Remember the little boy entering the Woods of life without sign post in yesterday’s image? What will he look like in forty years time?
The path is meandering, but level; the trees are crooked!
I only hope he doesn’t lose the spring in his step!
Archives for category: Photography
Last night I went to an exhibition opening of my students. I was impressed. This is one of the things I enjoy most about teaching, seeing individuals developing in their art. They are by no means all young kids. In photography we have a lot of mature students. Unfortunately I have the ungrateful task of teaching digital imaging. Generally, the younger ones just do it, the older ones say “I hate it, I hate it, I hate it”… but at one stage (and I can usually wait for it) they come up to me with a big wide smile all over their face and say something like “I am proud of myself, I have done so much on the computer”. The best of course is when they say “I love digital now!” I can’t take the credit for this, though. It doesn’t have much to do with my teaching, but with them gaining confidence in an area they never would have thought they could excel in. Good on you!
After the event I was hurled towards the opposite end of human emotions. I bumped into a friend, a very talented musician, who is currently drifting down the path towards middle age. I love him to bits. He really has something going for him, but he doesn’t know yet what, and he is increasingly running out of patience. He told me, and I repeat verbatim: “I don’t like what the world has on offer at the moment.”
Oh dear! What a puppet moment!
We had a visitor for a few weeks who is leaving today. We were supposed to travel around much more than we did. Never mind! You can see a lot of the country from the car, just passing by. Here a few impressions I took on the way up to the North. I love to see the country flying by. I certainly have to get out more. That’s my resolution for the next few month…. summer is on its way too :)
I can not remember ever having been so void of thoughts as I am at the moment. All I can think of is what shall I cook for dinner to feed the troops and I desperately need to clean the house, it’s spring. But absolutely no thoughts beyond the chores. This sort of freaks me out. Particularly as I normally don’t think about daily stuff at all, it just seems to happen on the fly. For a week now my head is packed tightly into cotton wool. I wonder when the cloud will lift.
This is an image of the Hokianga Harbour taken last weekend. Yes, we do have an amazing scenery in New Zealand – It is particularly pretty when the sun is shining :) Hope the weather lasts over the next weekend.
There comes a time, when one has to admit defeat: It might come as a surprise, but I am not Super woman! :)
It’s strange how life goes in waves. When you are on a high, you seem to be invincible. Everything runs smoothly and is exciting. Then all of a sudden one area turns to shit, then another one and another. Before you know it you are in an avalanche and you can’t do anything about it. In slow motion you see your head approaching the concrete floor.
The beauty about getting older is that you know you will be getting up from the floor again. You only have to bide your time! Though it doesn’t make it any easier while you are on the floor, does it?
Ah, well, at the moment I am well below par, the stress of recent weeks has well and truly finished me off for now. But I have made some plans. The weekend after next I have an appointment with my puppets. I feel a lot of new characters coming on.
Back from the winterless North with a cold. We had a gorgeous weekend, though. No rain while we were there and very mild temperatures. The trees start to have a first dusting of green.
I could spend hours and hours on the farm photographing. I like old sheds with all their forgotten items. This one here is a sheep sharing shed. The farm doesn’t have live stock anymore and the space is now used as “flexispace”, means anything could end up here. I would love to have the space to spread out.
We found this little fellow having a sleep under the rafters. Possums are a pest. They look cute, but do a hell of a lot of damage to the vegetation.
I need to get back into the habit of writing daily, otherwise my blog has a good chance of fizzing out….
We are planning to go up North for the weekend to visit family. The place is very remote, there is no cell phone reception (goodie, goodie, goodie!) and Internet is still dial-up. I assume we will be playing Monopoly at night. That’ll be fun. Of course I hope I will have some quiet time to take new photographs as well. It’s time for something else – no more birds and flowers :)
Two weeks ago I learned that I am a finalist in the Wallace Art Awards this year. It took a week for it to sink in, but now I am really savouring the moment. For a New Zealand artist it is not dissimilar to winning lotto.
They give you two and a half weeks to get the artwork to the exhibition space and I can assure you, you need every minute of it. My artwork is an installation made up of 30 individual pieces and this has to be packed in a way that prevents if from getting damaged in transport. Of course it has to be easily packed and unpacked as well as it might be included in a travelling exhibition.
The box ended up being an artwork in itself, but it is finally finished. Originally I had bought a bag of off-cut foam and I wanted to stuff everything in the empty box we had built to size. For a night I sat on the floor packing and unpacking the box, scratching my head and getting increasingly frustrated. Nobody would have been able to make sense of all the bits and pieces, if they indeed found everything hidden between the pieces of foam. Some of the parts are very small. So the choice was either to write a hundred page manual or continue on the design of the box to make it more accessible and tidy. Everyday there was a little addition to the box and finally after two weeks we are finished, just in time to send it off.
Does anybody ever have a deadline with some time to spare? Certainly not me.
So tonight I will be packing it again and this time it will be a breeze.
One of my current design jobs is a label for a honey jar. When I was looking through my images, I found this one of a busy bee working away, bum up, head down! Ah, it so describes my situation. This week was just chaotic. I didn’t even get round to writing my blog, but I am slowly catching up – phew!
The honey I make the label for has an interesting story: the hives are located on the balcony of the Townhall in Auckland. They only produce a hundred or so jars a year and I would like to know how it tastes. If you know Auckland, you certainly wonder where the bees can find flowers. Auckland has a lot of parks, but not really around the Townhall. This part of town is mainly concrete. I have learned that bees can fly 3km for food if need be. Poor little things.
dedepuppets 