Happy New Year!!!

Wishing you all a Happy New Year from us - I hope 2007 brings you lots of good things, and we're looking forward to seeing you during the year. I'm over in February, Michael's over in March (probably) and we're all hoping to come over in July. See you then!

New Studio

One other reason why it's been so good to clear up in the house is that I'm about to move into the studio I've rented in town, which will entail a good few days of loading up, driving over, unpacking and sorting things out. Patrick has kindly agreed to help me tomorrow (New Year's Day! Luckily for me, at least, his New Year's Eve plans fell through so he won't have a hangover... I'm disappointed for him, though, honest!), so with luck I'll get the bulk of it done before he starts work again on Tuesday.

The studio is at the rear of a new gallery called Gallery 37, surprisingly located at 37 Little Street in Coffs Harbour. The building was originally a funeral parlour, but I don't think it's been used as that for many years! More recently it was bought - in about 1990, I think - by a couple who are good friends of the new gallery owner, Shellie. Cath and Evan still run their own businesses in the back of the building but there is also room for Shellie's exhibition space and four artist's studios. Mind you, I'm the first one in there. The next likely tenant is a Scottish astronomer who wants to use a room a dark room! Sounds fascinating.

The main gallery looks like this:














My room is off a corridor to the right, and through another room. It's smaller than my old studio in Woodfield Road: 11' x roughly 14' at its largest, but it does have air conditioning, a window, a sky light and an extractor fan as well as the fantastically useful built-in shelving you can see, which means I don't have to set up my own shelf units and will therefore save some floor space.




























After tomorrow it will all look very different!

Settling in

I've been working hard this week to sort out more of our stuff, for various reasons. One reason is that I'm a bit like a cat: I need to turn round several times and be comfortable in my environment before I can sit down, so it is important to me that my environment is organised in such a way that I can find things and that it isn't full of boxes... I also wanted to do it for the rest of the family. With the quickest and most straightforward land purchase/house build in the world we will still be extremely lucky to have moved in there before the end of 2007, and so it's worth the effort of getting our rented house reasonably 'straight' because we'll be living in it for several months yet. Plus Michael and I both need to be able to work and earn a living!

The result has been a hot and sweaty week of sorting through the remaining un-opened boxes and doing a slow jigsaw puzzle of moving things around to create enough space in which to do things like set up desks, unpack books and equipment and get things sorted out so that we have a functioning office/guest bedroom. In the process I've been trying to create enough floor space to move the rest of the boxes down from upstairs so that the kitchen, dining area, living room, hallway, corridor and bedrooms are free of boxes and clutter. And at last I've succeeded!

Downstairs in the office/guest bedroom we've gone from this...














... to this:








































OK, so if you want to come and stay I'll have to clear the guitar off the bed, but that's a million times better than the state it has been in! And somehow it's been an important thing to do before the New Year; I'll feel a lot better this New Year's Eve in the knowledge that I don't have any more boxes to shift for a couple of weeks (until the remaining 70-off boxes arrive from the UK, anyway!).

Long ago and far away...

... Things went 'bang' and the universe was born! Well, we won't be able to see quite that far but we will be able to see a lot further courtesy of the new telescope Michael and I bought each other. We picked it up today, and Michael had a fun hour on the verandah putting it all together without relevant instructions (those included in the box were for a completely different model). I understand that we are now the proud owners of a 1200mm refracting 'Skywatcher' telescope, whatever that means. Anyway, here it is in all its glory, with our digital SLR mounted to the viewfinder...














This photograph wasn't taken with the telescope - it's just a picture of the lovely sunset we had tonight, looking out from the verandah at the back of the house, which we rarely use because it faces the road and the mountains rather than the ocean. There was a lovely sunset last night too, but unfortunately the memory card on our small digital camera failed to capture the images. Never mind!















And these two are called Mocha (Jack Russell bitch) and Ted (Dachshund) and they belong to one of our neighbours, James, who came round for a drink and some food this evening. Mocha is very territorial, particularly so since she's recently been pregnant (unfortunately the one pup died soon after birth), and Ted is a very romantic lover. His ardour is, however, spoiled by the fact that his legs are at least 4" too short and he can't quite have his wicked way with Mocha, so all insemination is apparently artificial... They are quite funny: Ted gives Mocha back rubs, and they curl up together with his chin positioned rather proprietorially on her shoulders.

Christmas morning

Well, what can I say....?

Ella really likes her book from Grandad and her doll from Nana and Pop! The book has been partially explored but Mummy and Daddy are saving it for later when we have the leisure to read it with her, and her doll is ensconced on her dressing table

Merry Christmas!

If you've been wondering about the dearth of posts and pictures in the last few weeks, part of the reason has been that the Blogger software has been a bit flaky. In the way of all wise clients-of-software-designers I've been chary about moving onto the Beta test version of the all singing, all dancing Blogger Mark 2 because I don't like being a guinea pig for testing all the bugs! But I got so fed up with not being able to upload pictures that when we got home last night I decided to go for it - a decision helped by the fact that the Beta version has now been fully tested so they've released it properly.

Et voila! Suddenly I can upload pictures and edit posts much more quickly, and you can have photos to look at. More will appear shortly...














Our German Christmas merry-go-round (sorry, Fiona, I'm very ignorant of the proper term for it...) arrived in one piece and has pride of place on our bench top where we can see turning. I'm so pleased it wasn't damaged in transit!

I should get back to my over-excited daughter who's busy trying out all of her presents (amazing how Santa managed to find her so far away from all her friends - he's a clever chap, that St Nick). We wish you a very Merry Christmas from a beautiful, sunny and warm Coffs Harbour, and we'll try very hard to catch up with you by telephone in the next day or so, satellite connections and time zones permitting.

Ballet Girl

Ella's been going to ballet lessons, so here are two pictures from the end of term session that parents were allowed to attend. The teacher, Miss Francesca, is lovely: Greek by way of London, but she's been in Coffs Harbour for about six years, I think. She's a lovely lady - MUCH nicer than Ella's teacher in Bristol! - but has to deal with slightly different problems. For one thing, the idea that if you attend the class you should either turn up on time or, indeed, stay inside the classroom once you're there is a novelty!















A couple of the girls (who are admittedly aged 3 and 4, so not very old) take off every few minutes to see their mother/brother/sister/the world outside, so it's all a bit fractured...

The main thing, from my point of view, is that Ella loves it. She loves Miss Francesca, she loves the fact that she grew out of her old ballet clothes and needed new ones, and she really likes the fact that as she's better at the basic class discipline than the other girls and she already knows some of the ballet positions etc Miss Francesca will be moving her up to the next class in the New Year. Hooray for Miss Francesca!

A close shave...

I've spent today in the Mitchell Library at the State Library of New South Wales in Sydney. It's part of an historical sandstone building with a steel-and-glass annexe, and between the two of them is a courtyard cafe, enclosed by buildings on three and a half sides. I went there for a coffee this morning and nearly didn't come back!

There I was, peacefully drinking my latte and eating an early sandwich underneath a large 'cafe umbrella' before burying myself in the archives, when there was a huge gust of wind that twisted through the gap between the buildings surrounding the cafe. I wasn't paying any attention until suddenly all five cafe umbrellas were jerked upwards, their poles dangling, by the wind. The umbrellas lifted vertically out of their bases until they were about ten feet off the ground and then the poles started waving around - and, as the only customer sitting outside in the sunshine, I was underneath! I was cowering in my seat as these bloody great poles waved around me, and then they came crashing down. The umbrella under which I had been sitting descended six inches away from my head, with an almighty BANG as it hit the ground, and I'm very glad it didn't land on me. I felt a bit shaky after that...

Box clever

Blimey - almost two weeks since my last post - I have been meaning to post a paragraph or two, but have been rather overtaken by life. Sorry about that.

Last Friday we got an unexpected phone call to tell us that the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service (I think I've got that right) had cleared our goods for entry into Australia, and that our shipping company over here had managed to sweet-talk their Mid-North Coast trucking company into delivering our goods on a Sunday for no extra charge!!! Imagine our surprise and delight... although it did mean a lot of hasty rearranging of stuff inside the house to provide room for 406 boxes and other items.














At 8:30am on Sunday morning the first of two huge lorries arrived, with a crew of five men to unload. As our driveway is so steep, our friendly neighbour James offered to let the trucks onto his land which meant that they could be backed up to our fence, and everything brought through that way. It might sound a bit mad but actually it worked a treat (apart from James getting a load of grief from his neighbour who has threatened to sue him if he ever does that again!), and five hours later we had a very crowded house...

Since then, of course, we've been unpacking like mad. Poor Michael hurt his back and I've been absolutely covered with insect bites, but it's been a very productive week. Some of our stuff is on board another ship, on its way to Australia but not due to dock until January 9th, which has led to some interesting discoveries. For example, we've found the knife blocks but not all of the knives; we've got side plates but no dinner plates or bowls; we haven't been able to locate various important cables, etc. And the box labelling has proved interesting, too! A box of 'tiles' actually contained 15 bottles of wine; a box marked 'kitchenware' was full of artists' materials; and a box marked 'toys and linen' contained - amongst other unrelated items - our inflatable paddling pool. So it's been a week of discovery in many ways.



We went from this (in the living room area)....


...to this!










My priority has been getting decent living spaces up together in record time, so that we're not faced with piles of boxes in the living and bedrooms over Christmas (that and locating the Christmas decorations). I've also been trying to find all my artists' materials and put them together in the garage so that I will be more easily able to move them to my new studio space in January. My press has arrived - UNcrated!! I paid for a bloody crate and it arrived swathed in bubble wrap and padded cardboard (like a large version of the stuff used to make Jiffy bags)... This will be one of several issues to be raised with the shippers. Given how much we brought over with us it isn't surprising that some things have broken (the odd glass and several picture frames), but I won't be able to establish properly whether my press is OK until I can set it up, and it weighs so much that I can't set it up until I get it into the studio space, so that part of the conversation will have to wait until the New Year.



And here's some of the rubbish we cleared up at the end of the day...

Big Head

Remember that I mentioned I'd put a print into a local art exhibition? A group of interested people and artists have come together to form the Coffs Harbour Arts Council, and as an inaugural event they organised a selected exhibition, with entries chosen by Dr Leigh Summers, who is the Director of the Regional Art Gallery at Coffs Harbour.

I brought with me the last few prints of 'Rusty Wharf, Murano' , which you've all seen and may indeed have a print from the edition, and got it framed up, and put it into the exhibition on the last day for entries, having only just seen that it was on. I didn't have high hopes of it getting in because I know absolutely nothing about the standard of work around here, so I was delighted to get a call on Wednesday evening to say it had been selected and would I like to attend the opening night on Friday (last night)?


















I went along to the private view on my own as Michael was cooking for friends, with a brief half hour to look at the exhibition before I had to be back. And I did what you do when you're going to a show where you've got work hanging on the walls: I looked around for my print, and found it almost directly opposite the entrance, with a red sold sticker on it! But better still was finding out who had bought it: Dr Leigh Summers.

I got someone to point her out to me and went up to talk to her and she couldn't have been nicer: she said it was one of the best pieces in the show, she'd gone to the private view early in order to make sure she could buy it, and by the way, could she see some more of my work and would I like a solo show at the Regional Gallery in early 2008? Blimey... And she also gave me her card, took my card, and got me to promise I'd phone her and meet her at the gallery for a coffee - soon!

And amazingly, that wasn't the only great thing to happen at the private view: I also spoke to the Director of the Bunker Gallery, where the exhibition was hung , Shellie Kelly. She's leaving the gallery to set up an independent gallery in town with studio space attached. Not only was she extremely kind about my print, but she wants me to take a look at the studio space available with a view to locating my print studio there...

AND I've been invited to a very posh private view of a new exhibition of Aboriginal work at the John Gordon Gallery in Coffs Harbour, which is apparently where the well-off people go to buy art. Not somewhere I'm likely to get a show, I wouldn't think, but it would be good to meet some people who might like to buy my prints.

So anyway, I came back from my 45 minutes of non-stop good news feeling slightly dazed!

Chained to my desk...

Did I bore you already with pictures of my desk? I tell you, it's bloody hard being a student!

Today I've got my laptop on the table too (these pictures were taken a while ago... it's hotter today, and I can hear cicadas down the hill). I've spent the last week coming out on the verandah to read academic papers, but now that I've finished putting together my first ever conference poster (apparently graduate students routinely put up posters detailing their area of research in order to invite input and comment from other interested academics and grad students - I didn't know any of this until I was invited to submit a poster and I had to do some hasty research into their form and function!) I can turn my attention to getting quotes for some of the work that would need to be done on road improvements/seage/water tanks/solar electricity etc IF we were to go for the Lot 31 North Boambee Road property.


















This evening we've got our first 'dinner with friends' in Australia. We've been in touch with a couple, Carol and Ian, whose youngest son Craig goes to the Montessori pre-school with Ella. They're bringing their older son Andrew along as well (he goes to the primary school where Ella and Craig will start in January) for a curry this evening. It's not quite the same as the wonderful times we've had in our kitchen in Woodfield Road, but it's a start...

And before we have dinner, I'm off to a private view for the inaugural 'Focus' exhibition for the Coffs Harbour Arts Council, for which my print, "Rusty Wharf, Murano" was apparently selected earlier this week! All of which makes paying the equivalent of £75 for framing it vaguely worthwhile... if I'm going to be doing a lot of framing I can see that buying my own equipment would be cost-effective! I'm thrilled that the print was selected - I have no idea what the overall standard of work is like - and it should be very interesting going to the private view.