Beginners

This is quite an amazing film. Understated, clever, romantic and touching. Carefully edited and wonderful on the big screen. Go see it.

Maps

I spent Sunday morning mapping stuff out with a couple of chicks. One mapped and imaginary place, one a beach - complete with mermaid cove and a jetty. Super awesome.


I chose to map a real place - the yellow house. No mermaid cove, but plenty of houses and u shaped streets.

This reminds me of you and you

Peppergreen

Peppergreen are closing down and I picked up some bargains. I could have spent hours wandering around looking at the bits and pieces - and the buttons! Vats of buttons. Don't you think there is something special about running your hands through thousands and thousands of buttons? Try it one day.

Berrima General Store

Good pies and nice flowers.

Matching

Dare I say....

Spring has sprung?

Classic Album Martini Saturdays

More Top 100 research ...I've been reading this blog- Classic Album Martini Saturdays
I like martini's, I like Saturdays, I like albums and I like blogs - so it goes without saying that I pretty much like this.

Bird nest # 5

Four things

First - what is with the formatting on this new version of blogspot. Terrible spacing between paragraphs.

Second - sometimes I write stuff here and then am immediately okay. Then you guys catch up with the writing and wonder if I'm okay. I am but I like it that you check. Keep checking as you feel appropriate.

Third - apple tv is great when it works which is 48% of the time. That means it is really annoying the other times when it doesn't work for NO REASON.

Fourth - the reason why I'm okay is that facebook told me my life would turn out okay. Evidence attached:

How will your life turn out?

Karin got Stay at home mom, married with 2 kids..

You are a stay at home mom, Married to a production manager who makes $73000 per year. you have a Boy named Parker and a girl named Aaliyah. You live the american dream in a suberban home.

Yesterday I accidently thought of you

I didn't mean to do it. I was driving home and I thought about playing scrabble, and then I thought about the time I played scrabble with the gypsies. 


We were all sitting around drinking tea, must have been a year ago, and I opened up the box to get out the tiles. Underneath the board and scrabble bits were the scores from a game long ago, with your writing and mine. Unexpected and weird, but such a small thing and a big thing all at once.


And thats how my mind came to ticking through the past, via thinking about a fucking game of scrabble. It's unexpected and not very helpful actually. It isn't even about you and I anymore, because it's good you're happy and successful and the rest of it - right now it's more about me and that I'm still here...nothing changed, just here with the dog, in a little yellow house.


I think I need to shake things up a little.

Here is something you won't want to do on a Friday night...

Think that it is a good time to clip your dogs nails while he is sleeping. Got to clip one whole nail - but a bit too short. 53 minutes of bleeding, 5 google searches, half a roll of toilet paper and a tablespoon of flour later and I wouldn't say all is forgiven - but at least the blood has stopped and so has the glaring at me. Dogs can glare you know. And sigh loudly.

A bite to eat

I've been to a bite to eat a lot of late. For a while I forgot how great it is. Retro interior, comfortable vibe, good food - all without being too cool for school. A bite to eat would fit in quite comfortably in Fitzroy in Melbourne, or Newtown in Sydney and here it is in Chifley shops Canberra. Thats one of the best things about Canberra you know...funny little local shops with the most unexpected mix of cafes, restaurants and bars. Yep - this is what our nations capital does well.


Back to a bite to eat. Breakfast includes venison chorizo, home made baked beans, and dishes like the Fat Elvis, which is a bagel with  banana, bacon and house made peanut butter! Lunch from memory involves some wonderful sandwiches. I had a King Henry VIII which was a good chunk of homemade corned beef with swiss cheese and whole grain mustard.  Also their fries are good. So good. Sometimes I dream about them.


Oh and it is also a bar. I'm petitioning they open a second venue around the corner from the yellow house. So far one girl and a dog have signed up.

Songs you should rediscover today because they are awesome

I've been doing some 'research' for the top 100 thing.
Songs You Should Rediscover Today Because They Are Awesome has been very enjoyable reading. I've started from the beginning and while I don't agree with all the choices it is pretty much like looking back at my past and detailing it on a good, well written blog...

I think I've forgotten how to be happy

I'm not unhappy, don't get me wrong. But am I happy? I'm never confident in what I do every day of the week - what is with that? For other people it all just comes kind of naturally. For me, I'm always second guessing. Always. That kind of knocks you around you know? I need to get past it. I need to stop worrying about what people think about me. And I need to remember what makes me happy. But what is that? I suspect part of all this is that I think too much. Or maybe I am just crap? Or maybe this is happiness....s t o p  t h i n k i n g

So close to spring

Silo Bakery

Do you know what has just occurred to me? I have never ever written about eating at Silo. Never. This is just the most amazing revelation. Why? Because Silo saved me from hating Canberra, and it is the place I've eaten at the most in the entire world.


When I moved here all those years ago, I moved because he got a job. I was working on an exhibition... so he would go to work, and I would work from home. By myself. Just me and the dog. And while the dog is awesome, he doesn't talk.


So what did I do?  I made super best friends with the Silo cheese girl. I would go down there a couple of times a week just so I could interact with my new cheesy friend. I'd mix it up with my friends at the Fyshwick food markets and my pals at the Griffith butcher, but nobody could compete with my silo besties. I'd walk into the bakery to be greeted with smiles and straight away she would steer me towards the cool room, cooing about a new french triple cream that just arrived this morning. Sigh. I was in love.


Then cheese girl left, as most of the staff do, but it didn't matter so much anyways because I soon made friends with people who weren't in the service industry. This, I have to say was a relief, because buying friendship via cheese can be an expensive habit (fast forward to my love affair with the belgium cheese guy at Deli Mart - it cost me $110 per kilo for truffle infused pecorino to flirt madly with someone who turned out to be gay). 


But back to Silo - I've always remained loyal. I've defended the bad service, the moments of sheer rudeness, and the inconsistencies around being allowed to book (or not book). And my has it been worth it. Never has it disappointed, and I couldn't guess how many meals I've had. Hundreds? Todays was a slow cooked meat pie - pudding with mash. Amazing. Kir Royale to wash it down, that you very much. So indulgent for a Saturday lunch.


So writing about this I began to reminisce, what are my favourite food memories from there?


The beef bruschetta - I think I ate this about half a dozen times before deciding to try something else. The potato and anchovy pizza with chilli jam is such a wonderful cheesy gooey potatoey wonder. The vegetable pates are always good and with three flavours my favourite always changes - right now the artichoke is the best for me followed by the hazelnut with capsicum and then pumpkin last (actually pumpkin is always last). The fresh sourdough bread is always heavenly, but at the moment they are baking a breadstick with walnuts. Oh...my...god. I could name about another dozen more meals, but I won't...I won't mention the breakfast choices, nor the tarts or pastries, nor the juices...and especially not the cheese.

6432 miles, some stamps and an idea

Did you know I have another blog? It documents an art project two of us are working on which crosses from Canberra to Delhi and back. The first crisscross is just about to happen...

bird nest # 4

Top 100 - how this thing works

Most songs tell a story, for both the songwriter and the listener. Songs end up forming a soundtrack to events in your life. You know what it is like - hearing a particular song can trigger a memory, a thought, or an emotion.

So many songs are important to me, that I can't even begin to pick. So here is the cop out bit. I want to see which songs are important to you, and hear the story behind them. Then I'm going to paint the crap out of that story and song, and we will all go to a gallery space* and drink cheap sparking wine, listen to the music and say which bits of art we like.

So this is top 100, I want 100 songs with 100 stories.

It doesn’t have to be your favourite song, but it should be an important song, a song that represents a little snapshot of your life.

Email your song and its story to theyellowhouseintheu@gmail.com

Then watch the blog for your part of the top 100.

* I know I said I'd never do the Front again...so if anyone has any bright ideas make it happen for me. Thanks

Top 100

I've been meaning to start work on this since forever ago....I been kicking around the idea for over 12 months when working on the 'Wolf and the Fold'. I'm not going to link back to the radio interview where I'm sure it was mentioned. Mentioned in the way that I do things best....by making stuff up. It went something like this.

Radio guy: "So Karin, what do you have planned for life after all these wolves"

Yellow house girl: "Well...blah blah about music...blah blah about songs...blah blah about how people feel about songs...blah blah about songs and memories...blah blah new exhibition"

Something I do well, is publicly commit to art projects so that I have to follow them through. This is why I'm writing about Top 100 now. Lets make it happen.

Joseph Cornell travel diary rant

The other day I mentioned Joseph Cornell and was going to write about the time I saw his work in Chicago. I remember that day so well, but in a way I have forgotten a lot of the detail too...I remember seeing his boxes...more than one, more than two, more than three. An entire room full of Joseph Cornell boxes. I remember the lighting was perfect and I had shivers just looking at all the delicate, beautiful work. Seriously. I remember standing in a room entirely overwhelmed and in awe.

My diary entry, well lets say...doesn't really capture that and perhaps lacks focus:

"Getting tired - we went to the Chicago Institute for some rest/food and to look at our photos. The gallery is huge but I felt really sick. Some great modern art and heaps of Joseph Cornell boxes. Beautiful delicate boxes filled with treasures. Some of them lit up with animals - well birds, inside. The butterfly box was a favourite, with frosted glass and real butterflies it was enchanting. Walked back to find the groovy area and failed and felt really sick."

I wasn't going to include the above because of its high cringe factor, and I shudder to think about what I wrote in Washington about the Rothko exhibition.

I looked.

Apparently there were more Cornell boxes, some Willem De Kooning, and a fantastic Calder exhibition. And the best observation?

"Also a surprisingly good Rothko exhibition, beautiful works, stained coloured canvases, breathtaking and inspirational"

Umm surprisingly good???

I'd like to apologise for my former self all those years ago. I hope I don't read this blog in ten years and decide I'm still a dickhead. That surprisingly good exhibition was an amazing collection of the most beautiful and understated work. I remember standing in a room mesmerised. I was stunned by the beauty of all of those works together and still look at the catalogue - which the purchase of is a telling sign of the impact of this exhibition. This was a trip where we drove other peoples cars to get from one place to another. We zig sagged aimlessly through over 40 states just to get somewhere cheaply. It was the trip we saved so hard for and then the dollar hit 49 US cents. It was the trip where you didn't have money to spare on buying an art catalogue.

But I did, and I'm glad - because leafing through the haze of colour brings back memories of the journey we took, that unfortunately my travel diary never will.

You know it is a great weekend....

When all the numbers add up:

1 trip to the cinema

12 episodes of Greys Anatomy

1 trip to the markets

2 dog walks

1 trip to Lonsdale Street Roasters

2 visits with cute puppy (sadly, not mine)

1 visitor to share a pot of french earl grey

2 hours spent drawing

1 frozen coke

1 Catch up brunch with friends

1 bottle of Chandon

3 hours of napping

and 2.5 serves of tuna slop

= excellent and relaxing weekend

bird nest # 3

Two conclusions....

Car keys left in the door from about 8am until 7pm....

Either Belcompton is super safe...or nobody wants to steal my getz.

Surrealism Exhibition - Brisbane

Surrealists, not my favourite bunch of art kids, but this exhibition was great. An interesting collection of paintings, collages and film - working its way through history. Curiously missing was any reference to Australian surrealism. I guess we didn't produce any surrealists per se, but there were many artist heavily influenced by the movement, like the Angry Penguins and Albert Tucker comes to mind.

A nice surprise was some work by Joseph Cornell, my favourite artist. On the flip side of the above paragraph - I wouldn't pick Joseph for a surrealist. Either way one of his beautiful boxes was on display and I was mesmerised. Did I ever tell you about that time in Chicago? That's another story. Remind me to pull out my travel diary to tell you.

Dodging ghosts

I spent a bit of time in Brisbane dodging ghosts. Not memories - but actual ghosts. Actually it was a bit of ghosts and memories. Brisbane was the place we used to hang out. Driving through the Valley from the airport I had to just not look. If I had, I would have been taken back to those nights at Ricks when she'd get tipsy on wine, her teeth stained red. The old Queenslander and the summer rain, the beads, her long brown hair - and days spent op-shopping.

I thought the city itself would be fine, but it all came back too. The markets by the river where she kept me company all day, then years later, dinner at ECCO with him. Was it after she had gone - I don't know why we would have been in Brisbane without her...except for after the day by the highway. Where we put a beautiful bronze sunflower onto the grave and then the next night got drunk seeing the Cramps at the Roxy. I don't even like the Cramps, but it was an apt way to say goodbye - especially because of her love for Kim Salmon and his cuban heels. It was a line up just for her.

I don't really miss her much anymore, because I don't so much miss him. She'd be proud to see what we have both achieved, though probably upset at me for not doing more art, and for him - well she would have liked him to do things differently is all. I wish we had the chance to be happy for her, instead of wondering what could of, should of been.

Reflections

Lanterns from Hoi An

I finally put them up in the laundry. They don't look great - but it is hard to make an unrenovated 1950's laundry look tops.

Instillation art in the everyday

Am I alone in thinking this is just beautiful?