iNana2.0

Months of R&D has resulted in the release of iNana2.0. Let's hope it lasts longer than the ill-famed snack of a similar name since disapproval was expressed at the highest levels .

CNC (computer numerical control) routing is scary new technology for a neo-luddite to be messing around with but I was lucky to have a spirit guide into this strange twilight world in the form of bubble-mage, Russell Anderson and the sexy CNC machine that he built. It just merrily zooms around tracing out the shapes with a drill-like bit while you watch closely to make sure it doesn't go beserk. It certainly beats cutting out the shapes with a jewellers saw! And the time I save on cleaning up the edges can be spent ingratiating myself with the Nana Mouskouri fan club. The shapes (3 different styles of Nana eyewear representing the length and breadth of her career) still get pressed onto 4 different kinds of glass (sparkle, Japanese floret, tarando and starburst) and all the other bits are handmade so don't think I have completely gone to the darkside. I'm just dipping my toes in.A reworking of my nana pins, these nifty summer accessories now sport new slimline stainless steel pins and reinforced bridge. We cut out my latest Nana 100%s from the White Rose of Athens (sung in German) LP. Four of these 12 (Edition No. 14) are already heading off to Athens for a customer over there who has dined with Nana herself at a restaurant in the nations capital! It gives me the shivers just thinking about it.

I've also make snack size versions of the Nana 100% brooches. I will have them all at Brisbane Finders Keepers market although if you want to buy one via mail just drop me a line and you can make your selection.

Foaming Nanas

It will be no great surprise to many of you that Nana and I have become very close over the last year. Very close indeed. Something which has meant that she has really been able to open up to me, and visa versa.

In one of our recent conversations she mentioned a very personal problem she has been experiencing. It concerns her trademark glasses.

They have begun to foam. Yes, foam.

You can see the transition from the mid to late stages as the virus makes it increasingly difficult for Nana to see. The ravages of this illness are set to take their toll on Nana, who has sold more records than Celine Dion and Madonna combined, but we pray that it will not affect her forthcoming show at London's Royal Albert Hall.

We cannot explain why it has been happening and it is something that has Europe's finest pathologists baffled and scared. Could we be experiencing the beginnings new viral pandemic? Fortunately it has not jumped from Nana into the general population but as we know, with viruses it is only a matter of time before the mutations cause this devastating leap to occur.Seriously though, before you make the switch to contact lenses, these new works do come with a warning for members of the Nana Mouskouri fanclub: MAY CONTAIN TRACES OF NANA. They are made from old vinyl records and were a few experiements from my NANA range of pins that got a little overcooked. Recycled for the Fabulous Foam exhibition. Each has a certificate of authenticity signed by the artist herself.

Christmas With Nana Mouskouri

I tell you, it broke my wrecker heart. Listening to this beautiful LP record of Nana's Xmas songs in the knowledge I was about to put it to the blade. Big fat tears rolled down my cheeks as Schubert's Ave Maria began to play. It was definitely not your usual Xmas musak I can tell you. Very light on the falalalala-ing. Heavy on the love, compassion, longing. Which is why I have decided to share it with the world in a wearable format. For only $50 you can own your very own little piece of it, quite literally. Go to my purchasing page and you will understand.

There are 12 brooches in this very limited edition, each one is named after one of the 12 memorable tracks on the album and each is sold with a certificate of authenticity containing a fragment of the original record sleeve.

And if you do want to buy the original uncut version you can get it on cd it here. I think I may have to succumb.

Thanks to Felicity of Mullumbimby who found this very magical record in an op shop down there.

Glasses ID'd

I learned all about the different glass patterns that I use when I recently visited my glass guru with a bag of little swatches for him to identify. He obviously had more important things to do and a business to run but I insisted that he give me his attention as I tried to explain the Nana project.

Knowing the names of the patterns is going to help classify the different textures I use in Nana Glasses and be a valuable marketing tool for me. Soon I will be releasing "Sparkle Nana", and "Medium Hammered Nana" on an unsuspecting marketplace. It would have been nice to do this releasing thing on Friday 13th Oct (Nana's 72nd b-day- shivers went up my spine as I was BORN in 1972!) but I couldn't get my packaging sorted out in time. In this day and age who would have thought it would be so difficult to get recycled cardboard boxes made? And with Mr Accordian on the computer 24-7 making his WOFO (Wayne's Orchestra of Found Objects) how does one find the time to put stuff for sale online, fiddle with photoshop and dreamweaver and deal with the clamouring of customers DESPERATE to own some Rebecca Ward jewellery!? Well, most of that is true.

I felt a bit bad buying the last perfect piece of antique blue florentine to break up into jewellery but it tones so well with Bombay sapphire and I wouldn't want it to end up in someone's horrible suburban leadlighting project so I probably did the right thing.

IkeNana

East meets west.

Effluenced by my guru, Kath Day-Knight and her absurdist piece, "Waiting for Telstra" made from a Yeppoon pineapple and chopsticks.

What's yellow and sings?

Flash Trash

Flash Trash officially opens Sunday 17 September at Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery and continues until 22 October 2006. I have made new work from old vinyl records collected from Toowoomba Dump and mentioned this work before on my blog here and here. Strangely enough it is through my blog that the idea grew when I followed one of those white rabbits down a hole!

Nana, Nana, Nana is made from 15 old vinyl records found at the Toowoomba Dump Lifeline store and zeros in on one of them- the ‘Delightful Nana Mouskouri’. I used this one Nana LP to reflect on the transience of technology, fame, and culture that once held value but are discarded and forgotten by the each new generation. I was influenced by the buried headstone fragments that I found at the dump, black polished granite memento mori poking from the compacted dirt! The similar blackness of the vinyl records is mournful, its message lost especially after I have worked it. We are reminded that our daily competitive struggles for status, fame and recognition are insignificant in the vastness of time and meaningless in the face of imminent death after which we are dust, our achievements forgotten. This is something that was bought home to me in the books of Alain de Botton who suggested that the way that Romans and Victorians used reminders of death and time as techniques to moderate Status Anxiety could be useful for some of us in our daily lives. I took a lighthearted approach though with this Nana project.

Nana 1. The records that I found were most likely taken to the dump by relatives of a recently deceased person.Perhaps a Grandmother- Nana or a Granny. I thought about the cathartic practice of frisbeeing old records at the dump. Getting rid of the clutter and material possessions of the past generation. Though these records had not been frisbeed. They were in good condition in their original sleeves. Each was respectfully listened to by me prior to destruction and a few were even salvaged.

Nana 2. Nana Beads. One of the records was of Nana Mouskouri who was my 1^st pop culture idol. At the age of 3 I loved to dress in my long string of large wooden beads that my own Granny helped me to make and dance to a record pretending that I was Nana. So this is personal nostalgia in making the beads as long as the floor length beads that I wore long ago. Nana Beads were made by hand sawing circles of vinyl Nana + other records and heating them in the oven on glass sheets at various temperature and various lengths of time to create the different effects. Even though I cut perfect circles and filed and sanded them all neatly, they all distorted in different ways. Each record is different- has a different melting point and reacts differently to the heat. So the process was quite organic and interesting. Some shrink and thicken up more than others. I was interested in making them pod-like as if they contain a youthfulness and range of possibilities that is part of my nostalgia when imagining being 3 years old.Nana Beads is what we call the cheap plastic beads as often worn by senior women- the thread in them is glued to the bead itself- Liana Kabel and Mark Vaarwerk have both used them creatively in their innovative plastic jewellery. I used this idea as wordplay for the construction of the work which has more of an organic look than mass produced plastic bead look to it. I was also interested in Art Deco plastic jewellery of and have adopted some of these design ideas with the red and black colours and the style of catch.

Nana 3. The thick black-rimmed rectangular trademark glasses of Mouskouri. I have heat-imprinted different heritage glass patterns on the sawn out shapes of Nana’s glasses. Another wordplay pun here but also referencing the transience of human objects through the old decorative coloured glass which, like vinyl records is no longer manufactured on the same scale or in the case of the glass, to the same quality as in the past. Initially disappointed that I did not find any heritage glass at the Toowoomba dump to work with, I was pleased to find a way to use it in my Flash Trash work.The pins are made from brass and melted skim milk bottle tops imprinted with the decorative glass patterns.I have made 50 frames of different sizes to represent next year’s 50 anniversary of Nana’s professional career.

Nana Mouse

Yippee I finally finished my Nana Nana Nana work and handed it in last week. I was so relieved to be taking a break from vinyl fumes, I forgot to photograph some of the final pieces but here are some Nana Glasses and Nana's Nana Beads made from same The Delightful Nana Mouskouri record that has been causing all sorts of problems at MoB Workspace.

Tex, the large ginger from next door was very unhelpful though entertaining during the ordeal. He is pictured reclining on top of the sharp brass wire pins I was preparing for the 50 brooches.

The stuff on my cat website has got it all wrong in forcing cats to have stuff put on them. What is it with cats that they always have to sit on what you are making, reading, paying attention to? If televisions were a horizontal surface, I'm sorry to say that our cat would be permanently attached to it.

I wonder if Nana Mousekouri likes cats. Maybe she prefers mice.

Looking forward to hitting the bottle again now:

Duelling Jewellers

Okay, I must say that last week at MoB Workspace, Miss Liana aka Plastic Girl and we had a most dreadfully horrible thing happen to us both. I finally feel like I'm ready to talk about it.

At all started on a bright sunny morning in the studio when we eagerly pounced on the city newspaper, hoping that our press release promoting our web launch would have had some sort of an effect. Well, there was jewellery news alright. Indeedee doo- an article entitled "Handcrafted with brains and beauty" all about a certain Rebecca (Mitchell) but no mention of our own fabulous selves! OUTrageous. The fact that she is a former international model and certainly makes a pretty picture really got our female danders up.

After all, neither of us are strangers to the arts of female beauty and poise: Liana was once the belly dancing champion of Australia (or the universe) and I did 2 years hard graft at the Joh Bijelke-Peterson School of Physical Culture (Queensland's answer to Hitler Youth- involved alot of marching, shining faces and hair scraped back in bouffant buns, what were my parents thinking?).
But what really was so terribly hurtful were Rebecca-former-international-model-mother-of-2's words: "our collection employs only natural products - never glass or plastic - in its creation." Now, I could say that using gemstone beads sourced from "exotic locations in Turkey, Asia and the Middle East and the vast islands of the Pacific" does not maketh a personally handcrafted piece of jewellery and that until you diamond drill through hundreds of beach pebbles, thousands of pieces of tumbled glass and melt and shape millions of bits of plastic, you don't really know the meaning of the term 'handcrafted', but no, I won't say that. Because that would be petty.

So I spent the weekend in the kitchen fuming in the fumes, melting my way through a stack of vinyl records and milk bottle tops on my new Art Wrecko jewellery inspired by Nana Mouskouri for Flash Trash. Sneak peek:Info about our web launch:

Web Launch: Museum of Brisbane Jewellers Now Online
Venue: Craft Queensland
Dates: Thursday 24 August – Wednesday 20 September 2006 inclusive

Contemporary jewellers Liana Kabel and Rebecca Ward of Museum of Brisbane Workspace have combined forces to launch their websites in 2006. www.lianakabel.com and www.rebeccawardjewellery.com are the dynamic portals to two very different and creative worlds. A new body of work from each jeweller will be on view at CQ Store window to highlight the occasion.

Competitions to win original jewellery will be launched from www.lianakabel.com and www.rebeccawardjewellery.com starting 24 August

Nana Challenge

Can you spot the Impostor Nana in the 51 Nana Mouskouris (click image to enlarge)? Well there is it least one imposter in this collaged google image search.

My top secret Flash Trash work made from old vinyl records centres around the fact that 2007 will be the 50th anniversary of Nana Mouskouri's professional career. 50 years and she's never converted to contact lenses or a side parting. You've gotta admire that. Harry Belafonte tired to bully her in the '60s not to wear glasses on stage but she dug her clunky heels in. She made glasses cool. Geeky before her time, she paved the way for all of us short sighted dorks.
She was my first role model as I have said before and although my first glasses at age 14 were heavily influenced by my John Lennon period, the second pair were pure Nana. The sales assistant informed me at the time that they would remain in fashion for at least 18mths. This surprised me as I was unaware that they were currently in fashion and I intended to wear them for at least 10 years like my previous frames! Unfortunately though, the huge weight of the large glass lenses and the onset of a permanent headache meant that my 3rd and current pair are rather more conservative. However, innovations in lightweight plastic lenses may mean that my fourth pair, to be chosen very shortly due to more to vanity than failing eyesight, may well go back to my Nana roots.
You can be assured that I will never, never succumb to contact lenses, which are surely the work of the devil and not to be trusted by us neo-luddites.

Uncanny Nana

My recent excursion to Toowoomba Dump not only exposed me to the different cultural practices and customs of the Toowoombonian peoples, but also catapaulted me back to my early childhood. All it took was the discovery of an LP record entitled 'the delightful nana mouskouri'. I was instantly transported back to my early years when, to unwind after a long day spent toiling in my father's carrot fields, I would don my long string of wooden beads and dance, dance, dance away to Nana Mouskouri, my rock idol. For a moment then in those grim years of survival in New Zealand's bleak south island, I WAS Nana Mouskouri. Maybe I still am.

My Spiritual Homeland: the Toowoomba Dump

Last week I spent an exhilarating day amongst the inert industrial waste at Toowoomba Dump, 200km west of Brisbane. Why, you might ask? Well I had the great fortune to be one of the 14 Flash Trash artists to be selected for this fun outing and the subsequent challenge of creating artworks from our findings. And boy did i find some stuff. Lots.

Firstly, we saw this vermillion elephant. Driving along the Warrego Highway is not for the faint-hearted. They must be so far inland that the differences between a fish and an elephant are no longer important.

Do not stop the car.

Do not try the seafood.

We got to the inert waste facility which was no garden of eden but not too stinky either. I found a few odds and sods and then I saw this bit of polished granite sticking out of the compacted soil. I kicked myself for not bringing a spade but managed to dig out a bit of it to reveal a gravestone with names and dates 1902-1977. Loved and Remembered. Yeah right...

A healthy reminder of mortality and our insignificance!

And another one: 'God's Great'.
God is Great? Not quite. 'God's greatest gift:rememberance'. hmmm.

Finally selected some vinyl at the Lifeline dump store. Can't wait to get my saw into 'em.

We rolled back down the range, windows wide open to combat the deadly fumes coming from the back where something toxic we'd collected was outgassing with avengance. We stoped for toasted cheese onion and tomato sarnies at the 'Cruise Inn', bottom of the range. Yumm. Pure happiness. I felt renewed.