Quilt patterns from ‘Alias Grace’

Posted by hil

Lucy Tartan’s review of Margaret Atwood’s novel Alias Grace over at Sorrow at Sills Bend this morning prompted me to go hunting for my sketch of all the quilt square patterns that were used as chapter illustrations. I liked how the motif worked in with the story and themes of each chapter much better than I liked the book overall.

Quilt squares

I always intended to make a sketch of all the knots used similarly in E. Annie Proulx’s wonderful book, The Shipping News, but haven’t as yet.

I once heard an interview with Margaret Atwood; it must have been on the ABC. In it I think – and I might be mistaken, I’d like confirmation – she defined the novel as writing that always has the notion of a clock in it. Does anyone else remember that? I guess it implies that there is always a timeline and a narrative, but being me, I started thinking of clocks and watches and other time pieces!

While you are at Sorrow at Sills Bend, don’t miss the rats and hydatid posters!

Banana cake!

Posted by hil

This is my absolute favourite cake. I like it best when it’s completely cooled down, and without any icing. It’s also really good buttered like bread. It always has interesting little dark specks in it, though I have known people to make banana cake that doesn’t – but that’s just weird!

Cake

Banana Bread

2 cups SR flour
125 g (1/4 lb) butter or marg
2 eggs
3 or 4 ripe bananas (can be over-ripe, variable number)
1 cup sugar
1 level teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
pinch salt

Cream butter and sugar, add mashed bananas, beat well, add beaten eggs. Sift flour and salt and add to mixture with 1/4 cup water in which the soda has been dissolved, beat well. Bake in a moderate oven for 1 hour.

The picture is me aged 7, showing off the first cake I ever made. I still have the little apron with the African animals, as I was fond of it. But I don’t bake often these days, and I discarded aprons many years ago.

Oona Tikkaoja’s sculptures

Posted by hil

oona

I love the look of the sculptures that the Finnish visual artist Oona Tikkaoja makes, in particular her wolf creature (fourth pic along) and lizard robot killer. They are soft sculpture.

I also think her wooden horses are spectacular. They are beautifully jointed, and immediately conjure up thoughts of the mythical Trojan Horse. Take a look at the photo showing the construction, with all the clamps!

(via Extreme Craft)

Updated links 2015

Excuse me, this is the yellow queue…

Posted by hil

Four of us in turn in the queue at the supermarket last night had multiples of bright yellow things: a bottle of detergent and a stack of sponges, a bunch of soup packets, bottles of lemon juice, and my hand of bananas. I felt very colour co-ordinated! Wouldn’t it be funny if you had to queue by item colour?

To introduce the system you could have people swanning around in appropriately brightly-coloured body suits helping shoppers sort their shopping and find the right checkout lane. Banana Man, for instance, would show yellow. Should the aisles be stocked by item colour? And the checkouts and lanes be demarcated by item colour? I think so.

Banana Man

This Banana Man is by Hilda Boswell, taken from Enid Blyton’s Marigold Story, from the 50’s. In the story the golly decides to go to a fancy dress party in a real banana skin. He asks the baby doll to sew up the skin around him but after much giggling in a corner of the toy cupboard… she can’t do it because the cotton slips through the skin. So they call on the elf who puts zips in with a bit of magic. Golly wins the fancy dress prize, but then can’t undo the zip magic to get out. I always felt sorry for him.

I could do with a bit of zip magic making the big body suit I’m working on at present.

all-mother

Posted by hil

AllmotherThere are only 3 days left to catch all-mother, a play presented by barb barnett‘s serious theatre and eRTH Visual and Physical at the Street Theatre in Canberra. I’m seeing the last performance, and looking forward to it.

“all-mother combines rigging and harness technology with puppetry, movement and music to re-imagine and re-tell the Lilith myth. Though hundreds of years old, the story provides unexpected insights into modern issues of human rights, gender, sexuality and the abuse of power.”

In an article in The Canberra Review barb talks about some of the issues she is exploring in the piece.

‘Springing from the question who is the puppeteer and who is the puppet, Barnett says she wanted to examine issues surrounding control. “Lilith stood up for herself – she was a powerful, strong woman,” Barnett said. “I really wanted to examine what happens when you say no and what does it mean to say no? What punishment is there for standing up for yourself?”’

Barb gave a wonderful performance as Lute in ‘scuse me while I kiss the sky (by Adam Hadley) in Catherine Langman’s production Six Pack last year. The evening featured six short works commissioned by The Street Theatre and based around the theme of love, and was the most enjoyable night’s theatre. The other performance that really struck me was that of Aiden Emanuel, the young mechanic in Carburettor (by Christos Tsiolkas).

Updated links 2015

Shaun Tan’s website and Aquasapiens

Posted by hil

aqua51

Shaun Tan now has his own website. It looks relatively new. It’s great to see a number of illustrations under each picture book listing, and read his thoughtful and friendly commentary. I was also delighted to see some images from the puppetry-based theatre production of The Red Tree, which was produced as part of the Queensland Performing Arts Centre’s ‘Out of the Box’ festival for children in 2004. I had heard about this wonderful fish puppet on the grapevine. There are also some in-theatre pictures of some of our puppets for Jigsaw Theatre’s production of The Lost Thing.

One project that was unknown to me before, is Aquasapiens. Tan was commissioned by Spare Parts Puppet Theatre in Fremantle, WA, to design large-scale puppets for a street theatre event as part of the 2005 Perth International Arts Festival. The director was Philip Mitchell, the puppet maker Jiri Zmitko and sound designer/composer Lee Buddle. These creatures are fabulous! Here are drawings of the Yellow Naut‘ and ‘Shrimpy’. I also love this.

Aquasapiens is going to be part of the Adelaide Fringe in February and March, and is available to perform at schools from February 27 to March 10.

Apparently Spare Parts will also be adapting another of Tan’s books, The Arrival, which is about migration and is due to be published in April.

updated links 2015