Archives for May 2012

Seven more sleeps

May 29, 2012 by Jen

As a friend informed me today there’s seven more sleeps until my exhibition opening. As I write the opening will be nearly over.

I’ve finally got all my pictures ready to hang.

Invites are out and people are coming.

I’ve pretty much priced everything. That’s hard!

I got a great write up on a local website called Adelaide Tweet.

Read more about how social media helped me get my 365 project exhibition underway, and find out more about my photo a day project – Project 365, or as it’s known this year, Project 366 – the leap year project.

I have some questions

May 28, 2012 by Jen

Do you use your ceiling fans in winter? I do. There’s a little switch on the side of them and one setting is for summer and the other for winter. It’s all about the air movement and which way warm and cold air flows and so on.

With my old house and high ceilings and I try to do all that I can to stay warm in winter in the one room that has decent heating. And in summer I have my fans on all the time because any air movement is better than none.

Do you have a tumble dryer to dry your clothes? I don’t. I use a combination of the outside clothesline and this inside clothes hanger in winter. It gets dragged into the aforementioned warm room so the clothes dry in a day or two.

In winter I have to time washing the sheets when it’s not going to rain so they have some hope of mostly drying in that day. I have my favourite flannelette sheets which is why I wash and reuse the same ones most of the time.

My drying in winter was fun when JJ was a baby and I had cloth nappies to dry as well. Luckily I only wash for two of us so this system seems to work.

And one more question. See that picture on the telly? What show is it from?

Black and white

May 23, 2012 by Jen

Who needs colour anyway?

These photos aren’t in my upcoming exhbition – opening happening in just under two weeks! But they SO could be.

Happy Wordless Wednesday.

His detentions used to fill me with dread

May 18, 2012 by Jen

When my son started school nearly six years ago he didn’t have an easy time with fitting in and settling into the school’s expectations behaviourally. He regularly spent time at the office, in detention, and was even suspended twice for a day each time.

So I’d go to pick him up from school or after school care filled with dread about what I’d find out when I got there.

It’s taken nearly this long to be able to walk onto the school grounds and not feel this way as he’s finally fitting in a lot better with the system. It seems to me that if you don’t get the system, or just try to buck it, then it won’t like you and you’ll stand out. He stood out because of this, and because he’s quite tall for his age and because people think he’s older they expect more from him.

He’s the kid that always gets caught carrying the can. He’s not sneaky enough to run away before the teachers get there so he used to always be in trouble.

This year he’s had a few detentions but they’ve been over quite minor misdemeanours. Take yesterday for example. After I’d picked him up we were waiting at the pedestrian lights when he told me that he’d received a detention that day. What for I asked?

He said that a bunch of kids were dancing while sticking their rude fingers up. I tried not to laugh when he told me. And to me, this doesn’t seem detention worthy but I wasn’t there. I always ask more questions when he tells me he’s been put in detention. Who else was involved? Why were you doing it?

There were heaps of the kids doing it. Did they all get detentions I asked? No, he said.

He told me that he owned up to doing it, and apologised for it, and the kid who dobbed on them had also been doing it but didn’t get a detention? Some other kids got detentions too. I think the teacher’s still filling in the forms as I haven’t received the note yet.

He asked me if I was cross with him and would I be punishing him?

I told him I wasn’t cross, but I was proud of him for apologising and being honest.

How social media helped me have my first photography exhibition

May 17, 2012 by Jen

I have just over two weeks until my art exhibition opening and while I’m still a bit nervous about the whole thing I’ve calmed down a bit now that some of the major preparation is out of the way.

I won’t say how I’m freaking out a bit about some of the last minute stuff, like framing the rest of the work. It will be okay, it will be okay I try to keep telling myself.

Upon reflection about arriving at this point I realised that if it weren’t for social media I would probably not be having this exhibition.

Around the time I started doing a photo a day, in addition to posting them to Flickr, I also shared the Flickr uploads on my personal Facebook profile and on Twitter.

A few of my Facebook friends made a point of telling me how they enjoyed seeing the photos I put up. It was great to receive this feedback.

This blog has also been another mechanism for receiving feedback about my photos. It’s really developed into more of a photo blog in the last year or so because it’s another great medium to share my photos. And personally, I like blog posts with images.

Sometimes you put yourself out there on social media and don’t get any feedback at all and wonder if there’s any point. But with the ease of sharing tools my Flickr uploads automatically update my Facebook news feed and my Twitter timeline. I know things get lost on the Twitter timeline because a Twitter friend commented the other day that she didn’t know I’d done (and am still doing) this photo a day thing. But I have had some feedback about the photos via Twitter as well.

So I was sharing my photos and then one day I saw a callout for visual artists from Suzie Wong’s Room to show artwork. I’d never considered myself a visual artist until then and without thinking much I sent a link to my Flickr photostream and gave a rough outline of what I imagined an exhibition of mine looking like. I decided that I had visual art to show.

About a year later it’s finally happening and if you can come along please do.

Some blokes singing about death

May 16, 2012 by Jen

I went out the other night to see this band – Graveyard Train. A band of seven blokes singing about death.

It was the first night of their Australian tour to launch their new album. I’ve now got their first and second album and they’re both brilliant. When we got the first album we played it in the car and I was ‘allowed’ to turn it up so we could both sing along. Usually my son pleads with me to turn the music down. Isn’t it supposed to be the other way around?

Hailing from Melbourne I’ve been very lucky to see them twice this year. Once at Barrio (Adelaide Festival), then again the other night.

As you can see I was nice and close and when they finished their set I could have stood there to watch it all over again.

Often when I see a band, even though I’ve enjoyed it, I’m glad for a rest at the end. Not so with these guys.

There’s a guy (at the end playing the harmonica in this shot) whose usual musical instrument is chains around his neck and a hammer. I wonder how they explain that at customs if the need ever arises. I’ve never seen a band playing chains.

The other thing I love about them is that they all sing (except for the drummer I think) and when they do it’s just magic.

This is the type of boy band I really dig!

Extending

May 12, 2012 by Jen

One minute you’re cruising along doing the day-to-day routine stuff then things start ramping up and you wonder how you’re going to manage to fit everything in each day.

I am currently pushing myself and it was kind of freaking me out but I’ve just been able to try and keep that at bay by taking one day at a time, with a list of tasks that I have to complete and it’s getting there.

First and foremost, I’m having my first ever photography exhibition and the opening is in nearly three weeks time. I’ve got some photos framed but the others are still at the printers getting mattes cut. I won’t get these until a week and a bit prior to the opening. Hopefully I’ve measured everything correctly and they all fit the frames.

I’m framing everything myself to try and cut my costs down. I didn’t price getting the photos I want at the exhibition framed, but I know it would have been a lot more expensive. I’ve a collection of frames I bought from op-shops and frames I’ve been given by my beautiful friends.

I’m sick of looking at the photos I’ll be exhibiting but I know that those seeing them will see them with fresh and different eyes so I’m trying not to think about what I think of them too much.

So one step at a time, I had to decide on the photos to exhibit – probably the hardest thing. As mentioned I’m getting them printed and ready for framing.

The exhibition invites are at the printers. I should have organised them earlier and saved myself $20 in rushing the order a bit. I was going to design it myself then I came across Vista Print who have a stack of templates for so many things so I used one of those. I could have done it all in Photoshop myself but this gave me a good start and took some of the stress away.

A friend has helped write a media release and I’ll be sending that out next week. I’ve never done that before. But the worst that can happen is I get no media coverage.

I’m also in the process of putting my exhibited work on Redbubble incase people want to buy prints of them afterwards. I don’t know how this will go but the only cost to me in doing this is more of my time.

And all the little things will need doing. A list of what’s being exhibited and the prices. The prices. What to charge? That is the question. I’ve got a rough idea.

Oh, and I didn’t mention the venue. That’s what kicked all of this off, offering my work to a venue after they put a call out, and having them accept my offer.

And all the while I’ve been thinking about this, and preparing for this, I’m quite anxious. I always am when I put myself out there. I’m sure that at least some friends and family will come along to the exhibition opening and even if they don’t buy anything and I don’t sell anything throughout the exhibition (which runs for a month) then those friends and family might have an inkling as to what presents they’ll be getting in the future.

I’m sure I’ll write more about this as time goes on, but I started the beginning of this post by saying that I’m pushing myself. I think buying an investment property and having the settlement day the same day as your current work contract ends is pushing yourself. I’m hoping my contract gets extended, otherwise I’ll be pretty extended financially.

Oh, and the photo at the top isn’t in my exhibition.