HAPPY STREET

Images via Bona Drag, LveLand, Minka Sicklinger, Bandit Brand, Daughter of the Sun, Amanda Charchian, Jen Gotch and Pinterest.

Judas Priest baseball shirt and high-waisted jeans. Warm beer in hand and hair all messy.

Singing Waitin’ Round to Die and None But the Rain. Drawing coloured eyes all over everything.

Ditchin’ responsibilities for passions. Spending rent money on new boots and a killer jacket.

Looking for that dusky blue summer sky. Prophetic neons. Heavy under all that silver and brass and turquoise.

Reading up on history and how to see things differently. Tuning for a station that plays Bowie and the Stones.

Shaking sand out of the sheets. Aching dawn. Not going gentle into that good night.

Undisciplined. Sleeping late. Staring at the ceiling while the opening strains of Eclipse strike up on your stereo.

Living heavy // travelling light.

☪

Also, my Bona Drag Boutique shopping list is getting way out of hand. 

DUSKY OPUNTIA

Dusky Opuntia 2013
Longer days, warmer weather, a full yellow moon rising over the suburbs ≜ Hot mornings, cramped planes, familiar salt air filling lungs ≜ Eucalypt fires, a reunited family, hundreds of years of shared memories ≜ Verandah-post wisteria, midday cicadas, the winding road we take to get there ≜ Newspapers, cold beer, my father in boots on the front lawn ≜ Freshwater streams, river-washed gravel, seven people talking at once ≜ Old fireworks, the beat-up ute, walking home through the paddocks at dusk ≜ My book collection, my mother’s garden, the light that is always shining on the hill ≜

WE SHARE SOMETHING SPECIAL

When I was a kid, we went camping in the Tablelands behind the coastal-rural area where I grew up. The Tablelands are a kind of mountain highland separating the coast and the flat, dry plains out west; they were all waterfalls and deciduous trees, sheep and granite boulders. My favourite thing about camping at the Tablelands – apart from jumping off waterfalls and climbing the big fig tree – was that I got to take home bunches of brilliant yellow everlasting daisies and a whole collection of bleached bones of a long-dead sheep.

A combination that pretty much sums up my interests, both as a kid and now.

So when I got back from that camping trip, I was excited to share my find with kids at school. It was standard for me to bring bones or snakeskins or big quartz rocks into class for show-and-tell, because to me, they were just pretty cool things I’d found. But I was disappointed when the other kids thought they were a bit gross. I couldn’t understand it; I mean, they were just things, artefacts. These were the processes I’d read about in encyclopaedias and watched unfold before me on the farm. Just life and death and shed skins and feathers. Just things that are around us all the time.
Now I’m older, I’m still fascinated. My mum is even in on the natural artefacts trip now, she collects bones and feathers around the farm, and cares for my cacti and turns my old cow skulls into succulent planters. And my dad is probably to blame for the natural sculpture preoccupation in the first place: since before I could remember he’d bring home brilliant rosella feathers, water dragon eggs, or gum tree branches with evenly spaced spikes where cicadas laid their eggs. Last time I was home, he’d hung a fox skull on the fence to bleach for me. But other people helped, too. My grandmother, dad’s mum, wrote me a letter and taped a flattened, preserved lizard to the top of the page. And Harry, who lived across the river, gave me a lucky rabbits’ tail, which I kept as one of my favourite toys. I was heartbroken when one of the girls at preschool told me it was disgusting. And when I got my first car, the guy who worked at the petrol station plaited me a red-and-white leather key chain with palomino horse hair hanging from it. When I moved to the city I often got asked if it was a voodoo charm, or if it was human hair, and told it was creepy.
But they were all just things, artefacts.
And that is a big part of what is in my illustrations. These things are not dark or threatening, they just simply are. I hope there is a sense of wonder in it, a sense of reverie. I hope it says something about how crazy it is that these little cells grow and build and make a frame, or a fibre, or a feather, or a shell. It’s crazy that snakes wriggle out of their old skins, that crystals can be so hard and so transparent, that our eyes see things upside down and our brains turn them the right way up. It’s crazy that humans can communicate with a look, that we can sing melodies that resonate in others’ chests, that birds can still fly in the rain, that dogs are like little alien humans that love us. It’s crazy what cacti look like, what platypus look like, what stars look like. It’s crazy that water dragons bury their soft little eggs in gravel, that mushrooms grow in rings after rain.
We share something very special.  

PERCEPTION

  Aldous Huxley compared the brain to a 'reducing valve'. In ordinary perception, the senses send an overwhelming flood of information to the brain, which the brain then filters down to a trickle it can manage for the purpose of survival in a highly competitive world. Man has become so rational, so utilitarian, that the trickle becomes most pale and thin. It is efficient, for mere survival, but it screens out the most wondrous part of man's potential experience without his even knowing it. We're shut off from our own world. -Tom Wolfe

COLLECTIONS

     

BECAUSE THEY SAY YES

... It made me think about the ones I left behind in hometowns and cities further north, the ones I miss desolately, especially when it’s 3am and I’m coming unstuck. Or when things are going bad – or good – and I need someone to be ready with a celebratory-commiseratory Jack’n’coke and a Gunners album cued up at the ready. When I need someone who laughs in my face when I try to intimidate them, who makes me cry when they cry, who can quote, verbatim, the stupidest things we’ve ever said or done, who will sit up until sunrise, chain smoking and talking about the history of rap music.

And the other thing about us, about why the people who love us are good. Because they say yes, they always listen, nod, accept, laugh – they’re always open and hopeful, aiming for collective happiness, not driven to bitching by boredom. They’re honest, and they’re honest about who they love, who they are, and what they can’t stand. They’re honest about what they might not know, and they humbly share what they do. They try to avoid harming anyone or anything else, they avoid misery, conflict, and ordering other people around; they have no sense of entitlement; they are polite, self-deprecating, and they share – both joy and burdens. They like dogs, art, the ocean, skateboarding, music, books, drinking, freedom. They almost never talk about real estate, insurance, celebrities or income tax. They’re fuck-ups, too, selfish, sometimes, but they’re hard to beat. They're amazing, unparalleled, and I miss them and they know exactly who they are.

MINOR REVELATIONS

Over the weekend I discovered that this is an excellent little local band, that I can not be drinking as much as I used to, that Humble is scared of popcorn sounds but is willing to stick with me through the most treacherous of hungover-Daria-watching marathons, and that I was right in the assumption that a lot of people just don't get it. 

And from that, we can discern that I haven't really done anything productive lately. I did, however,  list a few more shirts here and here, and then that's it for those styles. Mostly because screen printing is really difficult and stressful and on the next go around, I'm paying someone else to suffer that job.

WHISKEY VISIONS

Pony Gold Whiskey Visions sample shirt; Volcom button-up; Somedays Lovin’ jeans via Market HQ; Urge boots via Market HQ; jewellery/scarf/conchos: markets/eBay.

So we went to the op-shop, and I bought this good rug. I also found a book about – inexplicably, really – the original 90210 television series. So then that got me thinking about my favourite episodes, including but not limited to: the one where Dylan goes to Mexico because his sister was kidnapped, the one where the gang goes to Palm Springs and I think Brandon has a drinking problem or something, and the one where Brandon’s crazy girlfriend drugs him and his killer ivory Mustang convertible gets trashed – ending in the inevitable egg-assisted “this is your brain on drugs” metaphor. Oh, and any one where Steve wears a fluro crop top, because that just makes no sense. 

But anyway, most of all, the best bit was when Dylan McKay quoted what would later become my favourite Bukowski poem. Although, I only recognised that retrospectively, because at the time that it aired I was, say, five. 

But that was some cool shit, the Bukowski thing. Because Beverly Hills 90210 was about as mainstream and marketed as you can get – my 11 year old sister had 90210 socks – but I love that there was something kinda culturally seditious slipped in there, that you could take or leave. A bit of an unturned stone. 

Is that still going on? Are today’s characters in entertainment still doing that at all – working on two levels: the accessible and the enlightening? Giving us a little lane-end into new words, music, or art to discover? I have my doubts, and I try not to look at them anyway.

So, we went to the op-shop and I bought this good rug, and Humble and I laid on it in the sun and I thought about those kinda things. 

there's a bluebird in my heart that

wants to get out

but I'm too tough for him,

I say, stay in there, I'm not going

to let anybody see

you.

MYSTERIOUS AND ACCIDENTAL MAGIC

SKETCHBOOK: FLICK THROUGH

Welcome to my sketchbook for August/September... I think it was worth the killer neck strain and weird attachment to characters in CSI/Law and Order: SVU ... that I've developed after too many weekends committed to drawing with subliminal background-noise TV on. 

Going to try and get that obsessive-compulsive behaviour on a leash and head back out into the real world soon... 

And thanks everyone for your crazy, incredible support and love! It seriously amps up my obsessive-compulsive need-to-draw days, in the best possible way. Whinge though I may about workloads, I really love being part of such a supportive and creative community. 

It's somethin' else.

DELICATE // THUNDER

I recently spent a whole afternoon catatonic on the couch, staring blankly at old episodes of CSI and scrolling mindlessly through Pinterest. Fully tuned-out and dropped-out. No brain noise at all. The afternoon then segued into drinking vodka-orange-and-pineapple with my housemate in the backyard, while our partners barbecued some stuff and we talked about UFOs, weird people we knew, and the environment. I think that afternoon on the couch marks the official peak of my burn-out and collapse into kind-of desperately directionless watching/scrolling/drinking and denial of all the – constructive – things I was supposed to be doing.

So, I’ve been a bit quiet on here lately, mainly due to the kind-of burn-out experience. But I’m still here, and this is a bit of what I’ve been doing (list adapted from Meet me at Mike’s)…

Making: Plans. Always.

Cooking: Pear and parmesan salad, anything vaguely Mexican

Drinking: Alternating between whiskey+dry and tea

Reading: Recently, Tom Robbins's Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates and Tim Winton's The Turning, and just started Jonathon Franzen's Freedom

Wanting: This and this from Spell, Optical Intrusion jeans from Evil Twin, and this from Rejoice the Hands. 

Looking: Through the archives of my favourite artist of the moment Aminah Slor’s blog

Listening: To Pandora -- Lynyrd Skynyrd and Led Zeppelin stations

Wasting: Beautiful days and evenings, by sitting inside working on sketches.

Wishing: I didn't have to live in a city with no immediately viable options for swimming in natural bodies of water.

Enjoying: Waking up at 5am to chip away at to-do lists – mornings are my peak action time.
Growing: A lettuce garden and some mint. I’m really pleased that Humble hasn’t dug them up.

Watching: Documentaries on Pink Floyd and giant squid – not in the same one, unfortunately – CSI marathons and the highlights of the NRL finals.

Waiting: For a chance to escape and hit the road

Following: The constant stream of inspiration and motivation that comes out of the online creative community.

Liking: Every little new-campaign teaser Sugarhigh and Lovestoned are posting online.

Collecting: Biological specimens to press in sketchbooks, inspiration from natural sculptures and oddities to add to drawings.

Wondering: What I should do next.

Loving: My partner. And my dog, the Princess Weenie Mutt. And scones.

Missing: My family and my home. A lot.
Hoping: That our rented house doesn’t sell. Or if it does, that we find a way cooler place to live, where we can still have fires and puppy parties.

Marvelling: At spring in Melbourne, and how this city's awful/crazy weather makes you incredibly grateful for a day of solid sunshine.

Needing: More time

Smelling: Stolen jasmine flowers, toasting sourdough

Wearing: Black jeans and Harley boots (always), boyfriend’s black shirt that I bleach-dyed and screen-printed, and loads of silver and turquoise. Usually also some bright green and yellow hand-knitted house socks my housemate’s mum gave me.

Noticing: The ebb-and-flow of creative drive and burn-out, tolerance and rage, triumph and defeat. And that women, especially and sometimes inexplicably, can be very mean to one another.

Knowing: Way more about Adobe Illustrator than I did last week.

Thinking: About buying big canvases and starting some paintings.

Giggling: At Humble's attempts to be brave/sneaky/a human
Feeling: Cautiously optimistic

HAPPINESS OF SPRINGTIME

Most images have click-through sources, from here, here, here, Shae Detar, here, Mariela Paz Izurieta, here, here, and Zarah Abraham.

Laying on a blanket in the sun, with a lover and sleepy hound ◉ Collecting flowers from around the neighbourhood, pressing them in sketchbooks ◉ Monitoring the clear evening skies for stars, comets, and unexplained activity ◉ Spending evenings outside, talking in the dark over Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Creedence Clearwater Revival ◉ Planning escapes, trips, reunions, resignations ◉ Drinking beer in the midday sun ◉ Watching the gardens creep forth, growing inches every day ◉ Curling up, exhausted, to read a tense and familiar book ◉ Smiling dreams of horses, family and the farm ◉ Starting off down new paths, chasing new ambitions ◉ The happiness of springtime ◉

FRONTIERS

MOTHER

TODAY

So I hinted here at the weird recalcitrance and resistance life seems to be enacting this year... At the moment, there's no chance of coasting along for a few weeks without some minor setback or life-upheaval. I'm not sure what's going on. I like to think it's just change agents rallying and rumbling and forcing me to grow up a bit or alter my life. 

But even so, I'm not really that into it. 

Take yesterday, when things got weird again. The real estate sent me a message to say the house we are renting is being put on the market. So, we potentially have to move away from our nice neighbours and cute park and our backyard that is good for fires. Later, I drove home staring at an apocalyptic sunset in which I could actually see the whole outline of the sun, and that thing is huge and scary and I thought it was a nasty omen. When I got home, I found that Humble had eaten one of the screens I was using to print shirts. Then I almost snapped off three fingers on my right hand trying to shut the garage door. 

It got to the point where I felt like maybe I shouldn't attempt to do anything. Doing things was becoming a bit dangerous. 

But then I thought that I could sit there, not do anything, and the bad things would still keep happening. And I wouldn't have solved any of the bad things that had already happened. They'd just pile up. 

The alternative was to keep on chipping away at it, try to find alternative paths or paths of less resistance, in the hope that eventually -- in the words of Alice in Chains -- something's gotta turn out right.

So that's where we're at. Chippin' away. 

SKETCHBOOK: WONDERWORLD

So, I've been seriously consumed by commission work and this whole t-shirt printing thing... a situation that always, always makes me come up with amazing ideas that I just have to pursue but, of course, don't have time. Then when I do have time, I can't think of a thing to do. 

Anyway, here's an excessive amount of images for your eyeballs and mindtanks to feast upon. 

It's been the most incredible spring weekend here in Melbourne. The air literally reeks of blossoms and my pup has been going crazy in the creek, chasing birds and butterflies through fields of yellow wildflower-weeds into the tiny, gentle waterfalls... I actually had to stop and laugh at how incredible life is. 

Which is what you want. 

And hey, the first pre-order round of shirts go out tomorrow... Continually exciting times here. 

MAN IN THE SUN

sometimes you've got to kill 4 or 5 

thousand men before you somehow 

get to believe that the sparrow 

is immortal, money is piss and 

that you have been wasting 

your time.

- Bukowski, Man in the sun

Somedays, half-remembered lines from songs or poems or books clatter around in my head non-stop. I'm not sure if that gives them any significance, or if today is just the day my memory decides to fixate on a Bukowski poem I read when I was 19. 

.... Although, now that I think about it, the most frequently played mental loop lately has been a Bachman Turner Overdrive song. And when I think about it that way, I hope there isn't too much significance to the things that run laps in our brains. 

⋙ RISING EYE ⋘ LIMITED RUN SHIRTS

Rising eye crop available here.

This is for eternal enlightenment seekers. For arriving in a place you’ve never seen before. For discovery. For hastily written notes and heartfelt sketches.

This is for Pink Floyd in the midnight dark. For hand drawn temporary tattoos. For real ones. For last night’s conversations and this morning’s coffee.

This is for beat-up boots kicking up dust. For concho hatbands and silver jewellery.

For the first read of Walden and the first light of the day.

This is for your meandering soul. 

And so this is the other style that is up in my online store.

This is one of my favourite designs, I'm not sure why... It just sings to me, I guess.

But anyway, I'm sending out the first lot of orders this coming Monday, which is exciting... 

After that, both shirts will be available for pre-order again for another two weeks, until September 16, when I'll wash out the screens and embark on some new endeavour.  

I just have to decide what that endeavour will be....

CRYSTAL VISIONS

Images from here, here, here, here,  here, and here.

Watchin' the visions, listenin' to the voices;
Drinkin' beer, raisin' hell.

MIXTAPES AND HAND-LABELLED CDs

Digital edit of this print.

The first time I really listened to Creedence Clearwater Revival wasn’t until I was 16. My best friend and I were sitting on his parent’s lounge room floor, flipping through his dad’s record collection, drinking beer, burning incense and probably fretting about what the hell we were going to do with our lives. Later on, he gave me a CD to burn and that started a (kind of, sometimes it’s still embarrassing) shameless love of southern rock. It’s worth noting that this was the same friend who sat me down on the edge of a garden bed outside the school sports stadium and made me listen to Tool, and then Alice in Chains, in quick succession. We both had one earphone each, conjoined twins via a discman, squinting at the blinding white concrete and trying not to move in case the other’s earphone fell out.

With music, I think the thing that is almost as special as the sound itself is the person who gave you the gift of knowing about that sound. I remember “getting” Pink Floyd – in a dark room at 3am, no less – loving Guns n Roses, unearthing Rodriguez, falling for Bowie, picking up the Shins, understanding Biggie, and inheriting the Doors. All the people who gave me those sounds were and are such crucial people at pivotal times in my life that it makes me smile just thinking about it.

Those mixtapes and CDs with the hand-drawn labels and tracklists were just the best.