The Ramblings Of Linden Langdon
skip to page linksDress Model
Tuesday 32, July
In between reading, writing and frantic moments of printing I have been working on the frame that will hold the dress for the Indelible exhibition. It is a papier mache body that I modelled on a dress dummy. The first few layers are newspaper, then a couple of layers of plain newsprint paper (without the printing on it) then a layer of text which is an etching printed onto mulberry paper and finally a layer of tissue paper (still wet in the photo).
Damon Kowarsky - An August Adventure
Friday 27, July
Damon is leaping ahead in so many ways. Graduating from VCA in 2000 Damon Kowarsky has not wasted a moment with international adventures and devotion ot developing his skills as a printmaker. It is surely working for you Damon! Just a glance at his resume says a lot. Damon has a solo exhibition coming up at the Joshua McCelland Print Room, located at Level 2, 15 Collins Street, Melbourne. Opening on the 7th of August and continuing to the 24th, this exhibition has work from Damon's extensive travels and with an artists eye for the cultural detail of the countries he has emmersed himself in.
He is also a part of a group exhibition which is opening at the Jenny Port Gallery, Level One, 7 Albert street, Richmond. This has a very interesting group of artists in it with a promise of a great show. Opening on the 2nd of August this show continues intil August 25th.
But wait there's more! Damon has taken up a teaching position in Pakistan, where I'm sure he will be able to add to his beautiful and inspiring collection of work. You will be able to keep up with his experience through his blog - now there's innovation! I for one will certainly look forward to your posts from afar.
Plate Progress
Friday 27, July
My ambitious calculations for the number of plates I would have produced at the end of my adult education course seems to be way out - but then that is no surprise as I am no mathematician. Failure to include the time consuming turning (cutting away unwanted bits of clay on the green pot) and applying the glaze in the calculation has left the number that will come out at the end dwindled considerably. There is also the human factor - fancy leaving that out - which undermines the mechanical duplication of sameness and deviously makes me throw bowls and vases and other shapely objects. However, there should be a set of four similar plate like pots at the end of the 10 weeks to satisfy my desire to create a scroll. Hence the hole on the middle of the plate!
The photo of the pot at the back is a top view of a large pot my father made. I'm using his glaze as a reference for mine, although I'm no where near it yet. Also the plate on the left has a textured appearance in the centre. This is where I have etched some of the surface away prior to firing. I think it will become part of the project. Most of all it is just fabulous to be back at the wheel again! Funny how things just feel good sometimes - hard to imagine when we are in the middle of winter.
The Battle For Dominance
Friday 27, July
If there was ever any doubt about who rules... Not only the lounge, but also the tv remote - is there no end to this unruly behaviour?
Mount Wellington
Tuesday 24, July
In amongst writing and reading for my paper we managed to take a break and walk a little way up the mountain to catch a bit of fresh air and sunshine. It is only a few minutes drive from where I live to start the walk , and you are able to take dogs there on a lead, which is great fun! Quite a few people head up on the weekend, but not so many that it becomes disruptive. Everyone seems to be able to stay clear of each other most of the time, taking different tracks and traveling at different speeds. My speed is slow with plenty of camera stops. Unfortunately my batteries died part way into the walk, so there were only a few snaps. I have posted a couple on the mountain blog.
Artrage 2006
Thursday 19, July
The halls of uni are covered with college students work at the moment. It is on show until July 27th and there is some really interesting work in it. Just go to the School of Art in Hunter Street, Hobart, and ask the security guard to see the exhibition. Yes we have security guards...
Pottery Cup
Thursday 19, July
It looks a bit more like tulip cup than a coffee cup, but that is mostly the problems of taking a picture of a coffee cup! Really! It is actually quite nice to drink out of - and despite me forgetting to put a handle on it while it was still green... Ok it was a start, and it is a nice warm mug on a cold day - maybe no handles is the way to go in Tassie!
Silk Dress
Tuesday 17, July
At the moment I'm working on a silk dress that will be in the 'Indelible' exhibition at the Long Gallery for the Tasmanian Living Artists Week. The dress carries a story that relates to the horror of the massacre at Port Arthur in 1996. I was living on the Tasman Peninsula at the time, and the event altered my life path quite dramatically. I doubt that I would have taken on university, taken up my ambition to work as an artist, or any number of other subtle decisions that I make on a daily basis if... So, in context of my masters theme relating to the expression of trauma as a subliminal and - or obvious scar - turning point, my dress is called "were you there on the day?" and hopefully answers that question from a perspective that reveals a different story.
silk, hair and thread, printed with an etching of text
I'm still working on the dress panels, but this section is completed enough for the moment. It will be sewn into a panel so that it seems to grow from the dress, winding up over it and towards the ceiling. The text is my story, written during a unit I did called Writing Narrative. It is written as a short dramatic monologue. The story is broken up, just as the stories of the event become broken up with time, but not the emotional scaring, that lives inside. The hair is a tangible reminder of humanity, a momento of loved ones. Hair is a traditional keepsake, and especially in our country where the convicts would carry a piece of hair of their loved one as a reminder of them, or vice versa. Each seam is sewn by hand with a loose backstitch to form a closed or French seam and the hair and coloured thread is the decorative third row of stitching. It is about 6 metres long and 15cm wide. Anyway, that is what I'm up to at the moment.
Mary Pridmore
Monday 16, July
This weekend will be a chance to see the work of Mary Pridmore. Her PHD submission will be on show at the Plimsoll Gallery from Friday the 20th - opening night from 5.30pm - and then just from noon to 5pm on Saturday and Sunday. Working in contemporary figure painting her theme negotiates the relationship between mother and daughter. The Plimsoll Gallery is located in Hunter street, Hobart, at the School of Art.
Some Comps
Monday 16, July
Here are a few links for competitions that seem to fit into the printmakers range!
Another Lifetime Ago 4
Thursday 12, July
This is the last of the story...
My home gradually became entwined with the patina of emotional development as relationships flourished and faded. My first love lived two doors down. We were the same age and from toddlers, until he moved at about ten years of age, we were in each other's company as often as we could. Our first attempts at handwriting were of love, eternal friendship or plans of meetings hastily passed between us at the top gate under the blaze of the Fire tree. We sliced our thumbs to form a blood pact on the eve of his departure, but such young love is bound to be surpassed by the relentless progression of time. There was also a Poincietta tree near the top gate, draped in fern like foliage with clusters of scarlet flowers poised on top. It was here that my sister and I spent seemingly long hours playing with the elephant beetles. They showed up in numbers at certain times of the year and their scratchy claws dug into our hands as they screeched alarm. They would wave their antennae about as we placed them together for a challenge, occasionally engaging in battle to our delight. Perhaps it was their mating season, but childhood naivety only presented potential playmates for us.
This was also the time for my brothers' lives to be transformed from childhood to the complex worlds of adult configuration. They both left for boarding school, but my oldest brother came home after one year. War touched his life briefly as he was sent for military training, the memory of the Vietnam conflict too fresh. He had his training gear, huge boots and army greens, and slipping my foot into his shoes gave me some sense of his ordeal, but left me with the plague of tinea to remind me for the rest of my life. Boarding school taught me the ache of missing loved ones, and I would spend much of my free time haunting my absent brothers room, sitting at his desk, watching his fish or sleeping on his orange bed cover, my tears seeping into the soft fabric.
Then we moved. Leaving my home at twelve years of age was a traumatic experience. The new home, a small farm of twenty five acres, was in total contrast to Buderim. The boundaries were marked by natural bush and fencing between properties. The front boundary boasted a lush growth of deep green forest balancing of the edge of Eudlo Creek. All around us was space then walls of bush and cane fields with no view out to our beloved ocean. For teenage girls though, farms are about horses, and we had our dose of stubborn, unpredictable, hard mouthed and canny mounts. We learnt about milking cows, raising goats and the endless responsibilities associated with farm life. The farm was more isolated, and this was accentuated when the periodic floods transformed our crystal clear creek into a torrent of ravenous flow breaching the banks and trapping us in. I remember boredom setting in and bravery having its day as we set out on our inflated air beds for a thrill ride. Sand mining upstream destroyed the harmony of the creek, and one year a big flood brought down masses of logs that jammed the pools we used to swim in. Eudlo Creek no longer appealed to us.
The three years that I had at Eudlo brought to a close my childhood. My parents separated and being the youngest I was left at home with my father. Everyone else moved on with their lives, leaving me with the fallout of ash from the cane fires, relationships and the old commercial chicken shed stuffed full with absent souls precious mementos, memories and echoes of their voices filling the still, quiet, hot air. So I left.
Fruit And Sponge Pudding
Thursday 12, July
This recipe is quick to make and quite yummy!
- Fruit And Sponge Pudding
- Tin of fruit, or some fresh such as apples
- 80g sugar (bit more than 1/3 cup)
- 2 eggs
- zest of 1 lemon
- 1/4 cup SR flour
- 1/4 cup cornflour
Choose your fruit - I've used tins of apricots, whole plums and peaches, or you can use fresh fruit, but you probably need to cook it a little first to reduce the moisture. Drain the fruit and put it into the bottom of your pudding dish. I have found that my pottery bowl (finally a use for some of my pots) is really good as the narrow base holds the fruit while the sponge on top can cook without too much of the fruit juices making it soggy. Anyway, to make the sponge it is a matter of beating the eggs until they are as thick as cream, adding the sugar a bit at a time until it is even thicker, add the lemon zest then fold in the sifted flours and spoon it on top of the fruit. Bake in a moderate oven for about 30 minutes. It will have quite a firm and a bit crispy sort of top, which it needs to allow time for the centre of the pudding to cook.
Plums have been the favourite so far...
Housework And Beethoven
Thursday 12, July
In a rare moment the house is empty of souls apart from mine, and so it is time to rummage! In an ongoing effort to completely shift the house around; following the exit of son 3 and the emptying out of that space, now myspace, plus painting and dejunking of the garage, it is time to get down to the nitty gritty and sort through the many piles of oddments that have gathered under beds, benches and boxes. Not an endearing task by any means, but made more palatable by the Beethoven. Perhaps not the obvious choice for dragging out folders of prints dating back and back and back, and scraps of associated papaer etc., but he is my choice as the vacuum reaches a peak the violin concerto joines in. As the paper drifts out of my hands as I struggle to negotiate the galley stairs that lead to myspace, harmony from the tape player to calm the rattled nerves. It is Ludwig Van Beethoven, Violin Romances Nos. 1 and 2 that makes housework a choice rather than a chore!
Some Smaller Prints
Monday 9, July
Each year Hunter Island Press, a community printmaking group I am a member of, run an exhibition and sale of work called the mini print. It is a fun way to gather some funds for the group, which is setting up a community studio. It is also a great way to pick up some prints at a one bargain price. This year they are $25 each, and are 21cm x 21cm in size. There is always a big range of work there, and it is very active on the opening night as people choose the print they want to buy and more are put up in there place.
So far I have done two prints for the mini print sale.
"Rose" stone lithograph, handpainted, 21cm x 21cm, edition of 10
"Midwinter Midlands" stone lithograph, 21cm x 21cm, edition of 8
This year the mini print sale is being held during the Living Artists Week, 24th August to the 2nd of September at the Sidespace Gallery in the Salamanca Arts Centre.
These smaller prints are a great light diversion from the larger pieces I work on daily. Both of these prints have double lives. The first one "Rose", was actually created as a section of a print for the Parts of a Whole series.
"Parts of a Whole 3", lithograph, handpainted and woodcut, 30cm x 30cm
"Midwinter Midlands" was inspired by a print exchange I am in. Celebrating the solstice each year, the theme for our winter exchange is the weather. The exchanges are also a great diversion from the research based work of the masters.
This exchange is with a group of printmakers who subscribe to a Yahoo list. It is a great way of keeping in touch with people from around the world who have similar interests and usually vastly more experience in specific areas of printmaking. A very helpful and friendly group of people!
Health And Safety
Friday 6, July
This is one of those issues that is discussed in closed corners and ghostly halls, because no one really wants to jump up and down and make too much noise about something that has the power to change the way we work in printmaking. There have been some terrific solutions to problems in printmaking, for example using vegetable oil to clean up the oil based inks, rather than the solvents whcih are dreadful for the lungs and skin. But the stories in the huddled discreet groups continue - '...then there was a lecturer who used all the old ways like applying bitumen to the stones, he just died one day in the classroom! He used to play the violin in the morning before everyone arrived, and there he was oneday, just dead on the floor when we got there - riddled with cancer of course.' '..and the painter who used to suck on the tips of his brushes, shaping them I guess - cancer on the tongue!'
Of course the old argument of post-justification is to say that we all know the risks and the casualties chose to work with dangerous solutions and would be happy to have died form a these life choices. But I do wonder in the last moments of life if people would really consider this to have been a good choice - to die much younger than your natural life expectancy. Life expectancy is of course a relative issue - relative to the genetics of your famly line, conditions of your upbringing and of course any illness or events that have affected your physical body.
My family has a history of long lives - 80's and 90's, and with the passing of my Great Uncle John, (the last of his generation) it is a poignant moment to consider the changes in our modern lives from theirs. My family were early settlers in Australia, buying extensively in Sydney, Melbourne and in Tasmania. Of course Hobart was settled before Melbourne, so owning property here was the opposite of now, (Tasmania being considered the quiet backwater type place now, rather than the highly progressive city of Melbourne) and my Great Grandparents owned a farm called Kinvarra at Plenty, near New Norfolk and about 45 minutes drive out of Hobart.
Norman and Ellen Parbury on the steps of Kinvarra. We used to have our holidays with Norman Parbury in Currumbin, Queensland. He died when I was 16.
Kinvarra today, which is much the same as it was back in the 1800's. It even has the same land title size.
So, my Great Grandparents raised their five children at Plenty, then they sent them off to schools in Melbourne and Sydney, and their only daughter to Paris for finishing shcool, which is where my French Grandfather comes in! I have visited the area several times, and it isn't hard to imagine the four boys venturing out to fish in the Derwent River, just a walk away, riding horses, walking or riding in the carriage to catch the train to school in the early years, and generally being out in the fresh air exercising their growing bodies. Is this where the beginnings of longevity is?
So, while there may be good genes, a healthy upbringing (just as my realies) and good food, it is all useless if I don't pay heed to the constant warnings that whisper in my ear about health and safety in the printroom. Every day I use toxic solutions, known carcinogens, and yet I still don't have a simple mask in my tool kit. I scrimp on buying new chemical resitant gloves - stringing out the old ones until they are stiff and thin - and fail to use the safer options in time pressured moments. The time pressure though, is only relevant in the little picture. It is so easy to lose the big one.
John Ingleton
Thursday 5, July
John has been working with combinations of digital and plate lithography which uses a thin but very strong type of plastic plate which can be printed on in a laser printer. His theme is associated with his long term interest and research into the French connections with Tasmania. "Le Buzz" is open at the Entrepot Lounge Gallery at the University of Tasmania School of Art from the 9th of July to the 27th. Opening night is on the 13th of July at 5.30pm.
Rosanna Jurisevic
Thursday 5, July
Rosanna is having a solo exhibition of her delightful prints. "Small Works Little Treasures" is a colloection of recents prints in woodblock, linocut and etching. The exhibition opens on the 21st of July and runs until the 29th at the Regard Gallery, 372 Wilson Street, Darlington. There will also be a pritmaking exhibition on the 28th between 2 and 4 pm, so that would be a great time to catch up with the artist and watch her weave her magic! Rosanna also has her work online.
