General News

Camp fire

/ Sarah K Reece / 2 Comments
I’ve been enjoying one of my favourite ways to relax – having some friends around to sit by a camp fire in the backyard. I have always loved camp fires, when I was younger and used to live near a river, sometimes in winter I’d wake early and go down for a swim, then light a little fire and cook up a breakfast of sausage and eggs. The smell of wood smoke relaxes me, it’s associated with so many good memories of camping trips and nights under the stars and the medieval fair. It’s a very peaceful thing to sit by a fire and listen to it crackle and watch the flames and the wood turn to coal and ash.

This year it’s become a bit of a tradition with some of my friends, we get together every so often and bake potatoes in the fire. Everyone brings drinks or toppings for the spuds. The taste is fantastic, they are creamy and smoky and delicious! Today we also did baked bananas with chocolate sauce, and it isn’t a camp fire without toasted marshmallows. I am so very busy at the moment with work and study and volunteering, art projects, the blog, and all the reading and writing I do. Taking a whole day off to put out chairs and set a fire, water the garden, find room in the fridge for the drinks… it’s so peaceful! My skin smells of smoke, there’s leftover tabouli in my fridge, I’ve lent a book of poetry to a friend who’s new to poems, and all is right with the world.

Tea light candles in glasses to light the table I’ve put under the apricot tree:

I hope you’re having a relaxing weekend too. 

Preparing the garden for summer

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Lately Mum and I have been putting a little bit of time into the garden, hoping to prepare it for the hot weather to come. I don’t manage temperature extremes of hot or cold very well, just one of the quirks of my physical illness, so unfortunately on the nastiest days my garden wilts because I’m too wilted to look after it. So I’ve up-potted various plants so they don’t dry out as fast, planted into the ground various potted herbs and geranium cuttings that have taken root etc. And grouped everything together to make it easier to water and help to create a microclimate that lessens water loss. Plus, it looks good. The parsley and coriander are going to seed, so will soon hopefully spread through the roses and succulents of their own accord to crate a kind of potager garden. Give it a year or two to fill out and it’ll be beautiful. In the meantime I’m watching the figs with deep greed. I love figs!

I’m going to Broken Hill

/ Sarah K Reece / 6 Comments
Back in October 2010, Mum and I went off to Broken Hill for a holiday. By happy coincidence, we arrived on the right week, and stayed in the right hostel, to bump into a whole bunch of poets all there for a poetry event. And I’ve just found out they’re doing it again! So for Australia Day next year we’ll be taking the train up again for another wonderful few days of poetry, drinking, talking, and wondering around art galleries. I can’t wait! If you’ve an interest in poetry yourself and a few days free, why not join us? Broken Hill is a fantastic experience. (and if you’re on a pension, the train trip is almost free with your vouchers)

As you can see, I loved the massive stone sculptures. The countryside is harsh and wild and stirring.

There’s surprising beauty:

And interesting galleries to visit:

Or if your tastes run in a different direction: a Mad Max exhibit:

and at The Tourist Lodge this January, there will be poets by the pool.

What more could you ask for? Email me if you’d like all the details. 🙂

Auslan at the WEA

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Yesterday’s Auslan class was fantastic. I’ve really enjoyed learning the basics of Australian Sign Language. I actually learned the alphabet when I was a kid, my sister and I became really fast at spelling out words and carrying on private conversations with it. 🙂 I didn’t know any signs though, so we had to spell out every word which is pretty tedious. Learning signs for whole words and how to carry on basic conversations quickly is quite exciting.

I’d love to see Auslan or at least the basics being taught in schools. Many of us will experience some degree of hearing loss as we age, and already knowing the rudiments of sign language would help us to maintain communication. Some people experience hearing and sight loss, Auslan can be signed onto someone’s hand to overcome these significant barriers to communication. Knowing the basics also helps to connect with the Deaf community and include them.

I’m writing pretty cautiously because issues around rights, culture, choice and communication in the Deaf community have become pretty hot topics. There’s a lot of strongly held beliefs and politics that I am not in a position to make an informed call about. I am aware there’s been a lot of conflict and tension between Deaf people and medical professionals, and that sadly, the Deaf community seems to have a poor reputation for being unfriendly and elitist.

My background is chronic physical illness and mental illness. I have personal experiences in areas like the difficulty of having an invisible disability, the stigma of ‘madness’, the shame of trauma and abuse… my lovely Grandma was legally blind so I grew up attending craft groups at the RSB with her, I’ve spent a couple of years in a wheelchair when I was very unwell myself. I also used to babysit a child who had an intellectual disability and I did work experience at the special school he attended. I’m pretty passionate about disability issues and I have pockets of knowledge, but about other disability areas I’m quite inexperienced. I have very little contact with the Deaf community, but on the street where I live now I have a Deaf neighbour, and I’d like to be able to communicate with him. He came around one evening to let me know that I’d left my car lights on, and we wave at each other but I’m embarrassed that I can’t ask him how his day is or if he’d like some mandarins from my tree.

This class has been the most wonderful introduction to the Deaf community. The instructor is Barry, you can see him here on the home page of Deaf Can Do. He is wonderful, very friendly and funny with fantastic communication skills. I’ve so enjoyed this class I’m considering taking on Auslan as a second language. I bet there are some Deaf folks out there who could do with some good mental health information too. It does help to remember that behind arguing and politics are people, and that few of us like being defined by our ‘group’ – however passionate about it we are – to the exclusion of all else.

So, if you’re looking to learn something new and stretch yourself a little bit, consider this class! And while I’m spruiking for the WEA, Lee Pascoe, international hypnotherapist, will be back again to do three classes in January 2012. I did three of her classes at the beginning of this year and found them very helpful, I’d highly recommend her. She’s a wonderful woman full of vibrant energy.

A little story to finish on… I’m doing Auslan with a friend who attends the voice hearer’s group Sound Minds with me. At the first Auslan class we were looking through the notes and saw an instruction that we were to ‘leave our voices at home for these classes’… that gave us a bit of a private giggle!

Newsletter!

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Well, this is something new from me! Today I wrote a short newsletter to distribute to the people who’d asked to be on a mailing list about dissociative information. It took a surprisingly long time to do, even though I used some articles from this blog! It’s not perfect but I hope it does the job and if the feedback is positive I’ll look at making it a regular thing to keep people in the loop. Just putting together a mailing list that makes some kind of sense, is private and secure, but can be shared between myself, Ben, and Cary (we’re the three founding members of this little community group who’ve been setting up Bridges and the talks and other Resources) has been quite a headache! I’ve never done anything like this before and it’s all learning on the go.

It’s taken me a couple of hours of reading through forums to work out how to embed the newsletter on this blog, but here we are! You can also go directly to the document here to download it, print or email it if you wish. Please feel free to pass it on to anyone who may find it of use. 🙂
(function() { var scribd = document.createElement(“script”); scribd.type = “text/javascript”; scribd.async = true; scribd.src = “http://www.scribd.com/javascripts/embed_code/inject.js”; var s = document.getElementsByTagName(“script”)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(scribd, s); })();
So, there you go. I think I’m just a glutton for punishment, making extra work for myself! I’d love to hear any feedback or constructive criticism you may have about it. 🙂

Cataloguing

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I’ve been keen to add pictures of my work to my Gallery page so people who want to look through my art don’t have to trawl through lots of posts of the art in development. Fun as that can be! I’m rather short of time at the moment with Tafe and various other projects – I’ve taken up a short WEA course in Auslan, which is lots of fun! The quality of the photos is pretty variable, and some I’m not happy with, particularly where the image has been photographed through the glass in the frame. I plan to upgrade them all when I have a day off sometime. In the meantime, this is the most comprehensive collection of my work to date. I’ve quite a bit more to include and I’ll add to these collections over time, I’m particularly keen to put up the images from my various talks over the year. I quibbled over different ways of presenting the works – list them all directly in the gallery page? (this can mean the page takes a long time to load for those on slower computers) In the end I decided to group them and create links to backdated posts. I’m still not sure if grouping them by media/type is best or if I should have gone with subject eg all the tree spirit works together. Hard call. I may have to play around a bit until I find the format that’s easiest for people to navigate. Go have a look and tell me what you think.

Putting it all together like this, I’ve realised how productive I’ve been the past couple of years. Making up for lost time! It’s pretty exciting to see a body of work developing, and series and themes starting to emerge. Sophie for example is a little girl who turns up in a few different works like The Forest of Shadows. I’d also like to add in a description of each work, which I often have to include for the curator when they are exhibited.  
Today, I spent an hour on hold with Centrelink, in order to get some paperwork from them to start recording profit and loss statements as a sole trader. Despite my deep sense of gloom at all things math and paperwork related, this is an exciting moment. One of my major goals this year was to start operating as a professional artist and I’m achieving it! I’ve a business name, ABN, online presence, and participate regularly in community exhibitions. One of my major goals for next year is become published. There are three pieces of software I want to be able to work on to that end, I’ve just purchased two. This weekend I hope to back up my computer, then install Windows 7 and the Microsoft Office 2010 suite. This will bring my computer into line with software at work, Tafe and the library, meaning no more compatibility problems with docx formats and no more Vista being the pain that Vista is. Next I need to buy the Adobe In Design and start to layout my booklet. I’ll keep you posted! Very exciting developments in my world. 🙂

November events

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There’s a lot of wonderful events coming up over the next few weeks, this weekend the Feast Festival kicks off and the Vegan Festival is on Sunday.

There’s an Art Exhibition coming up soon, Peter Goers will be opening the Diamond House exhibition Shine on you Krazee Diamonds on Nov 25th. The art work will continue to be on display for another two weeks. I think I’ve one work in this, but things have been a little hazy with the details so I’m not making any promises!

See What’s On for all the details. 🙂

SmART Training

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One of the fantastic opportunities I’ve been busy with lately (instead of getting reasonable amounts of sleep) is a couple of modules of SmART training, which is billed as ‘business skills for creative people’ and aimed at people with a disability. Last week we did 2 days on how to plan and program events, and this week we’re doing 1 day on people skills. May I say if you are creative and have a disability – get in to this training! It’s been offered by the Community Arts Network and Disability Arts Transition Team, ignore the dreadful website, the training was really useful and the take home manual comprehensive. It was also a great chance to meet some other creative folks with a variety of disabilities themselves, and to me, that’s as valuable as the training. 🙂 So, keep an eye out and if you see any more of this training, snap it up! I’ll post any info as I become aware of it at my What’s On page.

I hadn’t realised until this course just how much event running I’ve been involved in! I’m the primary event person in my family and social network, every year Christmas and Birthdays etc tend to fall to me. I’ve also been involved in some biggies like the school formal, theatre productions, engagement parties. In fact I gained a reputation for being able to work with people, produce the spectacle and stay in budget. My big weakness to date has been the paperwork side of things as most of what I’ve been involved in has been informal and running to a very tight budget. Things like grant applications haven’t been on my radar. But, I enjoy writing, and if I can master the transition in style from poetry to essay – the former came naturally to me, but the latter took serious effort – then I can learn the language of proposals and applications.

These are very exciting skills to be learning, not only for use in my creative projects, but also for the development of further resources in mental health. That’s a very exciting prospect and I’m keen to take things further and also try to make sure the resources I’m involved in now are sustainable over time. These are key projects I’m very passionate about and committed to, and it’s clear to me that at this point I need to be able to drive and manage them at least until I’ve found existing compatible projects to nest them into or some way to ensure they keep running. It’s an odd quirk of life, but currently art is my ‘day job’ and peer work my unpaid indulgent hobby!

I talked at Parliament House

/ Sarah K Reece / 5 Comments

Earlier this year I was invited to go to Parliament House with a small group of people, talking to a committee who were part of an Inquiry into Mental Health and Workforce Participation. I shared my personal struggles with trying to engage higher education and work once I’d become unwell. Afterwards, myself and another Peer Worker who’d attended, Lisa, sat down and wrote an article about the experience for the MIFSA newsletter. You can read it here. (various of the projects I’ve been involved in are mentioned in that newsletter, you can read about them or see some of my artwork on pages 1, 5 , 6, 11, and 12)

It was an exciting opportunity to be able to say what hadn’t worked, what the obstacles to education and employment for me have been, and to suggest things that would help me to overcome these obstacles. My story was picked up by the Sydney Morning Herald, who wrote this article. That was quite confronting and left me feeling a bit wobbly and exposed. I was pleased however that it seems the way I’d framed my experiences and the words I’d chosen had impact and meaning. We also wrote a follow up letter to better address some of the great questions we were asked. This is what I shared:

I’ve had a long difficult road trying to continue my education and gain employment. At times it has been so demoralising and discouraging I’ve been at a loss to work out how it was ever going to happen. The chronic stress of seeking work and not being able to gain it was extremely debilitating. I’ve also struggled to remain engaged with university and each time I’ve been forced to withdraw the blow to my confidence has been major and taken a lot to get over.

I became very unwell in the first year of university and all my plans fell apart. I was unable to stay at uni, dealing with severe undiagnosed physical illness and mental illness. Without a diagnosis or support for my condition I was required to look for work. I spent about a year actively job hunting and was turned down for everything. The change in my hopes, from having an excellent academic record and sights set on postgraduate work, to applying for jobs pushing trolleys and being knocked back was devastating. My self worth plummeted. My academic successes so far actually played against me in the job market, at the one job interview I secured I was told they had no intention of putting the time in to train someone who would only be off to university in a year or two anyway. I promised I wouldn’t, at that time uni seemed as unattainable as the moon, but it made no difference. Trying to downplay my academic focus in my resume left me with very little to show my work ethic and good character. I started a small home business that failed, and then a second that never got off the ground. My health spiralled and my world collapsed.

Later I reset my sights on uni and tried to get back to my original plan. The support for someone in my situation was completely inadequate and I struggled terribly. Major health problems or life crises constantly interrupted my efforts. On one occasion I had to pull out of my course because I was hospitalised with chronic appendicitis, complicated by medication allergy reactions. On another I found myself homeless a week before the exams. Each time I was forced to withdraw again the sense of failure and hopelessness was overwhelming. Finally I decided this approach was futile and setting me up to fail. I changed gears again.

The years passed and the gap in my resume became larger and larger, with nothing to show for the phenomenal amount of work I was doing just to survive. It hurt so badly to be left behind, to watch my peers complete their degrees and gain work. I felt totally derailed, I’d not just fallen off the tracks but over a cliff, and all my planning and work wasn’t enough to get me back on that track again. I watched other people’s lives from a distance, with pain, humiliation, and desperate envy.

I decided to seek volunteer work as a pathway back to improving my resume, building my confidence, and allowing me to feel useful and connected to my community again. To my surprise, I was consistently knocked back by organisations who didn’t see me as someone with anything to offer. The few who were happy to have me had rigid requirements I couldn’t meet with my health problems, such as minimum 6 hour shifts on my feet. I could donate money but not help out in any practical way.

A couple of things finally changed for me. I found MIFSA, who were happy to have me volunteer in various capacities. I decided that getting back into education needed to be tackled in very small steps, and started to work on  my goal by taking up short courses with the WEA. Lastly, the idea of Peer Work was introduced so that people like myself, who are highly skilled but short on academic credentials could actually use our hard-won experience. My resume is a lot fatter, I’ve been making connections, building networks and finding out about events and training opportunities. I’m spending time now with people who think I have potential, and who also get how debilitating my invisible disabilities are. I’m finally starting to glimpse a future where someone like me, with both my strengths and limitations, has a place.

It shouldn’t have been this hard.

Tiger is being adopted!

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Update: sadly the adoption fell through with the new owner making other arrangements. So Tiger is still looking for a new home, even better if he can take his friend Cleo too. 🙂

Wow, today we heard that someone wants to adopt my gorgeous foster cat Tiger! I’m so thrilled for him! He’s such a trooper, very stable and settled, lovely temperament and markings. He’s in wonderful condition, all healed up and fat as a pig. 🙂 He’s in excellent health, hasn’t had any issues at all except for a little hay fever on high pollen days. He’s quite content to be indoors too. He wandered out one morning when I was signing for a package, and I was able to pick him up and bring him back inside without any fuss. I’ve just dosed him and Cleo this week with Revolution flea/worm treatment.  Here he is dozing on his favourite chair:

And those lovely yellow eyes:

But he’s not so keen on the flash lol:

Awww, I’m so excited for him, but I’ll be so sad to have him go! We’ve already got another foster cat lined up, a Mum cat with four kittens who needs a peaceful safe home. Cleo will be getting lots of hugs and cuddles to cope with all the change! She sleeps on my bed every night and I won’t change that, whatever happens with adorable newcomers during the day she’s got snuggles at night. 🙂

TheMHS quilt and last chance for exhibition!

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I forgot to post pictures of the gorgeous TheMHS quilt back when the conference was on. This was a great community project, I and many other people contributed a single patch each that were all sewn together into a total of six amazing rainbow coloured quilts! I’d love to be a part of more community/public art like this. Here’s my little patch, I embroidered it at a carers’ retreat earlier this year, using a line from one of my poems.

It reads the stars call to me, they sing in my bones. Here’s the whole quilt, my patch is the middle right hand side:

And here’s the whole row of three, people were fascinated by them and spent a lot of time looking at all of the panels. 🙂

And a quick last reminder, I currently have artwork in two exhibitions. The box factory one will be taken down on Friday, so this your last chance to see all 6 artworks – oils, ink paintings, linoprints, and a huge kite! And Homelessness is on display at the Diamond clubhouse until the end of November, when she will be going home with a new owner! I promise you they are far more lovely in person than the photographs you get here. Get in quick, free entry for both! Promise you’ll tell me all about it if you do make it in.

Blooms from my garden

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I’m having a pretty quiet weekend just recovering from the very busy week I’ve had and getting ready to launch into another one. I spent a bit of time in the garden yesterday, which was in need of some love and water. This time of year it goes mad with flowers and is looking gorgeous. I’ve been shifting around some of the pots so I can see them all through the house windows – makes it easier to notice when something is wilting or being eaten by caterpillars. It’s all very inviting at the moment. Gardening is one of my grounding techniques, I love spending time in it until it gets too hot.

I hope you’re having a good weekend too. Enjoy some photos of flowers!

These last flowers are from our feijoa tree (also called a pineapple guava), which is very exciting! We only had two fruit from it last year but judging by this year’s flowers we should get a good crop this season if we look after it. 

Sculpture at Tafe

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My new Tafe course started up tonight, it’s a subject from the Bachelor of Visual Arts degree called Small Object Making, and is basically exploring difficult materials to make into sculptures. I adore it. I could move into the sculpture department and live there very contentedly for the rest of my life. It is a big space, full of mad half finished sculptures everywhere, and the most delicious collection of expensive equipment in neat, well set out workshops. There is the bronze forge. There are tools for working metal in the metal workshop, oxy-acetylene torches, huge orange rubbery welding screens that looked oddly medical, grinding wheels, even a proper metal forge in the corner. There is a whole room devoted to clay and ceramics, where in one of the classes you sculpt in clay a life model who poses for the class. There is a wood workshop, full of lethal and fascinating wood tools, saws, drills, sanders and suchlike. There is a small class area of comfy lounges with pigeon holes of art materials and half done projects on one wall, and books and magazines for inspiration scattered all around. I could barely contain my excitement!

I also tried to get my jewellery project back but it hadn’t been marked yet. I will post pictures when I do!

For those of you who are only familiar with my 2D art forms, you may not know that I also have a passion for a type of sculpture called installation art. Where sculpture is usually about making something, a 3D shape of some kind that is then put on display, installation art is about taking a space and transforming it. It’s more akin to creating a theatre set, every part of the space is thought through. One installation artist I like is Christian Boltanski, especially his works with light and shadow such as Monuments, and Tombs.

Many years ago in school, I made two installation artworks for my yr12 project, one a pair of life size plaster people with clear perspex wings that changed colours in a light display, reaching for jewels that were suspended from plaster hands that hung from the roof. The other was a huge 6 foot long sarcophagus, complete with Mummy, from whose chest burst forth feathered origami birds that flew away through the ceiling. They were pretty awesome, I loved making them. It was very therapeutic to take over a small room at school and make it entirely my own world.

However, there’s big difficulties with this art form. It doesn’t always transport well – to put the sarcophagus on display at the Roma Mitchell Arts Education Centre I had to drive her in roped to a trailer doing 40km an hour, and then do fairly extensive repair work with silicon, paint, and hot glue when I arrived. It’s also difficult to find space to store the works, they are often built to suit a particular space and don’t work well in other environments… and they’re tricky to construct when you live in a small space and have a tight budget…

But I love it! And, as I improve my photography skills, I will be able to construct, photograph, and dismantle works more easily. So the final result may not always be an installation you can walk around, but instead an interesting series of photographs. And of course, there’s always possibilities for sculpture in miniature. I love to work with many different mediums and want to learn skills in wood, metal, glass, clay, polymers, and electronics. Getting sick and being so restricted with movement and energy I adapted and took up needlework and embroidery. Prior to that I would never have explored those areas, but now I value knowing how to sew and do bead work. I get a lot out of exploring different kinds of art.

So, I have a big decision coming up. Tafe applications close at the end of this month, and I have to decide what I’m applying for. There’s a number of fascinating Certificate 4’s, including one in 3D sculpture and public art, that are each only a year full time. (I would love to get into public art, but I’ve been told it’s very very difficult and involves a lot of paperwork. urk) There’s also the bachelor degree which is broader in scope and takes 3 years full time. I’m trying to leave open options to keep picking up all the other short courses I love such as at the WEA, and the media training I’ve booked in for with Radio Adelaide, plus I have to be able to fund all this study as most of these are pay up front kind of deals. And of course I do want to continue with psychology/social work/disability work/mental health/peer work kind of study also… Although currently being an artist, writer and speaker I feel I am being helpful in mental health, and my enthusiasm for being employed as a psychologist is somewhat waning when compared to making art to present talks about mental health like I’m doing now… tricky tricky! I’m worried about the commitment to a three year degree considering my health and my caring situation are both rather unpredictable, and I’d rather finish a cert 4 than half finish a degree. On the other hand I can work on the degree part time and I guess if 6 months into it it’s clearly too stressful I can always withdraw and apply for a cert 4 without too many issues. Dilemmas!

In the meantime, I have materials to experiment with as part of my current subject, two projects to complete and a journal to work on. Hope your day was inspiring too. 🙂

See my next post about Small Object Making here.

Current exhibitions and art

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This is your last chance to see Homelessness, she is going on display at the Diamond Clubhouse today, and staying there until the 20th of November, when she will go to live with her new owner. The Clubhouse is at 19 Kilkenny Rd Woodville Park, and is open Monday – Friday 9am-4pm. Parking and entry are free. 🙂 Another six of my artworks are still on display at the Box Factory in the city too, and in both cases are part of larger exhibitions with some other really fantastic artworks.

I’ve started a new oil painting. So far, it’s a hill.

I don’t know why. It started as a branch for blossoms then changed its mind and turned into a hill. I don’t know what’s going to happen next. I seem to just like hills. This is my first oil painting I’ve ever done, from last year:

I will admit, that’s a lot of hills. Will there be trees? I do like trees also. Oh the anticipation! Stay tuned to find out! :P

Cleo is on the mend :)

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Hurrah, apart from being a bit sniffly when the pollen is bad here, Cleo is improving day by day. Here she is, taking over my keyboard:

Both eyes are almost completely clear now and she’s much happier in general. Here she is keeping me company while I blog:

A very faithful companion. 🙂 Tiger is also going great. He stretches right out on the rugs like his namesake, requiring everyone to step over him in the hallway. He’s a big, happy, lazy cat. They’ve got themselves sorted out now, Cleo sleeps by my side and Tiger at my feet. Well, no, I tell a lie. Cleo sleeps on my book/journal/hands/pillow and then gets pushed off until she settles down to sleep by my side… Neither like being under the covers (who can blame them in this weather?) and both require the bedroom door is left ajar for easy access to midnight snacks. 🙂

Spent my prize money!

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Last week I was given a gift voucher to Premier Art Supplies for winning an art award. I have a pretty terrible memory for such things, so I decided to go out and spend it today before I put it away somewhere safe and forgot all about it. I spent at least an hour examining everything in the store before finally deciding to extend my range of colours in oil paints. I also purchased a fine tip tjanting tool to work with wax resist in ink paintings. Here they are:

Look at all the gorgeous colours! Yum yum, can’t wait to start a new oil painting now. Here they are together with my original collection, as you can see it’s just about doubled.

Always heart warming to have new art supplies. And, in case you’re interested, here’s my lovely Chinese painting pallette, all set up:

I purchased the paints very cheaply while in Singapore last year, and have designs on some more for Christmas this year. I used these together with the sepia ink for the first time recently to paint the illustrations for a talk about creativity and mental health. They are gorgeous, a little more opaque than western watercolours with lovely soft blending. These paintings are done entirely in the sepia ink, dried, and then the Chinese paints are painted on top to add gentle areas of colour.

This one depicts using creative arts to express grief, fear, anguish and pain.

Cleo’s eye troubles

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My foster cat Cleo has been having a bit of trouble with an eye infection of some kind in her right eye. That’s cleared up really well now but it was getting itchy as it healed and I noticed her scratching it. It seems she’s accidentally infected her left eye. Damn! I was being super careful about cross infection but it’s a bit of a difficult concept to explain to a cat. So now the left eye is being bathed twice a day.

Tiger is still going fine, he seems to have a remarkably strong constitution for a cat with FIV. He currently alternates between trying to play with Cleo, which she’s not in the mood for, and grooming her, which also annoys her a bit. She’s a bit sooky when she’s feeling ill, needs lots of cuddles and attention and feels a bit grumpy about Tiger giving her a good licking when she’s trying to nap. She comes up and prowls my desk when she feels I’ve been on the computer too long and paying her too little attention:

Hopefully the new infection clears up quickly. It doesn’t seem as swollen as the first did, so I’m hopeful it’s not as bad and will heal quickly. She’s very affectionate, sleeps on my bed every night, loves being picked up and cuddled, and has a gorgeous purr. 

Mindshare is Live!

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Mindshare is

“a unique space that allows mental health consumers and their supporters a place to creatively tell their stories. It is a community dedicated to de stigmatising mental illness through shared experiences”   Louise Pascale

 And it’s now live, with new material being put up every day! They are also keen for people to submit to the site, so if you have a story, poem, artwork, photo, or great idea for a blog post, consider getting involved! I will be sharing some of my art and posts there, they already have some of my art displayed here, and here. The launch on Wednesday was fantastic, the digital stories are of a really high standard and are really amazing to see. I highly recommend having a look, try starting with Flannel Flower, it brought tears to my eyes. The blog posts so far have also been really interesting. They’ve been working on this project for a long time and the results are excellent.

A quick reminder that my interview on Radio Adelaide airs Saturday morning, between 9 – 11am. As part of a stigma reduction campaign by the HCA, I’ve been recorded being interviewed about living with a mental illness. So tune in to 101.9 FM, or online to hear it!

Messenger Article!

/ Sarah K Reece / 2 Comments
The Messenger article about me ran today! Not in my area, which is a bit unexpected and inconvenient. Does anyone live North and can you please save a paper for me?? Pretty please?

It’s also available online here. I’m so pleased with it. The photo is lovely too! (but see – no eyes!) That’s my studio, where a dining table would traditionally be. 🙂 What a lovely way to sum up my work – a collection of contrasts! I’m so thrilled!
Everybody drops the middle K from my name, so darn frustrating! But I’ve set up a LinkedIn profile now, so people doing a search for me will find that when they google Sarah Reece or Sarah K Reece, and through that they can find this blog. 🙂 Everything I write or produce will continue to have the K in it! I’ve been fighting this battle since primary school and I’m not about to give up now!
I’ve also finished my poppy shoes, with a touch of bead embroidery on the toes. It was surprisingly tricky to get a tiny beading needle all the way down inside the shoe for this – I had to use pliers several times because my fingers weren’t long enough! I’m really happy with the final product, they are so cheerful. 
Here they are, all ready for me to wear to the Mindshare launch today!

Homelessness Art Award

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Wow, what an exciting evening! I was presented with an award this evening at the Emerging Artists Big Circle Arts Exhibition! It was for “a work that effectively captures an idea or feeling”, and came with a bag of goodies including a deeply appreciated gift voucher to Premier Art Supplies. That’s going to fill in a few more colours for my paint range and buy some new paper. 🙂 Here she is: Homelessness.

I’m so excited! I’ve been checking my memory all evening, and I think this is the first time I’ve won an award for an artwork. I’ve taken out a couple of highly commended and sold works on occasion, but my first award! I’m so thrilled, it was the best pain relief for my extremely sore mouth after three very deep fillings this afternoon.

It gets better – at the end of the evening I was informed the work had sold! Hurrah! I’m so very pleased. I have another 6 works on display for Mental Health week at The Box Factory, entry is free and the venue is disability friendly so please take a look.

My personal excitements aside, it was a great evening, music provided by the JMG band, some lovely brief speeches, (my nervous and slurry acceptance was not among them!) and wonderful poems and comedy by Kylie Harrison. I’m really enjoying having come to enough of these events that I can find familiar faces and people to chat with now. It was lovely to see you all!

Exhibition and talk

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Phew! I’ve finally mapped out the structure and visuals for a talk I’ve been asked to do later this week. It’s for the Open Your Mind event, which is shaping up to be a great night with some awesome speakers and really good poetry. I’ve been working on a short presentation about the power of creativity in managing mental illness. Now to find some time over the week to paint, scan, construct and write the notes for it… Why are the shorter talks not any shorter to write??

Heat set the poppy shoes and now ready for some beading when I have a moment. 🙂

And a quick reminder that I have work in an Exhibition that opens Monday night! Free entry, open to everyone. I’ll be making a huge effort to be there after my dental appointment, the woozy one who looks like she’s been smacked in the mouth will be me. Would love to see you there. 🙂

News and events

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Well, I turned up to Tafe tonight, all excited to start my new Small Object Making Fundamentals course, and I couldn’t find it! In fact, the whole building was being closed up and no subjects were being held there tonight. So I trundled across the road to the other Tafe building hoping the student services would be open, but everything shut early. Library, student support, cafeteria, the whole sheebang. I managed to find some staff working late and knocked on windows. They were very helpful and spoke with security at both campuses, but no one could help. So, I sat out the front of my building for 1/2 hour on the off chance someone I knew would turn up. I ate my peanut butter and jam sandwich, gave up, paid for my parking and came home. No idea what went wrong there!

But my group Sound Minds was awesome as usual, so I’m feeling pretty good!

There’s an exciting training opportunity called SmART, for artists with a disability, or people who work with us here. Places are very limited so get in quick!

Cleo is still pretty unhappy but she’s opening her sore eye a little more so I think that’s a good sign.

My new poppy shoes are looking awesome, I’ll post pics of them tomorrow. 🙂

And, I’ve found out when my interview will  be aired on Radio Adelaide! There will be one each from four of us who’ve been working with HCA, here’s the schedule:

  • Tim – Breakfast – Friday 14th, 6.45am
  • John – Breakfast – Tuesday 11th 7.10am
  • Steve – Barometer – Tuesday 11th sometime between 6pm and 7pm
  • Sarah – Arts Breakfast – Saturday 15th sometime between 9am and 11am

Radio Adelaide is our local community radio station, listen in on 101.9 FM, or online here.

The Feast Festival is coming up in November, check out all the events here.

And the next MIFSA Forum is also coming up – free event – Oct 26th, 1-2.30pm on The Benefits of Mindfulness, so if you want to learn more about this technique for enhancing your mental health, make sure you RSVP to reception@mifsa.org or call on 83784100.

And a reminder that the LAUNCH of the Celebration of Life Exhibition is on tomorrow morning – see my What’s On page for all the details. Free event, everyone is invited! I’d love to see you there. 🙂

Hope you’re having a good evening too!

Cleo is a bit sick

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She’s developed an eye infection which is all swollen and sore.

I’m bathing it regularly with salt water to help kill off any bacteria, and she’s being really good about keeping it clean. She’s feeling rather miserable and wanting lots of cuddles at the moment. I’m keeping a close eye on it and if I think it’s getting worse I’ll get a vet involved, but at the moment I think she’ll get over it herself.

Tiger is going really well, he’s been very healthy despite the FIV and no trouble at all. He’s a lovely friendly fellow, with a funny penchant for eating odd things! I’ve had to hide the cotton tips as he seems to think they’re cat snacks, and when he’s happy he licks whatever is nearby… the chair, pillow, blanket, or my fingers! Good exfoliation I’m sure, but I am having to use a lot more hand moisturiser!

The two have been all energised by the spring weather and when they’re not sleeping in patches of sunshine they enjoy chasing each other about the house. It seems to be pretty fair about taking it in turns who chases and who runs away which I’m happy about. They’re not closely bonded like litter-mates often are but they certainly seem to enjoy each other’s company. 🙂

Kill the Silence went really well

/ Sarah K Reece / 2 Comments
It was a great evening, very heartfelt and a nice atmosphere.

I didn’t know almost anyone there, and turning up at 4.30 to hang art, but not having my poetry reading on until 8.30 made it a bit of a long night for me. Here’s my Ink not Blood display:

I hope other people will find them inspiring too. I had to explain to a few people that I wasn’t trying to incite self-harm, these works were aimed at other people like me who have issues with self-harm already and were trying to find ways to overcome it. You will be able to buy an 8×10 print of any of these photos from my To Buy page soon.

There was a small collection of art around themes of loss, mental illness and suicide, some painted as tributes to lost friends, such as this beautiful painting by Emerson Ward, an artist who’s work is often displayed at the Medieval Fair.

The sign in the painting reads “Your art is your soul, don’t sell it cheap”.

I also really liked this one, “Nesting Babooshka’s of Mourning” by Jackie Reichstein.

Myself and one other poet read a few poems about recovering from mental illness or caring for someone who’s struggling with mental illness, and they were well received. A friend suggested recording it and pod casting, which I think is a great idea. I’ll work on getting some voice recordings included here as I figure out the process. 
I love to express a full range of emotions and experiences through my art, and I appreciated having a venue where darker, confronting works had a home too, even if only for a night. It was a really thoughtful, positive, and creative way to remember lost friends. 
*If you are one of these artists, and do not wish for your work to appear here, please contact me and I’ll remove it immediately.

Interview and Exhibition

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Hurrah! I’ve had the interview and photos taken by two lovely ladies from the local Messenger paper. I’m glad they took the photos first, I was all pink after the talking bit! We did pics in various poses in my studio, I can’t wait to see which one they choose. I will of course link here when it’s out. I coped with the anxiety using a little-known technique called painting a new pair of shoes! They are looking awesome. 🙂 And now that my hands have stopped shaking a bit, I’m off to deliver my Ink not Blood series to the Grace Emily hotel for tonight’s event. I am all organised, everything’s framed, and the frame where the glass broke earlier today when I was stapling a ribbon across the back to hang it from has been replaced. (See? I hate framing!) And I have my folder of poems to read out tonight, so do join us for an hour or two if you have the evening free. I will be there with poems in one hand and a gin and tonic in the other… aaaaahhhh.