Sunshine

Nice weather from top to bottom of NZ. This is the view from my dining room window. Just to the right of the washing line, tucked away behind the building is an apple tree that no one seems to love. I had noticed it earlier in the year but had forgotten it. Yesterday I rediscovered it with lots of apples on the ground. Apples are cooking on the stove as I write. I cooked some yesterday too and they are delicious.


In the living room-cum-studio paintings are propped against the walls. The sun is pouring through the windows and you can see half an easel ( see post below).

Friday is our life drawing class - we have been drawing on black paper (never my preference) for these last 4 weeks and yesterday we used oil sticks as well as charcoal. The model had a fabulous floppy straw hat.

Everyone gets a bargain

I bought an easel this morning from ... where everyone gets a bargain. The box was too big to fit in the car so I had to unpack it. Just as well, as I found that the box had an easel in, but the wrong one. Either the factory made a mistake or some struggling artist had taken the more expensive one away in a box with the less expansive bar code on it. So I exchanged my box and now I have it home and am puzzling about how to put the bits together. Where do the springs fit?

Yellow undercoat

For my painting project I decided to try different coloured undercoats. This is the beginning of my picture using a yellow undercoat.

Tints

Here is the same image painted using tints of red, blue and orange. Right side is cool, left side is warm. These are the sort of studies you always think you should do but never actually do. I am finding it a good way to learn to mix acrylics.

Blue, yellow and orange

Art school is much more time consuming than I expected but that's fine by me. Suddenly I have a reason to read art history, something I never did before.

I am now in the painting workshop and we are doing colour studies - as many as we can manage.
This is a study using two primary colours ( red and blue) and one secondary (orange).

Prison A-Frame

Another photo from the Dunedin Prison series. Both photography series are now online.

Dunedin Farmers Market

A Farmers Market is held in Dunedin every Saturday morning. Its a great place to buy organic vegetables, organic meat (which I have not seen in supermarkets here), German type bread, good Italian espresso coffee. Today there was a fellow selling beer made to German purity standards - so I got a pack of 4 bottles.



This piper was piping for pennies - I had not seen him there before. He sounded just like the piper in Frome.

Glorious Flowers

Are these not the most glorious flowers?
A birthday gift from Alison.

The historical Hocken

We are back at school today after a 2 weeks break, beavering away in the photo lab.

The Hocken Library is a specialist research library which collects items of historical and cultural interest to New Zealand. This photo is a montage - the arches are from the courthouse. I am sure there are lots of historical documents pertaining to the courts in the Hocken Library.

Koru: new life and peace

I bought a Koru in Greymouth and I discover that the Koru is not only a symbol of new life, but also of peace. Matthew Eru Wepa creates beautiful bone carvings and writes in his book 'Symbols of the Maori World' that the Koru symbol relates to man's effort to create a situation where peace and tranquillity are the end result.

Prison Fantasy

My photography project is morphing with time.

First I decided to photograph house doors and make a social commentary on Dunedin with door photos.

But Dunedin has some very fine public buildings and as I viewed them through the lens I decided to concentrate on public buildings instead.

Then I discovered that the building opposite the station, a lovely old building in red brick built in 1896, was the Dunedin Prison so I decided to concentrate on that. It has had a varied history - from women's prison to remand centre to male prison and as far as I can tell it still houses nearly 60 medium term prisoners. Not for long though, as a new prison is being built south of Dunedin.

Then we had a lecture on photo manipulation, and my photos are morphing still.

Here is one of my products. This one is called 'Prison Fantasy'. If you can guess what you see through the door, add a comment and I will let you know if you are right.

Brrrr

We are having a burst of winter with rain, hail and gales. Autumn leaves not hanging on hard will be blown off - probably all the way to Australia.

Early autumn in Otago

Otago is crisp and clear and the autumn colours are just starting to show. This is just east of Frankton.

This picture of the Remarkables with cloud hanging over them was drawn from the Cafe at Frankton near Queenstown.The Shotover River. Gravel has been excavated from the river bed leaving pools with steep banks . In the distance is the old bridge across the river, rebuilt recently as a walking track.

The Shotover River at Dawn

I just got back to Dunedin from Queenstown. This picture of the Shotover River was taken just after dawn this morning. Autumn colours are just starting to show. When I was there last it was high summer.

A picture frame mask

Our art class spends a day a week on conceptual projects. About a month ago the 50 first year students were divided into groups of 4 and told that each student should bring a concept from their own personal project and integrate it into a group project. No other instruction was given. Today group projects were presented and I was amazed at the variety and inventiveness. Videos, an audioscape, wearable art and performance art. My group did a performance piece with masks. My mask was a picture frame.

Now we have Easter and time to put into our individual projects. I am in the photography lab and have decided to work on photos of Dunedin buildings, one of the city's assets. Dunedin railway station is the most photographed building in NZ. Opposite it is the less showy Dunedin Prison.
I have decided to manipulate my prints to make a social commentary. This course has made me realise that social commentary/activism inspires me.

Kiri

Dunedin is a real surprise. I thought I would be hankering after the Australian Chamber Orchestra and the opera (well I am – it would be wonderful to have the ACO here) but I find there are lots of musical offering in Dunedin and it is all so accessible.

I have just seen the NZ Symphony Orchestra and Dame Kiri Te Kanawa. My ‘student’ seat was almost under the seats of the orchestra, but the advantage of seats like that is that you can see everything that happens and more.

The Town Hall was packed, even the upper-upper level, and Kiri got a great response. People are proud of her. She sang Mozart and Strauss and joined the NZSO under conductor Lawrence Renes to sing the end of Mahler's Symphony No 4 in G Major.

It must be a change touring with the NZSO after a career such as hers. Good on her, I say.

Copyright, Maori symbols and me

Today at art school we had a lecture on the Treaty of Waitangi, which included material about Maori symbols and their appropriation by commercial entities for advertising purposes. (Some of it was amusing - like the story of the American gaming company whose super-macho male hero was modelled on Maori but had female tattoos.)

During the discussion on copyright law and I couldn't help thinking that the issues are the same for the Maori as for the OSS community. Maori have a community ownership model and they are now thinking up ways to protect their inherited symbols while avoiding being squeezed into an inappropriate legal framework ie the European/American copyright/patent/legal system.

Most New Zealand symbols (apart from sheep!) are Maori symbols and this puts pakeha (non-Maori) New Zealanders like me in the odd position of identifying with symbols that are not inherited from my own ancestors but assimilated from the Maori culture around me. I find I identify quite strongly with these symbols while not really knowing enough about their significance. Coming back here to live here has given me an opportunity to address this identity issue and going to art school had provided the means, as there is a Maori liaison unit here that deals with these issues. Today I decided to integrate these copyright/identity issues into my term project. I am not sure how yet, but knowing that I want to do this makes me feel as if I have made progress.

FOSS ART

Well Free and Open Source Software friends - my series is done. I have finished my print project and put the FOSS Monoprints (monoprint = a print of which there is only one copy) online .

If you have ideas about licensing these images I would be pleased if you would add a comment. Which licence is best?

Our friend Oswald

Oswald the informed.
If you don't know Oswald - have a look here.
This monoprint is one of a series.

Take Share and Be Merry

One of your excellent suggestions (thank you Pascal Klein) for Open Source slogans was "Take, Share and Be Merry". My penguins insisted I use that, so here they are with their favorite words.
This is part of a series.