Hoopies

Hoopies are named after the giant Hoop Pines (Araucaria cunninghamii) that built Brisbane. Descendents of these magnificent trees still loom, most noticable in the evenings, silhouetted against twilight skies on crowded inner city streets.

Above: Photo of Hoopie at Elidon Hill reservoir by Wayne Kington, Copper etching, Rebecca Ward

But today’s built environment is constructed from all sorts of other new materials which are cheaper to produce, sometimes ugly and at other times quite attractive and interesting to the human bowerbird. So my hoopies range is made from the bits and pieces you might find on a modern-day building site: coke bottle lids, rubber washers, plastic, paper, laminex, and bits of old hardwood left from what was demolished beforehand. The circular hoop shapes are still evident though as an echo to the once magnificent hoop forests of our region.

I am putting hoopies in a show coming up soon at MoB Store- The Summer Collection - opening Wed 3 October 5:30pm - come along (RSVP 3403 4355 Mon 1 Oct).

Biscuit Fever

It's no secret that I have been drinking alot lately.
Tea that is. I seem to have the other under control at the moment you'll be glad to hear. Coffee never solved anything.

The tea thing is rather good I must say but always nice to have a bit of a nibble on something with the tea. I've never been a biscuit snack sort of a person but of late the bikkies are enjoying a bit of a craze in wrecker central. When one runs short of father's famous shortbread, then one must resort to machine-made store-bought snackage, something which would never have penetrated my former unprocessed diet of brown rice sprinked with brussel sprouts. But when tragedy strikes, desperate measures must be taken.

It was a sympathy pack of Kingstons delivered to me by one of my oldest friends that caused me to slip into the deep shadows cast by the bikkie aisle of the supermarket. I have become quite partial to the "Little Schoolboy"biscuits which have suddenly appeared in this shadowland of tempatation. Imported from France they probably are probably a major contributor to global warming but I cycle to the shops to buy them so that must count for something.
The 45% cocoa really hits the spot for me. And the idea of nibbling on french schooolboys- well that is quite a European thing I imagine.Then there is also the iced vovo, which was the inspiration for a range of earrings that I make from recycled glass. Well really I made them and then I thought "By crikey they remind me of iced vovos for some reason well they are the right colour and texture but iced vovos are so straight and these are so curvy swingy they are essence of vovo in their swing music kinda old-fashioned and vovoistic way". Profound.The Vovos have also inspired some of the Nibble Project with Shannon Garson which features such reverent reproductions of said Vovo in porcelain. It is a lonely friday night so I felt compelled to purchase some vovo and compare to the french schoolboy and I'm sorry to say that the vovo is not so great. It sucks a bit I'm afraid I think they may have cut some corners with ingredients and manufacturing as I'm sure it was much better in the 70s and 80s when I was a child and not allowed to eat them. Damn those hippy parents. I would trade my perfect teeth for a 1970s vovo anyday. And now that I've eaten all those bikkies I really don't feel like my leftover lentil soup for dinner.