Fixie's Shelf

New website

My blog has moved!! Yes, after years on Typepad, I've taken the plunge and jumped to Wordpress. Why? Wordpress gives me a lot more control to choose how my site will look, and I can integrate it with my regular website too.

Not only does my new site look fantastic, but I've taken all the good stuff I've written here over the years, and arranged it into articles and stories that are very accessible. There's a menu of articles about living sustainably, and another one about my journey as an artist, and one that reflects all the research I've done into food, health and medical conditions over the years. Lots of people tell me they love this blog when they dive in deep. Now you won't have to go into deep murky cyberland to find the good stuff! Just check out my new guide to my blog.

I've got a gallery too, a kind of online exhibition where you can see years worth of artwork in one place, and you get to pick whether you'd just like to see birds or pages from my journal or portraits.

AND... I've taken the plunge and built my own shop too, moving away from Etsy. This one is powered by Shopify and integrates much better with my new website and also my real life gallery/shop/studio at the Abbotsford convent. I'd love to know your thoughts, whether this is an ok place for you to buy my work, as opposed to Etsy. If you have been thinking of buying something for a while, would you consider doing it this week? Even if it's just small? And then tell me about your experience with the shop? I'm itching to road-test this but can't do it without customers!!

Please update your bookmarks, because I won't be posting to this blog any more, and eventually it will be taken down. See you over on Wordpress.

Dates for your Diary

For those of you in Melbourne who'd like to see my work in the flesh, there are two events this week which might interest you:

Subscription goodies

This is just an example of the sort of goodness you might find in your mailbox if you subscribe to my art (and my heart):

• a postcard I collaged from vintage supplies I collected at a flea market
• a fabric swatch from a test print I did, featuring my little fish on wheels
• some seconds I have lying around my studio: this one's a zine
• a tiny original painting of trees

Of course, you won't get exactly THIS. Everyone's packages will be different. There'll be something in the mail box 4 times a year, and the more you tell me about yourself, the more I'll personalise your package for YOU. Think prints, seconds, giveaways, postcards, gift cards, and whatever leftover sweet things I have in my studio.

If you want to know more about what it means to subscribe, head over to my shop and take a look here.

Journal page

This blog has moved! A new and updated post about this can be found here. Please update your bookmarks as this blog will be taken down soon.

 

Here’s a page in my journal from when I was away. I’ve cut out pics of things I made – crocheted dishcloths, a papier mache deer – and things my friend Jenine made while we were together – that papier mache mouse…

I also painted lots of experiments in colour. The picture on the right is one of my favourites from my paint-play in France. Mostly I sell my artworks, and stick prints in my journal, but I decided to keep this one for me.

By pasting in a photo of everything I’ve made or painted, my journal turns into a kind of folio of my creations and achievements. It’s good for me, when I’m having a down patch and wondering what the hell I’ve done with my life, to flip back and be reminded that actually, I’ve done a lot.

And it’s good when others see those same things, because it springboards conversations. Maybe someday I’ll show this page to someone and they’ll offer to teach me a better way of crocheting dishcloths. Or they’ll commission me to paint something like that little picture on the right. Both these things have happened, over and over, when others see my journal, and it opens up opportunities for me.

I teach how to make and use a journal like this in my course, Make The Book Of Your Dreams – check it out here if you like.

You will fly

For me birds are about flight, about courage to take a leap and try something new and different and scary.  This painting is for anyone who needs a little nudge to spread their wings and soar. I painted it on plastered fabric, which I cracked, to make it really textured, like an old wall. I just love this effect.

My fabulous new next-door-neighbour at the Abbotsford Convent, Rona Green has been teaching me lino-printing techniques. She let me in to her studio for a magnificent printing session, and this is one of the results. I'm thrilled with how it turned out.

If you'd like it, it's here in my shop.

Connection – A3 size

When I painted my big canvas, A Connection, recently, I had so much leftover paint on my palette that I couldn’t bear to waste, so I spread it over a smaller piece of plastered fabric, and next thing I knew, I had a smaller version of the same painting.

The idea behind this piece is that we are the same but different, and yet there’s still a place for us to meet and know each other. This painting is about making the connection, coming together and understanding each other, despite dark and light, tall and small, and all the other inherent differences we embody.

If you’d like this smaller one, it’s here in my shop.

Bird Girl

Bird girl is surrounded by all the birds she loves against vibrant, rich colours, in a field of flowers. She's painted on plastered fabric, and I slashed into it, creating a very textured effect like an old wall.

If you'd like this painting, it's here in my shop.

There was magic in the water

When I was in Norway, I was walking through beautiful hills with my friends Ragnhild and Atle. We came to this glorious private rocky beach, which was so picturesque I almost died. On a dare, Atle and I stripped off and ran in, even though it was freezing and felt rather like dipping my body into a bowl of iced water. Ragnhild joined us. And something magic happened there. I can't describe exactly what it was. But the moment transformed me, washed me clean from the inside, made me new again. And when we emerged there was a new connection between us all too. There really was magic in the water. I've posted about that here[URL for blog post] if you want to see photos of the beach.

That's what this painting is about.. that moment of magic and transformation, being made new again to have a fresh start.

If you'd like it, it's here in my shop.

Learning to listen to my intuition

My deafness has been a bit of a theme in my life recently. Normally it’s just something that’s there, in the background, not particularly interesting to me, not a focus, but part of my identity anyway. Writing Future Girl, in which the main character is Deaf and on a journey to discover her identity as a Deaf person, has forced me to examine very closely what it means to be Deaf, and also to find the words to articulate it.

When I launched my free online Auslan course, I thought a few people might be interested. I was stunned by the response – I now have over 11,000 students online! This has shown me the extent to which people are interested in knowing more about Deafness and learning our language. I’m truly blown away.

It’s made me think, if people are out there listening, what do I want to say? And so I’ve been trying to write about it more, make posts that explain aspects of Deafness that people might not be aware of.

Things are changing in my own life too. I took a deep breath and asked my family if they’d learn to sign, to make life easier for me when I’m with them. They are learning. I’m trying to lipread less, to get rid of the headaches and tinnitus that come with lipreading.

So, I guess it’s not surprising that Deafness and sign language are turning up in my art too. I’ve suddenly got a desire to paint people signing. That’s not easy, since Auslan is such a dynamic language, and the focus is often on the movement – hard to capture in a painting. But I’m pretty happy with how this turned out, a first attempt.

This girl is signing the Auslan (Australian sign language) sign for ‘intuition’. Learning to listen to our intuition is a subtle thing, not always catered for as our focus is so often on meeting our obligations and trying to fit in with the world. This painting is a sweet reminder to take a moment to hear a whisper from within. So no, this painting is not ABOUT deafness, as such, but there it is, my language, captured in a painting.

If you’d like this, it’s here in my shop.

Lipreading is not about 'reading' the shape of the lips

There's a misconception that lipreading is just like reading a book. You look at the mouth and read, right?

But no, it's far, far more complicated than that. I have to queue up words in my mind, invent possibilities that fit the facial expression, body language, approximate number of syllables etc etc. Sometimes there are a couple of possibilities, and I hold both in my mind simultaneously, waiting for it to become clear. While I'm doing this, collecting possibilities and sifting through them all, I need to keep the conversation going. So I smile and nod and say 'mmm,' and 'yep...' as appropriate. If I don't do that, the speaker stops, and we haven't gotten anywhere.

Sometimes though, I get right to the end, and I realise that none of the possibilities work. The whole thing just doesn't make sense. And then I have to say, 'Sorry, can you go right back to the start?'

And you might wonder, well why were you nodding and smiling and saying yes all along when I didn't understand. But that's because it's how lipreading works. It's not a lie. It's the only practical way to do it.

It can take a whole minute or two after the speaker finishes, that it suddenly comes to me what was said.

As you can imagine, this is incredibly hard work. I have an hour of lipreading in me a day, tops. After that, fatigue sets in. And if I go too far, pushing myself for maybe 3 hours, I am WIPED afterwards, and my head pounds. It can literally take me days to recover.

This is why, even though I'm a pretty competent lipreader, I prefer other modes of conversation.

If you'd like to do your bit to help raise awareness, feel free to share this post. Thanks!