Here be dragons

Here be dragons,
originally uploaded by Figgles1.

Went for a short walk around the block yesterday for a bit of fresh air and exercise after being stuck at home unwell. You can imagine how cheered up I was to find this drawing on the pavement by the bbqs in Saletina Ridge park. Here be dragons indeed!

Via Flickr:A chalk drawing in a local park

First and fastest!

OK, it’s time to skite, after last week’s schmozzle in the opening race, we had something to prove in the second race of Fremantle Sailing Club’s winter series! Again conditions were a little hairy – a squall gusted to 35 knots as we approached the start – but we sailed on through and were rewarded with that rare (for us) combination of first and fastest in our division (Div. 3)! Yee Ha!

No doubt next week the handicapper will cut us down to size, but tonight? Victory is sweet!

plus ça change – the saga of the Fremantle Station Facade!

Restored facade Fremantle Station 2005

Last week I came across this gem from the Fremantle Society Newsletter, March-April 1974 under the heading What’s been happening:

RAILWAY STATION

The Society has written to the Minister for Railways to have the Fremantle Railway Station restored.  The major part of the facade is Donnybrook Stone but unfortunately has been painted.  This should be stripped and the whole building restored particularly now that it has been given the National Trust’s major classification.

These things can’t be hurried, restoration of the main entrance was completed 21 years later in 2005 and the 2nd stage of restoration of the remaining front and side facades is underway right now in 2011!

Fremantle Station under wraps 2011

The fence of lost things : random acts of kindness at South Beach

Thankyou to all the people who hung lost property on the fence of lost things – I found my missing kayaking glove two or three days after I lost it in the ocean!

Random acts of kindness - the fence of lost things

Strange creature in Fremantle

Strange Creature in Fremantle

Who or what is this creature found hiding in a tree in the Henderson Street Mall?

Bazaar – a place to find favourite things

Brooches from buttons and from broken china,

Food bought for presents and food for the diner,

Brown paper ba-ags (not tied up with string) –

These are a few of Bazaar’s fav’rite things!

♥

Calico bags with hand stencilled decals,

Brooches like flowers with bright paper petals,

Drawings and etchings to make your heart sing –

These are a few of Bazaar’s fav’rite things!

♥

Silver that shines with a patina of hist’ry

Porcelain and glassware and other things glistery

Necklaces, earrings and all kinds of bling –

These are a few of Bazaar’s fav’rite things!

Snow Cozy by Looseleaf

Knitted tea cozies in shapes all fantastic,

Dresses and blouses and belts from elastic,

Wallets and handbags for stashing your things –

These are a few of Bazaar’s fav’rite things!

♥

Sculptural steel the garden is lighting,

Swords made of timber for playing at fighting,

Boxes well crafted, and all types of rings –

These are a few of Bazaar’s fav’rite things!

♥

Soap all organic and soap shaped like cupcakes

Is there no end to the clever things they make?

They must have started quite early (say Spring?)

making the stuff of Bazaar’s fav’rite things!

♥

When the list’s long,

An alarm rings,

And you’re feeling sad!

You simply remember Bazaar’s fav’rite things

And then you don’t feel so bad!

♥

(With apologies to Rogers and Hammmerstein)

♥

In case you didn’t guess it – I went to Fremantle Arts Centre annual Bazaar last night for some browsing and Christmas shopping, apologies for anyone I missed out, there was a lot to see!

FACPA2010 – Fremantle Arts Centre Print Award 2010 Opening night

FACPA2010

Drawing is making marks that have meaning, drawing underpins our material culture,  drawing is for  perception,  drawing is for communication, drawing is for invention, drawing is for thinking…

– tomorrow is the launch of The Big Draw and on Radio National this morning, Fran Kelly interviewed Eileen Adams (Educational Leader of the Campaign for Drawing UK).  Down at the opening of FACPA2010 (the funky new name for the Fremantle Arts Centre Print Award 2010) I had the opportunity to see that what Eileen Adams said about drawing is just as true of printmaking.

It’s hard to get a good impression of a show on opening night – everything is new, there’s a big crowd and you have to peer around people who may be more interested in catching up with friends, there’s drink and food,  DJ Jens and Timothy Nelson and the Infidels were making music. This is just a first attempt to say what grabbed me and maybe I’ll  go back later for a more considered look.

This show is BIG in every way – many huge works, many works addressing big ideas, I like this, sometimes art shows can be a bit too intropective and theory driven but this is work that communicates and makes you think.

In spite of that, the winning work – Rebecca Beardmore’s Seeing between II – is more quiet, a work about perception?

There’s plenty of invention too – I loved Benjamin Forster’s Discourse 2010 with two receipt printers printing parallel dialogues from the works of Karl Marx and Adam Smith, meeting in a pile on the floor (and reminding me of Princess Melisande’s hair – how long before we are pushed out the gallery by an ever increasing pile of philosophy?)  Inventive also is Joel Galier’s Hwy Dreams 1 – a car tyre forms the block, printing:

YOU’LL GO FAR BABY

on the gallery floor…

Susanna Castleden’s Perpetual Cruise Line at first seems to be a constellation chart but the resolves (I think) into a map – is it where the cruise lines go?  I think so…

Ben Rak’s After all it is never you who is unconscious uses dozens of paper bags… pixels in the grid of the bigger picture…

FACPA2010 - opening night on flickr

There’s much much more that you’ll have to go and see for yourself, but I must mention a couple of concurrent exhibitions – previous winner Poppy Van Oord – Grainger’s 2002 winning work Watercolour paintings on the pavement in the upstairs Kathleen O’Connor Gallery is well worth revisiting and James Dodd’s sprawling Boab Inscriptions – across the upstairs gallery and a new gallery in the old Museum section – is a surprisingly effective response to the centuries of graffiti found on Boab trees in the Kimberley….  Don’t miss this work and more of the Print Award finalists in the newly opened galleries…

Hulbert Street Fiesta 2010 – the greenest street in Fremantle?

I think I’m pretty green, my friends think I’m pretty green, I:

Solar panels on my roof

• Have a moderately passive solar house
• Have solar panels on the roof  (and am in credit with the power company) and a solar desk light
• When I have to buy new appliances I try to get more energy efficient ones
• Turn off standby power at the wall and use timers and motion sensors on lights
• Have a rain water tank for drinking and the vegies and manually reuse some grey water
• Don’t possess a clothes dryer or airconditioning
• Grow some of my own fruit and vegies (with varing success)
• Have a worm farm and compost bin for food scraps
• Catch the train to work and cycle or walk for short trips
• Clean with microfibre and bicarb and vineagar
• Buy much of my clothing from op-shops – and work on my reduce, reuse, recycling…

Hulbert Street Sustainbility Fiesta 2010

…but I don’t have anything on the people of Hulbert St South Fremantle – today I went down and wandered through the third annual Hulbert Street Sustainability Fiesta.   Hulbert Street is a cul-de-sac for cars but you can enter at the top end by foot or bicycle and all the green goodness starts right there at The Painted Fish (sustainable accommodation in a seaside garden).   Tim and Shani started the popular eco accommodation in 2006 and their passion for sustainablity has flowed down through the street.  Each year green living and community spirit is celebrated by closing off the street, erecting booths and opening their homes and gardens to the rest of the world.  This was my first visit to the fiesta. (I’ve seen inside The Painted Fish before when visiting friends who were staying there and I often cycle down Hulbert St.)  So here are a few random observations from a first time Fiesta goer…

• Entry by gold coin donation, please recycle the flyer, wrist stamp (suspect water based ink as it ran and I had to be careful not to transfer it to my white T-shirt!)
• Music from a bee costumed bloke who incorporated whoever was passing into his song, and further down the street a buskers patch for community groups and locals
• Vege growing – the Hulbert St mob grow vegies anywhere – in their own yards and guerilla gardens on the street.  Lots of stalls selling raised garden beds plus equipment and seedlings
• Sustainable transport – cycles, electric bikes and modified cycles for sale in the stalls; billy carts, bicycles, scooters and the Freo motorised bathtub brigade (now solar powered) on the street
• Sustainable power – Solar Shop had a booth, many houses had solar power and there were a few exercise bike set up to generate power with kids trying out how hard they had to pedal to power a small TV (and other appliances)
• Food – home made, gluten free, fresh, raw – it was all there!  Thanks to the gluten-free lady for the free sample ginger and macadamia Wallaby bar, yum!
• Lots of the houses were open – demo’s of sustainable living and artists studios but we were on our bikes and short of time so we didn’t visit.
• Pre-loved everything – many books and clothes (I didn’t look closely as I was on the bike and hadn’t brought much money
• Guerilla knitting at the Duoro Road exit!

There was much more to see – next year I’ll go on foot and take a bit more time – it’s definitely worth a visit!

Hulbert Street Sustainability Fiesta 2010 - a flickr set

Seeing double – Bratz Bring it On Again!

Seeing double - Bratz Bring it On Again!

The things you see whilst waiting in line at the checkout… Teenage stereotyping writ large, does someone at IGA have a sense of humour (or an interest in visual culture and femminism?)…

Toby at the Fly

I have a  playlist in iTunes that I call Divas – it ranges from Ute Lemper and Lotte Lenya via Nina Simone, Cleo Laine and Peggy Lee to Alannah Myles, Carly Simon and k. d. Lang, Kavisha Mazzella and  June Tabor.  So I was surprised that I’d missed hearing of local muso Toby Beard.  Last night I rectified this omission when as part of a friend’s birthday celebrations I went to the Fly by Night Musicians Club to hear Toby (Toby Beard and 15 piece band) launch her new CD Sleeptalk.

Toby at the Fly

Great gig – beautiful woman with a beautiful voice, dreadlocked blonde hair and feisty stage presence, she sang her own songs from her new CD and back catalogue (all new to me) and covered Little Red Rooster, Etta James‘s I’d Rather go blind and When a man loves a woman.  The band included cellos, flute, smoking violin, awesome horns (trumpet, trombone and sax), something I have tentatively identified as a melodica, Mr Jean-Guy Lemire on harmonica as well as the more usual guitars, drums, keyboard and percussion.

The encore evoked Commedia dell’arte,  first Jean-Guy appeared on stage for a mournful harmonica solo, turning to reveal half his face whitened and marked with the black tear of a clown, then the trumpeter echoed the solo, face fully painted,  the theme was then taken up by the white faced violinist, poignant and plaintive (and remiscent of Latcho Drom).   Fom behind us we heard the beat of the drum and we turned and parted to admit the band, faces painted white, each with the black tear or mark, marching funerealy in double file led by two drummers.  Toby had switched her tunic for a red and white striped clowns vest and a top hat hid her dreadlocks.  There was somthing about it that suggested a New Orleans’ funeral for a clown… this was the extended intro into the beautiful C’est L’amour.

A brilliant finish to a great evening…