The Home Festival

What a day it was yesterday!  I was up by 7am and out the door by 9:30am.  All my gear fitted in my bag and my little blue trolley.  The day was nice, clear and fine - just as we had hoped it would be.  And it wasn't a scorching hot day either.  

The Art Installation was called 'The Pop-Up Museum' (I didn't know it was called that until yesterday afternoon) and it attracted a lot of attention from the public. People were reading my book and enjoying the pages in the trees as well as the other artist's collections.  It turned out to be a great hang-out spot for a lot of people.  And as the day wore on, and the sun moved, there was plenty of shade thrown by our tree and it was used by the performance poets and community choirs.  People enjoyed the shade and basked in the sun as well; lazing about under the tree with the extra plastic leaves, reading my pink/red leaves and the larger ones of green that Doug Cartwright had put up.  

Too soon, though, it had all had to come down.  We were all tired from the day, eating and laughing.  I had gone to the jumble sale and bought myself plenty of goodies to add to my various collections and scored myself a first edition of an American poet from 1968 - which stunned my fellow collectors - for only $2.  My brother, his fiance and my niece were there to see the installation; only to unfortunately take off and not able to see the rest of the festival.  Oh well, there's always next year's.  I hope you enjoy the photos below I've put together.

The Home Festival 2012 

Jumble Sale Scores 

Exchanging of Gifts at a Glassworks

I was out and about today to a friend's house in Logan Central.  I bussed it to Doug Cartwright's place to help him with starting up a blog for an artist who needed something that was easy to maintain and was in the public light enough that people would find it.  So, of course, I insisted he uses Blogger because it will show up on Google.

On the way over, I found that there was more graffiti tags than art all over the footbridge; but they were very colourful.  So, I took photos of them.  However, his house was full of arty things; and Doug isn't just a glassworks guy.  he's an oil painter too and has had many exhibitions around the place; including the Logan Art Gallery.

Once lunch was, Doug showed me his studio downstairs where there was so much work he had done, glass sitting around in containers for his famous jewelry boxes that are sold at the LAG and much larger pieces standing up in tall slots waiting to be used in other larger pieces of work.  He began working on a small box when I looked on and began working on it my self.

Over the afternoon, I worked on getting the pieces of glass

together and soldering them, then worked on the sides and mirrored bottom.  After each piece, there was the copper sulfate, washing and polishing to do then more soldering.  It was a slow process; not one for the impatient type (which fortunately for me, I can have a lot of patience when it's required).  Doug found that I picked up the glass work very quickly and was impressed that once I put my mind to something like this, I could do it under

supervision.  I had a few problems, but nothing that Doug couldn't fix.  And now, I have a lovely little jewelry box that I had been meaning to purchase from the Logan Art Gallery Store.  Isn't it just lovely?

Doug's boxes come in three sizes and he also makes business card holders and other arty things out of broken mobile phones and stained glass too.