i can't believe i did that

Burnt offerings!

I have gathered, with mixed feelings, the pathetic little feijoas that fall onto the road near my house. It's probably not the tree's fault that they are such poor specimens, it grows valiently between concrete and asphalt. It's a miracle that it produces at all.

Today I sat and lovingly peeled the wee things, thinking of my mother who, every year, bottled buckets full of them for us. I put them on to cook.

I went to the computer to check for an important email.

Then I remembered a phonecall I needed to make.

Now I am eating brown, sticky, caramelised feijoas...

CyNICal, will I be forgiven?

Today I am grateful for sticky brown where it could have been crusty black.

boundaries of space and time

I have been listening to John Cleese talking about creativity. Thanks T, Webcomics and Youtube. I have tried to listen to it four times now, but keep being interrupted or distracted. Twice however, the interruptions have come right at the point where he is emphasising the need to have boundaries of space and of time.

Earlier today I read that when we are young one of the words we use most frequently is "No". As we get older we find it harder and harder to say. I didn't ever manage to say "Yes, I will do XYZ for you. But I also need to do ABC, DEF, GHI and JKL in that time. Which one to you think I should cancel so that I can do this for you?"

To create I need tranquility. Lately I have found that to paint even straight lines well and happily I need a peaceful workplace. When I am in that tranquil place my works grow with gentle layer upon layer. Just occasionally I like to work with more energetic input, responding rapidly to each brush stroke. But if I had to choose only one way of working, it is the quiet reflective way that suits me best.

I may be working hard at the moment, but I am not being particularly creative. It is time for more "stuff management"...

Today I am grateful for helping hands.

the list

Reluctantly I accept that I wont be harvesting my olives this week. The weather has packed it in and pickers are hard to find. A local will do the work, for a half share of the oil, but the olives wont be picked for another ten days or so. I was becoming quite possesive about the crop and the process, so I have had to let go. Big sigh. Meanwhile I am hoping that we (neighbours and I) might do the pickling olives on Sunday.

On a brighter note, work is coming along nicely in the palazza. I have outlined the panels and doors (photos tomorrow maybe) and it is beginning to look a little more finished. Today every time I turned around someone had borrowed my ladder, and the light went out several times as electricians worked upstairs. But at the end of the day I had painted many metres of geometrical design and it felt like progress!

Pickle is asleep under my bed, keen to behave now the cold is coming. Chewing my wrist brace was not a good idea however; she was severely reprimanded, and is now safely away from my "Noh! Noh! Noh!" Zacchi has decided that Pickle is smelling very interesting. Separate dorms time!

So, olives are off the list, Pickle is at the top of it now, and the other jobs are being ticked off slowly but steadily.

Today I am grateful for our wonderful bread, baked in a wood-fired oven.

clutter queen

To my great delight I read that "big picture people" are notoriously messy. At last I have an excuse! It is not so many days ago that my computer desk was ordered, tidy, not an unnecessary thing on it.

Today...

Hair tie
Newsweek magazine
Camera
Reading glasses
Moisturiser
Wristwatch
Owl shaped earrings
Clothespeg (no, I have no idea!)
Hand cream
Dictionary (maybe that is essential)
Mosquito spray (WAS essential, not so much now)
Wheat bag
Massage oil
Tissues
Business card holder
Headphones
History book in Italian (hence dictionary?)
Old Ryanair ticket
and of course the things that should be there as well :-)

and under the desk: jandals, running shoes, house shoes, stapler and hole punch (so that's what crashed!)

The crazy thing is that I really LOVE it when my house is tidy, I LIKE an ordered work space. There just always seems to be something more important to do...

Today I am grateful for the flavours in my lunchtime soup.

food for thought

"The more we sweat in peace,
the less we bleed in war."

Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit
.

from daily peace quotes

If you think you're too small to have an impact,
try going to bed with a mosquito in the room.

—Anita Koddick
.

end of an era?

(Draft only)

Has the financial crisis had an interesting spin-off that will be written about in art history assignments in years to come?

Currently running at the Tate Modern is "Pop Life: Art in a Material World" (until January 17). The timing and significance of this exhibition is the subject of the October "Newsweek" article entitled "Pop Goes the Market". Writer Christopher Werth discusses the impact of the financial crisis on the contemporary art market.

The art market remained bouyant at the beginning of the "decline of the material world" (my term, not a quote). Sothebys sold Damien Hirst works for a total of £111 million (around $US200 million) after the recession had hit. But the (over-inflated?) confidence in the art market bottomed out quickly, prices falling by 50% and expected to drop another 30 to 80% of pre-crash prices, and I suspect that with this fall we might also identify the end of the post-1950s art movement known as "Pop Art".

If Pop art began with Andy Warhol and his exploration of the mass media through his art, did it end with this world banking crash? Werth writes "But as the Great Recession takes its cultural toll - excess is out, thrift is in - art's flashiest, wealthiest practitioners (and their loyal customers) now appear as out of step with the "new norm" of financial restraint as bankers pocketing multimillion-dollar bonuses on Wall Street." (Newsweek, October 19 2009, p.48). This set me thinking about art movements, how and why they come and go, and where we all sit in the big big picture.

Have we seen the swan-song of this flashy era, where gold and diamonds command huge prices as collectors fall for the marketing hype, or will Pop art continue, with the brand-marketing celebrity artists filtering themselves off into a sub-genre that will re-emerge when the financial rollercoaster eases onto smoother tracks?

Not being a particularly "material girl" myself I quite like the prospect of the market leaders becoming a mere, transient, sub-genre! But don't get me wrong; I have respect for these artists (as well as a fondness for a Hirst made entirely out of dead flies) and believe that they are a product of the society that we live in, reflecting in their work the social and economic times.

That, surely, is what art is about. The true histories are not written in books, but may be read by looking retrospectively at the collective art of any period. Knowing who commissioned work, how art was valued, and what messages and values are represented surely gives us a better insight into how society functioned at any one period of time than a history book in which the author may or may not disclose his own political bias.


Footnote: The expression "15 minutes of fame" was coined by Andy Warhol.