Umbrella Day

Before I became involved with the Umbrella Collective (we had our fabulously successful inaugural fair on Saturday - see photos above), I had no idea what bunting was. It was discussed rather intensively at one of our planning meetings and I was left scratching around in the dark trying to figure out what they were all talking about with such passion! Because I did not own up to ignorance in the beginning, I did not feel I could confess my lack of understanding later in the conversation so it was not until I got home and did a google search that I discovered what it was all about. Buntings are the gorgeous flags (see above) that Kylie J made to decorate the buildings with. Not quite the same as the plastic ones used to decorate a car yard. They looked great with the gorgeous signs she made as well.

It was a really great day- thanks to everyone for helping especially the volunteers - we love you! More Umbrella Events coming soon!!!

DadArt

Well that was the BESTEST BIRTHDAY EVA!

The highlight, apart from my mother singing happy birthday to me on the phone (all the way through) was that I received another piece of original DadArt. This year, a self portrait. The man is caught in the teddybear frame of domestic trivialities - a powerful allegory for the modern male. Where to next for masulinity begs the question? Previous examples of DadArt in the Wrecker collection are the Duchampian inspired Dysfunctional Toast Rack (for bread found in the bottom of supermarket bags) 1998 which takes aim at the sickening debauchery of western civilization and the The Mango Pup, 1996 an obvious woof in Koons' direction and self reference to Dad's own New Zealand origins.

I usually love it when people make stuff for me and this year was no exception with such talented fronds. I got my very own Majic Cat Tangram from Florence Forrest:

And from multiskilled plastic girl, some fab new STRIPEY knitwit chunky knit bangles and a nautical themed b-day cake (delicious - did not taste like plastic at all!). Now I have 8,9,10mm set of nauticals and am ready to set sail on a a new year of Wrecking.

Wrecker Birthday

On this day one year in the early 1970s the baby Wrecker slopped into the world, baby hammer in hand ready to take on the mean streets of Papakura.

The flame trees always remember Wrecker birthday. This one planted outside the front door never fails to draw comment from a landscape architect friend.

LAF (incredulously): IS that an Illawarra Flame Tree you have planted there?
Us: Yes
LAF: do you realise how big they get?
End of converstation.

Then later, out on the backyard

LAF (incredulously): Is that a Blue quandong emerging from the Wayneforest?
Us: Yes
LAF: Do you REALISE they grow to 40 metres?

What can I say? We are jungle people.

Delightful Things Preview

I've been going bananas trying to make sense of all my jewels for the Delightful Things Umbrella Collective craft fair on saturday. I don't know why I thought I would not have enough work! At the moment it is all on my bed waiting to be priced and put into some sort of order. Unfortunately I have been at a xmas party this arvo and am in no fit state to do it though it must be done in order for me to go to sleep so there was a strategy here at least! I am drinking coffee and psyching myself up for a long night ahead.
Here are some of the promo cards I've made for it:

Nautical Week 5: Sea Birds

Coastal Birds toys: Florence Forrest

Photos of Birds: Wayne Kington

Sandgate artists Florence Forrest and Rachel Arthur have collaborated to create a wonderful Coastal Birds series of soft toys. They are available (unless they are all sold out which I suspect is a strong possibility!) until 25 November in the Furry Friend's exhibition in Surry Hills, Sydney.

Florence has interpreted the evocative drawings and paintings of Rachel's so cleverly. It is of great releif that she promises to work on the series more in 2007. They capture so well the pelicans and segulls that Wayne Kington has photographed on a recent trip to Amity (shark) Point at Stradbroke Island (thanks Wayne). The mother of pearl sky is a strong feature of the landscape in Moreton Bay and the soft toys bring to mind the pearlescent watery light.

Heading Out After the Storm: Rachel Arthur

And thank Florence for showing me the work of Rachel Arthurs. I am particulary drawn to this painting (oil and graphite on printed cotton) above. I love fishing boats and tales of the high seas and am reminded of the little ditty Dad used to sing to us:

You shall have a fishy
In a little dishy
You shall have a fishy
When the boat comes in.

Dance for your mama
Sing for your papa
Dance for your mama
When the boat comes in.

Nautical Week 4: Happy 60th Birthday Mrs Wrecker!

Today is the day that my wonderful mother, Mrs A. Wrecker to you, turns 60.
I know, hard to believe with my youthful looks.

Here she is both as a darling beach baby and later as madame lash at the WHITE CLIFFS OF DOVER, her favorite stomping ground as a young lady. This is the flimsy nautical connection I am going to make- in fact both shots are taken at the beach, mum's favourite spot to flaunt herself in a succession of teeny weeny bikinis and floppy hats and visors during the 70's and 80's, much to my small-minded embarrassment. Though not as much embarrassment as when she did bikini clad gardening in our suburban front yard in Brisbane. In fact, Mrs Wrecker never misses a chance to soak up the rays that she has been deprived of during a grey English boarding school childhood though blessedly she has now converted to a one-piece.

Mrs Wrecker is where I got my sense of fair play and determination as well as my great body! And she probably had no idea at the time, but the macrame years were very formative for me and I have fond memories of visiting craft shops and trying to get her to buy me all sorts of materials while her focus would have been more on the next owl or plantpot holder.

Although I seriously let her down on the netball court and generally showed the sporting prowess of a wet sandwich, my competitive sporting mum continues to take pleasure in whipping 18 year old boys on the squash court. What she does off the squash court is her own business.

Nautical Week 3: Ayumi Horie

I adore the work of this US potter, Ayumi Horie.
She also has a wonderful website where you can purchase her work and see her pots in action. Does anyone else from Brisbane want to be in on a shipment of her work to cut freight costs?!

The whale and bird cup is my favorite and reminds me of the Tom Waits/Kathleen Brennan song from Alice:

Fish and Bird

They bought a round for the sailor
And they heard his tale
Of a world that was so far away
And a song that we'd never heard
A song of a little bird
That fell in love with a whale

He said: you cannot live in the ocean
And she said to him: you never can live in the sky
But the ocean is filled with tears
And the sea turns into a mirror
And there's a whale in the moon when it's clear
And the bird on the tide

Please don't cry
Let me dry your eyes
So tell me that you will wait for me
Hold me in your arms
I promise we will never part
I'll never sail back to the time
But I'll always pretend you're mine
Though I know that we both must part
You can live in my heart

Nautical Week 2: I love crappy ship paintings

From the Wrecker collection. Or really the Accordian collection curated by the Wrecker. He started collecting these dodgy ship paintings (I did worry about the symbolism - was he preparing to leave?) and I had to hide most of them they were so bad. But these I like.

I love the blue one with its thickly applied impasto paint- you can almost imagine the assembly line heirarchies of palette knife wielders over brushworkers. It is a great bathroom painting. Foggy and mysterious. The yellow/green one tones rather nicely with the lounge and gives the living room a touch of the exotic east.

Thanks to Handmade Life whose velvet painting collection gave me the idea to blog this.

Nautical Week 1: It's so hot right now

You don't have to attend an exhibition opening with Matthew Bacon wearing his sailor suit to realise that nautical is the new black this season.

And it is very easy to get the look. You will need 3 things:
Blue - navy blue, royal blue, Howard blue
White - you know, the colour of the current Australian immigration policy.
Red - radioactive red, Robespierre red, wrecker red, commie red, take your pick.

Now the current fashions do stick with the Tricolore but strictly speaking there is a 4th nautical colour (used at sea for markers, flags etc) and it is Yellow. P'haps not everyone's favorite colour although worth noting as Craft Victoria are having a yellow Xmas retail bonanza soon.

So sticking with the 3 colours (Craft Vic can keep the yellow), I was under the impression from the Kieslowski 3 Colours films that each colour of the French flag officially related to one of the words in the slogan from French Rev'n:

Liberty: blue
Equality: white
Fraternity: red

But apparently this is a load of steaming Beasley according to this and this -the colours were really just chosen by happenstance and some other bogus reasoning was made up after the fact.

Now why am I reminded of my own conceptual methodology?

It does bring me to my new nautical range of threads revisted made from vintage beads. Aren't they lovely?

And to get into the naughty zone (about as risque as i get), I even painted my toenails with Revlon's Robespierre Red nail polish mum got for me back in 1989 for my school formal, being the Bicentenary of the 1789 French Revolution. All this nautical frivolity and jewellery order avoidance compelled me to have a dress rehearsal for the QUT jewellery party in front of my long-suffering cat. All very top secret stuff so I can only tell you that I will be wearing a floor length gown in an intense radioactive red, the hue of which has not been seen in dress shops since the mid 1970's. I think the skills and knowledge to make such a red has been lost to mankind, like the fine gold granulation produced by goldsmiths of the ancient world.
Or maybe they just banned the chemicals.
You may wish to wear eye protection if you are planning to be in the vicinity.

By the way, as a means of avoiding my overwhelming resposibilities, I am going to do a nautical week. Because I really, truly would much rather be at the beach right now. Please join me.

Badge Ladies

It can be hard work sharing the limelight with a feisty Tupperware Lady. The high drama, the hot air, the plastic fumes. It can be very competitive at times. Not so much in the Jana Pitman/Tasmin Lewis sense as in the Jana Pitman/Tasmin Lewis sense.

So in the upcoming jewellery party at QUT Art Museum as a sideshow of La Femme Domestique,

Plastic Girl is going to come dressed as a real life Tupperware Lady - the badge, the hair the frock, the makeup, the shoes, the accessories. Which leaves me precisely where? I could come in drag as her boring husband (not that she has a boring real life husband!). Or should I come au-naturale (not nude) as Rebecca-the-Wrecker, with hammer badge, king gee overalls, tool belt and hammer dangling from hammer strap. Or would that be stupid?

Any costume suggestions?

Hair Doerupperas in the News

I was sooo excited last Thursday that I might be in the Sydney Morning Herald that I could barely sleep the night before. Everytime I closed my eyes I kept thinking about how wonderful I was. I sprung out of bed at crack of sparrow and we headed to (S)Lutwyche Village for arancinis and muggacinos. Long-suffering Mr Accordian dutifully went and purchased the SMH for me.

Again and again I went through the paper and could not find anything about myself. Lots of stuff about other people, horses, dogs, footballers but not about me. Desperation set in as I combed the business and sports sections while the accordian applied himself vigorously to some Ekhart Tolle. I swung from hysteria to logical reasoning about what could have gone wrong. Then I realised we had the wednesday edition being sold a day late in Brisbane. Of course we are always playing catch up in the deep north and it's not just daylight saving I'm talking about.

So hurray for designspotter who set the ball rolling. Some of the press that I received from listing my Neo-Luddite Hair Control System in designspotter included Sydney Morning Herald cutting above (Thurs 2 Nov) and below groovy blogs.
Popgloss
Style hive
This Next
Zamazing.org

I also was recently in the Canadian Green Living Magazine print and online and Modamuse.

I was so pleased with myself that God had to punish my hubris with a weekend away camping in the rain and I returned wet and humbled to a full inbox of orders to make.

So does anyone have some more old computer keyboards for me? Or how about prising some keys off for me and popping them in the mail? I'm running out of ctrl, alt, tab, insert and end keys. Calling all office workers...wanna see the boss lose ctrl?