called Read What You Look At, which opens this Friday night, and runs for two weeks.

Although it is not my first group exhibition, it is the biggest one I’m showing in, with fourteen pieces of my ‘random poetry’ mixed-media collages on view. The series is entitled Layering Dreams, and is – you guessed it – all about dreams, sleeping, and waking.

Here is an abridged version of my artist’s statement:

From a very young age, I was captivated with telling stories through both words and pictures, often drawing and writing on found paper. At art college after studying the Dadaists, I became interested in writing poetry by reassembling random words. Recycling my magazine collection, I created a pool from which I could pull words to compile into ‘random poems’.

Always interested in dreams, and the surrealism intertwined with hidden meanings, this method of writing poetry appealed to me. Naturally, I choose words that I find appealing, but sometimes I deliberately choose ones that I don’t. This strange combination contributes to the elusive mood of Layering Dreams, often with unexpected results.

Sometimes a poem just starts with two or three words, and I slowly build on those. The poems are engaging and easy to read not only because of their brevity, but because of how they look. The fonts and colours culled from so many different sources interact with one another visually, encouraging the viewer to also ‘look at what they read’.

Returning to my roots of acquiring used paper (I’d pinch my sisters’ papers from their school folders!), I’ve sourced antique papers from the late nineteenth century to the 1950s, to use as supports for the collages. As well as traditional (hard copy) collages using only words, I also create digital works, combining scanned words and images cut from magazines with digital ink.

These many layers of ephemera, words, and pictures combine to evoke the otherworldly nature of dreams.

If you happen to be in Melbourne, I’d love for you to come and check them out in person!

Old Papers and New Poems

I’m pretty excited to have finished my new set of ‘Random Poetry’ this week. I started them way back in October last year, so they’ve been a long time in the making. They are a bit of a departure from the first set, with a simpler colour palette – most of the images are black and white – and some incorporate pen and ink wash drawings. All of them use antique papers, postcards or envelopes for backgrounds.

Most of these papers I have bought either here at home in Melbourne, or online at Etsy. The ones I love most are the 1860s and 70s receipts formerly belonging to one James Bell; those were bought in a fantastic secondhand books and curios shop in a Melbourne neighbourhood I once lived in. The copperplate script on these handwritten receipts is beautiful – how long did it take a clerk to fill them out?

There is even one sheet of yellowed foolscap that belonged to me as a child – I found it in one of my books in my parents’ garage. My dad discovered me a few months ago buried in an old storage cupboard and rummaging around. “What on earth are you looking for?” he asked, bemused. “Stuff,” I muttered in reply. I didn’t know what I would find. One of the things I uncovered was a 20-year-old love letter my sister had composed to her husband, then boyfriend. I very politely refrained from reading it and passed it on to her. (Later I asked her what it had contained, and she told me it was horrifyingly soppy.)

I’m really pleased with this new look to my collages that I developed. I find the stark black and white images have much more impact, and the casually scribbled drawings have the freshness of doodles. As a whole they are much more satisfying as pieces of art. One of them even rhymes! I was impressed I was able to create a semblance of meter from word scraps. The poems are about looking back and looking forward, passing through love and loss, transience and hope; some are sweet, some sharp, and some are bittersweet. Some of them are even lighthearted!

I hope you have as much pleasure in reading them as I did in the making. Click here to view Gallery Two of the random poems.

Back to the Drawing Board

Back to the Drawing Board :: Loftus // DreamCanvas // No flashI was very excited to get my old drawing board back on the weekend. My old housemate Rapunzel had had it on semi-permanent loan for several years, ever since we’d moved house and I had no room for it in my tiny apartment.

Having recently given up her own, Rapunzel asked if I wished to have it back. I’m still in the same tiny studio apartment, but didn't want to ditch the drawing board altogether, so a little reshuffle of furniture in my apartment created some room in front of a window. It’s a little crowded, but it’s just so wonderful to have a proper work desk for traditional art instead of spreading out on the kitchen table.

A new sheet of boxboard and it's back to business as usual – right now it’s covered in hundreds of words waiting to be assembled into poetry collages.

A Litter of Letters :: Loftus // DreamCanvas // No flash