The Well Dressed Pole - Newtown Square

The Street Knitters, whoever they are, have hit the spot here with their cosy subversion of  street graffitti's materials. Just off the cuff, that integrated pink/yellow, blue/sequence is particularly splendid.    Long may your needles click .

Purple Carrots: Beeta beeta carotena

Last week my great letter writing friend John Watson sent me an article from the New Yorker on The Hidden Allures of Root Vegetables by Jane Kramer. Among the root vegetables she discursed on was the deep-purple carrot, the ancestor of our orange carrots, which people in the old days eschewed. Kramer, who speculates their lack of popularity might be because they bleed in soups etcetera, obviously has not cooked them. They don't bleed, or at least these modern purple ones I found in Coles Big Bear Supermarket last week didn't. That people regarded them with suspicion was demostrated clearly when someone in my house of tender years pointed at them and cried, "Witch Carrots!!"  Really, I bought them to draw as they colour was a bit hypnotic. Here the drawing is superimposed over the scan, so it can see the shadow if its former self.

How to measure Goosebumps ?

I found this  family of geese in Melbourne, Caulfield Cup day last year.
It was pouring down, much drowned crin and drooping dyed chicken feathers.
Each of these though, has the other's
measure

Enough to make your ears Keirle - the footy set at Monday training

In my half hour sketch time, the first group to hit the training grounds are the charming younger folk and their diligent and enthusiastic trainers and Dads. As I am packing up the next lot arrive. What has happened that these older boys, saying 'men' would vastly overrate their stage of development, are prone to ugliness?  At my previous visit to Keirle Park , one decided that his bladder was the controlling force of his intellect and micutarated on a tree next to the car park. This was a precedent his team mate could not resist, and he too decided his willy needed an airing.  This week I hear, broadcast loudly, the conversation from the lad who was very shabby apre Saturday' game and  cannot remember much (read black out) after the point when he tipped back six sambucca shots, this being after he has accidentally knocked over a young woman, an event he struggles to recall the details of.   The small boys gleefully running after the ball deserve better examples.

Dumpling King, Newtown

Can one say 'we have dumpled'?  Newtown is awash with eateries, so it seems, leaving aside the favourite places, easy to try somewhere new. And the idea of a Dumpling King, some soft bodied royal personage, regaled in pleated dough, presiding over stacks of steamer baskets, bowls of noodley broth and sizzling saute pans was persuasive.  There was only one type of dumpling, northern Chinese, a wheat skin with a filling of pork and chives. We had a bamboo stearmer jammed with ten of these, dumpling noodle soup and hand rolled sichuan noodles and a pot of tea. The dumplings were going down fast when I thought perhaps they could benefit from of the prickly spicy heat of the the sichuan meat topping . Delicious. Sichuan can be an out of body experience but this was spicy, prickl , with enought of that slightly numb edge to give  you motivation to chase the slippery diamond chunks of fresh cucumber around the plate without the intensity which might make your taste buds walk out on you. You will not need to avail of the pawnbrokers across the road to go dumpling, as all of this was ridiculously cheap.   Next time I am having exactly the same.

Cunningham Courtyard, Botanic Gardens, Sketching Class

 

The pathway to the Cunningham Courtyard, tucked away behind the Boabab Tree in the south east corner of the Gardens might be a stage setting for a fashion shoot. The Sabal palm, with its tricky leaves that split to fan in three dimensions does its best to dominate the scene with basket weave geometry, the grass tree swooshing exurburantly in the wind gives it a run for its money and then there is that woman. Let's call her Miss Cunningham.  The cyathea, asplenium and (yes under the grass tree these are) dendrobiums are minor players. I've appropriated the plant sign - which reads, if magnified:

 

Miss Cunningham

Courting cold she stares,

wardrobe missing? cupboard bare?

A case, again, of nothing to wear.

Ryo' s Ramen Bar , Crows Nest - The Q-Effect?

The job of the simple ramen shop is not as simple as it may first appear. Unless you're a truck driver, and the ramen shop is enroute, then it should be your local, an easy breeze in, konichi wa kind of place. There is no doubt that Ryo's is busy. We spent more time in the queue and then loitering inside than we did at the table.  Outside, waiting on the pavement in the gritty rush-past of Falcon Street, standing under the "125 B, Beware of Vehicles" sign, a fine industrial relic of the adjacent property,  we estimated it would take us 30 minutes to get a table. In the end we spend 45 minutes waiting and 20 minutes at our table eating, a ratio which is not optimal, even for a noodle bar. Why the queue?   My theory is that people see the queue and think they are onto something worth queuing for, so the queue becomes a self-replicating phenomena. The ramen, nice big bowls like all the other ramen places I've ever been, is OK. I had Tokyo ramen, and gyoza, which were hot with those nice scorch marks on them, if a little haphazard, rustic one might say.  The pork is tender, and fresh,  but somehow the soup feels a little flat - perhaps it's the build-up? The decor inside is basically yellow, like you've woken up in an egg yolk. Time has made the paper menu items on the walls less than fresh.  I think I probably expect too much from a ramen bar. Blame it on Tampopo.

Rose's Italian Bakery, Flemington, New Jersey

Why does the exception have more gravitational oomph than the ordinary?  Most days I was in New Jersey I went to have coffee and something, like the sfogliatelle, featured in a previous blog in the company of Mr Farmhand and my friend, at Rose's cafe and found it to be a model of neighbourhood bon hommie. Quite often I was introduced to the folk at the next table, and people generally caught up with who was doing. The fellow at the next table here was the exception not happy, dolorous one might say. To be morose  in the company of pastries and coffee seems a special talent.

Both Feet on the Ground - Single Hakea

At one time I  had two sets of Stretch Body Parts, from Professor Plums toy shop ( of the science type).
Naturally I wrote a poem about them but I also used them in a number of collage, like in this collage, where they give the painted hakea  uplift.

Stretch Body Parts

I have bought a packet of

stretch body parts, four pieces.

(Professor Plums $2.95)

One unexpected windfall

is they stick.

The pink ear now has

its own wall to listen to.

The nose gives

sudden expression to three

roughs patches of concrete.

The wall looks

like it has just understood

that the last remark was not

at all kind.

The foot is basically not right

too yellow, toes too small

the ankle bulging but the hand

is so real and flexible,

I have opposed all the digits

against the thumb, compared

our chiromantic chances

and noted her thumb nail

needs filing.  Mine too.

Trace Vegetables

This pumpkin, long since eaten, seems to have disappeared leaving only this digital trace. Posted off on B5 card to join the Macau Elsewhere Project, other inclinations intervened and it lost itself, or was diverted,  in the post. Still most vegetables leave no trace at all, so it has at least this virtual life. But where do these lost trace vegetables go? Is there a virtual soup somewhere, or a virtual roast pumpkin salad, with golden slices  nestled among fresh rocket leaves, colluding with soft crumbles of fetta, dressed with pomegranite seeds and vin cotto as was the destiny of the role model pumpkin?

Sunday Night at Billy Swings, Spit Road, Mosman , Duck Two Ways

Since Dan Dan in Neutral Bay closed its doors I have been on the prowl for a regular, eat here once a week kind of place. Will Billy Swings do it?  The prospect is good, the warm sourdough rolls, the ice-bucket to chill the wine snaffled from the bottle-o three doors down, the amenably delicious  menu.  I might well quote Eddie Lear and say 'We dined on ..pieces of quince ..' . and for two of us, a lovely slice of pork, a puddle of parsnip, this  aside from a certain person who had the home-made gnocchi . Now all I  have to do is get my drawing sorted, and next time remember to  sit on the wall side so I can spy  the rest of the joint. And plan for some room for the Duck Two Ways and the chocolate tart.

Instructions for Duck Two Ways 

1.  Quickly, left, right, pull your head in.
2.  One hand on the table, squat,check out the space, (remove the hand ), duck  under the table.


PS  Their phone number for bookings, which seems to be mysterious to some, is (02) 8068 8338.

It's Monday so it Must be Keirle Park, Manly Lagoon.

The salient feature of Keirle Park oval today was squelch. The puddle was, now and then, pinged with rain drops.  But rain drops of no consequence, tennis went on, and a squad of bouncy footie kids flowed out to kick and punt the ball. One skinny kid with a Borstal hairdo, walked past my car, elbow and knees, acute. The line of his skull set off by the bristle of exclamatory pale hair. Things are so hard to catch on paper, or in the air.

Sketching Class in the Botanical Gardens - 1st drawing

Waiting at Beauty Point

Yesterday I parked looking out from Beauty Point, in the clear late-ish afternoon, the Thursday drum lesson wait. Coming home with this sketch I recollected a very different winter's evening waiting in the same spot, which I wrote about in a poem 'Windscreen' - published in Poetry Mosman, an anthology of Mosman poems published by River Road Press in 2008.

Windscreen

The view is winter, late evening -

busy with the traffic’s northern peristalsis,

Seaforth and the Spit Bridge’s

lights are sliding

slow blurred, down my rain swerved

windscreen, spilling lines of light

over its curb, the bent edge of drops

gregarious in thick bundles of hard water

& water knocking on my car’s tin roof

so all the distortions of glass, of angle,

sluice to remake a flattened world

of melting, molten light and rain.

Wild Horse in the Barrio Alto, Lisbon

The placement of the horse near this gap in the wall creates a tense question,
Will he jump? Will he make it?  While this is on a wall, which looks very much like a footpath in its texture and colour, the illusion is that  stencil horse is vertical and the gap  horizontal - and rapido! we have 3-D.

Farmer Bart Brassica's floral fiat

 

While Farmer Bart B.'s favourite crop is brussel sprouts, which he always says are the highlight of European Epicurean Culture, from time to time he gets a little dizzy and plants what he calls 'fancy daisies". There is some talk around the neighbourhood that this surfeit of chyrsanthemums is really a romantic ploy on Bart's part, others say its because he gets $2 a bunch for them in his roadside stall. Bart will not tell a soul the secret of his giant blooms, not even Mavis Eggwhistle the local florist, who has asked twice.

Keirle Park. March 2011, Paper Bark Writer

There are days when one wants to look on the wider world
and days when one needs to bring a small piece of it back
and attend to its minutae.  March in Sydney and the paper barks
put forth, a frosshle of white stamen and the scent, to me at least,
of sweet boiled potatoes. This might be irrational but
I find the association persuasive.

On the obligatory walk from Keirle Park to Manly I found this sweet fruiting body of a tree ( woody shrub) I am ashamed to say I have not identified. I've sketched it twice here, and included a sprig of it. The Paper Bark is from Keirle Park.  It seems I might need to document all Keirle Park flora! 14 March 2011.

Swimming in the Gold Fish Bowl - Arche Roughful

For some time I've been incubating a 'too-good-   to-use' cache of Arche paper. The textured surface is gripping to say the least, but allows that saturated layering which reminds me of antique fairy tales and  ancient colour printing. This image is a magnified detail as I am in love with that gold fish . The drawing/collage- whole picture's below- takes as a point of departure a Japanese woodblock print.

Pick Me Pick me says the White Agapanthus -

Any agapanthus that weren't picked are going to seed now, sending off their invasive emissaries to colonize places that don't need them.  Plant invaders, such as agapanthus and coreopsis,  growing wild along the old Pacific Highway, beaming in clumps alongside the railway line might as well be picked.  This picking wild weeds may be the last resort of the itinerant flower picking flanuer.

Soy Fish in Silk Water Storm

This corner of chinese wedding gown, makes a dark sea for the soy sauce school of fish.  A seasonally varied fish, easily identified by its detachable red nose, it is chameleon like in its adaption to different coloured inky diets.  The blue feather just blew in out of the blue.

Perch-ment, Adapting to local conditions

It might be a nesting instinct but this morning when I found this nest, perched here with other avian objects, I stopped sweeping up the leaves and went looking for its next home.  This is the fourth nest that I have found  blown into my garden. One nest is built entirely of twigs, the other three from fibres of the phoenix palm, lined with fluff of some sort. The fluff here, in extravagant quantities was picked out of my old BBQ cover by the noisy mynah who made this nest.  The bell shaped object is a small sponge I found washed up on Fairy Meadow beach. I suppose this assemblage, train brake shoe template with odd avian and marine items might be a collage.

Rear View Mirror

In a first off, casting around for quick something to sketch, parked waiting for Theo while he has a music lesson, in the same spot as last week, finding no virtue in the straggly street, the low-grade local buildings, the cars parked like aphids, I resort to the rear view mirror, that tilted perspective of one's self.  The task is a weird meld of the inconsequential and the unnerving.

Blade Runners, Leaf Litter , Clover

Summer has slipped off, and so has this drawing I did of the grass, fallen leaves and the odd sprigs of clover.  The last time I remember seeing it, it was pinioned by magnets to my notice board, since then it has been unnoticeable.  Grass is like that.  Ephemera, if there ever was. This sketch may look random  but it plots out a real swathe of grass, though perhaps it's a stretch to call  grass of  this length a swathe.  This was early summer grass from the park around Lane Cove Tennis courts.  Odd that the words, clover and cove, should be so disparate in meaning,  and might average out to clove and subtract to make over, love. If the drawing is out there, reading this, can it please make its way back?

Fava write things

 A few months back I made what Greg and Lucy Malouf describe in their lovely book Turquoise as  Fava Bean Pate.  It was good, but it didn't have the delicate pea, or should I say legume, green tint theirs did. I bought fresh broad beans, shelled them, pod and bean skin, and made it again. The colour was wonderful. Musing on the time consuming task of taking off the bean skins, and recollecting a message once left by my friend Helen M, set out in fronds of Boston fern and possibly the most beautiful and witty message anyone has ever left for me, the idea of an aphoristic poem, depicted in its own substrate, came to me. The slightly risque content, that the beans here are both signifiers and the thing itself and the dreadful pun, and that the poem ends up as a smooth pale pate gives food for thought.

Mr Bling does his Dash

Mr Bling, about the height of your average skirting board, dashed off with his VW medallion trailling, like the White Rabbit's fob watch. The door and cobbled street are in the Barrio Alto district of Lisbon, but Mr Bling might be anywhere by now.

Keirle Park, March, 2011, Shadows and my former self

Given that  light takes time even to make the trip from me to the grass of Keirle Park and back up to meet the camera, then I can truly say this is a shadow of my former self. I had, adventurously, trekked across Keirle Park oval and found a weird heavy metal roller, that the rugby/footie, or whatever that game with the pointie ball is called, use to practice with, pushed into the shrubs. I sketched it. The roller was a great rusty relic, with worn blue paint, and strange yellow markings. The sketch was dreadful, cross-wise beams did not meet up, the perspective was off and the bushes were dire daubs. On the way back I noticed my shadow and mercifully, this was crisp and graphic, right up to the top of that eccentric curl near my right ear. That crease is not me going weak at the news but the collage line.

Shower Fittings from the Lake

Travelling in Japan last September the fretwork circles of lotus root, fried to thin crispness, pickled pink or blanched white with the crunch abiding, and sometimes trimmed to read as a flower frequented many meals.  Back in Sydney the lotus I've found lately  is the fresh  seed pods, with theirTriffid like stems, in the flower section of the market. I drew these twice, the first time with Winsor & Newton Emerald Green drawing ink,  ( a detail below) - those green horizontals are supposed to the glass louvres, and didn't work. Then I was given new water colour crayons for my birthday, hence the crayola-eque sketch above. 

Clouding Factors

It seems most likely that post mortem I will come back as a cloud.  This is one of a series of cloud photos I've taken - and these clouds  might be related to me in a past life - though that takes a certain liberty with language in inferring that clouds are a life form, which, of course, is a silly idea I don't subscribe to.  If clouds really did have character, as opposed to properties and characteristics, this collection might be negotiating something fairly intense.

Tea cups gleaming

The Noritake tea cups, with their two tones,  are the leading lights in this static choreography of cups and saucers.  It only needs a teapot to sport forth with tea, the coffee pot to pour and the perfect state of afternoon tea will descend. Th heart shaped iced cake, below was a nougatine ,  with a filling of sweet ricotta ,  the ganache filled biscuits were almond , the little ones below glazed with coffee icing and decorated with hazelnut praline.  Yes, it's all eaten now, except of course, for the china and embroidered nappery.

Days of Smooth Bark

Yesterday, waiting at Beauty Point while Theo had his regular Thursday drum lesson,  I started reading E. M. Forster's memoir The Hill of Devi. This 1953 edition by Edward Arnold  & Co (London) with a number of black and white photographs on slippery paper that appear opposite one of the linen weave print pages, has that strange half-old smoke half-foxed smell of old books.  I was tinkering with the idea of copying one of the photos but then I opened my sunroof and noticed this very fine eucalypt had caught the last of the afternoon light.

Celery becomes venerable and subs in as Boddhi Tree

Reminiscent of Marvel's great line, 'my vegetable love shall grow, vaster than empires and more slow', the power of something as humble as celery to sprout, to persist, to keep on with photosynthesis is intriguing.   Any venerable plant needs avian attendants and a groundsman,  or as here, a canopy worker. The elephant resting in shade is taking time off to think about her next chess move.

Tulips, duplicities of light and phototaxis

Left to itself, light has been been busy in my ktichen, coaxing the tulip flowers  this way and that, to move towards its path, and making a drunken play with the wine glasses, casting both shadow and refracted image on the wall. The two near-tulip cones of light seem to be a kind of joking mimicry, or a comment on the possible redundacy of colour.

Red Ink, Yellow Ink

Naturally this miniature phalaenopsis  did not come in this glossy cardical* red, but the calligraphy ink which I painted it with did, and yellow too as you can see by the pot. This was exactly what I wanted to draw as soon as I bought the ink.   Sometimes called a moth orchid, though I wonder what had Mr Carl Linnaeus been thinking , or eating, when he described this orchid as moth-like, these plants initiate flowering when the daytime temperature drops below 27C, so it is particularly disruptive to render them in such a hot colour.

NB It may seem like a typo but cardical  red is the red of angora cardigans, one of which I owned as part of a twin set when I was six.