going, going, gulgong

Heading off this morning to Clay Energy Gulgong. The drive should take about eleven hours. I'm looking forward to a coffee already. It's been six years since I've been to Gulgong and I would really love to sit in a window seat in Janet Mansfield's library again. What a treat. I'm taking this large 60cm platter for the participants show. It's an image of Darwin touching Man complete with slimy protazoa from the benthos.

burringbar chicane

We whizzed up and down the hills around Murwillumbah after visiting Marc Renshaw and Karlee Rawkins show at Tweed River Art Gallery, slowing down only for the speed camera. My favourite work was Karlee's 'Pelting', a tiger, tiger burning bright orange and black stripes. I have this thing for hot orange, I have a burnt orange shirt for golf, and various other shades of orange for various other occasions.
I finished a new series of wall pieces recently. I used coffee grounds in the clay to lighten the weight. The clay was nauseatingly smelly for a few weeks, it then grew maggots and I had to use gloves when I pressed it into the plaster moulds. The iron in the coffee migrated towards the surface of the clay, leaving an efflorescene on the surface. You can see on the work, the mark of the ceramic barista.

snakey business

I went down to let the chickens out before my morning swim last week and found a two metre carpet python perched along the bracing timber inside the chicken pen. It had jammed its head into the wire and was having trouble getting out. I let the chickens out of the henhouse and got a very long stick and managed to free it. For the next couple of days, the chickens looked left and right and then left again before leaving the coop. But they don't have long memories so they run in and out now without worrying.

I've been making some more press moulds for wall sculptures. They are based on vegetative forms and cell division. Not quite ready to photograph but I have a picture from work I made last year.

plumeria

I was offered some frangipani flowers to fill a large vessel at my marquee stall at Rivafest. Their heady perfume reminds me of Papua New Guinean house gardens and the rough and ready PNG way of weeding by pulling out absolutely everything then putting the useful plants back in. I pick a frangipani flower most mornings after letting out the chooks then put it on the kitchen bench until it goes brown.
I went to the opening of Quotidian and Quixotic Gallery last night and saw some work by one of favourite artists, Gloria Petyarre. She has such wonderful design sense.
Here's another work from my recent show in Darwin.

november pineapples

I remember an old canecutter mate called Vic who said that pineapples picked in November usually have rot in them. I always think of Vic when I cut a rotten one open. Someone said he had tertiary stage syphilis and that accounted for his odd manner.
I've been invited to have an artisan's marquee at Ballina's Rivafest next weekend. I'm busily making some smaller work for sale. This is an image of some more work from my Darwin residency.

golf withdrawal

I couldn't play golf yesterday because it was raining and I've got withdrawal syndrome. But I also had my first day at Barratt Galleries as a volunteer. I first met Julie Barratt at a writing workshop at Linnaeas Estate last year.
I'm making some pate a papier shapes for two new paintings which I'm hoping to finish for the Stanthorpe Regional Art Gallery show in late November. Here is another image from my show in Darwin.

home time

For full details of my Arafuran adventures go to the Craft Australia website. We arrived back home to healthy chickens although both Athena and Aphrodite had gone broody. Some time in the chicken penitentiary is the only cure for them. We have a pair of scrub turkeys making a mound nearby in the rainforest for company for them.

opening

This is the charming speech given by Tim Berra at the opening of my solo show in Darwin.

Good Afternoon Fellow Primates
Welcome to this wonderful exhibition of Louise Fulton's work at the intersection of art and science. These two areas of human activity rarely communicate but tonight, we see how science can inspire an artist. Louise has embedded biological themes into her creactions. To appreciate her work requires a degree of scientific literacy, an important attribute for any citizen. This is especially timely during the 200th anniversary of the birth of one of the most important scientists who ever lived, Charles Darwin. This man may have had the greatest idea ever had by the human mind, the theory of evolution by means of natural selection. It fundamentally changed how humans view their place in nature and created a paradigm shift in science. If you would like to hear more about the life of Darwin, after whom this fair city is named, I hope you wil attend my keynote address at the the Darwin Symposium on Tuesday. Meanwhile soak yourself in images of microorganisms, the juxtaposition of bonobo and human bodies and footprints, Darwin's hat and other wonders to delight the mind.