Artworking; April-May 2020
I’m part of the Clear Blue Sky Project, a collaborative virtual project of documenting skies from cities around the globe as the world changes in response to Covid19. This is 45 degrees from horizontal, 11.30am Sunday 10th May 2020, Sydney North Shore.
So, March and April 2020, hey. Everyone has responded to the lockdown in their own way. No one knew how it would be when it came down to actuality, so whatever the response has been, it is an honest one.
5 days before this I posted loads of pictures of my new top. The strangeness of that.
In that one day, everything dramatically changed.
My studio is downstairs from where we live, so its disconnected which is good, but during these weeks I’ve wanted to be with my family; I felt like I wanted to keep everyone together, when everything is coming apart. I started sewing. I haven’t been sewing as much as I’d liked to over the last 3-4 years, any time I have is given to work; I’m feeling my years are running out & I need to be in the studio, there’s still things to make. All the time. And then I stopped. And I started sewing. Keeping things together. Louise Bourgeois ratified psychological therapy.
As the dining table is now office WFH station, I moved my sewing machines into the kitchen & the fairly small table we have in there. Its a kitchen table like, a table where you put all the mail that grows into a pile of mail, until every 6 months you freak out that there’s probably something really important in there & you throw it all out. That’s where I’m stationed and it feels right. Maybe soon I’ll have had enough. There is work to be made.
My fellas also needed somewhere to go so they’ve been in my studio making shit loads of mess, the bad kind that makes sawdust that really interferes with oil glazes & gilding. But thats where they were called & I cant really ban them from it, given these times. They’ve been making miniature siege weapons and as I type that, I can see the sense of it: its like the world is laying siege to itself! People keep saying “we’re all in this together” when really, it’s everyone for themselves, keep us out of it thank you, everything out there is life threatening. So making siege weapons, albeit very little siege weapons, is an emotionally valid response. I buried myself in making clothes. Which had really needed doing to be honest, not having taken that time out to sew has left me with poor wardrobe choices. But then I haven’t been getting out much anyway. And now I have all these clothes…
They’ve been making catapults & Ballista for a long time but never this miniature scale. We once had a 1.5 meter high Trebuchet in the back yard for bricks to be sent down to the skip when we renovated, so they had to go miniature this time around just to keep it interesting. These guys.
Ironing board in the sewing-kitchen, as Ballista proving ground. Ballista threatening a bookend.
Senseless waste of cucumber life
Train station car park. Some photos need to be taken.
Not me?
still on it
still at it
still on it
It’s a rubber band gun. With auto fire of up to 22 rubber bands & a dummy magazine ejecting wooden dowel cartridges. Incredible
Evil messy studio usurping genius
Endless walks around the neighbourhood has revealed these two creatures. The pug’s name is Ben, I’m not aware of the true identity of the concrete pig.
And the true nature of Sydney: beautiful. And the ‘third pylon’ on the bridge.
Nah just kidding, this was a different day. But some days just go like this, everyone knows that
My first visit to someone’s house after lockdown: to see my fried Rolly
My Mother and her husband Ross, on Anzac Day. I love them so much
Thats the end of April & May 2020. No one will forget them.