Collections Workshop - Week Two

Today, our workshop was off to the city by mini-bus.  We all arrived there about half an hour beforehand and and chatted amongst ourselves, then piled into the bus, and were off!  It didn't take us long to get into the city and parked outside the GoMA, State Library of Queensland and Museum and Art Gallery.  All of us walked to the old section of the Queensland Museum and found that a lot of it hasn't change; and it was soon to be undergoing new construction.  However, a lot of it has changed.  We were taken to a section of it that hadn't changed in around 20 years and shown how our exhibition could be at Pineapple Park in a few weeks.  I took some photos for ideas and then, we had some lunch at the new cafe for half an hour before meeting up again for a brainstorming and the workshopping part of afternoon out.

We sat in an area away from the milling crowds that were there to see the Egyptian exhibition (which was every man and his dog!) and we worked on what our collections meant to us in drawings.  First, we drew our collections with our eyes closed - as a visualisation technique - and then we were asked to draw it upside down on a separate piece of paper.  After that, we were told to put them both up on the opposite wall and explain, one by one, what our collections mean to us.  We more or less said the same things:  we began collecting our things in our childhood, we associated our collections strongly around our families and when we were around our collections, it immediately took us back to our childhood or times of strong memories surrounding our friends, family, travel or childhood.

So, our exhibition is going to be about just that... our collections and when they started and how they affect us now.  But it was a great day out; I totally enjoyed myself and really came up with some great ideas for next weeks' work.

Peter - our train enthusiast - needed the noises of a train.  But nobody could think of how to get anything like that without paying for it off iTunes... not until I said I had a sound effects cd that had those kinds of sounds on it which I had had in my collection for years we could nab the effects off and put them on a loop.  The organisers were amazed that I had that kind of thing, until I said that some of the noises I needed were of pub noises, parties, storms and battles and sword play for my books.  These were just noises I used for effects so I could close my eyes and write a good scene for a chapter.  They thought it was genius I wrote that way; however I've been using sound effects for years.

I have gotten so many ideas for my exhibition, I can hardly keep up with them here or on paper.  But I do need to go to the Thrift Store down the road and buy some old books that I can take apart and use... and I need to soak some of the caffeinated tea bags Mum left behind at my place to age the pages I'm going to use next week.  Yes, there's going to be a lot of preparation done before next Saturday's workshop; and I'll keep you guys fully up-to-date.  Until my next post, keep creating!  

Collections Exhibition Album - The excursion 23/6/2012 

NB:  I've tried three times to get the photos on photobucket to organise in the right order, and it won't do it.  I'm sorry if they're backwards, guys, it's just how the stupid program has worked out.