poster crimes

I suppose it's not the worst crime in the world, but lately I've taken to gathering free art posters that I find around and about, and repurposing them into other things. A few posters printed by Tessa Laird for the exhibition Auratica Fantastica at Auckland University earlier this year made their way home with me during the show. The posters have a list of  bibliographic entries on one side and squiggly script on the other.

Today I decided today to transform the posters into half a dozen invitations to send out to the members of a writers' group I'm starting up with six like-minded women. Each of us has a substantial writing project that we are keen to complete and we hope that regular meetings will offer us important feedback and encouragement as we write.

I've never been involved in a writers' group before, so I'm really excited about it. Jack has been a member of the Eye Street Writers' Group for the past seven years, and he says he finds the monthly meetings supportive, instructive and a great motivator to get a piece of writing completed before each workshop.

cake

If you haven't yet baked the deliciously gooey Louise Cake recipe

on page 50 of Alexa Johnston's cook book Ladies, A Plate

then you really should.

It's pure sweet magic!

I hear she's just published a book of puddings.

That's going on my Christmas wish-list.

GO POSTAL

What is going on with the postal service lately? It took a week for a letter posted from Auckland City to reach me here, just across the bridge on the North Shore. It took over a week for a track-packed parcel to reach my mother in Christchurch for her birthday. My colleague at work told me that a parcel she posted in June to a relative in Germany only arrived a fortnight ago. That's crazy! It's  terrible to think that the electronic age is having such an impact on good old snail mail. There is no Saturday  delivery anymore, and my neighbours in the adjoining units don't even bother clearing their post-boxes, so soggy mail drops onto the ground where it either decomposes or blows away.

Well, I for one am not going to put up with it! It's time to start writing letters again, and making use of the postal service, before it becomes yet another casualty of contemporary life.  So, I say to you

LET'S GO POSTAL PEOPLE!!!

My brother-in-law in Scotland asked for the recipe for a hearty vegetable soup I made for him when he was home recently. Now I could easily have emailed it to him, but I decided instead to type out the recipe (really poorly) on my funny old typewriter. I made a stamped manilla folder for it, and put it in a jazzy envelope that I made from the folded posters that are included in each issue of frankie magazine. Then I went down to the post office and sent it off. Easy as pie!!

I plan to do a lot more old fashioned letter writing from now on.

I hope you will too.

CUT OUTS

I've been flat out at work lately, but I decided to set aside Saturday for some long overdue crafting time. Works on paper were the order of the day, and I particularly wanted to make use of these lovely cardboard mounts in assorted sizes and colours that I bought locally from Factory Frames.

The plan was to design a couple of small editions of single poems for Pania Press, the first of which is a poem by Jack Ross called 'Lounge Room Tribalism,' inspired by the painting of the same name by Graham Fletcher that hangs in our lounge:

Bronwyn and Jack at home - photo by Katharina Jaeger

First, I typed out the poem on a delightfully wonky vintage typewriter my brother Greg bought for my birthday:

Lounge Room Tribalism

(for Graham Fletcher)

Faux sauvage

that was the

term we coined

for our in

terior

design phi

losophy

unholy

amalgam

of Gauguin

and Magritte

a strictly

rational

naive

te subord

inated

to the cor

ridor that

you can't take

beside the

window look

ing iut on

that wild lawn

Then I started playing around with this assortment of coloured paper cut-outs that Graham gave me last year. He made them while he was developing his first series of Lounge Room Tribalism paintings in 2009, but he only used a few of them, and asked if I'd like to have the rest. Some of the shapes are inspired by Polynesian statues and carvings, others look like insects and sea creatures, and some are just strange amorphous shapes. Seeing the glorious Matisse cut-outs at the Auckland Art Gallery recently inspired  me to dig out Graham's paper cut-outs and have a play.

Here are a few text and cut-out combinations I've put together:

That was a great Saturday!