Paprika and Packaging

I'm a sucker for packaging. There, I've admitted it. As much as I try to minimise the amount of packaging I buy; reusing containers, buying in bulk and generally avoiding processed foods, I really do love well designed packaging. This brand of sweet paprika really has it going on. I'm sure that this is the same tin that they've been using since the 1970s, which really says something about style.

Sometimes, with a camera, there is the chance to step back a little, later, and think about what happens, out there in the world, with so many images and signs clamouring for attention. I walk into the Spanish deli (johnson st, fitzroy) and smell that particular smell of olives, drying chilli, Spanish laundry powder and that subtle, smoky vanilla uncertainty that makes their custard tarts so good. Then, stacked right at eye height, are these tins of paprika. I want some. Is this art? did it sneak up on me? If it is not art, then is it ok to read it as art? what are they trying to tell me?

There are multiple layers of reading here... some subconscious, some fueled by desires and cultural fashions, others subtle and hard to untangle. I'll try.

The multiple stack of foreign product = delicatessen.
The clear label DULCE- no need for a translation here, the customer is no fool. Dulce kind of sounds like Dolce, Italian for sweet, so lets ask not questions, just presume that it means something lovely. The couple-los novios; just having them so happy in the kitchen cupboard will surely enrich your life with similar joyful moments of kitsch pleasure. Think Astrid Gilberto nonchalance as you gather your food for paella, the smoky flesh coloured dress will surely spice up your dinner, and deliver up a song from the man, that man leading you forward, out and away into happiness. Surely even the presence of such a tin could shine a fashionable, retro kind of light from the corner of your kitchen, I mean, you just don't see that kind of spice at the supermarket.

And then I walk around the corner, and find these little packs, and I reel with a sense of confusion. Did I really even need some paprika? Is this the same stuff? without the promises and the complicated meanings? surely it can't be as good.

Is that it? Perhaps these poor tins of paprika doesn't require such analysis. Either way, I am kind of glad to enjoy seeing the tins, but have not yet succumbed to the promises they make by buying one. I don't think I could bare the dissapointment, if it failed to deliver.

Journal

Paperbound journals were the primary document for the Anotherweather collection, at first. Then collecting with cameras and computers made these paper pages somewhat obsolete, but thus endeared them to me more.

Obsolescence, when bound with certain beauty is something I collect. A use for everything. I am interested in art that has no finished form; I wish not for a finite work to frame, but rather a method to my days. A conversation that keeps life alive and engages traditions and old knowledge with our everyday thinking. A method by which to refocus upon that which may otherwise be overlooked, in the haste of modern life. A fertile collection that offers a place from which ideas can grow.

To glean is to gather information bit by bit until a sense of something is understood. The gleaners of the fields come forward to gather the leftover grain after the reapers have collected the harvest. It takes time, as the left over grain is scattered and must be collected labouriously by hand, but to waste it would be futile.

Journals gather together the ephemera of everyday; holding scraps of paper, images, words and handwriting, so that they may not be lost. Pages hold random thoughts alongside scraps from the tactile world, in an immediate, casual form, and are often evidence of things at their begining.

Recently, my hard drive died. having neglected the sensible task of backing up for quite a while, I've no one to blame but myself for loosing so much stuff. Three years writing, images, notes, collections. It makes me once again turn back to my paper bound journals for a sense of perspective, both in the practise of writing and for the record they carry through time. This section of my website shares some journal pages, updated randomly.

closeness

"Sometimes things get so close that they ignite each other. This illumination, coming from closeness, is what we live for."
Elias Canetti

found drawing

This drawing was scratched into the back of the bus seat. I'm not sure what it is all about. Probably something to do with the interconnectedness of things, and the energetics of weather, I suspect.

I walked through a suburb on the other side of the river today, and had my camera with me. I found these images along the way.

Dandelion Hours

A self indulgent saturday. I tidy up my studio desk, only to immediately jumble it down again, pulling random bits into my reach, without any clear intention. I knew, after sitting for a while in a patch of sun in the grass, that I'd make a dandelion salad for lunch. I was wanting to make something, and thought I'd draw some plants, a dandelion drawing maybe. I broke my elna (sewing machine) trying to draw with stitches, so a few hours i spent with tiny screwdrivers and pulling her apart. (fixed)

Not having intention is difficult. A dandelion thing, was what I wanted. After the salad, I wanted something to last, some sort of drawing to remind me of this autumn day, but my cutting up of scraps of paper wasn't getting me anywhere. Letting go of intention is difficult, more so when hazy reasoning clouds the page.

In the end, my tired eyes refocused through my camera lens, in long exposures as the light faded, and words floated in to string these colours together. Pre-occupations and new things I've been thinking of. For me, it is strange to put myself so plainly in my work, but self is the everyday, and I'm trying to remember that.

Dandelion Hours is here.

the Hour Garden Project

Today the sky is overcast and grey, the big picture kind of messy. It is a good day for focusing on details, taking time to see things slowly.

First there was the book jam, a project with Antonia, in which a Borges text was made into a book, from scratch, within an hour. We made list of 10 rules, then set the clock and made the book, photographs, text, printing, binding. Although the first rule was to complete within an hour, we took 2 hours and 6 minutes. Still, if there was no time limit, we'd probably still not have finished it.

So today, instead of many other jobs that could have been done, I took my camera into the garden for an hour, to try and see things differently.

The Hour Garden Project

After a long hot summer with fairly extreme water restrictions, the garden was just surviving. We have a water tank, and the herbs get all the kitchen water, but the endless days of high 30s meant that many plants just fried in the heat. This last week, we've plunged into Autumn, with wild storms and welcome rains. Most often, I find myself letting the plants grow wild, when they can. The rambling green is beautiful, and I love seeing vegetables and herbs growing their full cycle. The blue flowers of a cos lettuce, or the frilly seed heads of parsley and dill. Last night I cut a creeping tendril from the pumpkin vine to place on our dinner table.

A favourite Gardener/Artist is Derek Jarman wrote in his beautiful journal, Modern Nature -"Death to the thread bare lawn. If the garden's not shaggy, forget it. "