The Universe Within

When I was creating my poem collage for New Year’s Eve, I was debating whether to use some different images as the background. These were also torn from a magazine (an old issue of Black Book), but I realised they were images by the artist Chris Bucklow. It seemed a bit wrong to be using another artist’s work in my own art – although I’ve seen it done before. (Australian Copyright Law does allow me to create collages using found imagery). Instead, I used a commercial photograph advertising beauty products.

Christopher Bucklow is a British photographer best known for his Guest series. Each image is unique, and is created using a technique similar to a pinhole camera. He first draws a life-sized silhouette of his sitter on a sheet of aluminium foil, which is then perforated with thousands of pinholes. Sunlight is allowed to shine through these holes, exposing photographic paper to many images of the sun and sky at once. Colour variations depend on the intensity of sunlight, the hour, and exposure time.

The results are these beautiful silhouettes – the universe within each of us.

See more of Bucklow’s work in his gallery.

Lillian and Licorice

I was so excited to put up my new calendar last night – practically on the stroke of midnight – and get rid of the old one. I was sick of Steinweiss record covers long before December rolled around. This time, I was a little more organised and sought out a calendar well ahead of schedule (instead of mid-January like last year). Published by Frankie magazine, this lovely calendar features the illustrations of 12 artists from around the world.

Straight off the bat is this winsome painting of Lillian and Licorice, by The Black Apple. Artist Emily Winfield Martin said of this picture, “I wanted to make two little licorice-haired friends with green eyes...I can't deny that I like it when people resemble their pets.” You can see more of her work here.

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.

Counting My Blessings

In this lead up to Christmas and the New Year period, amidst all the stress and busy-ness of work, marvelling at how quickly the year had flashed by, I began to reflect on what had passed, and what was to come in the next year.

It is too easy to become fixated on the sad things that happened, the regrets of failures big or small; to become impatient for the year to end so that one can start afresh. Life isn’t always a breeze, but it is important to remember to be thankful anyway, even for the simplest things. For every failure there are lessons that can be learned; from sadness, strength and insight can be gained. Simply to be in the possession of all one’s senses is one of life’s richest blessings. Imagine a world without music!

On this penultimate day of the year, I am counting up all the things I am thankful for. Why don’t you?

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.