Happy Easter

And I hope you are all having a wonderful Easter no matter what you are doing. We are mainly spending time with good friends and family and that's all good. For our Easter present to ourselves we have refurbished our chook pen and acquired 4 chooks. When we moved here 18 months ago we had an old chook house but it needed tidying out and fitting out with perches etc. Alan has also built an enclosure around it (which we have named `Eggs R Us') so they can come out during the day without laying waste to our kitchen garden. You can see in the photos that there are 2 quite large papaya trees which have self seeded in the chookhouse and this is good as it provides shade for the chooks and they in turn fertilise the trees. Makes us feel like real permaculturists - LOL The chooks are a reddy orange colour and all look the same so we have called them Eeny, Meeny, Miney and Mo. 2 of them are laying already and we already have 6 eggs. Woo Hoo. I love chooks, I love everything about them. Its great to have chooks again :)

Inspired by Angela Cartwright

So this week's `Frameworthy Challenge' is the artist Angela Cartwright. I really love the work of this artist as it is so much like the art I love to create, so this week's challenge was a lot of fun. Here is the link to the page on her website that inspired me. http://www.acartwrightstudio.com/beyondthepale.htm

Bricolage

Bricolage is one of my favourite words and one of my favourite things to do, especially when it means saving money and creating something original. Here is part of the definition from Wikipedia.

"It is borrowed from the French word bricolage, from the verb bricoler – equivalent to the English "do-it-yourself", the core meaning in French being, however, "fiddle, tinker" and, by extension, "make creative and resourceful use of whatever materials are to hand (regardless of their original purpose)".

Alan and I have recently been using Bricolage to revitalise some old furniture and to re-house our fish Nemo. The white cane table used to belong to Alan's Mum (c1950's) and we came by it about 15 years ago - last week Alan painted it white and it looks great. The `vase' on this table is the fish tank I bought for Nemo which turned out to be too small, it makes a great vase :) The leaves are from a plant which grows in water so it never dies. Nemo is now housed in a large jar which I have had for years and I found hidden at the back of a cupboard. The cover on his jar was bought at the market and is of course one of those old fashioned milk jug covers designed to keep flies away. In Nemo's case it prevents him from leaping out :) The vase with the yellow rose was given to me by my mother when she was downsizing years ago and I use it every day.

The chair is one of 2 (circa 1930's and very Art Deco) which we saved from the rubbish tip and first renovated in 1991. They were originally outdoor furniture. We have just had the cushions re-covered and they look great :) 3 cheers for Bricolage. Oh and Anne you may recognise the chain of turtles hanging by the window - they came from Singapore and contribute some quirky Fung Shui to our living room :) The little cane stool was one of 2 originally given to me by my brother Phil in 1983 and Alan has painted them white too. All great decorating on a budget, but more importantly its all original, fun to do and expressive of our approach to life. It is so good to have things around us which we use every day, love, and which have been either given to us or handed on to us by our family.

International Women's Day

Saturday March 8 is International Women's Day. I have just been reading a book called `The Promise' by Lisa Clifford. Daughter of June Dally-Watkins, Lisa writes about marrying an Italian man and moving to Italy. In one chapter she talks about how International Women's Day is celebrated in Italy.

`Women gather for lunch, dances and parties, mothers take their daughters out to Dinner and Sisters make the effort to meet with each other or their best female friends. Husbands, boyfriends, Fathers and Sons give their women a sprig of Mimosa flowers. Schools organise Art Sessions where the children paint or make collages of Mimosa to take home to Mumma or Nonna. For 24 Hours women are honoured and uplifted. On this day it feels as though, the universal sisterhood of women with its special brand of female nurturing love, is truly united and venerated'........... So I will be thinking of all the Women in my family and my `family of friends' on that day. Mimosa is not in flower here at this time but I might pick a rose instead :)

Frameworthy Challenge - Antonio Mancini

This week's Frameworthy Challenge is based on the work of Antonio Mancini, an Italian Painter who was born in 1852 and died in 1930. Mancini focused mainly on portraits, and as I have always been fascinated by portraits I chose to use a studio photograph of Alan's Great Grandparents with their family as a way of making a `connection' with Mancini's work. This is the image I used as an inspiration: http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2008/01/03/arts/0104-MANCINI_7.html

I have always had issues with conventional photographs and frames as a way of `seeing' our ancestors. They were living breathing people with hopes and fears just like us, yet the somewhat stilted images of formally dressed people in photographs taken in the early 1900's tell us very little about them. I have titled this Collage `Where have they gone to' which is based on the words on the transparent frame around the image. They read `Where have they gone to - to find new things under the sun - a REAL adventure in a new direction, may drop a line now and then........ I really do believe that our ancestors drop us a line now and then if we are alert enough to notice :)

Artist Trading Cards

I have been involved in a Digital Artist Trading Card Swap for over a year now. Although we make them digitally, or partly digitally, we mail them out and all of the Artists I swap with live in North America and Europe. It is wonderful to receive the cards in the mail each month as a nice change from the usual junk mail and bills. I am also a member of the local Art Society and about 12 months ago I was invited to give a talk to the members about Artist Trading Cards. Inspired by that, some of the members formed a monthly Artist Trading Card swap group and I have recently joined in that. The result is that I now receive between 10 and 20 Artist Trading Cards each month. Woo Hoo. I love these little `Works of Art' - each one represents a piece of the Artist who created it. I also love the fact that the cards are traded and not sold, so that each Artist can create their cards without a `purchaser' in mind. I think this tends to result in Art which comes from the heart rather than something `trendy' which is designed to sell. Ironically the cards are often coveted as they are beautiful, but they can only be traded or displayed. I have an album for mine and I love to look through it, each time seeing something new that I have missed before. This is my card from the Art Society February Swap, the theme was `Portraits'. I painted this in ArtRage, and the lace `brush' was added in PhotoShop.