trees puddles critters

Lot of fun and a lot of great drawings created today by local artists... Bianca (above also includes her sisters Aoife and Niamh's trees), Cassidy with his sunny and rainy GreenWay days, Elkie's rainbow and Isla's sensitive skink. A popular work with visitors today is this central tree-hybrid inkjet print on acetate by Melbourne artist Aneta Bozic (above).... thanks everyone.

issy iriele designs

These beautiful and sophisticated plant designs are the latest work by Isabel Iriele and presently hang amongst others in window view at the Paper Plane. All of her images here are drawn from living plants that grow along the GreenWay. Hope this inspires you as it does for me!

gallery open

Opening the doors of Paper Plane Gallery today 12-6pm

Lots to do now as I prepare for gallery occupation! 

This project has been in the works for a while and I am looking forward to setting up shop and now making the installation. The idea is to keep the process fairly organic in development as visitors over time interact with the growing installation. While the doors of Paper Plane Gallery are open - Thurs-Sun 12-6pm - I will be available to work in collaboration with anyone visiting. As an artist I am happy to guide anyone making artwork or not - naturally as each person is unique so will the participation be. The work also is not limited to the drawn image as I know one young artist who likes to do wall tags and perhaps a message could be written about our GreenWay.                                

It's time for play!

bookart beauties

This month in the display cabinet of Haberfield library are some bits of book art to promote the 2011 GreenWay Festival and the Greenway Playhouse. And below from the Artbound exhibition is this lovely artist book by Gary Smith - only one week left at Gallery Red,135-145 Glebe Point Rd. The work is titled The Day at Braille Beach and is made from found pine needles, shells, beads, buttons, stamps, plastic bits, bone, mirrors, found text, seeds, thread and mesh! Gary says: "Fantasy, adventure, hope - let's go to the beach!"

A Curating Cities Project

Slow Art Collective

at Object :

Try This At Home

8 OCTOBER 2011 – 8 JANUARY 2012

In October, Object’s Project Space is transformed into a cosy yet unusual lounge room for Try This At Home, which invites us to consider the way in which we are each designing the future by our everyday actions – from the products we use to the resource-use patterns of our daily life, and the truly confronting notion that the key material we are designing with is time itself. Artists, designers and collectives including CO2penhagen (Denmark), Haque: Design + Research (UK), Magnificent Revolution Australia, Makeshift (Australia) and the Slow Art Collective (Australia) present examples of adaptive practice in which existing resource use is re-directed for more sustainable outcomes.

Margaret Farmer from the National Institute for Experimental Arts curates as part of the Curating Cities project.

Utilising abandoned objects left by local residents for council pick-up, the Slow Are Collective (Dylan Martorell, Tony Adams and Chaco Kato) present an installation made from household refuse and document the hidden world of fellow jumble scouts, who collect and repurpose these discarded items. Some of the result shown above...

read more here and please take a look as Makeshift for example have a few other related projects around Sydney that may tickle your fancy.....

and another interesting show that is touring:         click here for link

Eco Annandale exhibition and book launch

some for you some for me  2011

Ecologically Sustainable Annandale 2011 exhibition 
and book launch of 1890s Annandale: A Short Walk by Marghanita da Cruz

Officially open by Jamie Parker, the Member for Balmain Sat 8th October  1.30 - 3.30pm

Exhibition on 1 - 29 October

Leichhardt Library, Italian Forum, Norton St

Eco  Annandale is an annual exhibition, artists and their works can be seen on the website via here

Not only is my art practice concerned with sustainability, I have a personal connection to Annandale with recently sighting my great grandfather's picture up on the wall of the Annandale Town Hall amongst many other past mayors.

Program Launched

The Festival celebrating the GreenWay features a week-long program of activities ranging from all of the above to lots  lots more ...click here

ditched deodorizer

Palmfinches   etchings on found throw out

Coming soon all the details about a fun DIY art project - the Greenway Playhouse -   made by all to celebrate and explore the life of our GreenWay. The many artworks created will be shown off during the GreenWay Festival so please stay tuned...

Come all and Ride

Led by  ARTcycle and the Friends of The GreenWay in a ride to celebrate the GreenWay no matter who funds it. You can also meet up later at 3:30pm at Gadigal Reserve - between Grosvenor Rd and Parramatta Rd. See Friends for all the details. 

Footprints Eco-Festival

In the backstreets of Annandale you will find the Whites Creek Valley Parklands hosting a community garden, ecological wetlands and sustainable cottage community centre. For all the details on the Footprints Eco-Festival like how to get there please visit Annandale on the Web. ps its only a short ride away from the GreenWay.

opening mosiac wonder

mosiac mural must see

  

In the Lords Road Tunnel (yes down from Art Est) a beautiful community artwork by a long list of community members and students is up for viewing. The original mural design is by April Keogh, the mosaic assemblage direction by Nola Diamantopoulos and the internal story wall by Joel Tarling. Here via U-Tube is a great film about it.

Signage and info installed reads...

It is a beautiful thing seeing men at work and an iron "whipple truss" bridge! Please go and read more at the tunnel.

National Tree Day

this lovely tree with great foundations is by Onyedi Iriele

National Tree Day is Australia's biggest community tree-planting event.

Please join in: 10am to 12.30pm this Sunday 31st July at Richard Murden Reserve, Hawthorne Parade, Haberfield

we will help plant some indigenous species creating great habitat for our native birds and animals. 

Powerful Owl

If you have heard at night a deep Whoo-hoo it could be the Powerful Owl,  Ninox strenua. It is the largest Australian nocturnal bird and is listed as vulnerable in NSW. Birds Australia has a public call out to help locate and monitor breeding pairs and Birds In Backyards will train volunteers. For a lot more detail please use my links and to report a sighting or join in volunteering please go here

As I am not often able to see outside of a book the birds and animals I like to depict in my art I then frequent museums to observe the preserved. A favourite is the intimate and historically important Macleay Museum at the University of Sydney - where presently they have a long-nosed bandicoot on display...  so I strongly encourage a visit! 

They estimate to have 9000 bird studyskins that were mainly collected in the late 1800s. I am currently drawing some of the birds found along the greenway, of course, and here I believe is a not so typically posed tawny frogmouth. It was common that the taxidermists and engravers of the time had also never seen these specimens alive and in real situ. 

cat attack / bandicoot talk

These small etchings are from another art project I am doing. And they are a good reminder of how our beloved meows can be active predators to our local native fauna.


The bandicoot talk given by Dr Tanya Leary presented by IWEG was thoroughly enlightening. There is already a lot of information on these Marsupials via the net so google ahead if you want more.


from my notes:  
21 bandicoot species ... the long-nosed are common but not here in the inner west where they had disappeared in the 1970's. Now rediscovered in 2002. Being a disjunct population it is classed as endangered. A worrying fact: 7 reported deaths in 12 months.
They are about the size of a rabbit and do hop and are fecund as rabbits too. Described as "naive" they don't avoid traffic and their threats are high. Local predators include our domestic friends and feral foxes. Here they have been found living under old style houses and one lady has been known to feed them steak! 
Our responsibility could include being pro-active about a night curfew for cats; covering compost, no outside pet food to minimize attracting foxes; "mosaic" clearing and planting of gardens... this integral approach to weed removal is practiced by bushcare groups so our fauna have plenty of dense and interspersed foliage - the ideal habitat for the bandicoots!

IWEG presents:

at Pine Street

Until the 16th June, there is a beautiful exhibition on at Pine Street Creative Arts Centre in Chippendale. All participating creators here are  5 to 12 years old with part of the show a competition about World Environment Day 2011  organised between Pine Street and City of Sydney's Sustainability Unit. The United Nations Environment Program for this year is the Forests: Nature at your Service with loads of interesting info on their site to look through.

Hawthorne Canal

..playing with ideas for artworks..

long-nosed bandicoot

Here in the Inner West the Long-nosed Bandicoot (Perameles nasuta) has been recently spotted with this photograph (below) taken by a Dulwich Hill resident in February this year. Their conical shaped diggings are a good giveaway of their nightly activities and are distinctively different from diggings by other animals like rabbits and rats. Current native and non-native vegetation along the GreenWay are good habitat for these sweet critters and clearing weedy vegetation should been done slowly allowing recently planted natives to firstly reach their maturity.

Just hot off the press is a new brochure by the GreenWay Sustainability Project team to raise awareness of this endangered local population and how to identify and protect them. For a download please link here. 

image courtesy of greenway.org.au

Inspired by these endangered locals, I recently participated in a volunteer day at North Head Sanctuary in Manly to help with scientific research. Bandicoots on the Brink is run by Earthwatch and is focused on protecting these endangered species by educating us and gaining data to understand the impact, activity and abundance of introduced predators in this area. I highly recommend to all to join up!! It is a beautiful day out learning about these little marsupials and more. A truely spectacular place among Sydney's endangered Eastern Suburbs Banksia Scrub and other wildlife. In good company and while attending to the asked duties, I also joyfully documented fungi and spotted birdlife I hadn't seen before - what a thrill. Thank you to both Dr Nelika Hughes the Wildlife Ecologist from the Australian Wildlife Conservancy and Rachel Maitland from the Earthwatch team for all your hard work and for such an informative and fun day.

and click on the cat-attack post for more bandicoot info