New Moon

Hi hi,
Well it's the end of the month and yet again I have some illustrations for the local rag, Talking Heads.

Tonight is the town hall meeting to discuss saving the Barwon Heads Bridge. This image is a view of the underside of the wooden bridge. Sadly Victoria state road managment is planning to tear down the bridge and replace it with two separate bridges. The local population is roughly 300 in the low season. Needless to say two bridges are a bit excessive. Apart from that, the locals love the simplicity and heritage of the bridge so they would prefer if it was restored.

As I continue to research food and design sites I have encountered a couple of really fun and worthwhile sites to visit:

Martha Stewart, as many of you may know, has started a "blog"
blueprint

There is, without a doubt, a massive resurgence of craft making. Sponge is a site which lists great craftspeople as well as before and after images of redecorated furniture. I personally don't always think they improve all the pieces but it's fun to keep up with what people are doing.
designspongeonline

Wine shop with amazing design which makes me REALLY miss NYC
Pasanella and Sons located near the old Fulton Market
pasanellaandson.com

A great spot to get handmade crafts, letterpress cards, silk screened products, jewellery and such, at what seems so far, very reasonable prices
Etsy








A view of the Barwon River which flows under the bridge and out to the Bay and the "heads" a few hundred meters away.





A view of the bridge from the pier.

The tea pot

Akiko Hirai's beautiful teapot

I was not sure it would arrive since there is bark on the handle but luckily it made it through and pours exceptionally well. She commented that it poured well since I had to return two teapots in 2004 since more tea ended up on the table than in the teacup.

The Letterpress Course at the Melbourne Printing Museum

The images provide you with an idea of the piece I am working on. I will be heading back there again this week to finally ink and print a poster series. To set up the press and block all the letters took 4 hours, so printing the poster should be the easy part.

Last weekend we were in Forrest where there are many many kangaroos munching away at the lawn. Sadly this little "skippy" died the day after this photograph was taken.

The local Rag

Birds

Talking Heads is the local magazine distributed "out and about" the Barwon Heads area. I met with the local editor Trish who was a bundle of energy and ideas. She is planning product design and book illustration. First up will be illustrations for the local magazine....so many great ideas. It will be interesting to see how things develop. The image above is one of the images which will be published this month (not in the negative though) along with the two below.

Community Garden

Surfin' Maggies (aka magpies). The remit was to produce local images. Since magpies outnumber the locals, I thought it might be fun to have them surfing on 13th beach.






This past Saturday Richard and I attended the Melbourne Printing Museum's antique printing course. We are now budding letterpress artists (yeah right). After a full day of learning how typefaces are made, set and printed we came away with a few business cards from the Adana machine and two lines of typeface. The larger letterpress is awaiting my return to print a poster. It took the better part of 3 hours to find and set up the wooden typefaces (aka fonts in todays lingo). As we ran out of time around 6:30 we thought it best to let Michael, the instructor/curator go home for the evening. Personally, I was ready to spend the entire weekend there dabbling about with the various machines. I'm hoping to get back there on Thursday.

The museum is in dire need of financial help. They possess the world's most extensive collection of antique printing presses but not enough space to house or display them. They need to change locations in the very near future so if anyone has any fund raising ideas don't hesitate to let me know and I will pass them on to Michael. One thought was to have an auction of posters designed by well known people from all walks of life. "The Prince Print Series" to be held every year at the end of November.....