This Is Just to Say...

Sorry, my roommate left me a note this morning that reminded me of a note that Erin left me last year when she tool some juice. I just realized I get to live with people that reference high literature in their counter top notes, yay!

I baked cookies yesterday because I was bored and didn't feel like drawing, but it turned from a relaxing exercise into a battle of wills between me and inanimate confectionery creations...My roommates don't keep basic items on hand like whisks, cookie sheets, or mixing bowls. (I shudder to imagine what Mrs. Shlinker would think of our lack of pastry brushes, but I digress) the worst part was beating cold butter together with sugar, using a fork, which i don't think i really accomplished in the end anyway, but it all worked out. A few weeks ago I broke down and bought mixing bowls; this was a weak moment as i am trying not to stock up a kitchen with items I will only be using for the next 8 weeks.

That's right kids, I only have 8 weeks left and I have YET to finish a painting. Also, I just learned that school breaks here are 'working breaks' i.e. you are expected to accomplish things during them. Ummm, what if people want to go on holiday and cannot bring the bare essentials of painting?

ANYWAY, the cookies. I got the recipe off of 101cookbooks.com, which has always served me well in the past, except for the thin mints recipe, but one out of many many successes. And they were amazing! They edges are crispy and caramelized, the middles soft, and there are lots of chocolate chips; I had to bring them into my studio so I wouldn't eat them all. Try them, I ended up using almonds instead of pecans, using some wholemeal flour instead of white (I ran out), and adding an extra egg because the dough wouldn't stick together (don't you love it when people say they love a recipe and then list how they completely changed it?) but my studio-mates decided they were the best biscuits they had ever had. That one still throws me, biscuits are fluffy and buttery and go well with gravy and fried chicken--they do not have chocolate chips.

In other news, I went out last evening to celebrate my Scottish friend's 30th birthday. We went to a great restaurant, then a fancy bar (they had these drinks with muddled orange, gin, campari, passionfruit, and cranberry juice--Nun's Nasty. Very girly and very tasty!) then a dive bar where we watched Australian rules football, then an irish pub where we danced to old rock/blues songs most of which i knew the words to. I forgot how much fun dancing to rock music is! Then we went to a club called the Back Alley Disco (I now have a blacklight stamp that says BAD to prove it)

Clubbing in Australia is very interesting because a lot of guys seem to go there just to dance, which is nice. They all do this weird dance resembling something called the Melbourne shuffle: http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZPaMdxC6CQI. This video is a bit more intense than what i saw, but I was not in Melbourne, and the video DOES have a strobe light effect about half way through so that you feel like you get the full club experience.

The two Scottish women came over to my place this afternoon for lunch and both of the poor things were very hungover and couldn't do the eggs benedict justice, but I loved it. (probably my top breakfast food, but only if the eggs are poached in tiny teacups) And Elaine and I decided to go see a movie tonight instead of go out again. We saw Grindhouse, which I missed when it was out in the states, but everything is incredibly delayed here so i got to see it on the bog screen. It was a reference to the old drive in movie double features, complete with bad previews and a fake intermission.

I actually enjoyed the experience a lot although I know many of you in my audience hate Quentin Tarantino stuff. The two films shown were "Planet Terror" by Robert Rodriguez and "Death Proof" by Quentin Tarantino. All I can say is, they went for the cheesy action flicks and they went full out. If you go into them with the same mentality that you would Snakes on a Plane or the upcoming film Wanted you will enjoy them a lot because they are so over the top. A girl has a machine gun for a leg. Seriously. Planet Terror was a horror flick, which should not have surprised me, in retrospect, but I hadn't thought about it and you all know my dislike for horror films on account of my dislike of being scared and my extremely jumpy nature. Death Proof was about a stunt driver serial killer (Kurt Russel) and it was awesome! It had such a good car chase scene and reminded me of the old North by Northwest and Psycho movies.

Anyways, they are very graphic, very cheesy, and thoroughly enjoyable. The scripts are ridiculous though, soooo apparent written dialogue. But anyway, as a result of those movies, which were, together about 3 1/2 hours long, I got so keyed up I have had to write a blog post to settle down before sleep and suppress the urge to drive cars really fast and fight off a zombie horde. The only time i have had more adrenaline this week was dancing at the club and when I thought I might have to change my plane ticket at a thousand dollar loss, whew that was close. (Don't worry Courtney, I am still flying out of here on the 10th as planned, for about two hours on friday the art department tried to give me a stress test)

I'm planning on taking photos of my works in progress tomorrow so you guys can tell me what you think! That post should be up in the next day or two. Then I get a much needed possibly edgy haircut that I can only hope is not a mullet on Tuesday. Then I am off for Melbourne on Wednesday for my fall holiday, yay!

P.S. Some of you might have noticed some typos in my blog over the course of its existence--they are there to keep you on your toes.

Tumut, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Field Trip

On the desolate barren dry road again...just can't wait to get on the....

For those of you who didn’t know, I had another field trip to Tumut from Wednesday to Sunday this week and have been bust since the weekend. It has been a while since I posted, so I believe I have a bit to catch you all up on.

Last Friday, all of the people in my studio were really unmotivated and as a result I was even less motivated than usual. I spent most of the day gessoing canvas that I put together all by myself, which I was very proud of. After you put together the frame, however, you have to seal the canvas to protect it using rabbit skin glue. Yes, it is made from Rabbits, and it smells…like rabbits. After this, you have to gesso the canvas to get a decent painting surface. Needless to say, I think I will be doing the rest of my works in paper for ease of shipping and because of the long involved process which one day might be economical and convenient but right now is just much less interesting that everything else I could be doing.

Anyway, a girl in my studio and one of her friends from the textile department were going to a pub called The Pheonix, which is a pretty hilarious dive bar where lots of art kids hang out. They invited me and I gladly left, forgetting to even wash my brush. We ended up going to her house to change from our art clothes and she dressed us all up in her clothes. This is only significant because she has two closets and lots of couch space devoted to her collection of vintage dresses, and, get this, she is my size!

In moments I was dressed in a black and white checked dress, a purple 20’s hat, and some awesome black boots which she gave to me as a gift because they were to small on her! She was in a short ivory satin wedding dress with boots and a knit hat and the textile girl was in a festive dress, ochre polka dotted sweater, and red beret. Needless to say we got many looks on the bus.

I thought that the reaction would be puzzled and negative, but actually everyone loved us. Several people complimented my hat and asked about the occasion, and the bartenders served us almost as soon as we walked up to the bar, yelling ‘hey, girls in the hats’ and fighting over serving us. We are thinking of instituting a weekly hat night, as I have never been so well treated in a bar before.

Anyway, that night pretty much set the tone for the weekend and I got very little actual work done. Although I DID learn to make udon noodles, so fun!

Flour + Salt +Water
You knead them by walking around on dough covered in plastic...need I say more?

I gave a presentation on Frans Hals on Tuesday for my art theory class and then worked a bit before going home. I did freak out a little about my lack of work to show the professors, but for the first time ever my teachers do not care what I do at all! I have been doubly worrying because I keep waiting for them to suddenly crack down, but now I am starting to relax more. Hmmm maybe that's what they're waiting for...

I went to bed early on Tuesday with the plan of waking early in the morning to pack, but I slept in and woke about 2 minutes before my friend came to pick me up for the trip. Long story short, I sent her around to pick up someone else and packed for a five-day art trip in about twenty minutes, leaving the house in the sweats and shirt I slept in.

The drive was full of stops and we were thirty minutes late to the campsite, a boys summer camp we had rented out. Thursday we went in to the Tumut charity shop where I get a pair of high rise jeans, as I had no clean ones because my washing machine and dishwasher had been taken into the shop for repair on Saturday and still had not returned by Wednesday morning. (I had to hand wash several articles of clothing for the trip, all I can say is the 50’s were the ‘age of innocence’ because they had no time to get into any trouble) Then we went hiking up in the national park and laid in the sun by the Goobragandra River. (the names for things here are so cool)

Friday a group of people went into Brungle, an Aboriginal Mission (similar to a reservation) and we got a tour from a park ranger and aboriginal heritage guy. Then I interviewed a woman for a portrait series I’m working on. She seemed fine with posing, but very skeptical as to her getting anything out of it, I got the impression that lots of white people had asked to take pictures of aborigines as curiosities so I am hoping that she will trust me more later into the project. Working with the aborigines here has made me even more sensitive to the problems we still have in the states with treatment of the Native Americans (which I never hear about, they don’t have as high of a political spotlight as here in Australia) and African Americans. Someone did a presentation on two artists from Los Angeles doing art on racism in America, which was interesting because people don’t know much about it overseas. The whole question period the other American student and I were trying to avoid being asked questions about the US, luckily they didn’t think to ask us.

Then the three ‘youngins’ myself, and two other girls went up to a dam to sketch and explore. Talbingo, the town by the dam, was the home of a woman suffrage advocate and an author, Miles Franklin, but the reservoir created by the dam has completely covered her house with water. The dam is a huge problem because it causes environmental issues, but it is a green source of energy….

My painting of all of the power lines feeding into the power station;
I strategically picked a spot in full sun for maximum sunburn potential

The trip was uneventful and the watercolor I did unremarkable, but we did see kangaroos! And a flock of Emu in the middle of the road, and, sadly, wombat road kill. And tons and tons of cockatoos.

On Saturday I woke up at 6 am to go flying in a microlight aircraft. For you laymen (like me) it is basically a trike with a hang gliding apparatus above it. I had reservations at first, but the guy flying us apparently is the best in the business (people come from Sydney to learn, and he landed on the dam back no his glory days) Anyway, it was awesome! It definitely made me want to learn to hang glide, except for the whole walking off of a cliff thing. It was sooo fun.

My other car is a...

There was lots of mist because of the huge change in temp lately (for the colder)
but it worked out prettily

I went with one other guy, and after our flights we went exploring and photographing. He’s this really shy academic guy who grew up in a fishing community in Sri Lanka, then went to university in the states. His first introduction to the US was, get this, Davidson college in the south. Then he went to duke, then Berkeley. He does bird watching and had lots of good advice about getting international scholarships for post grad education. We’re going bird watching next week, hopefully in the evening cause I don’t know how many more early mornings I can do.

He has seen an albino kangaroo nearby in his recent wildlife excursions. apparently there was another bloke who also saw it but no one believes him and it has become a sort of joke in the community. So when we saw this sign and told the guy in the museum we knew someone who had seen one, well we might has well have claimed to have seen elvis or something.



I went into town and painted a watercolor from the morning until about 3:30, I was hoping to scope out people for my portrait series more than get a decent painting. I got a couple of interested people and some teenagers who said my painting “wasn’t TOO bad.” Next time I will go earlier in the morning because everyone is on the main street on Saturday morning, but it is deserted by noon. And also, if you were wondering, buildings are SO hard to paint in watercolors.

Part of the scene I attempted to paint. Painting in public allows everyone to criticize your work to your face.
Sometimes it can be interesting and sometimes a little less than pleasant.
Especially if you are struggling with it, but most people were nice.

That afternoon we went to some ruins of an old gold mining facility, which was cool, until a cattle dog attempted to ‘herd’ us, which entailed a lot of growling and barking and near heel nipping. He was big and muscular, but there was a little fluffball of a white dog egging him on. Finally my Scottish friend yelled at it and it left. (Her cursing is awesome because they tend to string words together, and they sound so proper)

Anyway, there’s not much else to report, it was one of those experiences without a whole lot of comment. I am allergic to the Australian Bush, but not Australian planned cities. Being a person who doesn’t normally suffer from allergies I never really sympathized before but wow they are pretty bad. Australian slang is all very cutsey, I heard a grown man say that he was pulling over to ‘take some pic-ys’ (pictures). I also saw the milkyway for the first time in a long time; I’m planning on doing a whole lot more hiking in the next year as I am realizing how much I miss it!

And, from XKCD, here is your moment of zen: