Friday 26 January 2018

Art and Offal!



As you can see, I arrived safely in Australia. We are staying in a lovely wooden cabin, in a remote seaside community called Peaceful Bay, where it is cooler than Perth. We are here for another week, before we travel back to begin my residency. 


Mostly, so far, I have been passing the time swimming, boating and lounging about, all of which is great fun of course, but I had an especially interesting day on Wednesday. Professor Parker, who commissioned my work here, also has a holiday cabin at Peaceful Bay. She thought it might be useful to do a try-out, since she spotted a great candidate for her research.

Remember that she is interviewing different people about their jobs? Well, the man who works at the local tip, Jeremy, really caught her eye, so I packed up my sketching kit and we drove up there to talk to him.



It’s a profession many people might turn their nose up at, but Jeremy told us it’s the best job in the world. He loves the freedom, the sociable nature of the work and the spare time between visitors, often hours to himself when, amongst other things, he creates sculptures from bits and bobs he has salvaged. 


I sketched his wonderfully peaceful little sculpture garden, tucked behind his shack. Stones, wood, bottle tops and other interesting shaped small things are strung together and hang from the trees. Aboriginal- style decorations, again from bottle tops, wind around tree trunks. A miscellany of larger objects are planted in the grass. There used to be much, much more - it was apparently the talk of Peaceful Bay - until one day someone came in the night and stole it all. Jeremy told us that knocked his duck off somewhat, so he's not making much now. Very sad.


I sketched for 3 hours. It was a surprisingly pleasant place, despite the piles of refuse.  The only down-side was an occasional waft of something ghastly, which turned out to be the fish offal bin! Everything else was unsmelly and really tidily gathered into piles. There was one huge pile just of discarded bikes! 

It was hard-going in the full sun, so when possible I tried to find at least partial shade, which did dictate to some extent what I drew. 


It was a very useful experiment to see if we needed to tweak anything and to help Prof Parker to better understand how I work. It was really interesting too. What a fun start!

2 comments:

alissaduke said...

Absolutely fascinating. I am looking forward to looking over your shoulder" on your residency , as well as reading any of reflections on your experiences in Australia (may they all be amazing !)

Unknown said...

Looks very peaceful Lynne.....hope you don’t decide to stay..you are needed here! Knocked his duck off? That’s a good one! See you took your magic pencil.