Matthew Collings
Matthew Collings is going to be in NZ in a couple of months. He’s coming here to open the Auckland Art Fair.
I’m glad to see him being brought to New Zealand, as I believe that his views on the visual arts are worth listening to.
Kim Hill on National Radio, interviewed him for 40 minutes last Saturday morning. If you feel like it some time you might like to dip into the interview, to get the feel of the grain of his mind. The interview will be available for 3 weeks.
Pukekura Park
These are two trees in Pukekura Park, as they appeared yesterday evening. WOMAD was held under the shelter of these trees.
Yesterday a large thick envelope arrived from a friend in Kansas. It was crammed with American newspaper cuttings. One that particularly caught my eye was a review from The New York Times of an exhibition of a photographic ABC. Neil Winokur (b1945) has been working on these since the early 90s. In the cutting we have A and H.
About 20 years ago I started making an ABC book. I have A for Alligator. I haven’t completely given up on the project but it definitely seems to have stalled. Perhaps I should have another look.
A problem, I found, was not only making photos that represented the letter, but creating 26 photos that matched each other. Some photos that I had for letters jarred with their neighbours. I wasn’t thinking of this ABC book as being for children alone.
Below is the image that I made for
X.
Moonflower
To the right, in the sidebar, there is photo of my front door. The large white flowers turn into seed pods such as the one above. I photographed it in 2002.
This plant has many names, one of the most common being Jimson Weed. It is the same species that Georgia O’Keeffe painted during her time in New Mexico, where it grows wild. O’Keeffe also painted Morning Glory, the climber that I mention in the posting below.
Gardening
This week I’m gardening. This fertile Taranaki soil means that weeds can take over rapidly and as an example, here is a photo of two of the dominant weeds here, Morning Glory and Wattle. In this case one growing through the other. Such is the size of the problem that most of the gardening in this area involves hacking and dragging. I use a sharp machete.
Much of the ground is covered with the third offender: Nasturtiums. While the flower, see below, is beautiful, the plant can swamp most others out of existence.
I don’t mind putting my time into the garden though because there is a strong connection between plants and my photography. As usual, my photographs follow my interests.
This last week I’ve been able to enjoy uninterrupted time to relax and potter around. The weather was perfect, mostly wild. I’ve had time to look through a new biography of Matisse and was interested to see this photo of his studio wall. I like the philodendron leaf motif as he uses it.
Apparently he had a number of philodendrons. Here’s the motif in some chapel windows, made when he was about 80. It was only in the third version of the windows that he removed red from them. I don’t know why this impressed me so much.
Two or three years ago I took the photo below, a closeup of a philodendron elegans that I grow. Elegans are particularly difficult to locate but I found a small plant at a market 5 years ago and it grew in a pot quite happily but became tall and top heavy. Eighteen months ago I took it to a nursery where they cut it into 9 pieces and have been growing the segments on for me. Old enough now, I’ve brought them home again. Each one is about a foot high.
Webb’sThis is part of an advertisement that appears on page 3 of today’s Sunday Star Times.
Increasingly, my work has been appearing in auctions. Usually I don’t know who the owner is, especially with images like the one above, which was taken about 25 years ago.
Generally speaking auctions have been a bit worrying because although they are putting work in catalogues and it’s getting seen, the work also tends to go at what seem to me quite low prices. This has been the case for years.
Towards the end of last year, in two consecutive auctions, photographs of mine set new records at Webb’s, for photography. $6000 & $9800. It received some publicity and many people remarked on it to me. I’m keen to see what happens over the next few auctions.
Another trend is that if it is reported that a high price has been achieved for a Peter Peryer, say, as it was in the NZ Herald in early Dec, then other print owners are more likely to think that they might sell theirs. High prices at auction will suck work off walls. This is turn could affect prices, perhaps in a negative way. In my case I wonder how many more of these older works are out there. There were never very many in the first place, and they must be getting rarer. (I don’t reprint.)
WOMAD is on in New Plymouth this weekend. The population of this city of 50,000 is boosted by perhaps 15,000 visitors so visitors are everywhere and the atmosphere is a lighthearted one. Womad started at 6 pm on Friday and finishes on Sunday night.
I bought a 3 day ticket several months ago and put it away in a very safe place. Problem is that it’s in such a safe place I can’t find it! I’ve been searching for about a month now. Tried every technique known to mankind, apart from praying to St Anthony who is, I believe, the patron saint of lost WOMAD tickets.
But as I write this tonight, I feel for those visitors because there is cold, hard rain and it’s dark. Brooklands Bowl is nearby.
The photo of the ducks etc, I took in the Bowl, the day after the last WOMAD finished.
P.S. Sunday morning.
Met a friend at the Farmers Market this morning. He’d danced in the rain at WOMAD last night until 3 a.m. so that’s good news. Meanwhile the rain continues. Forecast is for clearing weather later today.
The Tenderness of Wolves.
Last week I urgently needed a novel so I went into Unity Books in Auckland. I chose this one.
At 440 pages, it’s quite a substantial read. Yesterday we had a storm here, so I took most of the day off to finish the book and enjoy the wild weather. There was lightning and hail. My house lets in a lot of weather so I was well wrapped up.
This morning I was ponderering on how
wonderfully evocative Stef Penney’s description of the Canadian landscape, had been.It was a surprise to find out a few minutes later, that Stef Penney had never been to Canada!
It did take me a little time to get used to the idea, I was even a teeny bit indignant and uptight at first, for a few minutes only I assure you. I’m won over, particularly after reading this article. And the novel of course. I recommend it. Possibly it’s all the better for having being written out of a library in London.