I’m back

November 16, 2009

Holy Shit!
Has it really been a year and a half since my last journal entry on 5 June, 2008? Yep. Just shy of the mark by only two weeks.
Well, I’m back. Welcome home.

My shadow precedes me as I walk through the gate.
In the intervening 18 months since the last entry I spent six of [...]

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Time to Pause

June 5, 2008

For the past two months—or ever since the last piece of wood was put onto the Peace Fire on April 6, thereby allowing it to come to an end after six continuous years of burning— a sense of “empty anticipation” has been a constant companion. Empty in the sense that what I most desire right [...]

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Behind mist awaits hope

April 3, 2008

A leaf flew into the window last night during a storm of 170 kilometres per hour winds. It plastered itself onto the glass and is still there now stuck like glue offering an image to the brief frailty of all life. Everywhere I turn and look there is branch debris, the wind is still strong, [...]

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The model

March 27, 2008

A Gary Snyder zen poem reads:
“In the shaping of the axe the model is close at hand.”
As a sculptor who uses axes, chisels, gouges, rasps and other tools-of-removal, I am fond of this poem, not only because of its multiple koan meanings, but because of literal wisdom in the notion that if one wants to [...]

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Top dog under dog

March 19, 2008

A dog sits calmly, head turned towards a glow that emanates soft yellow. Does the dog understand what it is looking at?
Maybe to the dog, its just the tail end of that “giant dog in the sky” she howls at monthly. Maybe, maybe not.

Or is cognition just the domain of humans? This, they say, [...]

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Celebrating what we already have

March 13, 2008

Most readers would be familiar with the story of the two people who are looking at a drinking glass that has been filled to the half way mark. One optimistically says, “It’s half full” while the other person says in a more pessimistic voice, “It’s half empty”.
Since writing last week’s blog entry about the young [...]

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The story is in the bag

March 6, 2008

Yesterday I splashed out on a new pair of cream coloured pants and a green shirt in order to be a little more presentable than normal at an upcoming wedding in two weeks. (My wardrobe of well worn, mostly work clothes, has now been increased by about 20%). Driving home from Hobart with my fresh [...]

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Patrick’s egg

February 25, 2008

The “giant squid” egg on the beach didn’t actually arrive on the rising tide. That was just me having fun trying to get an interesting photo. Instead, it was sent in a padded box by young fourth grader Patrick Kammar from the Jemicy School near Baltimore, Maryland as part of a “migration project’ that is [...]

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An artist’s life – 4

February 15, 2008

Last night I slept 12 hours. Bone tired, I was. Not to say that I wasn’t content in my tiredness, because I was. You see, the past two weeks have been spent preparing for and executing a site specific sculpture at the Friendly Beaches Eco-Lodge on the east coast of Tasmania. The only requirements [...]

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An artist’s life – 3

January 30, 2008

Lifer
Hunched over hard white bread
and plastic soup bowl filled with gruel,
he looked like a stork, a silly angel,
all neck and bony shoulder-wings
and awkward beak.
His head lifted, then fell
in a slow deliberate dance,
three, four times, dough-skinned
in a gray room sickened by yellow light.
He kept his eyes shut tight.
Outside the prison dining hall,
a turnkey slammed and locked
the [...]

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