Scissor Happy
I’ve been busy, busy as a little bee working on a new series of Poetry for Ransom collages. I’ve collected up a whole lot of vintage paper ephemera (going back as far as the turn of the second-to-last century), including old postcards, letters, envelopes, pages torn from ledgers and secretary’s shorthand notebooks, and combined them with found imagery, pen and ink washes. I love their foxy edges, yellow with age. I even found some of my own bits of paper secreted away since childhood in my parent’s garage. Finding those gave me a kick!
Look out for a new gallery in the coming weeks. In the meantime, here’s a little taster.
Brilliance Yet is Nigh
On Christmas Eve while baking little lemon cheesecakes for the big day, I had the film The Holiday playing on the tv in the background. There is this one great line the old guy Arthur says to Iris (played by Kate Winslet): “You, I can tell, are a leading lady, but for some reason you are behaving like the best friend.” She replies, “You're so right. You're supposed to be the leading lady of your own life, for God's sake!”
Some days later I was assembling this poem especially to celebrate New Year’s Eve. The first words I picked out were ‘the siren’, ‘of your story’, ‘it’s time’, ‘another past’ – and that striking line from the film came back into my mind.
The end of the old year is the perfect time to let go of the past and take charge of the future; to balance the scales and determine to make 2013 shine brilliant. (It’s also just the time for a little flirtation under the influence of midsummer night music.)
Thank you dear readers for your support this year. Have a fabulous New Year’s Eve and here’s to a shiny 2013!
Are you the siren of your story?
Blow bubbles in the pool of your world;
come up flirtatious
& glisten with midsummer night’s music,
for surrounded by another past
brilliance yet is nigh.
It’s time now to balance the spirit.
Up, Up. And Away.
While we’re on the subject of balloon ascensions, here’s one I prepared earlier.
I have been working on a new series of random poems in the last few weeks. There are several visual themes, one of which is the paper scraps combined with nineteenth century engravings on crumpled, foxed paper pages.
I have one more day of work at my part time job at the theatre, and then it’s three glorious weeks off, which I will spend in my hometown of Melbourne. I am planning on lots and lots of art making, although I will try my darndest to fit in some holiday making too.
Enjoy the sun (or the snow) wherever you are in the mad rush of the season.
A Long Summer
Recently I’ve been experimenting with hand drawn oil pastel backgrounds for my random poems. And this morning I wanted to try to assemble a poem that was somewhat more cheerful in tone simply to celebrate the fact that summer has come.
The table was strewn with a multitude of word snippets, and one phrase lead naturally to the next. By the time I came to the end of the poem, I found that not only was I pleased with the positive message, serendipitously the colours were also bright and complementary.
Instantly I knew exactly what kind of background I wanted: vivid, happy colours that softly merged into one another. Originally I was going to do broad stripes, but I decided on blocks of colour instead. I really love how it’s finally come together, and it makes me smile. Here’s to an endless summer.
Life is edged with delicate happiness
Step through the secret world where the sun sets gold
And a long summer for endless hours defies the laws of nature
Such an array of riches catches the inner glow to your heart.
Fragments of Poetry
Exotic Style :: Watts // Big Up // No flash
The other week I killed two birds with one stone. I was clearing my storage room of junk (old UK Elle Décor magazines) and simultaneously adding to my stockpile of random poetry fragments.
I had realised I just didn’t have enough personal pronouns and conjunctions. I had also been holding onto these magazines for more than five years. I had bought them for renovation ideas, and kept them because they were such nice magazines.
… I just didn’t have enough personal pronouns and conjunctions.
Manners :: Watts // Big Up // No flash
Space :: Watts // Big Up // No flash
Funnily, when I looked at them again, I realised that so much had changed in interior design since the mid-noughties and that I didn’t want to keep the magazines at all. So I quite happily butchered them. All in the name of poetry of course.
As I happily sliced away, it occurred to me that all these fragments scattered over dissected pages were quite pretty. The Bondi Hipstapak (inspired by photographer Ben Watts) seemed quite perfect to capture these collages.
Clare Regularly Bounces :: Watts // Big Up // No flash
Sixties Design Window :: Watts // Big Up // No flash