take a walk on the wild side

do you ever feel like you're in the pages of a book?
alice falling down the rabbit hole?
i think i'm in maurice sendak's where the wild things are
on pages 8 or 10, before the monsters
when the forest grew and grew
and grew ...
and overwhelmed the words, covering the page in vines and illustrations
except it's not a forest.
it's my garden.

i would like to know what to do with gardens ... i think one of the keys is going outside and mucking around in the dirt!
scary - no wonder i think they'll be monsters...

a garden growing through the concrete!
a reclaimed rail lineyard in new york,
story in the nytimes: Renovated High Line Now Open for Strolling
slideshow on tree-hugger

zz

when wes anderson's cousteau inspired life aquatic came out, my sister got excited and said she'd knit us both jumpers with the "z" insignia, and that we would be team zissou.
"z" is a special letter for us. our surname begins and ends with a "z".
the fact that life aquatic is a cool movie and taps into the jacques costeau made it feel right. because our dad was a huge cousteau fan, and there was something of the manic steve zissou about him.
the movie itself is about fathers and children, so it makes it all the more bit poignant for me.

the movie touched a chord with many people
so much so that there are instructions for making your own zissou shoes or buying zissou merchandise, i may get a zip-up zissou top


a friend of mine used to give me cards that said, z is for zorro . they always made me happy.
zorro means fox in spanish which is neat given my predeliction for foxes

quite importantly, z is also for zzzz, viz. sleeps.
my family are olympic sleepers. we're nappers from way back.
i suppose the z sleep for me reminds me that my dad (and my grandmother) have gone for the big sleep now.
my sister has a short film of my dad with my nephew on his shoulders. z beginning and ending.
i want to include it here. it's lovely. i haven't looked at it since my dad died (21 july 2008). it will probably make me cry.
but i've learned this past year, that crying is good. living through feelings is important, & loving is essential.
see you daddy, i love you.

how ace!

ace is such a good word.
i remember it from the seventies. for such a little word, for me it says a lot of things. something is ace if it's ingenious or inspiring, cool and makes me laugh.
every now and then, i will think (or exclaim): that's ace. or reply, ace.
a few ace things
ace hotels this is a new chain of hotels in the u.s. located in "indie/cool" places like portland, seattle (you should be getting an idea by now), palm springs and new york.
each hotel has a different style (the new breed of budget boutiques...hotels whose idea of cool has nothing to do with what's in design magazines ... says one review, although this really depends on the magazines you flip through). because style is important, you can check out the rooms online before you check in (boom boom).
portland
seattle
nyc
palm springs

the new york "loft" includes a turn-table.
wallpaper magazine reckons they're rocknroll bohemian
oh yeah.
the guardian review says: bohemian and affordable
and they do tread that line between "cool, i wanna go there" and "my god, this is so pretentious, i hate it already"
read what someone who has stayed there, roamed around and taken pictures says about it. online is so much more reliable than newspapers, what would they know?
LA Times article below









also ace - humans! apparently, watch this movie to find out (it's very ace indeed)


ace frehely (obviously) don't know much about him but knew he was the "cool" one - because paul stanley was too obvious and there to charm the "ladies", because gene simmons is just a freak, and peter chris was a bit lame (who paints his face like a pussycat, i ask you?) there were always rumours flying around that his face was peeling off because of the silver paint he had to use.
which made him even more mysterious. and suggested integrity (willing to die for his art) to 11 year old kids.

travel all over the countryside

it's funny how ideas or information circles you sometimes, perhaps like a vulture, or maybe like an angel.
sending you glimpses until it all collects together into a thought.
a few weekends ago there was an article in the travel section of the age, the road to damascus by sean mooney. it got my attention firstly because it was about damascus (ah, the mystery-history of the name!), it captured my attention because it was so beautifully written. it worked its way into my head because it conjured this image: From a rocky outcrop on the top of Jebel Qassioun - a mountain so integral to history, it appears in the Book Of Genesis - I gaze down on one of the world's oldest settlements. On the plain below, partially obscured by a film of smog that, with the setting sun, lends it an apocalyptic hue, sprawls the ancient city of Damascus... I turn back to the road behind me, which is littered with decrepit VW Kombis now employed as roadside cafes. As the sun sinks below the horizon, strings of fairy lights illuminate a curious mix of social encounters. Men recline on ragged old couches smoking nargileh (water pipes) and listening to Arabic love songs played at full volume on laptop computers.
i tried to find an image of a re-caffeinated constituted vw, but found nothing. it seems the folk at vw's ad agency were way ahead of the clever syrians.
one of the reasons this popped out at me was that i had recently been on an overland holiday (just nipping over the border into nsw, but it counts) and just before we went on holiday i saw a re-issued matchbox kombi for sale in the supermarket. i didn't buy it and therefore became obsessed by the thought of it.

you can buy original matchboxers in the original packaging, but really i'm not an enthusiast. the first thing i'd want to do is rip open the packaging and check out the car, anyway. i love the "matchbox" packaging of the 1970 van. ace.

kombis recall a different age of camping. black & white photos. young mums wearing 70s bikinis, kids wearing mullets, families travelling in station wagons if they didn't have a kombi (because nobody had a 4 wheel drive unless they were onsafari!) even the leyland brothers had a kombi (as well as a 4 wheel drive) and they did go on safari.
simpler days!
which of course is why folk still want the kombi experience

1973 westfalia at the beach


you can go kombi in australia, or you can choose from the classic campers in new zealand

ke words
fakeords
fakeords fake words
fake words
there are also all sorts of mad kombi enthusiast pages - but you can find these for yourself if you care enough
(i found a kombi camping cookbook which excited me briefly, but it looked pretty crap on closer inspection so i let that one go)
Artist Lee Stoetzel has crafted this tribute to the classic Volkswagon motor bus. His spin on the environmentaly friendly automobile is as much a tribute to vehicle itself as it is to the hippie culture it was such a part of. more about the wood kombi
of course, the retro-eco-visionariness of kombis has been updated into the verdier eco camper - some have "wood-panelling" (possibly referencing the brady bunch station-wagon, but more likely a straight rip-off of lee stoetzel),
other models look more "space-age"silver bulletish.

ke words
japanese variation of a german theme, diy japanese motor home

another kind of vw!

an iconic mexico city taxi, poster via a few places via ffffound, originally here

most classic ever, tent in the shape and styling of a vw camper van, available via here

comes in any colour so long as it's primary

hew & cry

i have always liked the blunt and heavy works of bruce armstrong which for all their brutishness (not brutality) have a tenderness to them.

relatives of bunjil, the eagle that watches over wurundjeri way, have landed recently at the looped drive-way at the hyatt on russell st
they look like good-humoured bouncers
i love the visible marks of the tools
this work is a bit more brutish and rough, and although it's still an abstraction, it has more animality -
perhaps it's the sharpness of those teeth
ship's prows on the yarra, a collaboration between bruce armstrong and geoffrey bartlett - 1997, constellation

i remember this image from the larousse encyclopaedia of mythology
this monstrous animal head (as the british museum describe it) is an oak ship's figurehead, with its gaping jaws and prominent teeth and eyes [it] was probably meant to be protective and not just ornamental. journeys by ship were hazardous affairs, and it was believed necessary to ward off the evil forces encountered at sea, again according to the bm folk. originally thought to be viking, carbon-dating says it's older, 350-650 A.D. still germanic though
the criss-crossing motif reminds me of the early wooden versions of brancusi's endless column
1918. detail. Oak, 6' 8" x 9 7/8" x 9 5/8" moma

columns in situ in brancusi's studio

there are lots of cemeteries built high on the cliffs above the ocean on the south coast of nsw. many of which have rough and ready grave-sites - at moruya heads there was a grave surrounded by a rustic fence. the tops of the fence (barely discernible in this photo) have been carved in a rudimentary way, but they reminded me of brancusi's notches.
david nash - nine charred steps, following that notched up theme.
1988–89. charred oak, work installed in brussels, belgium.
(thanks to david neale for pointing me in this direction)

nash chats about his work here
in collecting images, i realise that my "wood" aesthetic hankers after the rough and raw, the blunt, the grainy, the gnarly. while i appreciate the finer arts of wood, overpolished and gleaming smooth wood makes me feel a bit queasy ... like overbuffed body-builders with popping muscles and way too much reef oil
i seem to prefer the rawness of this chainsaw-carved redwood trunk located in Laumeier Sculpture Park in St. Louis
i like how the carved contours mimic the shadow lines

given its height and diameter - 34 feet tall and 7 feet in diameter, it is thought to be the largest singular piece wood sculpture in existence, if you're into that kind of thing - it is quite an awesome structure - the photos don't quite convey the proportions

andy goldsworthy's spire in san francisco - a visitor comments It is made up of the trunks of cypress trees which had been felled on the site because they were unhealthy. The structure looks like a branchless tree and is about 100′ tall. The sculpture is surrounded by newly planted cypress trees which are only inches tall at the moment. Eventually they will be as tall as The Spire. At the moment, it stands out like a sore thumb but, as the small trees grow, it will disappear and will eventually rot away

like this totem pole, weathering away in the canadian forests

a hewn hand by henry moore, looking wizened and worn and showing the grains of wood

privet hawk moth pretending to be a piece of hewn wood

goldsworthy again, playing with a environment-ravaged tree, making it look like a beastie with its tongue hanging out
tacita dean's WandermÜde works at the frith street gallery in london (looks like a nice space)

WandermÜde means exhaustion at the prospect of travel – tired of wandering.
In 2005, Dean began work on a series of found postcards featuring trees, which she transformed by painting out all the background detail with white gouache. Inspired by the success of these smaller works, Dean sought out famous and

ancient trees in southeast England. The resulting large-scale works include, Majesty (2006) and Crowhurst II (2006), the oldest complete oak tree in England and a yew estimated at 4000 years old respectively. By isolating their form, the subject becomes even more imposing in its solemnity.

Dean's Kotzsch Trees, 2008 -

now showing at acca until the 2 august - lucky us!

a well weathered winter tree

and more tree play by andy goldsworthy - husks of trees

bryan nash gill, hemlock ink rubbing of a giant tree stumpand in more detail
david nash's wooden boulder, 1978-present - a clever work because the work is not a static sculpture despite its size & substance - it is actively encouraged to move in the environment: Wooden Boulder came from a massive felled oak, from which a dozen or more sculptures were made. I intended to move it down the hill to my studio, but it got stuck half-way in a stream. Initially this seemed a problem, but I decided to leave it there, and it became a sculpture of a rock.

It has moved down the river nine times since then. Sometimes I had to move it on, as when it got jammed under a bridge

the age published an article called the afterlife of trees.

it was about what happens to the "big trees" in melbourne parks when they fall during storms or drought. some go to artists like bruce armstrong to work with (see "dead wood" at the bottom of the article).

anyway, it reminded me of a "this is your life" type episode on sesame street

maybe some bits end up as cool japanese building blocks - tumi ishi - good to feel the texture of wood ...

these blocks remind me of chainsaw-cut "wooden diamonds" by jim shaw i saw in a magazine once ...

and it seems there's a world of re-incarnation, an after life after life... if this discarded chair dragon is anything to go by