flight paths for paper birds

death by chai

so, I'm not the most careful person in the world, with my belongings. I can be a bit clumsy, and very messy, and disorganised. But I hadn't had a major disaster in years, until I spilt a cup of chai onto my laptop in December. 

With my new laptop I am resolving to be more careful - and so as well as banning myself from having liquids of any kind within spilling distance (already broken this ban a couple of times - a habit to be learnt), I bought a nice padded hard case from the computer store. But it was boring and black, and doesn't have a strap - so I made this. It's almost finished. 

 I'm also trying to use up my stockpile of wool, so nothing new was bought for this project, yay! 

rainy days

For this rainy day, while I'm at home doing some work, I thought I'd take a break to post some photos of (some of) the things I've made in the last few months. 

If anyone happens to read, and wants to know how anything is made, I'm way too lazy (or busy? should be, anyway!) to write out instructions, but let me know, and I can give tips. would love to! 

This barrel was for the fundraising auction for my favourite eco non-profit, Reverse Garbage - and I was a bit terrified that no one would bid on it, but they did! and my lovely friend Ellie made the winning bid. 

I had some other stuff in the gift shop there too - all made from reclaimed or recycled materials, some cards:

And a striated pardalote recycled paper bird mobile - there were actually 5 birds, but these mobiles are really hard to photograph! 

and a whole lot of my older stuff - but I didn't take photos (I'm slack like that!)

RG is now moving on to bigger and better premises, which is very exciting! 

giant recycled fabric doily rugs

so, I saw these awesome rugs on dudecraft - like huge doilies. I immediately wanted to make one, but with my aim to use only recycled or reclaimed materials this year, it took a bit of experimenting to find good materials. 

My attempts

 

The best option I've found so far was to use stretchy fabric, and luckily I had some slightly damaged ribbed shirt fabric from reverse garbage (sorry this is mostly relevant for brisbaneites, but maybe there is something like this in your city? I LOVE rg - could rave all day about them). Non-stretchy fabric was ok too, but the rug had less... bounce to it. 

these ones were for a show Rozi and I were in recently - Future Specs, run by the 4c arts collective. More pics and things from that show to come! 

They got a good response! I think I'll have to give some lessons sometime. Basically though, if you can crochet, you can make them. Just use your hand as a big crochet hook! And if you are going to make one, please think of using reclaimed material - divert some fabric from landfill! 

big ball of fabric yarn

  

spring belt (for the end of summer)

still updating from old projects, though there are many more in the making! This is an obi belt that I embroidered last year. I'm not very disciplined, so it was all free-form. I just did the flowers, then vines around them, until I ran out of green thread. and it was two strips of material sewn together, with ties at the end- easy! 

 

 
 

party!

We had a family reunion at our house in October, and I made bunting. It was fun, and totally easy. Basically I cut triangles out of all the old fabric scraps I have been hoarding, and sewed it onto ribbons and some bias binding that I'd had in the cupboard for about 5 years. 

 

It was a fantastic party too. 

This is what some of my cousins had delivered a couple of days before the party

yum.  

what's 350 about?

Well, it's about the maximum safe level of carbon parts per million in the atmosphere, above which the risk of runaway climate change is very very high. 

here's some photos of my first craft activism expedition (with thanks to Rozi, Josh and Josh for help!) to get the number visible in the city (briefly). This was actually back in last October, just before the global day of action on climate change- which was Oct 24. 350.org is a fantastic group making links between climate action orgs all over the world- with the aim of getting action based on scientific evidence about what the world needs (ie. 350 ppm) instead of what is politically expedient or the fact that big polluters don't want to have to change their ways. 

in blog news I'm just starting to make an effort with updating again now (after being reinspired at Woodford, about both art and activism!) 

 

and here they are in the homes they found around the place, for a very brief life in the limelight, before they were all taken down by maintenance. 

 
 Victoria Bridge

I made about 60. my hands were mighty sore from all that crochet! 

Oh yeah, and my friend Josh wrote a blog post about this project too (and writes the funniest blog I know in general) where he says nice things about me. He also wrote a book which is faaaantastic and you can read about it on his blog too. yay! 

red birds flying in a circular path

I always have trouble photographing my mobiles- they look so much better in motion. Perhaps I should try to record them moving... 

Recycled paper birds and discs (covered in tissue paper, fabric, and varnished) scraps of chain, and sticks. 

and some birds of cool colours. 

I actually sold a few of these mobiles at the Top Floor disco ball a few months ago. In future they might have to be a special present or request mostly project, as they take quite a long time!

Lost Bees in the Biosphere installation

From the ART|PLAY|SCIENCE exhibition 18-22 September 2009, put on by the Environmental Art Collective, and curated by Rozina Suliman, our Lost Bees in the Biosphere installation (Rozina Suliman and Anna Cooke)

enter the world of the bees (no actual bees included) through the honeycomb tunnel. I can't describe well the beautiful sound that was designed for us, it was part lullaby, buzzing just on the edge of your consciousness, very otherworldly... Rozi and I listened to it for about 3 days straight and still love it at the end of that!

soft leaves and pollen/wattle flowers... the kids on opening night had a lot of fun with these!

the view out - there's some work by Lesa Hepburn and Colin Peile, and Guiseppe and Fiona Filardo there. 

We also had a booklet about colony collapse disorder, which was the issue that inspired the artwork. I'm going to upload the text and pictures to my environmental blog- www.onethingperweek.typepad.com

one last thing- Art collaborations are so fun! get out there and talk and create together!

lost bees and blogging

well, I suppose I really should have been blogging last week, before the exhibition closed, but here is a blog post about what I've been doing most of the last few months, when I haven't been sleeping or in doctors surgeries. 

pretty exciting- this was my first collaboration, with the amazing Rozina Suliman, my first major art exhibition, with the Environmental Art Collective, my first big conceptual piece, about Bees and Colony Collapse Disorder, my first installation, Rozi is an installation artist, and our piece was about 3m x 3m x 3m! I printed a curtain that was 9 meters long! 

and it's the first time we've been blogged about! Thanks Sophie!

http://sophiemunns.blogspot.com/2009/09/lost-bees-in-biosphere.html

more photos to come. 

new papery things

just some things I've made lately. I made a way cooler mobile out of birds (the birds in my banner, actually), but forgot to take a photo of it, and it is now in Sydney, hopefully entertaining the gorgeous Oliver. 

recycled paper beads and brooches