An Evening Sunrise

Its been a great joy to return to my collaborative altered book project with Bethwyn, Frugal with the Bruegel. We had a long winter break while I was caught up in preparing for exhibitions and she had a term and a half of teaching full time.


However, early in the year we had decided to enter some books in the Association of Book Crafts biannual exhibition opening in Auckland later this month, so that was extra incentive to overcome any inertia that might have delayed out altered book project further. We entered two books were more or less finished last year and two books that we finished this week. Here is one of the recently finished books, Sunrise, in its entirety.


I happen to be reading a lovely book by Diane Ackerman called Dawn Light: Dancing with cranes and other ways to start the day, which is a series of meditations on dawn through different seasons and in different environments. She is a favourite author of mine for peaceful, grounding yet uplifting prose. I also feel like this spring heralds the dawn of a new stage in my creative practice, as I prepare to lift my game up another few notches. So Sunrise is a very apt book to be sharing with you.


The base book 'Sunrise' was a perfectly lovely wordless meditation on a single dawn from a single perspective on a small rural village, in which a few quirky characters appeared. Bethwyn and I added an abundance, perhaps almost an excess of quirky characters and other additions to this, working on it in slow, occasional bursts for at least a year.

If I arrived at a Frugal with Bruegel session feeling anxious or sad, a couple of hours of gentle silliness with Sunrise would make me feel good again.



Sunrise is also known between Bethwyn and me as the Uncle George book because of our extensive use of a couple of 70s kids books in which Uncle George takes his niece and nephew to the zoo and tv studio. You can play spot Uncle George if you want!


Some of the best contributing books to Sunrise were old primary school textbooks and story compendiums with images by many different illustrators.


Dinosaurs and other prehistoric life from evolution (and creationist) books were the final touches to tie everything together in the last session.


Unlike the art I make with textiles which is very conceptual, deeply researched, deliberately planned and exactingly executed, Frugal with the Bruegel is spontaneous, playful, casual, whimsical, intuitive and often ridiculous. Which is not to say we don't have rules, but only for us to feel no pressure and have lots of fun.





The point of making Sunrise was to lighten my heart in the making. If it has a message its only perhaps to slow down and look carefully, because there's a lot to see in every spread. Not only the weird incongruencies I pasted in, but the original illustration beneath is full of interest too. Viewing these photos on a computer screen its probably not easy to always tell what I've added and what was there first. At this distance I'm not completely sure myself anymore.





You can see the real thing, along with our other altered book submissions to the ABC book exhibition at Lake House Arts Centre, 37 Fred Thomas Drive Takapuna, Auckland between 31 October and 20 November.

Bronze vs Clouds

Here is my first finished little cloud. It's as big as two small balls of crochet cotton will yield, about 17x12cm. It casts lovely lacy shadows and spins in the breeze. I'm very pleased and want to make more.

I've started another cloud which I intend to be bigger, and more dispersed than this small ash cloud. I crocheted the first sphere while listening to a fascinating talk by Andy Lowe at the Waikato Museum about his experiences of installing Michael Parekowhai's incredible bronze sculptures at the Venice Bienale .

Micheal's huge bronzes weigh tonnes, literally. There was a piquant contrast between hearing about his heavy bulls and grand pianos being hoisted out of the Grand Canal and into the Palazzo Loredan dell'Ambasciatore versus the airy, almost weightless little cloud bubble taking shape in my hands as I listened. Of course packing, transporting and installing such crushable delicate pieces will bring their own technical challenges where ever they end up being shown, but I doubt block and tackle will be needed.

Eyjafjallajökull and Puyehue-Cordon Caulle

Imagining Antarctica is up in ArtsPost for one more week, so if you haven't seen it yet there's still time. Since installing it three weeks ago I have been having a rest from blankets, and besides catching up on paperwork and housework what have I been up to?

I had the flu for a week and didn't do anything. But before I got sick I finished restoring, at long last, my Adana printing press. Yesterday I inked up for the first time and printed 75 new business cards for myself. It was fun to remember how easy printing can be, especially on a little, user-friendly press like the Adana.


As a reaction against my single-minded focus on blanket stitching land- and ice-scapes with heavy wool blankets for most of the past two years, I have been crocheting light as air little mesh spheres. I've had an urge to make clouds for ages: the aurora borealis of Antarctic winters, the radiation leaking out of Fukiyama, the volcanic ash clouds that have grounded planes around the world recently.

In my first experiment I used up a small hank of thick creamy wool which gave three small gorgeous cloud like globules. New wool is beyond my means at the moment (the exhibitions have left me with some debt) so I've been checking out the haberdashery bins in op shops hoping to find a big stash of a suitable yarn for one of my cloud making ideas. The first thing to show up was a couple of new balls of fine crochet cotton in variegated greys.

Crocheting cotton hadn't been my intention (too fine, too slow) but the grey shouted the volcanic ash of Iceland and Chile. I've been making mesh balls, sort of 360degree doilies in various sizes. To make them spherical I'm experimenting with various home made starch recipes and methodologies. When the crochet is soaked with starch I stuff it with green wool roving to hold its shape while it dries

The next step will be to stitch all my little spheres together to make a small cloud of particulate matter suspended in midair.

An event

Bergs in foreground and Blizzard in background

Sunday afternoon's artist's talk and poetry reading event at ArtsPost for the Imagining Antarctica exhibition went very well. There were about 15 people in the audience, who seemed very attentive and asked good questions. I talked quite a lot about Antarctica and why it is meaningful for me, and how particular pieces in the show relate to my particular concerns. It was great to have the big My Antarctica relief map to demonstrate distances and identify places. Much of what I talked about is covered, more or less, in this interview with me published last week on Books in the Trees.

Part of my audience.
I've been unable to get a good photo yet of work on the wall behind them, the glass reflects the window light in the mornings so I need to go of an afternoon to document that part of the show.

I brought along a couple of props as well. My well-thumbed and much beloved copy of Kim Stanley Robinson's novel, Antarctica, which launched me on this creative path. I also did a small demonstration of how I needle felt the blanket layers to create colours and build height (and depth) in my 3D works.

Demonstrating preparing the wool for felting (this and photo above taken by Janice Meadows)

It was a treat to read lots of poems instead of the two or three max required in the group readings I participate in occasionally. I read my Antarctic hero poems, and some with evolutionary themes relating to the Deep Time work I showed last year along with others from the extraction series relating to my mining pieces seen in Melbourne earlier this month. And various unrelated poems of a science fiction bent. All 15 poems were written within the past two years, so even though I don't feel like a very productive poet (and certainly this year has been a bit dry on that front) I could see I'm not doing too badly, when they are all gathered together as on Sunday.

Me and My Antarctica (photo by Marion Manson)

Poems and Interviews etc

I'm very honoured to have my poem 'Ponting's Genius' featured as the Tuesday Poem on Tim Jones' blog Books in the Trees. It's one of the Antarctic poems I will be reading on Sunday 28 August 3pm at ArtsPost, surrounded by my Imagining Antarctica exhibtion. As well as the Antarctic series I will be reading other recent poetry, mostly relating to same environmental themes that inform my visual arts plus plenty of science fiction poems like Cake (coming out in Enamel 3 next month).

And in the special bonus artist's talk portion of the event I will be discussing my visual art- the thinking behind this exhibtion, and my technique. Questions welcome (though you may find many of your questions answered in the interview that will be appearing in Books in the Trees later this week).

* * *

Here's some of the print media attention I've received this month.

In the Waikato Times Arts Page on 19 August. The lovely photo is by Jody Saturday, a photographer friend with an extraordinary talent for taking flattering portraits. Despite my wan, worn-out countenance lately she managed to make me look good, along with Melt. (The Waikato Times link takes you through to the full story)

In Riff Raff 3, Hamilton's 'edgy' arts magazine I got a full page of photos of my stitching.

Opening Antarctica

Imagining Antarctica is at last successfully installed and opened. Its wonderful to see all the pieces I've made over the past 18 months finally all unpacked and hung together, filling the space beautifully.


There is more to say of course, but truthfully I feel a little shell shocked and completely inarticulate. The lead up to last night's preview was intensely exhausting and stressful. Right now all I want to do is sit in the sun and reread favourite novels.


If I had been up for making a speech at the preview it would have included a lengthy list of thank yous, worthy of an Oscar winner. My deep gratitude goes to so many people who have provided all kinds of support, but most especially to those whose help has been practical and/or saved me from crisis. Stuart Briden, Grace, Emily Rumney and Stephanie Chalmers each contributed with invaluable advice, materials, curation and/or installation and without these professionals my work would not look nearly so fine. Chris Fairly and Robin McIntyre have been tireless transporters and interested problem solvers. Lynda Johnston saved me from being buried under boxes of finished work by offering secure storage. Anna Littler, Sarah Oliver and Eleanor Lefever Taschen have all saved my sanity on more than one occasion in the past months. But most especially I must thank my parents, Norman and Martha Simms, for their ongoing generous assistance is what makes my life as an artist sustainable. Also they make really excellent opening food.

Box o' Bergy Bits

The technical term for small icebergs is bergy bits. I kid you not. I am finishing off the last iceberg for next week's Imagining Antarctica exhibition. Already I have a box of seven completed icebergs, which I think of as my Box o' Bergy Bits. All the finished ones got measured, priced and labelled today. Whew. Another job ticked off my list.

Last iceberg, to be finished in the next five days.

F*** Your Donation

Opening night

I've just returned from a whirlwind four days, three nights in Melbourne. I installed Spoil at the First Site Gallery at RMIT, attended the opening and then flew home. To cram all of Spoil into the checked baggage requirements of Air New Zealand, some assembly was required in Melbourne, so I spent several hours in the gallery stitching the stacks of gold coins to the acrylic mount.

Levelling the hanging gold

This was definitely the loveable problem child of my three pieces. Lovely assistant curator Kellie Barnes (who also let me stay at her house), patiently spent hours up a ladder with her arms above her head measuring and tying, while I stood at the base of the ladder, supported the work and complained about my own sore arms.

Kellie hanging gold

It was totally worth it, as the hanging piece looked exactly as I had intended and attracted a lot of attention at the opening. I was really delighted with how Kellie and Andrei Davidoff curated my installation with me, so that as visitors approach the main gallery down a long low corridor, they see all three pieces lined up. The gold hovering in the distance looks every bit as ethereal, science fiction-y and enticing as I hoped it would. The contrast between it and the low leaden weight of the grey spoil heap is balanced by the opencast Australia piece in the middle, which does not reveal much from a distance and required visitors to come close and lean in to see inside.

Spoil viewed from the gallery entrance

I enjoyed watching people engage with the installation at the opening. It seems to invite physical responses... not just your standard gallery looking pose. One guy couldn't resist touching all the pieces, but mostly people peered, bent, leaned, crouched and circled most satisfactorily. I tried to get people to tell me what they thought it was about before I answered their questions about my own intentions. Most people picked up the mining references pretty effortlessly, but there were also some food interpretations (cakes, kumara mash)- no surprise there!

Snow Progress

I'm feeling a bit calmer this week than I have been for the past month or so. It helps to have cleared some finished work out of my tiny studio into temporary storage, and very reassuring to be chewing through my to-do lists. For example, the melt water tunnel piece (Melt) is now finished and mounted. I really want to make another one, more of a straight crevasse version, but I won't have time before the exhibition, so this one will just have to represent all meltwater features for the moment.


And I'm making good progress on Stragusi (another wall relief showing wind blown snow features). Now that I've worked with beautiful ice blues of Melt, my standard white on cream stitching seems a little bland, but the textures and patterns of this piece more than make up for the monochrome palatte.

Counting down

Attatching Blizzard to its (hand-me-down offcut) acrylic mount using buttons.

Three weeks until the Melbourne opening, a month until Imagining Antarctica opens in Hamilton.

The momentum has definitely tipped towards completion. More work finished than not, more work nearly finished than merely started, more work begun now than not. But the work, both finished and unfinished, is pushing hard at all my limits; limits of time, money and most of all space available to realise my vision.

This is the point where it becomes impossible to maintain any illusions that I can operate independently or am remotely self-sufficient in my creative work. I gratefully accept all offers: storage, transport, materials, help, advice. Well, advice is always the most difficult to accept graciously, but I am trying!

The everyday challenges of life feel like an unbearable affont for slowing down the pace of my frantic preparations. Another flat tire on my bicycle, incorrect prescription in my new spectacles, damp laundry, spilled food, bills I can't afford, relentless rain or missed connections all seem disproportionally dangerous for the threat to derail my attention from the deadlines.

I'm on an emotional rollercoaster that feels rickety, precarious, desperate. But, underlying the fear and exhaustion are my memories of going through all this before. I've skidded along this same terrifying path and survived in the past. The memory of my proven capacity to do this is what enables me to sleep at night. I know the secret of success, which is to just keep going. To take the next step and the next step and the next, no matter how hopeless or pointless or useless I feel. Just keep going.

The swirly mustard beneath is an old quilt that forms an integral part of my studio equipment, propping up and/or protecting work as its made.