Because I needed a little laugh after the last post...

Signs you've been in Australia too long:

·      Thongs is something you wear on your feet

·      $2 is an good price for a liter of milk

·      Getting coffee or taking the bus with a surfboard under your arm is perfectly normal

·      You start every conversation with "how you going?" - even with the girl at the check-out counter in the supermarket

·      You instantly say "no worries" when someone apologizes

·      You no longer have to think twice to understand words such as Chrissy, prezzy, brekky, cozzy etc.

·      You have as much swimwear as underwear

·      You know that Teddy's, VB, New, and Blonde are beers

·      You order schooners, middies, and nips in stead of pints, half-pints and shots

·      Being drunk means you will be refused entrance to bars

·      Backpacker is another word for tourist

·      You no longer notice the cancer clinics lining the main streets of every city

·      You are no longer surprised at cyclists on the motorway

·      Names like Woolloomoolloo, Bulahdelah etc. seem perfectly natural

·      You have a havaiana tan on your feet

·      You no longer start the windshield wiper by accident when wanting to use the indicator in your car

·      Roadkill is spelled k-a-n-g-a-r-o-o

·      The sound of the Australian Raven is no longer amusing, but makes you want to get a shotgun

·      You can name at least 20 different toys for watersports

·      SPF 30 is your second skin

·      You no longer put salt in your food because you get your rdi from the ocean

·      Your sunnies cover at least half of your face

·      You call “mate” everybody: Very convenient when you forgot someone’s name

·      You are no more surprise when a perfect stranger is calling you “mate”

·      You say “G’day mate” with the right accent

·      You eat Vegemite for breakfast and kind of like it

·      You’ve got your Australian name and get surprise when someone is using your real name

·      You’re saying “I reckon” instead of “I think”

·      You know what AFL means and you picked your team

·      You know that a “bloke” is actually a “man”

·      You know that Holden is not a cheap Asiatic brand for cars

·      You know now that internet contract with data cap STILL exist.

·      You admit that France doesn’t have the exclusivity of good wines production but don’t know why the Australian white wine is giving you a headache when the French one doesn’t.

FUZE Week 50

Honestly... The past 4-6 weeks have blurred together a bit and many of the themes and weeks have started overlapping or dissolving into a to-do list of packing, emails, paper work, travel arrangements, and last visits with friends. 

Two weeks from today I will be landing in Tokyo.  Six weeks from today I will be back in the United States.  My excitement for Tokyo meets so many unknowns about that culture and leaves me in a place in non-emotion.  My joy for getting to see family and friends in the US again meets the sickening heartache I feel at the thought of not being here and again I'm in a place of non-emotion.  There seem to only be extreme highs and equally extreme lows on this journey with very little in between.  "Middle ground" seems to be a self imposed place of total neutrality that serves to keep me from looking like (and feeling like) I'm schizophrenic.

This week as I booked plane tickets and set up meeting and coffee dates to say goodbyes and farewell party plans were made I shed a lot of tears... n: fluid appearing in or flowing from the eye as the result of emotion, especially grief: to shed tears.

This week I also moved out of my studio and started packing at my house.  There were tears shed in this process as well.  I was more struck by the sensation of tearing... v: to pull apart or in pieces by force, especially so as to leave ragged or irregular edges. Synonyms: rend, rip, rive. Antonyms: mend, repair, sew.  In August of 2009 when I first visited Perth I gave it a part of my heart and leaving then was hard.  Now, after having lived here a year, Fremantle has my whole heart and I have it's.

Tear, both the noun and verb, is the theme for this week.  And I have a feeling the next few weeks as well.

Missions vs. Mission Trips

FUZE Weeks 41-42

 The past two weeks  I was touring the eastern states of New South Wales and Queensland with Remnant Dance Collective.  More so than touring the east coast of Aus I was touring the uncharted lands of a realm far beyond my comfort zone!  In this unknown land I discovered many new creatures including collaboration, dance, and improvisation.  At first these creatures although intriguing seemed wild and scarey and I was quite happy to keep my distance, but we warmed to each other in time and ultimately developed a loving relationship of mutual respect.

Every time I travel I'm reminded of how big the world actually is.  And how small my world often is.  Touring the east was no exception.  This time it was the creative world I had been living in that I realized was small by my own making, when in reality it can be quite big.

Day 1: Ananndale

Day 2: Carlingford

Day 3: Dress run

Day 4: Pub

Day 5: Woy Woy

Day 6: Sydney

Day 7: Public Transport

Day 8: Brisbane

Day 9: Costume Check

Day 10: The Old Museum

Day 11: Boonah

Day 12: The Girl Hive

Day 13: New Friend (he was nearly the size of my palm, BTW)

Day 14: Cool Kids Ride in the Back of the Bus

Day 15: Brisbane

From the Studio

This week in the studio this...

Became this...

 and this...

In my preparations for going to Sydney and Brisbane next week all of the tags had to be taken down.  This was going to have to happen sooner or later as part of moving out of the studio anyway.  It was a little sad.  Mostly though it was scarey.  As I took the 1,100 plus tags off the wall I was thinking of how to display them for the up coming exhibitions over East.  I had no idea what I was going to do with them.  To say that realization brought with it a sense of failure would be highly accurate.  Here I've been collecting these stupid tags for months and having people all over the world also collecting them, I'm showing Tete a tete as part of my installation on the East coast next week and NOW I discover I'm not really sure what I'm doing with these stupid things!

There's no telling how many hours I spent staring at a color coded mountain of tea tags this week.  I knew what ever I did with them had to add to the story not just solve the issue of easily transporting and installing them.  I mounted them on craft paper, sheets, glass, napkins, and stationary in various different shapes and configurations... it all looked fine but it didn't add anything.  I piled them on the floor, tables. shelves, and chairs of all varieties... that didn't add anything to the story either or even look ok.  I put them in tea cups, plastic containers, ziplock baggies, and boxes... that didn't work.

Then I counted out 60 of all the same, put them in a stack and covered it with wax.  And it worked!

This whole work is about shared moments... how long is a moment?  A minute, 60 seconds?  An hour, 60 minutes?  Both?  Neither?  However we define "moment" it deals with a measure of time, the number 60 is a big part of the way we measure time.  So is 12.  So 11 more times I made a stack of 60, covered it in wax, and tied the strings up like a ribbon on a package.

I love that they look like little present.  What is a shared moment or an intentional conversation if not a gift?  Wax, as a long standing phrase in my visual language, always refers to preservation.  When you have that lovely moment of meeting someone face to face and sharing time with them you'll want to keep it. 

Each stack has specific tags, some are the tags for specific people, that signify specific people or events that have marked my year here... churchfreo is one, there's one for my Artist's Way group and studio buddies, there are several for specific friends, all of my supporters have one, the class I took back in July at Curtain is one.

This makes me kind of sad...

Granted, it is kind of funny.  But notice that it's all based on choices and preferences not once is relationship or faith mentioned.  Sad.