And then someone sent in the sun..

We are in the post office, time metered out: stamp, kiss, stamp, kiss. Letters are written, forms filled, media kits sent, lists checked, content firing. We are walking around the block on toddler time, in the garden, on the trampoline, in the playroom, at far away desks, in the middle of imagination.

We are stalling and swimming in tides of time-lines and invisible wishing-chair wandering to branches of grumpi ladies and boatbirds and collaborations and rigorous asks from artists who prepare to sail and windcatch our words in ways that will billow us back to rock-pools of when it was all simpler and we could work without consideration of a demographic or detail, nor continuity or image resolution. 
We are working around the clock.

And then we stop for a moment to catch the sun and a personal journey of first flight  - taken in response to her son's invitation - from US based Rachel Awes.

my first flight (Rachel Awes):

 i have worked as a psychologist for a bunch of years. i adore my clients & have scribbled on scrap papers some of the words they've said that has taken my breath away. i decided at some point to compile them together into a healing story & put together a book called "all i did was listen". next i began to look through other artist's images to consider including pictures beside the quotes. i came up with a few & showed our youngest son. he gently laid his hand on my shoulder & said "mom, this needs to be your own art."

i had not created "ART" before, but felt moved by his invitation. i then began with scribbling through an entire notebook to create an image that might match one quote. the initial process was slug slow. & also delightful. over time, it didn't take an entire notebook to birth one image. it became faster & held greater ease.

now i am completing the manuscript. & somehow it is helping to complete me. i am flying. & grateful.

 

A school of birds

From Highgate Primary School in Western Australia, we welcome these incredible portrait birds of some incredibly creative and curious kids! Chani Crow is an artist and teacher based at the school and is doing amazing things with each of the lucky classes. You can see more of Chani's inspired ideas and kids artwork on her fabulous new facebook page promoting and featuring art in primary schools.

In keeping with the BIG side by side theme, we fly the grade 4 and 5 class contributions with a response by the teacher herself to the same task. An artist bird always flies with her flock!  Each one of these birds has such an animated and interesting personality and we are completely bowled over by the quality and expression of these young artists who have taken part in our first ever BIG school collaboration. 

Here Chani explains the process in response to our BIG prompt of creating bird portraits: 

We started the project with a brainstorm of all the birds we knew and some of their more unusual features (toucan beaks, emu legs, peacock feathers etc..). I then asked them to name particular personality traits associated with particular birds (wise owls, happy kookaburras, dramatic peacocks etc...the rule was that it had to be a positive character trait). They then had to design themselves as a bird with an emphasis on showing their unique personality. They were able to use particular features of birds that they knew or create a new creature altogether. We then added colour to the birds, laminated them and added a strip of magnet to the back to they can be taken home to 'fly' around on the fridge!"

Chani's portrait bird flies with her class flocks from Years 4 and 5

Endurance and Navigation

A Mystery of Endurance and Navigation
2008
(Selena de Carvalho)

The BIG mother-daughter flight continues with Selena de Carvalho and Ruby Peppa. Selena is a Tasmanian-based artist whose work is currently featuring in a fascinating exhibition titled Birth.art at the ACU Gallery in Melbourne until June 30 (you can read an adult review of it in the Age newspaper here).

Lilly and I are loving our own practice of Endurance and Navigation, with wings and children wrapping up each of the painted minutes between us. We are slowly finding the words, both poetic and rigorous enough, to articulate a creative vision with an ethical, environmental and socially aware foundation that also encompasses a strong business model. BIG was born with a philanthropic heart at its core and we are in the process of structuring it in such a way that it is financially viable in order to live true to this founding principle of generosity. You can see our manifesto here.

We are researchers and artists, educators and performers, mothers and poets. And soon to be publishers of a children's magazine. Right then. While Lilly gets another crash course in CS something, I fly with certificate of registration in hand and make a pledge to my (other) partner to actually cook something a couple of times a weeks. The dance between catching cous cous flung from highchair abandon to highlighting passages from the National Arts and Education review, to test-colouring a big ship, to sharing small wild dances of delight at each courageous YES keeps us upswept in a headwind of incredible momentum. Lilly is currently drafting a guest post for a major blogger on side by side artistic collaboration with kids. And we both hold our daughters close in the mother-dance.

A Mystery of Endurance and Navigation
2008
(Selena de Carvalho)

Collecting Honey
2010
(Ruby Peppa)

Mother-daughter birds (and 25 sister birds) soar side by side!

This mother and daughter team is awesome. Mama maintains a gorgeous blog we love called Bird and Little Bird. The mama and creator of the divine Alphabet Glue magazine is Annie, and we figure little bird is her daughter Mariam. Side by side they worked together on their birds and when they flew into our BIG sky, we soared with them (totally visualising Mariam's 25 'sisters' in a Busby Berkley style flight formation amid the brilliant blue!).  BIG and Bird and Little Bird have been talking and are excited about the collaborative potential in the international sky between us.

Mariam (little bird)

Bravery is doing something even though you are afraid.
Imagination is like pretending.  For example, I have imaginary sisters.  Which there are twenty-five of.
Generosity is giving to other people and being nice to them and caring for them. 

Mariam, Vermont, US

Annie (Bird)

Bravery is doing what your heart tells you is right, even when it is really hard.
Imagination is believing that the impossible is actually plausible.
Generosity is giving to others without thinking first about whether or not you have enough.

Annie, Vermont, US

Father/ Daughter FireBirds

BG, 8, On the road

Paul Macklin, On the Road

BG, 8, On the Road

 I have a firebird staying in my house. She is the Rose that introduced Lillly and I so many years ago. She is on the road for many reasons.

Bonnie Grace and her dad Paul  are on the road too. There are four of them, a family, traveling around Australia in a camper van. Learning from life and loving the challenge and freedom of their journey. We will tell more of their adventures soon!

Paul Macklin, Firebird

BG, 8, Bluebird

BIG Kids and Emerging artists

BIG will foster conversations and collaboration between emerging artists and kids. Between schools and the home playroom. Between emerging artists and established names. Between established artists and kids. Between kids and parents. Between parents and artists. Between kids and kids!

Here we feature emerging artist Emma Fishwick, who is a young independent dance graduate with a fledgling (i)fab project in the making. She created and sent in this 'Birds of a feather' response especially for BIG and we love it! Meanwhile, Grace sent in this bright bird all the way from Michegan in the US where she is featured on the fabulous Chicken Nugget Lemon Tooty artblog with her siblings. Brilliant bold work, check them out.

Grace, 10, Michigan, USA

And with a drum roll we announce the winner of the paperbird doll giveaway is Chani with her pick of 'Where the Wild Things Are' by Maurice Sendak (email us with postal address to see the dolls fly your way!)  Thank you for all your facebook posts and brilliant book comments! 

On the road, dancing

I have just returned from Melbourne where there was much dance. It was massive. A collision of past and present crossover worlds saw me walking between shows with this BIG thing quietly dancing in my pocket. In a back street I met an artist photographing a 'happy pile of rubbish' and he gave Nadia a tiny red paper paper crane from his 'pile' of hundreds.We will feature his work soon. For now, we take in the beast of the new BIG banner and begin to press 'send' on links and connections we have been so patiently waiting to reach out to. It is a second BIG lift off. Phase two of many.  The birds below fly from nomads, Paea is a dancer currently touring in Europe (today Portugal), and Bonnie Grace is travelling Australia with her family in a van of endless adventure. We will feature more on 'BG' very soon. Like them, BIG is at large on the road, and we invite the adventure of it all, both great and small. Have wings, will travel.

Paea, On the Road, Brussels, Europe

BG, 8, On the Road, Australia

Paea Leach, On the Road, Europe

View of the world in flock and detail.

Zoe, 3.5yrs, Melbourne

   Pittsburgh crows #1, Maribeth Joy, Chicago, USA

Pittsburgh crows #2, Maribeth Joy, Chicago, USA

Watching the big picture unfold and thinking of each life
looking to land in the aftermath.

Leaf and Little Branch

The BIG logo is fast growing on a Little Branch. Lilly and I muse and chatter excitedly over the drafts sent to us by the amazing Maree Oaten and then sleep with castles and birds and boats and ocean fonts all swimming in front of our dreamscapes. 


The attention and ongoing navigation between the domestic/professional/BIG spheres is noisy, demanding, untamed and without prediction. On some days we are tired and a little bit broken and on other days we soar. We now have a 'dropbox' housing shared documents including the new BIG business plan and the very BIG list. We prioritise and get to things when we can, balancing the BIG picture with the ongoing 'work' of it, a crazy and vulnerable way to begin. The only way for us. All in, all at once. Multi-coloured-tasking.


As I go to post this draft of Lilly's, I check in with the Leaf blog and read Cath's latest post on serendipity. Timely as we launch into the next 'stage' of this making of a BIG magazine. How Lilly and I reconnected here after twelve or so years still has us both shaking our heads in wonder at our sudden landing in the same BIG sky. Every BIG connection, child, artist and idea we meet provokes, inspires, fuels and challenges our future steps.


Here Lilly introduces and shares the story of Leaf: 

I found Leaf  through Story one night when i should have been asleep.  I was searching online for  place/idea/business, where everything could live and new things could be born; concept, brand, ethics, ecology, diversity, heart, imagination, connection, hope, humanity and responsibility. I was looking for a different ways of seeing and telling stories for children, and for ourselves, side by side. And then I found Leaf, and sat for a while in the trees, and wondered about the woman who created it. I wrote to say thank you, and share BIG with her, and invite her to contribute a bird,or a story about flight, or an idea that might spark a skyward journey. She wrote back:

My Little Bird

I loved him from the first moment I saw him.

To the rest of the world, this bird is a mark on paper – a graphic to be sold, shared, enjoyed briefly, then discarded.

To me, he represents the realisation of dreams.

He is the marker that pinpoints my journey into the unknown world of running my own business – one which finally brings together all that is ME, as wife, mother, daughter, sister, friend, traveller, creative, entrepreneur, woman; of who I have been, and who I will become.

From him, a whole business has been born, and with it, the hope that I will bring joy, intimacy, insight and creativity to other people’s lives.

I dream big dreams. Often they keep me awake at night, as I shiver in fear at their sheer magnitude.

This little bird reminds me that every journey of a thousand miles starts with the first step. He is my first step.

Cath Connell

Owner and Creative Director of Leaf. Paper for Life. 

Emerging artists

Barney, 8
Sydney

Mia Holton, Perth

Wandering through Finders Keepers Market in Sydney I came across 8year old Barney standing alone behind a stall. Big smile, confident and engaging. Not only was the card I fell in love with illustrated by him, but the business of creating and selling cards was his also! I have a suspicion we are going to see more of Barney as BIG grows and we begin to gather our young editorial team. Barney's 'bird match' above is by Mia Holton, a multi-media artist of exceptional talent.
All flight to these two emerging, original and inspired ways of seeing the world!

Sunday Brunch Birds!

Lexi, 3.5yrs, Perth
Lexi resisted all urging from Mum to decorate her chicken with glitter and stickers, but offered instead a small concession in the form of a gold glittery wing.  This is a chicken of few words.  No chicken bling.

 
Breakfast Birds
"I Was making picture pancakes for family and friends yesterday and a few birds arrived unexpectedly to delight them and bring a sparkle to our breakfast compansionship. Perhaps they will bring some delight to Big Kids readers too."
Paul Macklin, Sydney,
Head Hand and Heart

How gracefully they fry



Maria Pizzirusso and her beautiful AVE, Melbourne

Morgan, 6, Melbourne

Fly me to the moon

  These two birds have been waiting for each other.

Guardian the Owl, Jonah, 9, Halls Gap,Vic.
(Read here about Jonah and his family's 'sculptured life' )

My first flight

My first flight was to be to the moon.

I waited all night until my little eyes wouldn’t open anymore. Somehow I kept them open.
I waited until my neck wouldn’t support my head anymore; I pushed it up with my hands and waited.
The adults promised me I would fly to the moon that night of the party; if I were good then I would get to go.

I think they forgot about the promise, but I never did.

Jen Jamieson, Perth

Lilly and the Love Bird

"Love Bird" Humphrey, 6, Perth
I painted this at a bird sanctuary in Kalbarri.
I've been to Kalbarri, it's so fun, there is a river just over the road

MY FIRST FLIGHT

Received the “The Mystery Envelope” filled with postcards, drawings, photos and other pretty things.

One postcard read “Imagination can take you anywhere”.

Where is my imagination?

In between my eyebrows I found my secret eye!”

I found myself lying on a white gigantic moving cloud.

Sliding down the colour blue all the drawings started to take shape and with my magic camera I took photos of my “First Forever Flight”

Elena Iacovou, Sydney

Lilly has landed with washing flying, commissions circling, girlchild growing and bits of the circus still in her hair. Immediately our live chat email picks up where it left off and we thunder through a thousand overlapping thoughts, proposals, questions and winged things. The BIG bird flock is circling in a holding pattern that is awesome to watch.We are completely caught up with the BIG navigation and begin again amid the heady slipstream of continuous first flight.

Victoria Crowned Pigeon, Bali, by Jo Vanderzwan, Perth