There is a competition of young people interested in photography and Abi has her entry up online. The students had to find twenty photos that responded to words on a list - a scavenger hunt! She had a lot of fun doing it and really put a lot of effort in. Her wonderful sense of humour comes through as well - great work Abi!

There is a gallery of photo sets on the Snap08 website - Abigail Giblin is my daughters entry.

In between the mad rush to complete work for the Top Gallery show there was a day on the weekend when the canvas gently drew me into its persuasive surface and enticed me to spill out another memory from Alice Springs. The river bed near Trephina was really quite a magic place - well all the river beds I walked in, camped in, drove along even, were a unique experience of being in the MacDonnell Range. The eucalyptus trees line the edge of the dry river bed with a lean that seems to anticipate the next roar of water that will eventually flow down the course sandy river bed and replenish their underground store.

In light of the modern age of working in the arts there is a strong emphasis on developing all aspects of being an artist. This includes being informative about your process, I think, so I made a couple of simple posters that give a brief outline to the process of working with stone lithography and etching.

They are not intended to be really thorough, but after having many conversations with people about the various methods of printmaking it is clear that most people don’t really know what a lithograph is, let alone that there are many techniques that are called lithograph (what is the definition of a lithograph these days?) or what an etching is, so my little posters will be at the entrance of the gallery just as an introduction to understanding what is behind making the prints. I must admit I really enjoy these extra bits!

As October draws closer I thought it was about time to post the invitation for my exhibition in the Top Gallery. This will be a selection of work that has been directed to answering my questions for the MFA and hopefully the strengths and weaknesses will be identified and the next 6 months will be focused on exactly what I need to work on for my final submission.

I plan to have a set of questions there for anyone interested in having a say about the work, which will be really interesting as it is hard to step back to being without any invested opinion about whether the art is relating to the research, but someone who has no prior knowledge of it will have fresh and direct opinions.

So if you happen to be in Hobart in October between the 2nd and the 30th then the show will be up in the Top gallery which is located in the Salamanca Arts Centre. It will be open from 10am to 5pm and I plan to sit in on Saturdays when the Salamanca Market is on and there are lots of people around!

Finally after hours and hours and hours… and hours of working on this plate it is ready to go into the etch! It is 60 x 60cm.

It is a copper plate coated with bitumen as a ground and I have used the beautiful Nothofagus gunnii or Deciduous Beech as the image inspiration. It is quite a stunning sight in the high peaks of Tasmania and the leaves are very sculptural in their form and the way they group together and sit on the trees. The plate is supposed to be a layer to work with another image, so hopefully things will come together and this aching wrist will be justified!

While I was marking the seemingly endless little strokes into the bitumen it occurred to me that the tool can be so crucial in determining the mark. Not rocket science of course, but as I worked I hadn’t noticed that the point of my tool had become about as sharp as a tapestry needle rather than a finely honed tip. This determines the breadth of the mark and indeed how cleanly the mark is made. So it got me thinking, as you do when performing repetitive tasks, about the use of the dremel type tools in printmaking. This is probably a bit of a touchy subject, considering the huge relief it has been for people to be able to work images with more speed and efficiency as the effort of making the mark is placed in the power of the tool rather than the stroke of the hand.

But my concern is this, does the tool then become the mark of the maker, rather than the makers hand being the mark? The question has stemmed from a recent crop of beautiful work from several highly talented and regarded artists which is barely distinguishable between each person - and my vote is for the tool that is creating a flattening out of the artists hand, rather than any other more sinister explanation.

Ok I’ll jump down off  my soapbox now… and get back to work!

Each year the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens have a plant sale put together by the ‘friends of the gradens’ group. It is a great way to start off the spring planting as they have some unusual plants on sale as well as the expected splashes of colour to lift the winter greys away.

Their flyer offers heritage tomatoes, native plants, shrubs, herbaceous plants, perennials, potted colour, jams books and magazines for sale. So hopefully the sun will be shining on the 20th of September and some bargains will be had!

The quality of these images is not so great as I was caught out without my camera, so the mobile phone got a workout! The day started with some plate preparation with aquatint. I used spray paint for this which works ok but is not as fine and controlled as the rosin aquatint which is the traditional method.

Then I moved onto the lithograph stones, and first up was a wash out with white spirits for a new image.

Then the rolling up begins, following an application of bitumen that is, and the image needs about ten layers to build up the ink at this point of its life.

The image is then ready to etch once it has dried (as the stone is quite wet after the rolling process which is alternated with being wiped with a wet sponge), so it is on to another job while it dries.

I have another stone on the go that has been waiting for some detail to be added, so that is the next job.Here I am applying rubbing ink which works as it sounds - by rubbing a soft ink onto the stone. My fingers get quite sore after an hour of this!

A wash is also added to the stone in some areas.

So now with two stones waiting to be dry enough to apply an etch, there is time to grind off the third stone, and the biggest, ready for its next image. This takes nearly an hour as it is uneven and needs some extra grinding on one end to try to level it up a bit. Printing an uneven stone gives me heart flutters as you need extra pressure to take up the lower end and the sound of a stone cracking - and they go off with an explosive bang when they crack - is not a sound I want to hear!

Finally I can apply the rosin, talc and gum solution to the stones with images. This needs to sit overnight before they can be printed.

And that was before lunch! So the next time your printmaker buddy comes home and says - ‘I’m pooped’ - you know they have been very busy indeed!

With an exhibition date looming rapidly it has been a push to complete the sequences that I have planned for the three Precipice groups of prints. Of course there is nothing finalised about the prints in terms of how they will work together, and that is what my mad slippery slope of frantic and determined printing has been about and will continue to be about for the next few weeks. It isn’t as much the show that is the aim as it is the opportunity to see how my last few years of work sit together and what needs to be adjusted and expanded or indeed contracted before next years submission.  Of course it will be a vital time for my supervisor to nudge in the right direction and give the nod or the shake to specifics sets of work.

So hopefully by October the first, when I will have the Top Gallery in Salamanca Arts Centre for a month, there will be some more or less completed sequences and sets of prints that will hopefully have something to do with my Masters of Fine Arts! In my last moments before sleep could finally grasp me last night I came up with a sentence that I think may explain what I am working towards… ‘An exploration of landscape and physical appearance as a metaphoric description of significant repressed emotional experiences.’ but of course in the game of academia it will probably change and shift and warp finally settle into a block of text within the dusty pages of published paper.

Amy is an extremely talented young lady and she needed a website to showcase her professional work from the last couple of years. So it was onto the computer for the weekend and out popped her new website!

The images are in sets that can be viewed as a slideshow and each one shows just a glimpse of the powerful and deeply thoughtful productions and workshops she has been a cast member of, directed, or assisted the direction of and frequently produced costumes and set design for.

I hope you enjoy Amy’s new website as much as I enjoyed working on it!

The thing about home is that is what it is - home, and eventually everyone comes home sometime. It is Amy’s turn this time round after nearly two years away in Norway where she has been teaching and working in various roles in the drama/theatre field.

With only a week to catch up with everyone it was little brother Anthony (ok not so little anymore) and sister Abi that got he attention - out at the market and walking along the beautiful Howrah beach track.

Amy and Martin (on the left) are heading off to Melbourne to settle for the next adventure!