23 Tuesday Mar 2021
After Ecce Homo Corona, by Eureka
I think of Christ
Jesus of Nazareth
Shepherd to a flock
convinced of their righteousness
but so often wrong
Dissident, revolutionary
not one to turn any away
yet so many now use his name
to push down the desperate
Christ as an excuse
My cup runneth over
giving to another
will not deplete me
instead build our mana
Just love thy neighbour
even the weird ones
02 Saturday Jan 2021
Posted in Art, Music, My Journey, Writing
I tried to write this on New Year’s Day but got distracted by being tired and a bit sore from having a big night. Even now I’m still tired and scatterbrained.
When I wrote up this list I saw it’s exactly the same as last year’s. Perhaps it’s not a bad idea to stick to stuff I can do on my own, while in my house, until the COVID-19 vaccine is in wide circulation and the threat of another lockdown is not imminent.
So here’s the list:
The last two are pretty much dependent on the ability to move around in the world. For a long time Victoria had no cases, but they’re back. We’re definitely doing much better than other places, so hopefully we can get the spread under control again.
Music, writing and art have kept me sane while socialising has not been possible. I really miss performing, but I know I’ll be back on stage soon.
For everyone’s sake I hope 2021 is easier than 2020, but if not, we’re all kick ass at staying inside and wearing masks now, and maybe that will make the difference.
14 Monday Dec 2020
Posted in Art, My Journey
Yesterday I attended an end of year picnic with some people from the Life Models’ Society. A person approached me:
Them: You look like you’ve lost weight.
Me: [laughing] I really haven’t.
Them: Then why do you look like you have?
Me: [awkwardly ignores the comment and goes back to my previous conversation]
Let’s break down why this conversation was fucked up.
1: Commenting on my weight is never a compliment
Regardless of how well-meaning you are, commenting on my body shape, weight loss, or gain is not a compliment. I am more than the sum of what I weigh, and whether I currently fit into Western ideals of beauty. It also implies there are people unworthy of your compliment/respect/value based on their bodies, which is not cool. All bodies are good bodies.
What can I say instead?
Nothing;
Hello;
You look well;
You seem happy;
I’m pleased to see you;
That outfit is smashing.
2: If I correct you, accept this.
When I said I have not lost weight, and indeed I have put on a fair amount what with the injury and COVID restrictions and lock-down and stress and the like, the person in this conversation argued with me. This could be considered gaslighting, a practice where you habitually deny the reality of another person in order to undermine them. Part of my also wonders if people have a concept of what I look like that is a lot fatter than how I appear in person, given how often I get told ‘you’ve lost weight’ and the fact that I have not, in fact, lost weight.
What can you I instead?
‘What I meant was you look well/happy/great in that outfit’. Or maybe going back to the above idea of not commenting on my body in the first place don’t say anything. If I correct you, don’t ignore that correction, especially when it is about me, my body, or my life. I’m the expert in that field, and you have no right to doubt me.
Women in particular are subjected to appearance based judgement frequently and I, for one, would be happy to see it go in the bin.
This year has been particularly difficult for my relationship with my body. For a period of time it was severely broken, it is now only mildly broken. I have had a lot of intense pain, and still have ongoing mild to moderate pain and restrictions in my mobility.
I don’t consider myself permanently disabled (yet); time will tell whether my ankle injury (and the associated back pain which has become more of an issue now I’m more active) is permanent and to what extent. I have good days and bad days. I limp in the morning and when I get up from a long period of sitting.
In six weeks it will have been a year since the incident. I’m surprised, frustrated, and disheartened by the amount of work still to be done return to full functionality. Then again, I look back at the time when it was too much to walk to the coffee shop (ten minutes away) and back, and I’ve come a long way.
I’m sure I’m not alone in this experience. It’s always uncomfortable when people compliment me for the way my body looks; sometimes when I’m modelling artists will say I have a ‘real/natural’ or ‘womanly’ figure, which makes me uncomfortable not only because I’m being objectified, but because it implies an ‘unreal/unnatural’ or ‘unwomanly’ figure.
I welcome compliments on my creative posing, my stillness, my use of shadow/shape/foreshortening, my theatrics, but whether or not my body is highly consumable is not a compliment. I’m sure I do it too, it’s a cultural norm, but I’m working on it. Maybe we all need to spend some time cultivating new ways to tell people we value them.
03 Friday Apr 2020
Posted in Art, Photo Essay
≈ Enter your password to view comments.
14 Saturday Dec 2019
Posted in Art, My Journey, Writing
≈ Comments Off on End of year schedule madness
Tags
Art, Christmas, ekphrasis, end of year, Ian potter, Inspiration, Muse, National Gallery of Victoria, Poetry, Writing
We’ve entered the realm of Christmas parties and end-of-year celebrations. I had my work party last Wednesday – good chicken, disappointing dessert, my poetry group end-of-year do today and my writing group Christmas party tomorrow!
As we’ve done in the past, the poetry group visited the Ian Potter Centre at the National Gallery of Victoria to view the works in the hope of inspiring something poetic.
I spent some time sitting in front of these three works by Petrina Hicks: Fertile (2010), Into the abyss (2011), and Melo malo (2019).
Then I stood looking at this work, Force (1950-54), by Roger Kemp.
Finally I sat with this impressive sculpture, Hippolyta and the Amazons defeating Theseus (1933), by Jean Broome-Norton.
I wrote the bones of three ekphastic poems today. It’s more poetry than I’ve written in a long time, since I’ve been mainly working on prose. I hope to post some of the poems here on this blog once I get them polished up.
All the artists at the Ian Potter Centre are Australian, and all the works I viewed were in the free collection part of the gallery.
I can highly recommend hanging out in galleries with notebooks and writing whatever comes to mind. Take yourself on a date, or go with friends. You never know what might come of it.
29 Friday Nov 2019
Tags
Art competition, Art show, Creativity, Inspiration, Life Models' Society, NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, volunteer, Writing
Yesterday, November 28, 2019 I won NaNoWriMo for the eighth time. I’m proud of myself, but having done it before it doesn’t feel like such a big deal anymore. I’m ready to take a bit of a break from my story, but I have two more days of November to try to get some words down.
I won’t give away too much, but the story is a paranormal thriller with a romance subplot. Once it’s done it should be a stand-alone novel; about 80k words I expect.
I frequently feel I put off starting work on creative projects; on the days I don’t have to go in to my day job, I don’t start my NaNoWriMo words until well into the afternoon. I’m very good at distracting myself by watching Netflix, or shows on the various other streaming platforms (there are so many now!). I try to procrastinate productively, by doing other jobs on my list, but it doesn’t remove the feeling I’m wasting time. Perhaps one day, when I’m a grown up, I won’t do it anymore.
Now NaNoWriMo is done can get back to planning to release a new book early next year, and I have already started writing a show for the Melbourne Fringe Festival next year.
I can’t wind down just yet, I still have an exhibition opening for the Life Models’ Society Inaugural Art Competition on December 17 before I can start slacking off. I hope to see some of you there.
15 Saturday Jun 2019
Posted in Art, My Journey
Tags
fundraising, Gasworks Arts Park, Inspiration, life drawing, Life model, Life Modelling, Life Models' Society, NaNoWriMo, Writing
I’m sure you’re all aware that one of my jobs is modelling for art classes and drawing groups. I’m also heavily involved in the running of an organisation called the Life Models’ Society – a collective of models who advocate for better pay and condition for life models.
The LMS has been around for thirty years, as of 2019. We, the LMS Committee, decided as part of the anniversary year we would run an art competition. The idea is to generate more work for our models; the full competition rules are here.
It’s open to anyone in Melbourne, but you have to have made the work this year and feature an LMS model as the subject.
This is a fantastic opportunity to promote art and life modelling in Melbourne. We will be hosting the accompanying exhibition at Gasworks Arts Park in Albert Park in December. It’s probably the biggest event I’ve ever organised – much bigger in scale, budget, etc. than the book launch I hosted earlier in the year.
I’m really relishing the challenge of managing the working group, and approaching sponsors, judges, artists and models to participate. It’s taking up a fair bit of my non-work time.
I’ve been working on a novel manuscript as well, and I’m now over 52k words into a book I didn’t write as part of NaNoWriMo. After all the input I’ve had from my writing groups over the years, I think this story is one of the most polished and interesting I’ve written and I haven’t even finished the first draft!
I look forward to seeing how the competition all works out, and for the skills I’m developing in the events management arena. I’ll keep you all informed on how this progresses.
16 Thursday May 2019
I sit, headphones on, but no music playing
I can listen to things around me without attracting attention
The woman next to me on a phone call, the two men across
the way watching some code of football. Rugby I’d guess
based on the city I’m in. Slow revelation of meaning through
poetry has never been my strong suit. I don’t do well at
layering. I tend to put my subtexts into the main text.
If you were teaching my work, it would be easy for the
students. Although perhaps, as Judith Wright said,
I didn’t write that in there. Of course, the postmodernists
don’t care about the author so I suppose what I do
doesn’t really matter
The lighting is dulled, outside it’s dark, but like a casino
they don’t want too much reality seeping into an airport
People with different body clocks, different destinations
different languages, all want to sit, alone, protected from
other passengers by their books/laptops/phones/ear buds
There is half an hour until I head home
away from one family and back to another
I have created a life and a home – a settled little
nest. Friends have flown to create new nests with
new lives and young lives in tow. No one to greet me
at the airport this time, just long-term parking and
the promise of sleep in my very own bed.
02 Thursday May 2019
Tags
Challenge, Friends, Inspiration, life drawing, Life model, Life Modelling, NaPoWriMo, National Poetry Writing Month, New Zealand, Poetry, Travel
I made it through the challenge of NaPoWriMo again for April 2019!
It is always a struggle to feel that my poems are any good when I do this challenge, I seem to churn out so much rubbish, but as with NaNoWriMo, the point is quantity over quality.
I will have to set aside some time to revise and review the poems I’ve written this month, although I did publish one poem here and one poem on a couple of Facebook groups for life modelling. For those of you who haven’t seen it yet, here it is:
The art studio
1 convener
5 minders
9 artists
21 models
A room full of nude bodies
Holding perfectly still
The sound of one voice
And scratching on paper
The knowledge that in a few
Minutes we break to eat
Working to create great art
Together sharing our vulnerability
Seven poses over four hours by a Monash University student (April 2019)
It was written on the last day of the challenge, close to midnight, after a full day of work at the day job, followed by a four hour life-model training session. I am not particularly good at drawing, but the act of performing as a model to be drawn has been something I’ve enjoyed for over five years.
The Life Models’ Society is having an art competition at the end of the year. I’m helping to organise it and we’re finalising details now but I may even submit a work to the competition. I’ve been thinking about something like a charcoal drawing, perhaps several figures all together, with my poems about life drawing printed on transparency over the top. I think it could look quite good – obviously dependent on the quality of the drawing(s) I manage to produce.
I spent a little less than a week over Easter with my beautiful friend Cathy and her family in New Zealand. It’s been difficult the last few years as a number of my close friends have moved away from Melbourne. It’s not the same as having them here, but knowing I can pop over and visit and have their love and warmth on tap 24 hours a day is a great comfort.
My next projects are going back to some of my incomplete prose manuscripts; I wrote 1500 words in one today despite my procrastination!
Thank you to all my friends, family and supporters – I wouldn’t be here without you, and I hope that I support you in return. Big love.
21 Friday Dec 2018
Tags
after ‘The American Dream’, by Brett Whiteley
Detail from ‘The American Dream’, by Brett Whiteley
The brain is a machine
susceptible to corruption
working away on incomplete
data sets
The bird builds a nest
fills it with eggs, potential life
feeds the young on instinct
and hope
Green and yellow earth
flow down to meet the sea
intuition and reason fight
for primacy
The blue ocean continues
insensitive to the logic, the imagination
of the painter who tries
to capture it
The red light of alarm, a dream
we wake from sweating
trying to make sense of the message
sent from the void
The coming storm, the enticing nude
the death of intellect as we
exchange emotion for distraction
and stop thinking.
