Work in Progress

Herewith one of the books pulled from the skip which I have begun working on. 
Thanks Penny for the surgical scalpel, which I have been using to good effect to create a contourish like hole, I have also organised the pages that I have cut out into a little mountain/cloud like stack. 
Who knows what will happen next.  I do know I need to take a break from the scalpel as my right pointer finger is slightly bruised from the pressure of too much cutting in one sitting.
Reminds me of when I got blisters from sharpening everyone of my brand new, mega pack of coloured pencils in one sitting when in grade 3.  Even the blisters didn't dampen my enthusiasm for using those pencils, I'd been eyeing them off for ages and was so excited to get them for my birthday, dreaming of the hours I would spend filling the pages of colouring-in books with my rainbow hues.

Rescued Books

 

Literally pulled these books out of a skip after a local book sale.  Unfortunately arrived too late and the book sale had closed, the local army cadets were busy throwing a huge amount of unsold books into an enourmous skip and were impatient to be out of there, so only managed to gather a very few books.

Some of these books are almost a century old, the student's bookkeeping is the 26th edition, published in 1919!

Hopefully, will be able to inject new life and meaning into some of these tomes.

One person's trash is definitely another person's treasure!

Backyard Happy Snaps

 

Three images from my backyard.  The kookaburra and butcher bird are regular visitors.

Melbourne Snapshots

More snapshots of Melbourne ramblings in winter.

Offline Wandering

 

There's been a break in transmission due to me being off wandering around the lane ways of Melbourne for a few days.  Back home again after much banqueting, exploring and general change of scenery.

Eye See - completed

Finished product.  Delivered to the gallery this morning, so no more changes to be made now!

faces

Herewith some old paintings of mine, of eyes and faces, all oil on board, just for something different.

Gembaku Domu

Old and abandoned for a very different reason, this is the Gembaku Domu or A-Dome building in Hiroshima.
Built in 1914 and once known as the Industrial Promotion Hall, it stands as a silent reminder near the hypocentre of the atomic bomb blast of August 6 1945.
It was one of the only structures not totally obliterated within a 3km radius of the blast.
Eerily suggestive of the ongoing plight of many in present day Japan after the earthquakes, tsunami and Fukushima nuclear disaster .

eye see

So this is how my little red book has turned out so far. 
Carved, painted upon with gouache and then nailed. 
Might even mount it upon one or two slightly larger cloth covered old books to give it a bit of substance to stand alone, either that or I could frame it to hang on the wall.  Still thinking........ so not completely finished yet.

Lost

This poor old house used to belong to a loving farming family, but the farm and the family who loved it have long gone, as has the house now.  It was knocked down to make way for a mega nursery complex, which has consequently gone bust.  The land where this lovely old house stood is now earmarked for small lot urban development.  I wonder if the developers of this latest venture will fall upon the same misfortune previous owners seem to have found.