Fruit Salad Music

Two weeks of Signal workshops were fun and exhausting. These photos from a day recording and playing music, robot drums, plants, fruits and vegetables with Dylan Martorell. This goes down as one of the best work days in my history.

I woke up the day after finishing with a sad summer cold. It has swallowed up my two days off and made work a little harder this week. Can't win em all.

Energy

Or lack thereof. Maybe I need to climb under a pyramid with a plant. The top two pictures are part of the exhibition at Mr Kitly. The bottom one is a Christmas tree I made for you, on the shelves of a warehouse in the depths of Melbourne. Merry Happy Festivals to you all.

Inside Outside

Rachael Hooper has a new exhibition opening tonight, Inside and Out. Here are some pictures from the other day when I got to hang around in her studio for awhile. Lucky me.






These healthy succulents put mine to shame. I'll have more time for you soon little ones!

Green Thumbs

On Saturday I dropped into Y3K for a look at James Deutsher's 'Horoscope Ecologies'. I particularly love the first room which is maybe a separate exhibition entitled 'We Are Building A Civilized Space Here', though I remain unenlightened as to whether he is solely responsible for it. Whatever. Plants make us happy. And these ones are nurtured in delicate constructions dividing the space and bringing to mind my idea of the room division in the Headmasters House of The Moms in 'Infinite Jest'. Phew. Mouthful. That reference might be the opposite of the Wellness Architecture the catalogue essay speaks of as 'The Man Himself' commits grizzly suicide by putting his head in a microwave there.
Sorry everybody, random.

Back on topic, I've been tossing around ideas for more growing art projects and nurturing my own wall of hanging plants so I know of the sense of wellbeing they bring. Go see!

Flowers and babies.

I know I've gone on about this before, this pregnant onion, but look, it's flowering. And it has babies ready to drop.
I have become the onion's minion, planting up the babies as they drop and dispersing them amongst my friends.
I swear this alien plant is sure to take over. Let me know if you want one.

Green Town

Hi. Just had to share this little beggar with you. Outside Newtown SC is a little cabinet of plants, Green Town, created by clever Sarah Parkes of Small Town jewelery fame. I would've taken this fence sitter home if I had the money on me.

indigo girls

I dyed some things blue, which is actually a good thing. Unlike Zoe and Pene, I like blue. I also liked going to the op-shop looking specifically for things to dye blue, as I have no white things hanging around.
Indigo is freaky plant magic. And I was quite happy to watch the ladies of the Plant Craft Cottage* mixing up the batch of dye. It looks like weird sickly yellow soup, but when you lift the fabric out it slowly reacts to the oxygen turning special blue. Cool.
And weirdly when you put it back in the dye to make it darker, it comes out yellow again. All that blue colour gone! waaah! where! ooooh! look! its back and its darker. PLANT MAGIC.

Alex showed us some videos, I wish I could remember what it was called, the first one with the colour coordinated dancing rainbow finale (they did grub dancing across the sand amongst other things) but unfortunately I have no brain. Lucky it was an age and skill level discriminate workshop. Melissa turned up, stripped off her skirt to dye it and said she was hoping it didn't turn out too hippy. All this hippy tie-dye! HaHa. I bet it did turn out hippy. There'll be a drum cirlce in craft victoria in no time. Oh, there is. A Chicks on Speed drum circle. For the love of the object instrument. Friday night. See you there.

*The Plant Craft Cottage is in the botanic gardens and I wanna hang out there as they all remind me of my grandma.

garden

This is the alien onion which grows it's babies on the side, then drops them off to grow more babies. And more babies and more babies until it takes over the world and eats our children.


These are funny little toes, lovely new plants from Irina.


And these are furry wee bear claws, also from Irina. I am loving the gardening. Good, as we still have a sea of concrete to cover.