Reviews

Lately I have been to see a huge, big-budget, famous film and a tiny, low-budget, Melbourne written and based play.  A nice contrast.  

AUSTRALIA  I am not going to enter into the historical accuracy debate that is raging.  It was fiction, folks, and if you don't like the way Australia was portrayed in it, use your own version of history.  That means you, Andrew Bolt, in particular.

Loved it.  Expected to hate it, but came away feeling that this was our very own Gone With the Wind (OK, with similar debates about historical accuracy!!)  Pity it was two or three films cobbled together, but they were all quite good in their own way.  It could well have finished when the cattle were driven onto the ship and it would have been a good old-fashioned yarn.  

The scenery was the real star, plus Brandon whatever, the young Aboriginal boy, who was a superb actor.  I hope he has a good life and doesn't get caught up the hype of show business to his detriment.  It was wonderful to see David Gulpilill playing a dignified and resonant role.  Hugh Jackman was rather more deserving of that Sexiest Man in the World label than I had expected!  But Nicole Kidman ... why do people insist on casting her?  She can occasionally be funny, and Lars Von Trier did get one reasonable performance out of her with his own special brand of mental cruelty.  But SHE CANNOT ACT.  And how anyone can spend almost every minute of a nearly three hour film on screen WITHOUT MOVING HER FACE beats me.

CARELESS  In complete contrast, a local play performed in a tiny theatre. La Mama at the CArlton Courthouse is a very intimate space, and we sat in the front row and almost had the actors in our lap.  It was a wonderful experience to see them actually act for every second they were on stage.   The playwright, Russell Rigby, is a Melbourne barrister and it was about lawyers, deceit and dysfunctional relationships - plus the obligatory Lord Denning joke.  The director, John Higginson, has been a friend of ours for many years (his mother did a mature age degree at Monash when George was there) and he did a good job.  It was wonderful to see a women of my age act AND MOVE HER FACE CONSTANTLY!! (Carolyn Bock).  It being a real Melbourne play, the cast had all either been on Neighbours, or Blue Heelers, or both, except for the youngest cast member who had been in Underbelly.  It was very funny, very cutting, and very, very Melbourne.  And afterwards, in the pocket-handkerchief sized bar at the theatre, we mingled with the cast and drank cheap wine out of thick industrial tumblers.

Now that Womabt is off school and the flood of Christmas holiday movies will soon start to trickle in, I will be seeing a lot of kiddie movies.  Actually as my kids get older I enjoy their choice is films much more!

New Template

Just changed my blog template to a new one and consequently need to rebuild all my links and things.

Stage Three Funding!!!

Yay!!!  We have just heard that Wombat had been granted Stage Three funding for secondary school.  That's what he has been on in primary school, but many kids go down a level in secondary school, and that is rarely a good thing.  We believe that we will not have to reapply and that it will stay in place until he finishes school, which is FANTASTIC!!!  This gives him a reasonable amount of aide funding for the very necessary assistance he needs.  

His new school this year has been brilliant and he has made lots of progress, enough for us to be reasonably happy about him starting at a state secondary school next year.  We have looked at many schools all over Melbourne but settled on the local secondary school just round the corner.  They have a reasonably good integration program and are very close at hand if disasters need to be dealt with.

Baby Bear has also decided to go there.  She had been getting increasingly unhappy at her school and we think the move will be a positive change for her.

I have just been around to deliver a bottle of bubbly to the teacher who put so much work into the funding application for us.  She deserved it!!!

A Bit of an Anti-Climax

Emptying out the exhibition of Saturday afternoon felt a bit anticlimactic. Rather like cleaning up after a party. But the drinks in the pub afterwards were nice !

My grand total of six months work above: A framed bead embroidery mounted in ultrasuede and framed, inspired by the Shakespeare poem 'Full Fathom Five', including a carved bone skull (handmade but not by me) and coral-like patterns and colours; another framed bead embroidery, this time inspired by the film 'The Cabinet of Dr Caligari', again mounted on ultrasuede, using ceramic faces (again handmade but not by me) and colours and patterns inspired by the colours and motifs in the film; a bead embroidery sewn onto the back of a repurposed denim jacket; and a peyote stitch vessel and a jewellery set all inspired agin by 'Full Fathom Five' (the necklace is a lariat made in chevron stitch with fringing, and earrings are just fringing and the brooch in bead embroidery with some fringing on the botton.

Nothing sold. I didn't really expect it to. What did sell was framed machine embroidery, plus a framed felted piece and a coiled felt bowl, plus framed 'patchwork' pieces with lots of screen printing and machine lettering on them. They were all exellent pieces well worthy of sale, but it was noticeable that the less convential styles did not sell at all. I also made a series of earrings in the same style as the green ones in the botton picture to sell separately, and I did sell one of them. The rest are going in the Etsy shop when I have a chance to photograph them individually.

Would the selling pattern have been different if the exhibition had been properly promoted and with more sensible opening hours? Who knows.

Deadeye Constance Reborn

After a long fallow period of non-blogging, I am BAACK!!! I have spent the last six months finishing my Diploma of Studio Stitch/Textiles at Box Hill TAFE, a major part of which was preparing for a final exhibition. I didn't want to post pictures of work in progress when they were then going into a public exhibition, and that's basically all I have done for six months! I am still knitting a pair of socks that I started six months ago. (Half way through the second sock, so it will be finished this side of Christmas at least).

I am now relaunching my Etsy store and my business name DEADEYE CONSTANCE. There isn't anything in the store yet but there will be soon. Harry, the beaded thingie in the picture, is my business logo - I made him in 2005 before I even started the course and I am extremely proud of him.

As part of the restructuring of the course there is now a combined Media, Arts and Design department graduate exhibition, this year held at the Meat Market in North Melbourne, arranged and run by the TAFE. You didn't know it was on? Well, that would be because the Communications Officer of the TAFE who was organising everything somehow omitted publicity of ANY DESCRIPTION. REminds me of the old jokes about Intelligence, Military. AS a reward for NOT organising our own exhibition and publicising it and chosing a nice gallery with lighting where our work could be seen, open at times that the public might actually want to see it, we are all being granted a Certificate III in Arts Administration. Refer to joke about Intelligence, Military. SAdly I do not own a budgie whose cage would could be lined by the certificate.

Pics of the exhibition opening night in my next post. I am now going to post regularly, and take things in ways I cannot wait to work on. I am fired up and excited and my fingers are now permanently scarred with beading needle accidents, and I would not have it any other way!

p.s. Exhibition finishes Saturday at 5pm, so sorry Jill!

Bunch of Grapes

Yes, as Karen S says, we do get some wierd assignments! This one was to do something with the idea of a bunch of grapes. I had fun doing this scarf - based on a colour theme of orange, green and purple, I crocheted a lengthways scarf, then needlefelted some vine shapes onto it with fleece, then knitted leaves and needlefelted them on, then added a bunch of grapes to each end using large acrylic beads, a beaded bead, and some smaller acrylic beads, then crocheted fringes. It took less time than it sounds (if I remember corrctly I was stuck at home that week with a sick child) and was a great success. If flung abruptly over the shoulder, the 'grapes' could take someone's eye out!

Build Me A Wall

Another class piece. We did fine line pen drawings of a wall and then coloured it with watercolours. Then we had to produce a textile piece in some way connected with walls. I chose to focus in on lichen and try to reproduce it with beads. It hasn't shown up too well in these photos - I wanted to photograph it somewhere natural but consequently the beading losing some detail. Beads are a PITA to photograph well! It is freeform netting with peyote stitch raised bits, draped decoratively over Alphonse, a large lump of quartz which was given to George many years ago (yes, he came with the name!)