The Birth of Velvet Wins!

Well not the entire Air New Zealand South Pacific section of the 2008 Wearable Art Awards, See the winners here but I thought Commended and a cheque was pretty darn good. The cheque will go into my Pacific Island holiday fund and the joy of walking up on the stage to recieve it will stay for ever! Photo below courtesy of WOW and the others are from my files (many thanks to my models Haley and Steve). Click on the photos for a bigger view.
You can also see it performed on this video link about WOW- mine is right at the end!
Click here for the video

The Birth of Velvet: High Art meets Low

Edgar Leeteg, the velvet painter of Papeete idealized Tahitian women as noble savages, with full breasts, fertile hips, and starry eyes. Tourists loved these souvenirs of the South Seas, a holiday from Western morality. They represented an innocent sexuality; like Eve, their nudity was without shame. But was he more exploitative than celebratory? Was he just a philandering white man disempowering and objectifying his Polynesian models? Or did he just love them as Sandro Botticelli adored his model, the beautiful Simonetta, mistress of the Medici on whom he based his Venus; the mother and patron saint of all the forces in creation.

reference source http://www.seattleweekly.com/1999-09-01/arts/paradise-painted

15 entries since 1995, 15 on stage, 8 times Finalist,
4 times Award Winner.

Bitchin'

The really irritating thing about not getting my third JF novel published sooner than half way through next year (Glory- Scholastic) is that I will be that much closer to menopause. Oh it’s not the moodiness that bothers me; I can put aside irrational anger long enough to smile at my book launch. No, it’s that I will be another year older and yet a little less gorgeous for the publicity photos. At 24 I thought I had years up my sleeve and now at twice that, dammit, I find that lines, wrinkles and other age enhanced attributes increase exponentially with age. My greatest fear is that I might be 70 before I can finally afford designer clothes and will have by then lost all will to wear anything other than Osti frocks and Kumfs; I already own Hush Puppies…and then, of course is the horrible realisation that I might indeed be turning into an old dog too….

Bristle Face

Today I found a long bristle,

Upon my chinny chin chin,

And my fragile shell of vanity,

Like the little pig’s house, caved in.

I sought my mother’s wise counsel,

For the first time in thirty five years,

But the revelation imparted,

Did nothing to stifle my fears.

Apparently whiskers are common,

As you head down the menopause track,

Whilst men lose their hair, we get more to spare,

God, I hope it won’t sprout on my back.

It seems I’ll be doomed to plucking,

Or have them electrically speared,

For if I let nature have her own way,

I’d sport a luxuriant beard.

There’s always the option of shaving;

I’d bond with my husband each day,

We’d both lather up every morning,

To scrape all our worries away.

Considering my changing complexion,

From peaches to old kiwifruit,

I could then change my beauty care options,

And swop my Clinique for his Brut.

Golden Girls

I was flicking through my visual diaries in preparation for presenting at talk at Bookrapt http://www.bookrapt.org.nz/bookrapt/seminar/seminar.html and found these pics and a musing from a holiday on the Gold Coast. It was July and not particularly warm but nice enough to sit on the beach and feel like you had escaped winter in N.Z. I was taken by the contrast between these gorgeous gals I saw in Cavill Mall advertising a club and the lovely woman on the beach taking time out. They were all dressed in gold.

There’s a tanned old chook on the beach in a satin slip of a top, fussing and pecking at her straps in a self conscious sort of way. Her hair is scraped up; a cockscomb for a dowager, ballet style and secured oddly with wedding flowers. She is the colour of warm leather and her shoes are gold; placed neatly beside her. One by one: partners. Did she lose the other shoe that once partnered her? He would have been leathery too.

On the Truck with Charlie

A comment from the blue recently posted on my blog, brought me back to the time I spent in Bristol 6 years ago as a volunteer at a fantastic recycling enterprise. I wrote this piece about it at the time on foolscap refill paper, filed it and promptly forgot about it. Charlie, getting in touch with me had me rifling through my filing cabinet and bookshelves this morning, and thanks heavens I am such a magpie, because there it was. So I have typed it and posted it to share with you all the truly gert concept that it is.
For one who loves to make silk purses from sows ears, I was as happy as a pig in mud…

I arrive at Welshback early, coffee in hand, my breath issuing forth in the English winter morning, like great billows of smoke. I could be a gargoyle, or a dragon; like the artfully made head that hung from the wall in the warehouse I now stand in front of.
I am there as a volunteer; a piece of flotsam from New Zealand, looking for paying work and finding none but in my creative desperation falling across what would become my find of the year. The Bristol Children’s Scrapstore www.childrensscrapstore.co.uk ; the Charity that makes practical use of scrap material for children's play activities. The ultimate useful box; my treasury of delight.

For anyone who has seen the possibility in an egg carton, a bottle top or discarded packaging, you will understand my excitement. From the age of 5, I have plagued my mother, and in turn as I grew, my husband and children with my bags and boxes of things that ‘might come in useful one day’. I blame my dear Scottish Aunty Isabel for this; a woman who bore two sons more interested in football than felt, she and I would spent hours cutting, sewing and gluing all manner of materials in the corner of her tiny Thornton lounge. My aunt is now 82, still working, still running craft classes, still making things to sell, still dancing. What a woman!

So back to my standing in the cold, clear morning outside the Scrapstore; my mission- to boldly go where (I think) no itinerant Kiwi had gone before; with Charlie to pick up clean industry waste for the warehouse. I clamber up into the truck, badly (there’s a knack to it as I soon learned through the many leaps in and out of the truck through the day) and we set off. There is a structure of sorts to the pick-up. Gathering factory and industry scrap works on a rota system; the businesses we would see that day were visited two weeks ago. The collection starts at one end of Bristol and follows a circular route, ending back at the store; we have an empty truck, waiting to be filled.

First stop, a printing firm with two pallets of corrugated cardboard, which are loaded with ease by ‘the boy’ who obviously relishes his forklift manoeuvres. He spins the machine around; practised and flamboyant. I eye the donation with glee; corrugated card is wonderful for construction; you can never have enough! Next stop, a food tech operation which makes flavourings. There is a pervasive smell of an indefinable substance; maybe cheese, but turns out to be tomato. It fills your nostrils unpleasantly- it might be better in sauce. The cheerful man in the white coat points us towards empty barrels; which are large and perfect for storing scrap in, unfortunately they also have irritation warnings on them in large orange stickers. Regretfully we leave them behind as contravening Health and Safety regulations are not on our list of things to do today. We move on.

Charlie talks about his first pick up which had started as mundane until he spotted a medical supply company and risked a cold call.
“It’s that lucky strike you always look out for; like a jackpot win.”
In this case, he was directed to two large shelves which, amongst other useful bottles and containers, housed a surprising number of unworn white canvas surgical theatre shoes.
These were swooped on with glee and the Scrapstore ran a ‘Decorate the Shoe’ competition to the great enjoyment of many schools and kids.

The next pick ups have the truck half filled with large circular cardboard cut-outs.
“I don’t know what people do with them, but they all go really quickly,” says Charlie. I can think of several, especially in the classroom. Big pie charts for maths, huge daisy flowers for science, bases for models of the Coliseum, or decorated with paper for pretend pizzas? Another packaging factory gives us cardboard tubes. I’ve used these myself to make rocket ships, desk tidies and mad dogs! The pet rat at my son’s after school care club snoozes in one regularly.

We call in at a cigarette packaging factory. No tobacco in sight; this place just makes the boxes. This is a print shop on an enormous scale; giant rolls of shiny silver card are piled high in the storeroom, each as big as a colossus. Mammoth machines spit out printed material but the whole place is as clean as an operating theatre, where you take your dirty lungs to be fixed. I try to imagine just how many packets are printed here and I cannot get my head around it. Smoking is obviously not a dying industry in Britain- except for the end consumer. Charlie is hopeful for the silver card, but there’s none left over today. Instead we help ourselves to the wooden spindles that come in the ends of the giant rolls. These make wonderful wooden stands for models. Some are plastic and look like Party Susan’s. You could almost give them a wash and serve nuts, dips and crisps in them.
A notice board industry gives us lovely bits of brushed acrylic felt type material and a lingerie manufacturer yields two enormous bags of silky off-cuts including a nice leopard skin print. I immediately see fierce jungle collages in the making.

A dodgy looking street in Bristol (one of many) with the yard next door housing baying hounds from hell, is the home of an unlikely enterprise which supplies large felt covered props and screens to the BBC. We rummage through their off cut bin and take red and white felt scraps; remnants from the forthcoming Queens Jubilee celebrations perhaps?
Just as we turn to go, a collection of felt ends on rolls in an array of vibrant colours are pushed our way. I think how much you could pay for a 10 inch square retail and I am delighted that this will be accessible to art and play workers. We get similar bright colours in PVC from an inflatables factory. This material goes down well, as does rip-stop nylon from a ballooning company.

Our final picks fill the truck with green plastic rods from an electronics industry, plastic signage material, soft, stretchy black rubber, empty medicine containers and redundant lever arch files from an insurance company. The truck is full to groaning and we’ve been out for 8 hours, stopping only briefly for a flapjack from Charlie’s favourite bakery in Kingswood. On our return, Jeff and the boys will unload the haul. Some will go straight into the warehouse, some will be stored and some will be swapped with other scrap stores around the country to ensure a wider variety and distribution of materials for community art and education.

As for me; I’ll heat up, my glue gun and get my scissors out. I have a large mural planned for the back wall of the Scrapstore, and I’m desperate to ‘bags’ some of that felt!

Mamma Mia

Was it wrong to cry in ‘Mamma Mia’ the movie? Am I ridiculous for letting tears run down my cheeks in an emotion other than laughter? Call me shallow, call me a philistine, but it moved me. So why did it? Because I have a 20 year old daughter who is slipping away from me bit by bit? Because at 17, I was a Dancing Queen, grooving in the discos of Wellington? The answer is both.

That wondrous feeling of youth that you didn’t quite know you had until you didn’t have it anymore. The absolute assurance of dancing in a tiny scrap of cheesecloth, knowing that your arms wouldn’t flap and stray, wiry hair wasn’t going to peek out from surprising places. Knowing you could cast a glance and have a boy look back just as meaningfully. O.k., o.k., it wasn’t so difficult; boys would shag a goat if they got a chance, but you know what I mean?

And my daughter; could I really have made such a gorgeous being? Of all the creative projects I have had in my life, how could I have pulled this one off so well? And now when she is all grown up, making plans for a future that doesn’t include me in her everyday life (just as I did with my mother), how can I not shed a tear?
I still dance, wings and all and I embarrass her of course; because…me a mamma.

The Dancing Queen

We put on some loud music,
From my youth-the seventies,
And we all got down and dirty,
To the Stones, and U.K Squeeze.

Then in a dancing frenzy,
My booty shaking all the while,
I had a little flashback,
At which I had to smile…

When I was just a nubile
Disco Queen in platform shoes,
My boyfriend of the moment
Appalled me with his news.

His Dad had just turned forty,
And was about to celebrate,
With a party at the clubrooms,
And could we go at eight?

Reluctantly I followed,
And stared with horror at the floor,
At a bunch of old farts writhing
To some ancient music score.

They all got pretty wild,
And I declared "When I'm old,
Strewth!
I'll behave with more decorum",
Ah; the arrogance of youth.

Outpourings

For everyone in NZ who has suffered the wettest winter ever...

I told the rain to go away
And come again another day.
It did and now it’s with regret
I find myself so sodding wet.

My car today was down the street;
I ran to it on soggy feet,
My brolly fighting with the wind,
Turned inside out, and had me pinned

Against a wall where gutters gushed,
Awash with leaves and humus, mushed.
It all cascaded down my neck;
A filthy shower, made for Shrek.

My jeans, a trendy baggy pair,
Dragged a denim driftnet flare,
And I craved a retro 80’s taper
Instead of street-cool litmus paper.

When I was young, we used to say,
Rain was the Almighty’s way,
Of showing he was feeling blue…
I hope he doesn’t get the flu!

Iron-me / irony

I’m flattened...I can’t believe people take me seriously!
Really, you should laugh a little more, preferably whilst I’m on stage at Katipo Café, Willis Street, August 27th. http://sites.google.com/site/willistreat/Home

The Third Act Turning Point

O.k. so I haven’t finished the novel yet but I am halfway through Chapter 10 with six more to go. My arms hurt, my head hurts (though that might be more to do with the Sav I drank last night). There is a lot more to go…both in the writing and the drinking.
I have discovered in my quest to ‘write a novel in a week’ the following things:

1) It is not possible to write a full YA novel in 7 days unless you are on speed (even then I’m not too sure…)
2) It helps to have a plan- I had the Wild Cards ‘bible’ that I created for my scriptwriting thesis. This gave me the Wild Cards World; the setting, characters, history and chapter outlines and a goodly amount of dialogue from the scripted episodes.
3) It really helps to have a dedicated (warm) writing space outside of the house and it is amazing what you can do when you have one. Thank you to Ogilvy Advertising http://www.ogilvy.co.nz/ , the marvellous Julie Powell and her team.
5) It is absolutely vital to have financial support to buy you time out of your usual life and work to do it. Where it comes from isn’t important. In my case it has been my family who have done without my income whilst I do this. My partner is an amazing funding body(!)
6) No-one has to give you permission to do this except yourself.
7) Your persistence is the measure of your belief in yourself.

Now go to it. No excuses.

Ah yes...the novel....

So, you ask...WHAT ABOUT THE NOVEL? I can happily report I am half way through and it is not humanly possible to write a novel in a week. However I have written 29,572 words in that time which I think is a pretty concentrated effort and all without CNZ funding. So there you go, surprising what bloody mindedness will do. I am in a mood to finish and yes I have a sugar daddy- my husband. I owe this and all my previous novels to him, because without whose acknowledgement, belief and support I would think it a pretty pointless pursuit.

All that remains now is for me to finish the first draft (ETA mid September- I have a book to finish illustrating in between time) and to interest a publisher. My last three novels have all found homes with one, so maybe there is hope for this one too, and if not, well, it's all a game isn't it? No point in slashing yer wrists about it. But drinking large amounts of Sav...now that's another matter.

I am giving a literary talk this weekend in the BOP, weather permitting (runway not washed out) and I found in my diaries whilst looking for things to include in my data show a comment about contracts. This by the way has little to do with publishing although some might interpret it that way. I have as a freelancer, been asked to sign all manner of them and I find very few find in anyone's favour except the contractors. ITS ALL A GAME... (she said as a mantra)

WOW is all I can say...

It is mad I know but the competition has completely disappeared from Text’s website! I am wondering if I dreamed the whole thing, in which case I have been writing flat out for what? My own self indulgent pleasure apparently.
On the upside, a visual story I have told, a 3 dimensional one, has been accepted for the 2008 Wearable Arts Show. http://www.worldofwearableart.com/ which is a real competition not disappearing anytime soon.
My entry is called ‘The Birth of Velvet’ (guess what materials I have used?) and I am afraid that I am not able to publish any pictures of it until after the show in September, such are the rules. And fair enough, it is pointless, is it not, to show one painting before you display the whole collection.
So as a nice diversion to writing (for which labours I have been at the osteopath today) I am taking a collection of Wearable Art to a school tomorrow to show the kids how something is conceived. Because birthing it is, at the end of the day, as is any creative endeavour. Instead of my WOW comment on high art meeting low, here is a picture of ‘Sophia’s Story’, something I laboured over in 2005.
15 entries over 13 years, 7 times finalist…I must be doing something right.


On the 10th June 1886, Mt Tarawera erupted, destroying the beautiful Pink and White Terraces. Guide Sophia Hinerangi and people of Te Wairoa that sheltered in her whare were spared. This is her story:

'We had not gone very far over the lake before we saw another canoe in the distance being vigorously paddled but never moving. Several said they could see it, but as I looked earnestly the men who paddled changed into dogs and then the whole thing vanished. I said "That was a phantom canoe and a warning that something dreadful is going to happen."
I thought of the old chief who had warned us that God would punish Wairoa for its wickedness- he said that all the Maoris would be killed excepting me. He tapued my whare. That same night the awful eruption of Tarawera took place.'