Earth Mama

Watercolour pencil in VAPD, A4 size

Inspired by the IMT prompt: "Green". There's a little bit of glare from the scanner.

I know, strange interpretation.

And a strange prompt, actually. All these events in regards to the environment have been popping up in my life lately, and all within a period of less than five days:

Cleaning my room (well, that was a conscious decision) and consequently filling garbage bag after garbage bag with paper for recycling; a random entry for the Waste As Art competition through the mail, and then IMT has a prompt that in honour of Earth Day that will be occuring this week (April 22). I honestly never knew it was going to be Earth Day this coming Wednesday, which is why I am quite freaked out.

I wonder what the world has in store for me with all these hints.

Art News

More work in progress...

For a couple of weeks now I have been aware of something, but not blogged it. I just honestly haven't gotten around to it.

Next Monday & Tuesday I will be attending a workshop at the Newcastle Region Art Gallery (our local art gallery) - appropriately dubbed 'Art Castle' - at which I will create art works individually and collaboratively with the other selected senior high school students within the group. I had to submit a written application and attach a reference from my art teacher, as this is a "scholarship" (ie: a charity organisation - The Smith Family - has paid for our gallery time and the materials we utilise, in addition to the catering and any travel expenses we may come across).

I was lucky enough to be accepted to attend this workshop, as was another girl in my art class. At the end of the two-day period, we will hold a mini exhibition, where our families and friends will be invited to see. I had to sign a release form type thing. The Smith Family will be documenting our work through photographs and other media for their own purposes. That's a little scary. It's very, very, very exciting to have my work "shown". I will take photos of my artwork on these days, and of course photograph our "exhibition".

Another arts-related event I will be taking part in will be the Hunter Region "Waste As Art" 2009 competition, run by the Hunter Waste Education Group (HWEG). Yesterday, quite coincidentally as I'd just finished my big clean-up, I randomly received a letter addressed to me which contained an entry form for the competition. Strange, I thought. But then I thought about it some more... and am developing my concepts.

Waste As Art encourages artists of all ages within our community to create works using recyclable materials and found objects (though not organic waste materials such as animal or plant parts, as stated in the competition guidelines). It is free to enter the competition and all artworks submitted are exhibited. First place and runner-up money prizes are awarded in each of the competition's categories, in addition to "People's Choice" and "Judges' Highly Commended" awards, which also present a reasonable amount of cash. Again, I would have to sign a release form.

I'd really like to take part in Waste As Art, as I am with Art Castle, as it allows me to experience the art world more thoroughly - through both contributing to an exhibition and being amongst peers.

Other than all this I am still doing what I usually do. Except it is the school holidays! So I have alot more time to do what I usually do, and even more. I am also taking alot more photos, mainly influenced by my new use of flickr. I need to buy art supplies but.

More graphites and a couple more VAPDs will do nicely, but I'll have to purchase larger diaries than what I usually buy. For home-use I generally buy A4 sized diaries, but at school I have been using 11 " x 12 " - or whatever that funny inbetween size is - for the past 2 years. So, as a result I've become rather accustomed to using a larger scale VAPD and really hate it when I have to down-size. That's probably the reason why I have been using so many pages in my school diary. Seriously, I only have half a dozen pages left and as such I have almost completed this VAPD in 1 term. In the past I have never finished a school diary within one term, let alone one full year!

Look out, tacky table!

Time for a makeover!

A 'quick' post first, just before I get into the nitty gritty of what I'm getting up to with art.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I was very motivated to clean my room and thus completed a two-day intensive clean-out, disposing of fripperies and other junk. Basically, being quite a lazy young lady, and not having had a decent cleanout in quite a while my room was cluttered. Cluttered, cluttered, cluttered. But that was just the beginning.

I realised that in order for my room to keep clean and organised, I was required to dutifully discard of a lot of crap. From old school books that were no longer relevant to my current studies and nonsense school assignments from year six (I'm currently in year 11), to letters and clothes and other everyday items such as photoframes that I no longer used. Leather shoes was a biggie. I finally 'threw out' all my leather shoes after I had them sitting there, decaying under my bed as my veganism thrived almost a year now.

I didn't 'throw' them out really, but donated them to an op shop (thrift store), along with 2 garbage bags of clothing, accessories and novels in addition to the box full of a decent amount of leather and non-leather shoes. I recycled ALOT of paper and cardboard as well. I weighed them, aswell. The combined total of 2 garbage bags and 2 smaller shopping bags worth of paper-waste weighed in at just a little over 21kg (that's 46.3 lb for imperial system-ers).

For all my efforts my mum has promised me new furniture, as I've never really had decent, "goes-well-together" stuff, let alone anything that matches. I've had the same bedside drawers and chest since I was a baby. I'm 16 next month. Though I do acknowledge I'm lucky to even have what I do have.

This weekend we're going out to Domayne, and Freedom, and other furniture stores to just take a look around and what's currently "in". I'd like to down-grade to a king-single bed now too, as I've got no space whatsoever in my bedroom as my queen bed totally dominates all floor space. I'll be getting rid of an old computer that's no longer used on my desk, and then getting rid of that desk to so as I can have a nicer table-top to work on in my own room. A desk with drawers. I know it sounds kind of spoilt and totally consumerist, but I think it's fair.

BUT! I am doing something quite non-consumerist... I am "recycling" something else...

Ta-dah!

In the process of all that cleaning, I managed to clear the surface of this miniature op-shop-sourced, knee-high, cheap, wooden "coffee-table" - which wasn't actually used for that purpose - and realised just how tacky it was. My mum had let me use it when we moved house five years ago as I didn't have much furniture in my room.

This table-top gives the impression of a corkboard rather than a smooth surface.

This will be my first ever project of this kind: redecorating an old, nasty used piece of furniture.

In these photos I think you can see that it is rather daggy, but I think it has some potential to be quite beautiful. I rather like the shape and form of its legs, and this table truly has served me well. It deserves a new lease on life.