Mini magazine-makers in Sydney

The tiniest member of the BIG team and her mama recently set off across country on a LONG and magical flight for a girls own adventure in Sydney. Together, we spent six days arranging the BIG pages, seeing sights, having BIG meetings, perusing galleries and art stores, splashing waves, sticking, sculpturing, enjoying books and baby cino's, and watching players on the stages of the iconic Sydney Opera House. After seeing the not-so-imaginative 'Imaginocean', we were then guests at The Cat in The Hat  - a very life-like translation of the book indeed! The Creative Play interactive artist designed projects and storytelling after the shows were fantastic and gave the events a multi-dimensional feeling which is so great for sense-making and engagement! The girls loved the new outdoor area of the Opera House with Fruit Fly circus performing, stacks of wooden blocks and oversized lego to create with in the sand pit and on the grass - a very cool space for kids and their grown-ups too. Of course we were then entertained at home with impromptu plays inspired by the shows. The 2013 Kids At The House includes Andy Griffiths 13 Story Treehouse (loved by the BIG boys). Our picks are Miss Ophelia, Little Big Shots and The Man Who Planted Trees among other gems.

Side by side response play at The White Rabbit Gallery

The calm of worlds underwater was balm for us all

Amazing to watch our BIG babies grow into girls who have a LOT to say :) Mini magazine-makers!

The Making of a magazine - two years in.

The nights are late and the work is as driven as it was when we began whispering this BIG thing to life more than  two years ago. Sometimes we are exhausted. Forever managing ways to mark out the time differently, to acknowledge the work done by the other and together, to do what we can, to remember our voice in the overwhelm. The administration is relentless and roles are necessarily divided. The creative work is ongoing between us and behaves much like a child demanding attention to the exclusion of all else. And sometimes like a child, it has to wait which, more often than not, ends with EVERYONE grumpi ;) As the BIG creative directors, we are also our own PA's  -  responsible for sleuth work on returned to sender subscriptions, for invoicing and advertising, for business, for responding to submissions, for curating the artwork, for the features, for collaborative design, for blogging, face booking, emailing, meetings and meltdowns. It is a BIG journey, daily, and mapped mostly by the energetic rise and fall of the four little people in our lives. 

Right now we are immersed in the beauty of a new work unfolding. The creative development of Issue 4 Into The Dark is well under way even though it will not be published for 5 months. It is the most exciting time, ideas drawn up and exchanged at all hours, words scribbled on scrap paper and paintings flown through a cracked iPhone screen for immediate response. It is a fuelled and firing process with the luxury of a slow burn over the holiday period before the speed and adrenalin of final design in the new year. We are beside ourselves with the quality and QUANTITY of artwork and words received from around the world. Current collaborations and exchanges are on the go between here and Russia, Helsinki, the Netherlands, New York...sometimes we pause and catch our breath and laugh a little for the enormity of this BIG project. Last night I was asked if we could speak to some artists about how we got BIG off the ground. Well, we can hardly remember the specifics (except that every step has been recorded here on the blog) and agree it was unthinkable that we made the bulk of the first magazine without a SINGLE spoken conversation! We could write a book on the making of a magazine (and yes, it is on the list!) 

As we watch the pages growing almost by themselves, we speak increasingly about a BIG pedagogy that is a realisation of where we have been working from for so long; that of valuing the work of children and artists side by side. That of giving a voice to the concept of not knowing. Of challenging the authority of art practice and paradigm. Of firing creative response without prescribed expectation or goal. Of contributing to the conversation about the value and accessibility of arts education. Of giving permission for new ways of open-ended art making and risk-taking. Of nurturing bravery, imagination and making visible the power and impact of generosity and collaboration.  Of a process of co-authorship that is significant and immersed yet driven with individual still voices maintained and spacious. And of this balance of particular practice of co-authorship and creative process in relation to collaborating with children. 

For us both we feel the BIG work is a growing culmination of 20 years each as practicing artists and educators. In arriving at a clear vision for BIG there is again space for the creative work between us to thrive and spark threads unexpected. Lilly works on a series of dark monsters and I respond with words scrawled over late night print-outs. We dream up the beginnings of limited edition artist books with our work published as a response to each of the magazines. We follow instinct and watch the BIG world build as a paper city between us. A continuous and evolving exhibition. Marks made and erased and made differently in response to the other. Live and in process. 

We are so grateful for the feedback and support given to us from so many circles and this enables us to continue. Thank you x You can subscribe here or help us by sharing the BIG work among friends. 

He was responsible for the final tree in the forrest with a water source that fell pouring from his heart. 

Meeting and Magazine Making

First night landing at the Sydney Festival

The BIG begin

Twyla heads off with the pirates while we work

Treasure seeking

A few pages in..

Late night renderings and the pressure is on. 48hours.

Birthday week for our BIG girls

Two girls, two birthday's, two cities, two stories: Swan diving, turtle dreaming, spin riding, music box opening and a doll's cradle re-made for the daughter of your daughter (thanks Grannie), paper bag rainbows,  guest star singers, blueberry treasure, flying friends landing, family dancing, tall trees and tents, little icing hands holding big, stories whispered after bed...


It has been a BIG birthday week. My baby girl turned from one to two, and Lilly's from two to three. The little ones have never met but we think each would love the other. See the post a year ago when they turned one and two. How far this ship has sailed so far - distance measured by the days of our children growing. Happy days girls.  xx

2 year old birthday girl

Nadia in half dress morning unwrapped wonder 

Twyla waiting for Nadia Sunde, guest of honour at 3rd birthday

BIG Kids interview in Small Magazine

The incredible editors of Small Magazine, Olivia and Christine work long distance like we do and we were thrilled when they asked us some BIG questions.  We know not all of you are on Facebook, where we have linked to the latest stunning edition, so we have included our BIG interview that features in the magazine here. Start with our Small Hands interview and then take a moment to sit with the rest of the beautiful imagery and ideas on each of the other pages. Quite a journey.

Conversations

Distance charged with sound and onset

I have counted all the way from me to you 

subtracted all the numbers

and our distance is the sum of zero 

(Jo Pollitt with Paea Leach and Anica Boulanger-Mashberg - from 'micro distance' 2009) 

Lilly's exhibition, Infinite Proximity opens tonight at Art2muse in Sydney. Meanwhile I am working in the studio on a solo that is accompanied by an exhibition of photographs taken by the dancer. We laugh and celebrate the long distance intersections, cross-fire and difference in our work. Lilly's micro 'conversations' artist book, and a glimpse of her exhibition work hanging in situ are below. 

Lisa Rodden hanging her work for the exhibition with Lilly's work on the right

An artist a dancer makes

It is has been over a year of BIG collaboration between the two of us.  First flights and treasured maps are writing themselves into our other work and forging unanticipated links, provocations and responses.  Lilly posted the below on her Little Boat Tree artist blog today and funnily enough, ran it by me to help land a sentence with my words catching her thinking, like she catches mine.  Together we find ourselves increasingly working at the intersection of magazine-making and art-life, and this post is where it collides. It all happens, all at once, all of the time.  The opening of the exhibition (and you are invited!) also marks our much anticipated launch into the making of the Treasure Maps edition and we cannot wait to get lost in it. 

Here the artist dancing, introduces her new body of work:

-------------------------------------------

 It is a while since I have been here, splitting myself between BIG things and creating a new body of work for a show with Lisa Rodden I have opening next week at Art2muse. Splitting is not quite the right word though, it's more of a swinging back and forth, never quite leaving one for the other, always informed by where I have been and where I am attempting to get to. Since beginning a collaboration with dancer Jo Pollitt over a year ago I have come to see lines on a page as more of a silent visual choreography. A floor pattern tracking longings and failures; map like; incomplete; absolute. My hand responding to a personal lineage of marks and shapes; histories and broken bones. Working this time to a dissonant soundtrack, Prokofievesque, storytelling the heartbreaks, hopes and missed opportunities of love and partnership. Investigating the losses that come from holding each other too tight, or not enough. 

perpetuity

 In this new body of work I explore the nature of relationships and the landscapes that sprawl distances between people. Graphite landing on unspoken conversations, making them visible (like rubbings on autumn leaves), even in their emptiness. The little red stitches holding it all together. Corrections like red crosses on a primary school page. A path; a fence; the fabric of our discontent like spiders webs or fishing nets. The unsaid stories that connect us and betray our need for distance, otherness and solitude. 

Interestingly, despite the obvious disappointment in some of my images (no doubt a delayed response to my own heart break)  I am now involved in the most intense, supportive, challenging and creative relationship I have encountered. The collaborative work I do with Jo feeds, frames and fuels much else in my life. There is something significant about connecting across a great distance with another human being that defies life's hopelessness and disappointments. In my work I search for marks that are relevant, and scribble stories that might change the way we relate to the world in small ways. I worry about the state of the planet, and especially the plight of children living without fresh water, sunlight and laughter. I am not sure how much of a difference my pages of ink can make, but I am convinced that truly connecting with another human being, and then making something together, is a defiant act with unmetered potential to catalyze change.  This new body of work is called Infinite Proximity and with enormous gratitude I dedicate it to my creative partner Jo Pollitt for restoring my hope, distilling my fears, and making me far more brave. Thank you x

You are welcome to join Lisa Rodden and I for launch drinks at 6.30pm Thursday November 10th at Art2muse Gallery 475A New South Head Rd cnr Bellevue rd Double Bay. 

held

listen

Lilly's landing on Paper Runway

Lilly has a gorgeous editorial feature in Paper Runway - where passion meets paper. If you love beautiful images and stories about interesting people pushing the bounds of what is possible with paper, then take a moment to read the magazine here, subscribe here or find it on the facebook runway here.


  

Congratulations Maree and Nikki, your second issue is truly divine and we feel very lucky to be working with you.                  

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    You can also find originals of Lilly's work at Art2Muse - a Sydney-based gallery run by the awesome Katrina Hampton showcasing some fabulous artists.

  it takes a leap of faith, 

unbridled and wild,                

eyes wide open,                        

to see what is there.

         beneath.

                                                                                                                       

Surrender
Lilly Blue

The pond was everything
Lilly Blue

The ocean of her
Lilly Blue

Unbridled
Lilly Blue

Our BIG (childhood) beginnings

We shift the BIG content around on virtual pages, dancing ideas and stories, images and artists between us in the late evening hours and found minutes of each day. We are finally coming in to land with the BIG 'pagination' and watch as the pages fill up with visible renderings of our BIG dreaming come to life. We talk in quiet calm as we barely contain our excitement at the artwork and articles flying in from our featured kids and artists. We focus on what needs to be done, and occasionally remember to breathe. By Sunday the first draft will be complete. It will be almost 9 months from when we first began. We are, right now, making a magazine. It feels like we are at the beginning of the next BIG chapter. And so, we take this opportunity to introduce our own beginnings:

Following an early childhood in Zululand imbued with dance and song (my mother was a folk singer) I landed in Australia and looked over the fence at my new world. Her name was Emily, and she was older than I with 2 small siblings. Together we created a world under her house which kept our secrets. When I wasn’t peeking under the circus tent across the road I was scrawling in journals and taking my dolls for walks in the washing basket on wheels. I first quit ballet at the age of 5, but by 15, I knew dance would be my career. My passion is improvisation and yes, I am good at making it up as I go along - earning a Master of Arts degree on the subject which I plan to finally frame on the BIG wall somewhere!

Jo and Emily's little brother watch the circus roll in

When I was 10 I directed a Circus  performance under the liquid amber tree in our backyard. I illustrated  the invitations and hand delivered programs to the neighbours inviting them for pre show spiders. There was a tightrope strung up under the washing line, clown acts and my younger brothers famous magic show. I was the ring master both behind the scenes and on stage, conducting the enthusiasm of siblings and cousins, trying to keep them interested in the rehearsal process when they lure of the pool became too great. None of the neighbors came, but the day is remembered as a great success and preceded hundreds of shows and exhibitions in makeshift tents and on bedroom walls. In fact,  my life today looks incredibly similar!

Lilly and her younger brother, pre-show (a few years prior the mega circus production)

Arteries and Oceans - An artist interview with Lilly Blue

After the excitement of announcing the Junior editorial team, I am thrilled to follow on with a profile of the incredible work/life of my BIG creative partner Lilly Blue.  Lilly and I have been working together everyday for more than six months on the development of BIG Kids Magazine but there has been little time for talk or questions beyond the immediate BIG realm.  I have not seen Lilly for 12 years, and recently an interview began with a will and curiosity of its own.

Lilly lives in Sydney with her two-year-old girl child Twyla. She is a prolific artist who sells and exhibits her work in Sydney, New York and Paris. Lilly is represented by Art2muse in Australia and Galerie LWS in Paris. She has just been featured on Artbuds and is soon to appear in Spoonful.  She has a Bachelor of Fine Arts with a post graduate diploma in Education. She has a heart bigger than possible.

Lilly 5 yrs old, Birmingham Alabama

On B.I.G:

Bravery is embarking on a journey into the unknown, shadows and all
Imagination is the million things that can't be known
Generosity is a treasure map

On Paris

It was an incredibly formative time about five years ago, and was the location of my first intentional art sale. For a month I worked everyday in a little artists studio a walk from St Germain des Pres (when I wasn't buying cheese and loaves of crusty bread at the market). I met with the gallery curator for three hours in a hazy smoke filled cafe two days before I left Paris. At the end of the meeting he told me he would like to buy 10 of my inks on paper and invited me to come to the gallery the next day. After a night of butterflies I arrived, and he told me Galerie LWS wanted to represent my work. I was stunned. 

The studio in Paris

On New York: 

Prior to the Paris landing I traveled to New York to attend a six week workshop with Anne Bogart and the SITI Company and ended up being seduced by the city and staying for almost seven years! While there I pursued my interests in large scale community arts projects with youth at risk and disability services, working variously as the Creative Director of an organisation called Catskills IDEA (Institute for development of entertainment arts), the Artistic Director of a Youth Circus Program, and as writer of creative programming for a beautiful yoga studio. 

On creative Process (and the work of Lilly Blue):

Some bodies of work - like the boats - began when I was a child and I can't imagine finishing in my lifetime. I have been doodling and painting sea faring vessels forever. I collate some of my imaginings in a place called Little Boat Tree. I remember in primary school we had to create symbolic self portraits, and I drew myself as a boat on a vast sea. I love journeys and the idea of exploring uncharted territories, inside and out, arteries and oceans. I love being in the studio when I am exhausted, or careless and playful, so that I can make discoveries that were completely unintended. Spilt ink at 2am led to a body of black hulled boats on graphite silver seas.  There is no greater joy to me than looking down at the page and being surprised by what is revealed; unexpected, raw, inexplicable. I am more inclined towards experiencing not knowing than in tying up loose ends. I am interested in ambiguity, incongruity, subtlety, ambivalence, inconclusiveness, intuition and poetry. In some ways I still live in the worlds I loved as a child. Enchanted. 

From the 'spilt ink' series

On arriving at BIG:

All of my creative work- performance, installation, writing, visual art - has run somehow parallel to social and community work. Exploring and envisioning alternatives to traditional education models is a huge passion - lifelong learning, reflective practice, multi-generational crossovers - my book shelves are bursting with it. At many points in my career I have felt like I was all over the place, then inevitably I would end up running a program, or directing a show, or writing a curriculum and all my eclectic skills would come perfectly into play.  I feel we know so little about our future. We are educating our children for a world we know almost nothing about, except that creativity, compassion, generosity, vision, adaptability, emotional intelligence - these things we KNOW will be essential. So it is not surprising that I have arrived here in this BIG world, with a brilliant creative partner and a scope bold and encompassing enough to address all the things I am most passionate about. BIG is an invitation to see the world with new eyes, respond to it, participate, witness, contribute and celebrate a child's view exploring the world from their perspective. 

On Kids and Art :
I feel that in many cases we have stolen the experience of generating ideas and philosophical thinking from children by demanding they fit squarely and quietly into standardized tests and rows of desks. Kids are primed to believe they have to figure out the answers that the big people already know.  It is a theft of the most profound implications. I will never tire of witnessing that moment when a child's eyes awaken to the possibility that their view is truly valued, when finally, after asking questions for weeks and weeks, "What do you think/ Why?" they find their own unique voice. I work for that moment, to bring an exploratory, unfettered process back into a child's world. Immediate, messy, and completely open-ended.

Lilly and Twyla

 On Motherhood:

I LOVED being pregnant.   More than ever I was content to simply be a part of life, I didn't need to add to it. I looked at the world with eyes that found beauty and majesty everywhere, I don't mean that to sound obtuse, but it was truly a profound experience for me. That unsettled sense of 'searching' for something, of making marks in the hope of finding meaning, literally fell away the moment I conceived.

With Twyla I have so little time to create and yet I am driven and inspired more than ever in my life. In watching her direct experience and absolute presence I am able to connect to the value of process  in a real, absolute and true way. To really dabble and delve and watch things unfold naturally without contrived pushing. To be inside the textures, shapes and sounds of the experience. To share it with her. I love when she scribbles on the work we do side by side and I am taken somewhere new and unexpected. Somewhere I could not have reached without her wildly flung, crayon clutching, paint brush wielding fingers. 

On people who inspire:

I love Georgia O'Keefe for the shapes she carried in her mind, the solitude she reveled in and the moon lit early mornings she inhabited, paint brush in hand, eyes open, receptive and alive. Georgia Rises is a poetic children's picture book about a day in her life. 

I love Hundertwasser for his home made shoes, his philosophies and attention to natural detail, and his colour drenched dreamscapes. Harvesting Dreams is a fantastic book for exploring and sharing Hundertwasser with children. 

I love Frida Kahlo for her introspection and the beautifully complex and layered worlds she created out of her pain. Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera is a great book about their lives, full of activities and ideas to explore with kids. 

On co-authorship and collaboration: 
I have been interested for a long time in the mysterious creative space that reveals itself when two artists begin a shared process of creation. It is a rare and valuable meeting as revered fragments of self necessarily fall away to allow unexpected hybrids and composites to appear.  Ideas volleyed back and forth pick up speed and direct ownership is lost in the furious exchange. I have worked with a number of artists and visionaries over the years but have not enjoyed the sustained intensity, uncompromising support and shared rigor that I experience in working with Jo on BIG. It is the ultimate research project into the  process of co-authorship and I am grateful beyond words that she came so unexpectedly back into my life. The great thing about this kind of shared process is that there really is no telling exactly where it will take us, but I am definitely up for the adventure!

Thank you Lilly, you are a giant.