The Ramblings Of Linden Langdon

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Rollover June

Wednesday, 30 June

Toady I had the near misfortune of almost being missiled from a seagull as I walked along the warf edge to art school. I say misfortune, but then some believe that the rarity of having bird excretion splatter on your body must mean that you are in the realm of good luck. Does this mean, therefore, that I have just missed out? Merely the experience of seeing out of the extreme upper of my peripheral vision the very moment the fluid grey blob departed its maker seemed good enough luck to me, but I spent the day occasionally wondering what I had missed out on. Makes me sound greedy, but opportunity is like that, hit or miss. (hehehe)

So while calculators are crunching numbers and pens are faltering for the last day of the financial year, I'm baking a cake for my son who turns 16 today. Happy Birthday Anthony!!

The Wright Magic

Monday, 28 June

In first year printmaking I had the luck to have Helen Wright as a lecturer. Over the last four years she has continued to inspire me through her fabulous consistent effort in her own work while devoting time and energy to her many students. Energy is perhaps an appropriate way to describe Helen - pure energy. Her passion for creating artwork is evident in her work as is a sense of feminine. The National Gallery has one print, "Sense and Sensibility", 1990, and a more recent painting was shown at the Tasmaniaian Museum and Art Gallery's exhibition Interpreting 2004. More work and an exhibition history can be seen on the Bett Gallery site.

The Tassie winter is well and truely set in with pouring rain and freezing winds whipping up from Antarctica. I guess the skiers will be dusting off their gear in preparation for an anticipated fall in the next few months. Its a melt/freeze/melt/freeze kind of thing at the moment!

Fruit Bats

Friday, 25 June

There was a dead fruit bat on the footpath I was walking along in Brisbane earlier this year, its last memory no doubt the deadly sting of the electricity wires it used to like hanging on so much. One wrong flap and your cooked. I was reminded of this unfortunate siting last night when I caught the bus in peak hour home time. Clinging like bats from the suspended handholders the travellers are all cloaked in their daily disguise and veiled by an overriding need to maintain space within the crush. Occasional breaches of cool blooded demeanour warm frozen expressions, but are quickly stiffled with the jerk of the bus and determination to maintain dignity. If only I wasn't so time pressured, buses would be a great way to cut the transport expenses.

I like Graeme Peebles work so much I am putting another print up. The link takes you to the Queensland University Art Museum site which has details of the tour. On the home front I am struggling with the annual dilemma of whether or not to tryout for the Hutchins art prize.

Dilemma: a situation requiring a choice between equally undesirable alternatives; an embarrassing or perplexing situation. Yes, do I put my neck out or not? I have until 5pm to decide...

Payout and Surfing

Wednesday, 23 June

Sometimes dates and events trigger a stream of memories springing all the senses into action for a total recall. I guess that as memory works, the more you reinforce the occasion through repetition, the stronger the reminiscing. Growing up on the Sunshine Coast had the unbeatable benefit of surfing. Our family spent most weekends at the beach, picnicing under the She Oaks and body surfing the crystal clear waves. My sister and I used to make our own bikinis out of batik fabric, but unfortunately the pattern is lost. The sensation of the water rushing past my flesh sends tingles all over me and luckily I have had opportunity to refresh the memory. On my last visit to Queensland we got a surf in at Mooloolaba and managed to scare a few lads on body boards into giving us a little space. Maybe it was the vision of three ladies skillfully riding the waves, or perhaps it was the ballooning effect of the water on our swimmers as we slid down the wave face. No matter, we took the space and grinned..

Oh and thanks Johnny for the $600, I have put it away to go towards the dream of owning a printing press, all the more closer now. No influence on voting day though, poor Johnny.

Primal Instinct

Monday, 21 June

Today I went off the rails of social priority and ditched the learned robe for a wander in the wilds. Well if you can call the botanical gardens 'the wilds' that is. I spent about three hours striding out from the city center out to the gardens and then on to reclaim my car from the garage where it was having its humming bits tweaked. Sometimes the need to stretch out beyond the limits of normality and the expected just take over and I find myself climbing mountains, poised on a cliff face or in this case, claiming the narrow strip beside the highway as my own and defying the scream of engines and stench of fuel to mark my step where no others lay. Now if only I had that spa installed and masseur on hand...

Chemical Free

Sunday, 20 June

Recently I had the opportunity to check out Graeme Peebles Mezzotints on exhibition in Brisbane. It is a superb collection of his work, and a magnificent example of this method. It is a touring exhibition presented by the QUT Art Museum.

The subtle tonal range achieved through mezzotint has a sensual quality, and one of the great benefits of the method is that it is chemical free. Printmaking is plagued with the use of solvents and acids to achieve etches and cleaning up. Mezzotint employs an age old method of marking the surface of a copper plate which creates a burr. The burr is then flattened in varying degrees with a burnisher or scraper to create a surface that holds different amounts of ink therefore producing a tonal range. A tool called a rocker, which has a serrated blade, is used repetatively with a rocking motion across the plate. A printmaking site has a page titled 'That Old Black Magic' and has some good ideas for reducing the repetitive strain injuries! This is my first attempt at mezzotint, so the results are well and truely down the track, but I am always looking for methods that don't rely on harmful chemicals. There are a few sites that have a history of mezzotint, and despite the lengthy and laborious process (and extremely expensive cost of the tools) I think it is worthwhile having a go at least once.

Another tack for reducing the harmful affects of etching is to use a more friendly form of etch. The Edinburgh etch avoids the traditional acids and is well worth studying up on chemical balance to achieve good ecthing results. Also the Tasmanian art school encourages the use of vegetable oil to clean up ink from the benches and rollers rather than white spirits or other solvents.

Workin' it, Promise

Friday, 18 June

Snow caps Mount Wellington and I weave through morning rush hour to grab the print machinery before the competition arrives. Actually its really peaceful at uni in the break. Apart from the few other postgrad students trialing their ideas and spread throughout the expansive building (ok I'll take some pics) and the ever present security guards it is just a warm and spacious place to work.

Located in the old IXL building on the waterfront in Hobart, the art school gracefully embraces historical and current use.

Dawn of the Bitch

Friday, 18 June

Bitch: a woman, esp. a disagreeable or malicious one, and yes of course the female dog. Typing bitch into google brought up the Bitch magazine - a proud to be feminist mag promoting the cause of female strength in pop culture. So now I wonder if I really am a bitch? I wonder if thats what people have in mind when they they suggest that the bitch title belongs to me for the day - a strong woman determined to beat a more self motivated and directed path for herself? Perhaps not.

Post Justification

Tuesday, 15 June

Johnathon smiles whenever I see him, and understandably too! He runs the art supplies shop that is conveniently located within the art school grounds in Hobart. He smiles because he knows I am a sure bet when it comes to picking up all those costly pieces of paper, inks and tools (plus all the other stuff too varied to mention) and he grins like a chesher cat when I hand over my plastic card for him to run through his machine. But then he manages to balance out some (perhaps not all) of the transaction by dropping his pearls of wisdom about anything and everything in the shop. Without a sense of high and mighty too, which can be refreshing when after four years I still manage to get my paper types mixed up. Today I extracted a large sheet of BFK Rives, and he could see my expression of confusion and proceeded to tell me I had been using a different paper. Yes thanks Johnathon, and in hindsight the post justification of really intending to use the litho paper all along works for me too.

Flash Frustration

Monday, 14 June

Starting out with a new software program is like trying to remember the first day I crawled across the floor - tangible and sound in theory, but oh how frustrating! Macromedia Flash MX is proving to be a beast in all its subtle issues, but the possibilities keep me coming back for more like a slave to her master. I am doing lessons through an online TAFE course, which will hopefully see me through to being cabable as a multimedia designer in a year or so. That'll look good on the resume!

Browsing through my boyfriends old Internet.au magazines I came across an artist who works in street art with a difference. I've been to his site before, but Kurt Wenner creates the most amazing images in chalk defying the less celebrated definition of street art. On the same page was a site for bored geographers from all over the world who need to find something to do with their GPS skills when the job board looks a bit empty. Think I'll leave it at that!

Cresent Beach

Wednesday, 9 June

Being raised on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland I am acutely aware of the develpers power to change the sense of 'wild' to well tramped. Cresent beach lies tucked away from the regular tourist route on the Tasman Peninsula. To get to this coastal reserve you have to cross private land, land that is now the center of a proposal for an extensive development that would see the end of the intrinsic value of the bays remoteness. I remember writing to a friend in Queensland, a card describing the pristine beauty and how much it related to the seclusion we had felt as children on the quieter beaches on the Sunshine Coast. I told her this is why I continue to live in Tasmania, away from my home ground. An article in the Mercury Newspaper details the proposal.

The Mooloolaba coast reveals the result of development pressure as opposed to the unspoilt beauty of Cresent Beach and surrounding environ.

Finding the Point

Monday, 7 June

I was poised over the grinding bench today, elavated by a platform so that my center of balance allows me to add weight to pressure and get the litho stone grinding done in half the time, but I digress, as suddenly I was aware of someone watching me from just outside my peripheral vision. Turning round I found a shy young lady with hair bleached in a strip over her head and gel laden into half spikes. Her stout form slumped a bit at being discovered, but after I commented on the effort it takes to grind a stone she gathered her bravery and said excitedly "I don't know what your doing there, but I'm going to be learning about it next semester". I explained what I was doing and turned back to the job at hand with an even higher feeling of elevation at possessing desirable knowledge, but before I could even get used to the sensation of gloat I felt the sharp jab of Maslow's triangle in my buttock.

Abraham Maslow must have made quite an impression back in about the 1950's with his proposed heirarchy of needs because it seems to be still proposed as being a relevant form of categorising the development of people through their motivation in life. The base being the basic needs, food, shelter etc, then next up is the need for security, then if you achieve that you are ready for love, and if your lucky enough to experience that then you can indulge in self esteem followed by self-actualisation at the pinnacle of human development. Now what could be wrong with that? Well apart from volumes of counter theories pointing out the realistic perspective that people develop according to their environment and can achieve from any level at any time without the necessity for such structure. So how could this still be so relavant as to appear in current psychology studies, communication, philosophy and whatever else is thrust at unsuspecting students? Well the only thing I can think of is that it supports the middle class idealism of promoting managerial and materialistic views. Relinquish teachers and lecturers! Maslow has had his day - try turning the triangle upside down and shaking it, it has much more meaning for our society of today!

Sourcing Images

Friday, 4 June

I am told that about thirty percent of internet traffic is through pornography, and I guess that would include the artist sourcing an image of a nude to work with. So how do we sift through the legals, morals and rights to treat this huge wealth of nudity with an artistic eye? I thought I would turn to the old faithful dictionary to see what came up.

Nude: unclothed, as a person, the body etc.; the undraped human figure; a nude figure represented in art.

Naked: bare of any covering; without clothing or covering; defenceless or unprotected, unguarded, exposed as to attack or harm.

Voyeur: one who attains sexual gratification by looking at sexual objects or situations.

Exploit: to turn to practical account, utilise for profit, esp natural resources; to use selfishly for one's own ends.

Girl: a female child; Woman: an adult female person; Pubescent: arriving or arrived at puberty; Teens: the period of one's life between the age of 12 and 20.

So perhaps keeping these terms in mind when surfing the net for images can help? In the face of being attacked by aggressive porn peddlers with insatiable pop-up windows, or sites thinly disguised as artistic, and with the knowledge that every image that hits your screen is on your hard drive, perhaps being responsible about choice is all we can hope for.

In Memory of Sam

Wednesday, 2 June

As a child and into my young teens I spent some time within the life of Sam Fullbrook. He was an Australian painter who, I believe, managed to maintain a strong sense of Australia in his work for his whole painting career. I have vivid memories of this deeply lined man, his raucus laugh and friendly ways bellowing across the dinner table or resounding about the backyard. One of the last times I saw Sam was at his house for Christmas dinner. He gave me a superb fan, its arms carved out of bone and imbedded with shell, and the paper painted in traditional English style with a quaint outdoor scene. I cherished it for many years, but eventually the decay of time and boisterous gypsy lifestyle I led for many years turned it to a faded memory. Sam died earlier this year at the age of 81.

Another Sam I have fond memories for is a little soft golden brown dog my brother gave me when I was 14. He was a lovely pup and I let him down badly when I left him with my Dad. My brother's intention was good and true, but I was too young and too old all at once, and Sam was left behind.

In Search of Enticing Cleavage

Tuesday, 1 June

Being souls with a yearning for visual stimulation (meant in the broader sense to encompass the visually impaired who must have enviable ability to visualise internally) and following the instinct to create visually stimulating artwork I find myself being acutely aware of carefully orchestrated visual and tactile tricks. Our hometown streets are bustling with Sudanese people, escaping the horrors of their politics, the women gloriously endowed with long plaites - courtesy of the latest technology in 'fusion' at the hairdressing salon. And how about the cleavage thats hitting the tv screens and 'places to be seen' these days? A whole range of bras designed to bolster, pad and press those front bumps into eye catching mounds with the latest in gell filled soft touch design. No I'm not not a cynic, I'm just wondering what I can afford...

With uni break now officially kicking in, time to get over the few days relax and get some action happening in the print room. It's rather cold here, so why not enjoy the heated rooms at school rather than boost my power bill anymore? No weekly art forums for a while though. One of the art forum lectures I enjoyed was Patrick Clancy discussing his writing machine. His concept involved the recording of wind currents in different locations and feeding that information into a program that affected the text on pages that display on the computer screen as a visual representation of the wind movement through the text. The homepage has a pre-recorded example of his work.