A Busy Couple of Weeks

Have you ever had one of those periods in time where everything seems to come at once? This has been one of those times for me so not a lot happening IN the studio but a lot of art stuff being carried out.

First there has been the children’s mould making school holiday at Shoppington (four hours a day every week day) - you can read about that in the earlier post. And then I presented the Stories behind some of my art work to the Waitomo Society of Arts. You can see some of my work that we discussed in the photo above. We had been trying to do this for a while. The evening was so successful they are thinking of making a regular feature of an artist talking about their work. I spoke of an hour and a half - with a power point assistance and there were lots of questions and interest for their own work going forward.

Somewhere in there I managed to sandwich in Marty Vreede’s collagraph printing course and online there has been the Zen summit 2023 and the Gel Plate Summit with various Gel plate enthusiasts offering new ways of working with the gel plate. I am still trying to master successful every time printing from laser prints and magazine prints.

I have been too tired at night to do much handwork but I have played around with making a Blizzard book. Next Saturday I will go to my Ngaruawahia art group and learn more about blizzard books. That might be the post for next week.

That should be enough for a while but at the end of the month there is the Taranaki garden festival and I am hoping to get down to that and maybe do a drawing course on botanicals. I feel so lucky to have all these opportunities but it is not helping me get on with my major project for the year as the stimulation of new ideas keeps overcoming good intentions. I will go down to Mokau to our beach batch and stay the night to reduce the travelling and regroup from there. I always really enjoy Taranaki, especially the photograph opportunities the trip will provide

As it is Spring here the garden is coming to life and so that mean there is much more to do out there. I have been starting off seedlings for the vegetable garden and trying to combat weeds that are popping up among the plants. The hostas and arasemas are coming through and of course I am fertilising with bio fertiliser. I tend to mass plant over Spring and Summer which cuts the weeding down a bit but at this time of the year there is still all the treasures that have been asleep for the winter that are bursting into life. I have mainly tried to attend to this after finishing with the children each day,

The maples are leafing up as are the gingko and cotinus. Sadly this year the liquidambar on the front lawn will not be bursting into life. It was split when cyclone Gabriel went through and will have to taken out this summer. It was a very large tree but fairly delicate in its branch strength. I will miss it as it was a main stay for eco dying. There is another one at the edge of the property so I won’t be entirely without my fave.

I am hoping to get some eco dying done while the Spring tannins are in the leaves - they give quite different effects to the older leaves.

And so the week rolls on full of activity and promise. I just need to get my old knees into better shape so I can fully enjoy the season.