2015 in review.

This blog is quickly becoming something akin to the annual christmas letter you send to distant relatives and old friends. Oh wull. Merry Christmas! Happy New Year! & Look what I did last year!
In following with christmas letter tradition, I will list the successes and skip the angst, failures and flawed coping strategies.
Here is some of what I did in 2015...

1. I continued selling cartoon prints
I extended the print run to 14 designs and started selling through Blarney Books, Port Fairy, as well as The Artery in Warrnambool and F project artist markets.

2. I held an exhibition with Rachel Peters, on the theme of 'Somewhere between domestic and wild".
This largely featured drawings of monsters doing mundane, domestic things. Because even monsters have to wash. I guess.

Below: Portrait of my husband flossing and Portrait of my husband shaving. My husband is not at all monstrous. But he is a wonderfully exotic beast. and has hairy toes. Hence the works.

The exhibition also included almost 20 terrariums featuring more monsters and giant mutant beasts. Plus plants to make them pretty. Leading up to the exhibition I spent a lot of time in $2 shops, nudging aside 7 year old boys to get to the  GOOD matchbox cars and plastic dinosaurs. When I'd caught my breath, I'd continue on to the glass bowl section and elbow aside all the other 40 year old mummies making terrariums. It was harrowing. 

Rachel's work included pieces like the one below. She is one classy dame, no?

 3. I made some giant flowering gumnuts. They were commissioned by the local council, as replacements for the tinsel-covered council decorations that normally adorn light poles.
I used old aluminium lampshades for the gumnuts, and unravelled rope to make the flowers. I figured rope would stand up to the seaspray and wind of Warrnambool, and it's wiry kink was evocative of the real flowers. I made the gumflowers detachable with carabina clips. Having detachable gumnuts will enable the council to store the metal panel flat and should help with installation as the panel can be installed and then the gumflowers added later.
And just quietly, I kept making our strawbale home. The house is finished but making stuff, growing plants and children, continues. The cartooning and artwork happens around this and both feel creative and challenging.

Finally, this was the year that I joined facebook and reluctantly got a mobile phone. Soft. I'm sure there are ways of hooking up my blog and my facebook page. From memory, a hot-glue gun, pipecleaners & some batteries are required. This may take some time. Bear with me.