Beauty is fleeting

Lilies, ink by me

 Beauty is fleeting and flowers are a metaphor for this.  They are extraordinarily beautiful and with time they are ready for the compost, petals have fallen and stems are rotting.  The drawing above shows white and pink lilies looking pretty good and today the painting below shows them nearly at their end.

Lilies, gouache  and ink on statistic paper by me

Yoko Ono



It is pretty thrilling to have Yoko Ono in Sydney right now.  She is here to speak at the Opera House and also to open her survey exhibition, entitled War is Over (if you want it) at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney. The exhibition which runs until Feb 23, 2014 encompasses sculpture, installation, film and performance.

Much of the show is participatory.  This maze is made out of acrylic or glass and at the centre is a telephone with the words "if the phone rings you know it is me".  Unfortunately the phone didn't ring when I was in there but it had rung the day before.  There weren't any members of the public there at the time but a gallery staff person answered the phone and was very pleased to say hello to Yoko.







This installation is made out of helmets filled with puzzle pieces of a sky.  This relates to Yoko's childhood when she witnessed the atomic bomb falling on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  She was a young girl at the time and she and her siblings were sent to the countryside for their own safety. The children spent a great deal of time looking at the sky and the sky has been an ongoing theme in Yoko's work.  The public are invited to take a puzzle piece from the helmets.

This exhibition includes Yoko's work from the 1960's up until artwork from the 2000's.  It also includes pieces done for Australia and this particular show.  One of these is 6 lemon scented eucalyptus trees plus tags that viewers are encouraged to affix to the branches. This piece recalls the Shinto temple trees of Yoko's childhood.

 

Okay a couple more dancing drawings, I can't help myself

 I continue to be interested in dancing drawings but maybe this will be the last for a while.  When looking at the old photos the background goings on were also fascinating.  I like the line that goes up behind the Queen's picture, likely the electric cord for the clock which would have hung above, out of sight.  The master of ceremonies and the judge behind with her fur collar are also great fun to see.



Ink and collage as well as tea staining

Girls dancing, pencil and collage of topographical maps from Canada

Sculpture by the Sea

Coast with sculpture entitled Polyrock by Bev Goodwin

Sculptures by the Sea is an annual sculpture show in Sydney which runs for a very short 3 weeks until November 10.  The sculptures sit along the coast between Bondi Beach and Tamarama Beach . There are over 100 sculptures by artists from all over the world.  It is a wonderful experience to walk along the coastline and to see all those wonderful artworks is even better. If you have a chance please go.





Kirsten Lewis, Concealed Craft



Vince Vozzo, Moon Buddha

Carole Purnelle and Nuno Maya, Plastic World











Ken Unsworth, There's many a slip

view of  part of the walk



David McCracken, Diminish and Ascent

Chen Wenling, Rainbow

Qian Sihua, Bubble number 5

Lucy Humphrey, Horizon

More Ballroom

Pencil and collage.  I used topographic and city maps from Canada.

I have been enjoying making some more drawings on the dancing theme.  Here are a couple-




Pencil drawing, I liked the onlookers but they weren't looking at this couple

 Here are the old photos, found at a market, which were used to make the drawings

Ballroom dancing

Self portrait and Dancing, drawing and collage by me

 Over the past few weeks I have been thinking about dancing and happened upon a little collection of vintage photos of people at dances.  The one I have used in this group of drawings was the best as there were details that the others didn't have.  I have used different techniques, the first one is a mono print.  I rolled some ink on a little piece of glass and then used a stick to make the marks.  Then a thin piece of Japanese rice paper was placed on top, rubbed and voila... the image seen here



Mono print by me

Ink drawing using a stick on map of Blue Mountains

Pencil drawing by me

Teri Horton finds a Jackson Pollock?

Teri Horton in front of the painting that may be by Jackson Pollock

Teri Horton is an American former truck driver in her 70's who bought a painting in a Thrift shop for $5.  She bought the painting for her friend because she needed cheering up.  The friend wasn't too keen on the artwork nor could she get it through the door of her trailer.  Teri then tried to sell it at a garage sale.  An art teacher happened to see it and suggested it may be by Jackson Pollock.  Teri hadn't heard of this artist but soon found out and realized it could be worth a lot of money, even 50 million dollars.  She tried to get the painting authenticated but the art community decided it wasn't the real thing and weren't about to change their minds after the original decision was made.  They didn't think that an expensive Pollock painting could find it's way to a thrift shop nor did it have any provenance.  Teri and her son then organized a Canadian art forensic scientist to examine the painting and he found a fingerprint on the back which  matched  Pollocks. He also found that the paint on Teri's painting matched the paint on the floor of Pollock's studio.  This wasn't good enough for the art experts though, they still wouldn't authenticate it.  With the proof Teri did have, there were offers of 2 million and then 10 million dollars but Teri wouldn't accept them.
There is a DVD called Who the #$&% is Jackson Pollock? which tells the story.  Teri is quite a character who makes the story even more interesting.
Australia bought a Jackson Pollock painting called Blue Poles in the 1980s which caused a bit of an uproar at the time due to the price and that it wasn't a traditional painting that people could understand easily.  I think everyone is pretty happy with it now.

Blue Poles by Jackson Pollock