Book Art Weekend!

This is the show I judged. 80 books $4000. - to purchase books for the collection, probably 75 people at the opening, and I had to sound like I knew what I was talking about. I think it went well. I had a lot of positive feed back which is good, because I decided I wanted to give some critical feedback. The Australians have a fabulous printmaking programs - their prints are amazing. Text is good too, I think a little experimenting would be good - it's not a dominant thing in their work. I think the weakest point is the structure, and so we talked about that - or rather I talked about that. It's really hard to wrap your head about all three things though, but I think they are on the brink of being a big impact on the Book Arts world. It's very exciting to see something at the beginning - something which has so much potential and no roadblocks to keep it from being successful. I've met some amazing people that I hope to form a strong connection with. Oh, and I also managed to piss one person off - so I think I can actually call it a very successful opening.

This morning, I was back at the Gallery bright and early for a Blizzard Book workshop. Margaret, Geraldine, (me), Heather, and Babette were delightful students. Incredibly inquisitive, positive, excited and just really lovely. There is no other way to describe the morning. We went way over time, and I really didn't want to stop! I'm excited to see if they can use this structure for some of their work - we talked about a lot of issues, and so we'll see what comes out of it.

After the workshop I went back to Julie's house. She'd stayed home with Monica Oppen, another book artists, to work on a PowerPoint. I really wanted to sit and chat with them, but I was so exhausted I had to take a nap. An hour later I was woken up by alot of buslting in the house - we were running late to get Monica to the airport. After we were finally all in the car, Julie told us there had been a slight panic while Darcy (her son) and I were getting ready to get out of the house. There had been a spider on her car.
Now just wait... this wasn't any old spider... this was a Huntsman - the size of your hand! Now. I like alot of things about Australia. I'm thrilled I got to see a Wallaby in the wild, we are listening to a Koala rip off the leaves of a gum tree right now - I saw a Wombat... but. I. Don't. need. to see. one. of. these. things. Thank you. Just google image them. EWWWWWW.
So after Darcy and I freaked out that it might be in the car (which it wasn't - thank god), we dropped Monica off at the airport and headed up the coast to Byron. Here I am at the lighthouse, being blown over by the wind practically - and I'm at the eastern most point of Mainland Australia. Julie insisted. The view was spectacular. The sun had just set and so there were two beautiful bays with purple mountains ringing them. Really nice. Julie and Darcy: Darcy is 14 and a real sweety. Julie is just amazing and wonderful. I don't know how she does all that she does. Her gallery is fantastic! She is creating quite a little hot spot for the book arts. I think this will be a very important gallery for book artists.

We had a nice evening sitting on a 2nd floor balcony in Byron enjoying some really amazing food. Poor Darcy though, probably bored to tears by the boring grown-up women/bookarts talk. We ordered a plate of rock oysters for him though, and a plate of Spanish Churros with chocolate dipping sauce. yum.