2011

Well ... I just did a quick survey of 2011 ... it feels like it was quiet year for Drive West Today concerts but I still managed to squeeze in about 10 concerts which seems to be my average over the last 5 years or so. In fact - that means I've now done over 50 concerts in that outfit ... which sounds like a big number doesn't it!

2012 is looking interesting with projects both musical and visual with
Taking part in an Opera in January in Hobart ... can't say more ... perhaps afterwards.

A concert at the Forest Festival in February where I'll perform a once-off composition for the Tassie forest.

At some point in the year I shall be accompanying my beautiful wife Nadine on her fellowship trip to Boisbuchet in France so she can attend a design workshop of some description ... I'm going to hang out, eat camembert and probably draw comics ... might see if I can get to Paris and meet David B ... and then fawn all over him ... with poor French skills.

Plans in the wings for another collaborative production with the wonderful Chris Downes for a comics/theatre crossover ... stayed tuned for that later in 2012.

My graphic novel is more than half complete ... the full first chaper can be read online here at Joshua Santospirito Art, if you like what you read you'll hopefully like it even more when I get it in print ( that is, after all, how it's designed to be read ... not on a computer screen ).

Late in the year I'm going to be doing a fairly massive comics-exhibition in Hobart which should keep me occupied for some time.

So - I'm liking the lookie of 2012 ... I shall be telling you all about my creative pursuits when the appropriate moments come up ... in the meantime - enjoy Summer (if you're in Australia) and enjoy Winter (if you're in a Northern part of the planet).

My new art website

I don't know if I've written this here before at the Collossal Adjective ... but I'm writing it here now - if you're interested in my comic art then check my other website - Joshua Santospirito Art. There you can read a few of my one-pager comics, look at my slowly growing long-form essay-comic The Long Weekend in Alice Springs (I'm slowly putting up pages from it as I complete them) and other bits and bobs that I think to put on the web for people to have a gander at.

I will also be looking at a large-scale art project in the next year which I shall exhibit in Hobart in December next year, I might place bits of that up as it slowly evolves as well ... so check back every now and then if you're interested in the process.

www.joshuasantospiritoart.com

Heading back to Sydney

Looking forward to this - In December I'm headed back to Sydney for a gig at the Silent Hour XX, which is a tops night held at the General Store gallery, a beautiful sounding space in Wooloomooloo. In November, in the meantime, Greg Haines, Tim Coster and Spartak will be at TSH XIX on the 19th of November which should be nice ... but I won't see it.

Ooo ... big city of lights.

December 2nd, (Friday) from 8pm there'll be a few acts on for a fundraiser for the General Store. Playing on the night will be Paul Heslin - who's got some cool little videos you can gawk at here - >

Plots within plans

One must always have projects ... if one does not ... one gets a little fed up with things. Mental sanity is a fragile thing when one works five days a week, Monday to Friday.
I am constantly juggling numerous plans with a view to keeping myself occupied.

• I am continuing my comic - I have put up pages 1-13 on the web now, you can read them HERE.


• I continue to look for new and exciting places for Drive West Today to play in ... I have no gigs lined up for certain ... but I'm working on it, not just in Tassie, looking to play in Melbourne and Sydney and Brisbane again one week soon ... and Basel, Zurich, Berlin, Milan etc.


• I am in long-term discussions with my partner in crime Chris Downes for further developments of the performance we did in August this year.


• I am growing veggies with Nadine ... and fighting off snails.


• Nadine and I are slowly revolutionising our house ... slowly.


• Trying organise a regular night in Hobart for improv/noise etc with a couple of comrades.


• ummm, that'll keep me occupied I think.

Things one forgets to do when one is too focused on plans and plots to keep oneself occupied.

• Stop and smell the roses.


• Enjoy the sun.


• Go for a walk.


• Enjoy a beer with a mate.

It's a delicate balance people, don't forget it!

Biophillia

Gotta say ... Björk's new album is beautifully complex. Dark Matter put my ear's into a state of exquisite bliss. Thunderbolt confused me at first ... but I listened to it another two times ... then I got it, BAM - instant classic to my ears.

I also, just COULD not understand Sacrifice at first ... it has these intensely dense drums that come in over the top of the sluggish movement of the underlying structure, after a few more listens I began to become dimly aware that it works in a way that I had never heard before.

I have thoroughly enjoyed the last few album's use of brass horns, this is strangely augmented somehow on Biophillia by the use of organs and choir which provide this surreal drive to tracks such Hollow and Dark Matter, the best advice I can give is that you listen to this on the best quality equipment that you can find ... beg, borrow or steal ... but don't riot. You will richly rewarded aurally.

Björk's combination of sluggishness and intensity also gets a guernsey on Mutual Core which is also quite a humdinger of music. The final track of the album is a far more subdued and beautiful piece that focuses more on voice, which gives the entire collection a sense of focus that is quite sensual somehow, but in quite a different mode to the rest of Björk's work.

She mixes up programming and the quality of more organic sounds such as choral work with more confidence than ever ... perhaps her collaborator Leila Arab's work has improved dramatically, though Björk's choice in colleagues is always second-to-none and this time around includes awesome "studio as instrument" producer Damian Taylor and again uses the skills of experimental harpist Zeena Parkins.

I note that Björk also did the mixing and producing this time around, Spike Stent, her usual collaborator ain't around and the level of detail in the sound is extraordinary despite having poor quality headphones to delve into this with.

And I cannot believe the font that M&M have created. I know amazing fonts get made all the time and the truth of the matter is that I probably just can't pay attention to all of them because of the media "white noise" ... but the fact remains that it is endlessly fascinating to stare at.

I got the digi pack with the extra tracks on it too ... so I finally scored Nattura ... which is a CRACKING track!! Though it probably doesn't quite fit on the same CD.

Weather is changing yet again

So I don't tend to blog as much as I used to ... but that doesn't bother me so much.
I haven't got much on at the moment so there's not much to talk about, just beavering away at my comic when I get a second ... which is not often.

Though I did play two gigs on the weekend - the Inflight gig on Friday which I organised - a top success, people hung around and the gallery setting seemed to give the whole thing a great focus with the audience really coming to listen. I was an oddly shaped performance space but it seemed to work pretty well. You wouldn't want more than 30 or so people at one moment in there though.

The other gig was up at the Grand Poobah at the new front room they have called the Swamp Art Compostery which was put together by Aiden Howlett and some other bloke who's name I don't know. Quite a fun space that want to start having music at the same time as the Poobah Bazaar is on in the other room, a nice little market. Not too many people, so I just played a lot more loosely than I would normally, got to see my neighbour's baby crawling across the floor to my music ... well, I think my music was a little incidental to his awareness to be honest. Hopefully, as time goes on, the Poobah gig picks up and more people come on a Sunday afternoon. I think it's once a month.

The weather's warming and I reckon I'll spend more time in the garden as I plot my next musical adventure. We are thinking of heading to Germany, Switzerland and possibly Northern Italy next year so perhaps I shall be checking out the possibility of having a few concerts over there, perhaps around June.

new video

Sound Klub IV was a great success! Plenty of folks came to Inflight and hung around throughout the four performances

- Flights Habits

- mumble(speak)

- The Hobart Improvisational Collective

- Drive West Today

Here's a video that Nadine filmed from the sidelines

The Surveyor General's Corner

Here's a photo of one of the markers that're at the corner of the Northern Territory, South Australia and Western Australia.

There's actually two markers, the first one was in the wrong place by about ten metres ... a bit of a stuff up ... so they did their maths right and put another one in the right spot ... and then they put this one (in the picture) there ... which has a plaque on it, but there's a slight mistake that I noticed on the plaque

... can you see where the problem lies?

Here's another photo of my placing my bottom on the Surveyor General's Corner plaque and doing a wee fart to let him know that I don't think much of his work and that he shouldn't have been given the position of Surveyor General to the Queen, her Majesty, if he can't work out that W.A. should be on the large side of the plaque, not N.T. ... though perhaps some smart-arse Territorian with an oxy-welder came along to have a picnic one day and assert the right of the outback's lonely picnic area policy of tomfoolery.

Easter

This is a pic of Easter breakfast ... someone who knew what they were doing went snorkling.

Sound Klub IV

Poster illustration done by Josh, lettering done with major assistance from typographer extraordinaire - Nadine Kessler.

Rod Moss

An artist from Alice Springs who's work I quite admire. He wrote a book in the last year or so which is quite a read - it's called "The hard light of day".

Video from Sound to Light evening

Filmed by Nadine Kessler, movie made by Chris Downes, performance by Chris Downes (drawings and poetry) and Josh Santospirito (music and sound), lighting and sound mixing by Jason James as part of the Sound to Light evening on the 20th of August 2011, as curated by Chris Norman and Jason James.

The Shipwright and the Banshee was a blast!

Chris Downes and I have just this night completed the WORLD PREMIERE of this fine production at the Second Sound To Light night at the Long Gallery (Salamanca Arts Centre in old Hobart town). Ours was by far the most "analogue" looking performance of the night - the rest entailing lots of digital works, some amazing programming by some local artists, my faves being Jordan Marson and Matt Warren's piece which was a gut-twistingly loud feeback session with a projection of a arena stadium set, and a beautiful work by Tonya Meyrick and Matthew Dewey involving lots of mirrors which twisted projected light which was in the room off to the side of the Long Gallery.

Our performance entailed Chris drawing with oil crayon things up on huge sheets of paper, the two main protagonists of our woeful tale - the young shipwright and his bane the moaning Banshee. I produced and played live the music for the piece on guitars and my gorgeous ol' electric organ, projected up on the big screen was the writing of the story, written in 4-line stanzas as written by Chris.

Had some absolutely awesome feedback from the audience ... one person said it was Shmick!! Two ladies told Chris that it was amazingly incredible (or something to that effect) ... numerous people have decided to believe that we based the story on a local ghost story ... which of COURSE is 100% true! It's just one that no one has heard before.

Chris drawings were superb, absolutely suberb! Hopefully I can get my hands on some of the photos and put them up here. Nadine Kessler was great enough to film the performance and I believe that Chris will put it up on the web sometime in the very near future for your kind perusal.

http://www.soundtolight.net/

Picture by the wonderful - Chris Downes

The Shipwright and the Banshee

Just to add a touch more tease to what Chris Downes and I have been up to in preparation for Sound to Light on August the 20th at the Long Gallery (upstairs at the Salamanca Arts Centre) -

We've been moulding this little baby for months now - It will involve sound and music by in accompaniment to Chris drawing. It will be a ghost story based in little ol' Tasmania (anyone who knows Chris well enough knows that ghost stories are his speciality).

There's a preview pic up on the sound to light website for youse to check out.

I heard that R Crumb has pulled out of "Graphic" at the Syd Opera House due to some bad press. That ain't right at all!! Outraged comic fans - protest against the Murdoch press and boycott Sydney altogether and just come down to Hobart on that weekend!!

Sound 2 Light

DWT will be performing along with the wonderful Christopher Downes as part of Sound 2 Light at the Long Gallery in the Salamanca Arts Centre, Hobart on August 20th. We've been working on this project for a number of months now - it's been freakin' interesting, Chris will be painting in his inimitable style whilst Josh makes the sound track to this ghostly tale!

Tix - $10-12

Also performing on the night are -

King of the Morning & 313RGB
Nick Smithies & Adam Walker
PilotError & Joseph Barrows
Oceans & Matt Warren
Sam Gregory & Zeal
Matthew Dewey & Tonya Meyrick

Presented by Salamanca Arts Centre and 313RGB.
Curated by Jason James & Christopher Norman.

A night of cross media collaboration transforming Salamanca Arts Centre into a hive of performance and installation.

Sound 2 Light is an exploration in collaboration and process through the combination of sonic and temporal practice. Artists involved in the fields sound and light are matched together and given two months to create hybrid partnerships. These will transform the Long Gallery into a hive of performance and installation based work.

Presented both onsite and broadcast live via 313RGB’s show Synaesthethics on Edge Radio 99.3FM.

Tour-ist

Just got back from too long away from home- here's some evidence of fun.

New Video

A recent video of Drive West Today in prep for his little sojourn across to the mainland of Australia from the Apple Isle of Tasmania.

(Part 2 to be posted for those really keen on listening more).

Chugnut Comics #1

Chugnut Comics #1 can be found HERE.

Organised by the amazing Anthony Woodward (see the links bar on the right of this page for more AW comix)

DWT Bio (2011)

)) Drive West Today

DWT is Joshua Santospirito, whose guitar has quickly become one of the most unpredictable instruments in the country: sometimes a weapon to be feared, at other times a scrumptious ear-tickling feather. Sitting somewhat uncomfortably somewhere between sound-art and jazz, Santospirito has been speaking with his own excitingly unique and ever-evolving tongue for many years now.

DWT has also been a collaborative project over the years, including musicians: Jnine Stanton (Alice Springs) and Nadine Kessler (as part of Silberhörnli from Hobart) as well as visual artists such as – Christopher Downes (Tasmania), Mimi Leung (Hong Kong), and Anthony Magen (as part of MONA FOMA 2010).

Formerly known as boy Brightlulb, DWT has performed to enchanted, horrified and enraptured audiences all over the country since 2005, and even as far abroad as Berlin in 2008 with another tour planned for Europe in the pipeline in 2012.

Originally from Melbourne, Santospirito has spent much of his adult life living in various deserts and cities of Australia but is now based permanently in Hobart, Tasmania from where he plans world domination.

((( Web

Recordings and video can be found at http://www.camaldulensis.blogspot.com/

(((email disco_jeans@yahoo.com.au

_____

))) Other stuff

Gigography - all DWT's past concerts arranged on one page! oooh
Media written about DWT - reviews, mentions etc.
Video - Some live, some not.

(If you would like a pdf version of this bio, promotional photos or any further information please feel free to e-mail the above address)

The Blues

At this stage I have nothing in particular to blog about other than the fact that over the last year or two I have rediscovered my love of watching the Carlton Blues kick the lily-white arses of other Australia rules football teams. This quiet little bogan enjoyment has been growing in me for a few reasons ... my brother who was living on the North Coast, but now lives in Albury watches at precisely the same time, as does my elderly father in Melbourne who has joined the modern world and has learned how to text.

We three sit at out respective TV sets in our three different locations on the Australian map. We three TEXT in awe and AMAZEMENT when little Jeffy Garlett moves his little lightning feet through another man's legs and pops out the other side with a little goal and slaps the little arse of little Eddie in a manly and heterosexual (?) fashion in excitement. We gasp by SMS when Judd does his quite-spectacular feats of balance and poise under inscrutable pressure!!

It has been many years since my dad had any excitement on the Carlton Blues front.

The goal goes in - the texting says *WAITE!*
*YARRAN!*
*JUDDY*

Last week the Blues beat Sydney in Sydney. The first time in a long time. It was bloody wet and the Blues slogged it out and WON!!

I went to bed a happy gent, my wife laughing quietly at my excitement. 40 minutes later I received a text which woke me up, from dad - "Here we come" I smiled, imagining Dad walking around the big house I grew up in with a grin on his face, not wanting to go to bed.

40 minutes later I got another one - "Premiership here we come!" I had stopped smiling by this point because I was tired and that was the second time he'd woken me up.

The Acousmatic Tour - June/July

Drive West Today
beats around the bush in June / July 2011

- Alice Springs, Northern Territory
Saturday 4th of June, outdoors concert - FREE, on the East Side of Alice Springs underneath Spencer Hill near the Goss Street playground at Precisely 7pm. As part of my series of outdoor gigs that I have been doing in Alice, once a year, started in 2009!! Should be a CORKER this time - I have moved the 'venue' North of Goyder Lane ... all the way to the playground on Goss Street near Spencer Hill ... let's pray for no rain in the desert tonight.

Friday 17th of June at Watch This Space Artist Run Initiative as part of Mimi Leung's exhibition. This should be a cracker - Mimi has asked me to play in response to one of her paintings at the exhibit - I haven't chosen as of yet - but you should definitely check out her images at her site on the attached link.

- Sydney (Woolloomooloo), New South Wales
25th of June as part of The Sound Hour at The General Store. Another exciting gig at a slowly growing night in Sydney!!

- Hobart. Tasmania
July - tba
Back in my home again - stay tuned for gig details.

Zines & CDs available at all gigs.

The first new music in the Autumn of the South

New track here!

And another here!

The dept of conversation

colour ...

Whilst at Camp Chugnut with a bunch of comic nerds ... I rediscovered COLOUR!! I'd forgotten that it was even particularly interesting.

Black and White is very nice ... but colour is also very nice ... So I did up a photocopy of one of the sheets that I had in the "Watching This Place" exhibit in Alice Springs.

It's an image of the psychotic tourist on the edge of town - Gilgamesh. The bit you can't see is his ciggie smoke turning into a humungous monster.

Old pages

Here's an old page that I did when I was still working out what format I'd do with format and style. Some remnants of the layout concept for this page still exist in the more up-to-date version but I've had to tweak certain parts of it since. Don't know if this page makes sense standing alone without the rest of the comic to give it context.

The funny part about adapting a prose piece into comic form is that you have to scrap a lot of metaphors that are in the words. The metaphors are, more often than not, being conveyed by the images. Consequently the words become a little more bland ... but the hope is that the whole piece comes alive with that ... chemical reaction between the images and the words that always seems to happen with sequential art.

Dog

Here's an old rough from The Long Weekend. I spent a smashing weekend in Victoria at camp Chugnut with a bunch of mad ol' comic artists.

Thanks to Pat Grant for letting me borrow his gorgeous old one speed bike with reverse pedal breaks to get from Lilydale Station along the Warburton Rail Trail to get to the camp ... and for the smashing conversation along the way ... and back again when we were both drained of all energy after a killer weekend.

I got to meet Mandy Ord, which I was quietly excited by since I had just been sent her book Rooftops, by Bernard Caleo, the book was really great! Her drawing style was awesome but - as always - the thing that always grabs me is storytelling. She has a great voice in writing! Which was beautifully megaphoned by her panels. It was a little like watching a film, with her constant panel-size and tops action through the streets of Melbourne that I know so well having grown up there (almost made me sentimental about my hometown ... almost, not quite there ... give me a few more years away from the overcrowded city).

There's a chugnut blog somewhere with some images from various folks who attended, photos, drawings, and most importantly - SEQUENTIAL ART!!! COMIXXX.

Jenny Hval - Viscera

Many many years ago I became friends with a tiny Norwegian girl who was living in Melbourne. She was studying at Melbourne Uni where I was studying. She was a singer in a few bands and had a phenomenally strange and amazing voice. She was quietly eccentric and it turned out she made private music as well - I was very impressed listening to her private little creations. When her minidisc player broke she gave me all of her minidiscs which had a tops collection of the Cocteau Twins and Kate Bush and Boards of Canada AND - all of her demos. So I walked around the streets of Melbourne and listened to her demos to death, deciding quietly that I was onto something very very special indeed.

She returned to Norway and made an album called To Sing You Apple Trees which was successful since it had a single or two that was quite poppy in it's appeal. I recall thinking at the time that close to every song on the album referred to various body parts, quite visceral in its lyrics, perhaps not in its musical tone. This album ended with the astoundingly beautiful A Flock of Cheshire Cats, which lingers in your mind long after the stereo has quietened, quite a luxurious silence.

Her next album Medea was more Laurie Anderson than pop, far less commercial but achingly beautiful. In listening to it I realised that she was not aiming for broad appeal but reaching very very ambitiously for some greater - something more akin to rock immortality. Oh Anna is a strange novelty, a song in two stages which takes you from electronic darkness to the Technicolor brilliance of its synthetic climax.

The literary focus of her lyrics evident beyond mistake, having built an interest in English literature whilst studying in Melbourne. She has since published a Norwegian poetry book which I, alas, cannot read. Perhaps this is for the better though.

She recently came back to Australia and I saw her perform in Hobart at the Alley Cat with her band. I fell in love with the song Milk of Marrow, a long and drawn out shimmering Lanois introduction to the almost swaggering and anthemic body of the song, Hval singing with more purity in her tone than her usual ethereal meanderings.

I bought her album recently and listened to it for the first time today .... Listening to this album, under her real name for the first time - Jenny Hval - I realise that she has entered a more complete phase of music writing. Perhaps like Smog morphing into Bill Callahan, Hval has become even more like herself. Golden Locks almost freezes the listening experience into a complete catharsis and there is something extraordinary about the suspended state of Blood Flight. I was lucky enough to discover the video clip for this track on youtube. It was created by Hval and her guitarist Havard Volden whilst in Australia, driving up the Hume Highway towards Sydney, characters from the lyrics such as the clitoral sphinx race across the sepia-toned barren landscape - a very fitting visualisation to the drive of the piece. In something that I feel echoes the concept of Oh Anna, the 7-minute Portrait of the Young Girl as an Artist splits the album into two neat apple halves with it's expansive rock-strength. The last two pieces have the gentle feeling of an epilogue helping us digest this story of the body, with the simplicity of a more direct song in the last piece A Silver Fox.

Happy digestion - You can get her album at Rune Grammofon.

I recommend with magnificence!!

Using the work scanner is naughty

from Josh's blog - The Colossal Adjective

After my last blog about sticking things up on the web I took my sketchbook to work and had a look at the big thing they got there - it's an amazing thing called a photocopier/scanner/fax machine. It even has a function that staples large amounts of paperwork for you if you'd like.

This is a rough little comic I thought I'd make starring Juliette, my oldest niece who is a book-worm ... and RIGHTLY SO!! (Only because I was a bookworm at the same age).

I might make a second page for this sometime.

This other page ( lower down here ) was something I did on the same day ... after reading a favourite ol' book of mine that I'd like to do as a comic one day if someone else doesn't beat me to it ... actually that would be a blessing if someone else were to do it ... then I could get back to projects that I should really be doing - such as Australian comics. But this was just a sketch from my mind about what Gregory Syme looks like. He's the main protagonist in the surreal and wondrous adventure story of "The Man Who Was Thursday" which is a religious but ambiguous swords and chase adventure story set at the turn of the century ... which is BY FAR the best thing GK CHESTERTON wrote ... which is saying a lot since he wrote the whole Father Brown detective story series.

I wonder why no one seems to know Chesterton these days. He was very popular back in the day and for some unknown reason appears to have shrunk back to relative obscurity. But I HIGHLY recommend this book to anyone who enjoys philosophical farce and adventure.

When I say its got a religious core I certainly don't think that should scare off any of my secular friends ... Chesterton himself was a religious bloke but what he wrote is still amazingly beautiful and frankly SURREAL towards the end. It mostly weaves around London, which is of course a great setting for an old fashioned chase sequence.

I love a good chase sequence ... especially at night between two individuals.

momentum

I’m am labouring on my comic a lot lately. Have done about 47 pages of rough pencillings ... some of which are better than rough ... so YAY! I shall try and show it to people who are attending Camp Chugnut in Victoria in a few weeks which ought to be cracking ... since there’s some comic artists there who I reckon are awesome and may have a pointer or three for me - Jase Jarper, Jo Waite, Mandy Ord, Chris Downes, Bernard Caleo ... I met John Retallick the other night at a comic’s launch in Melbourne who chastised me for not being capable of putting up images on my blog ... I thought it had to be done by scanner ... but he scoffed at me that a camera image would suffice ... never occurred to me it would be that easy ... must find a camera now ... anyone own one?

Also spoke to Jen Breach whilst I was in Melbourne and have realised that I need to tighten the ending ... so perhaps it will be ever-so-slightly less than 100 pages. DAMN!!! I liked the idea of saying “Yeah, it’s over one hundred completed pages”

Now I’ll have to change that to - “Yeah it’s about one hundred pages” ... which sounds a touch weaker.

Can’t wait to comic it up in Victoria.

Summer - food

Wow - in the garden I have this awesome Zucchini called the yellow Crookneck ... some National Heritage variety that you can eat (when the bureaucrats aren't checking).

And then there's the SWEET Corn ... which is soooo SWEET!!

Kohl Rabi looks kind of ridiculous .. what kind of NON-SWAMP plant has it's roots above the ground? - RIDICULOUS!! But it actually tastes good. Nadine made some up raw with some salt (Deutsch-style) last night with Spätzle ... rockin!

Tomatoes coming out of our ears ... and our ears can't actually hold that many tomatoes ....

The Artichoke is flowering ... I had nooooo idea how bloody NEON the artichoke flower was gonna turn out to be. I also hadn't made the connection that the bit that you pull out of the artichoke (that gross stringy stuff that tastes all manky in your mouth) is turns out like an ugly duckling into the most crazy purple colour when it comes time to attract some bees. We found a bumble-bee dead in one of the flowers ... all that sugar! what a way to go.

what else ... ummm, beets by the tonne.

... raspberries ... the boysenberries are having a late run this Summer ...

The new olive tree has a few fruit on it!!

The Feijoa in the driveway does too ... but they come later ... man that tree needs to be controlled! You can almost not drive the car down the driveway anymore.

Nadine planted a grapevine ... we got one bunch of grapes within a few months ... but the bloody birds were checking them out too! What is it with the birds ... they're so greedy that they don't even eat the fruit when it's at it's best. They must have terrible digestion! Which is suppose is why their poop is so sloppy.

I got back into plating lettuces so in a week or so we can have salad on the table ...

OH yeah - the biggest turnips I have ever seen are out the back. Don't know what to do with them - any suggestions people?

Carrots - paris markets and the usual long ones ...

Taters .... kilos and kilos of taters ... it's time to MASH!!

and lots of other things ... I'm tired of typing now. Time to put these fingers back into the DIRT!

Some bits from 'the Long Weekend'

Here's some roughs that I did for the Long Weekend a long time ago for your perusal.

Parts of the roughs were included in an artwork that is currently being

displayed at Araluen, the cultural precinct of Alice Springs off Larapinta Drive until February 2011 as I mentioned on this blog a month back.

I'm technologically stunted so I

haven't worked out how to shrink the scans so they can live happily on this space without driving me crazy uploading something that's going

to take out your entire month's worth of download ... if that's even the correct terminology.