Collaboration 2005

I spent the past weekend in Newcastle, Australia for the Collaboration 2005 conference. Put together 30 artists from different media and countries and you end up with an interesting mix of projects and great fun. I learned so much from talking to sculptors, carvers, furniture makers, and painters! I'll have ideas buzzing around my brain for months to come.

Anna, Alain, and I arrived midafternoon on Friday. That gave us enough time to unpack our gear and get started before the arrival of the rest of the group. I made a small pollen grain bowl to put into the "lucky dip" drawing, which is where everyone makes a small item that can be exchanged as a lottery drawing. I drew out an offcenter spin top made by Theo.

After everyone arrived to the workshop on Friday we had dinner and a slide show and got acquainted for a bit. Then it was off to our campsite to settle in for the weekend.

We stayed at a scout camp at Glenrock Reserve. It was situated on a lagoon about 1/2 mile from the ocean. This is a view of the ocean from the campground. The ships out there wait for spot in the harbor to open, and there are usually a dozen or so big ships waiting for their turn at the docks.

This is the view from the beach looking back toward the camp.

We ate breakfasts and one dinner at the camp. We also gathered in the dining room in the evenings for some social time.

I was pretty jet lagged the whole weekend, but felt awake enough on Saturday night to join a group for a beach party. That was the only place we could go for a beer since alcohol was forbidden in camp and we were a long way from any pub. I brought along my fiddle and agreed to play only if we could do a swap of songs or stories for every tune I played. Graeme Priddle and Stephen Hughes got a fire going, and then we were on our way.

After my first tune, Stephen took up the challenge and told a joke that had to be acted out. Ernie Newman went along and was talked into doing some silly things. Most of the other jokes were not PC and unrepeatable in polite company, but there were a couple of good ones in there, too. A couple of the fellows played percussion along with my fiddle playing. It was fun, but I was ready to turn in before the party broke up. I made my way back to camp by flashlight and picked up a ground leech along the way. That wasn't too thrilling, nor were the giant cockroaches, but the rest of the fauna weren't hard to get along with. The birds made a huge raucous each morning, but most of the songs were pleasant to listen to.

I worked on Saturday morning with Alain Mailland to learn how to use his tools for making the forms for his elaborate carvings. I wanted to try carving in 3D rather than across a single surface. It took me three tries to get the basic form. The first piece of wood I had on the lathe had an internal check that I didn't see until I had finished the outside profile. The second piece of wood was way too soft. The third one worked ok. This is what the form looked like before I started carving.

Here I've cut away the scrap to make the basic shape.

Silvio is helping me learn to use a carving knife to refine the shape.

Alain is teaching me sanding tricks.

Here's what it looked like after I finished the carving and Annette Barlow did the painting.

And here's the collaborative walking stick that Anna Dawes and I contributed to a group project.

We used a hobby club workshop as the setting for the collaboration work. The shop was well equipped with many lathes and all the power tools needed for woodworking.

Everyone brought their own gear and it was interesting to see the different tools used for different projects.

the large room was set up for painting, pyrography, assembly, and thinking. It was pretty busy all weekend as was the shop and the outside yard, where most of the really noisy things took place (power carvers, air compressors, routers, etc.). I lived in ear plugs and a dust mask all weekend.

The Scobies and Annette Barlow brought a large assortment of paints and they were busy all weekend helping to decorate the various projects.

Lunches were provided on site and it made for a good break time to regroup, visit, and plan the next stage of a project.

Here are a few of the proejcts that were made through the weekend:

Graeme Priddle organized a project where most everyone made a walking stick. Mike Lee turned the collar and I decorated it in a maple leaf motif.

This stool had legs made by four different artists. Neil Scobie organized this one. The next two pics are progress shots of the legs being made:



The next two pics are ones I took during a walk on the beach on Monday morning. You can see a coal seam running along the rock face of the coast and the old railway line where coal would have been transported together with a decaying wagon. This area is a national park, so the remnants will stay in place until they decay away.



And, finally, here's a group photo of most of the participants of this weekend's collaboration.


Front row (L to R): Robert Vaughn, Andi Wolfe, Alain Mailland, Ernie Newman, Annette Barlow, Robert Frye, Andrew Wood, Mike Lee.
Second row (L to R): Andrew Potocnik, Liz Scobie, Anna Dawes, Anna Scobie, Gordon Ward, Vaughn Richmond, Theo, Robert, ??, Ruth Thompson, Les Fortescue.
Third row (L to R): Stephen Hughes, Terry Scott, Aris, John, Glenn Roberts, Silvio, Greg, Graeme Priddle, Gary Saunders, Neil Scobie, Andy Schmidt.

I hope I got the names right. Did you notice there were two Andrews, an Andy, and an Andi? That made for some confusion as did the two Anna's. This was a wonderful experience, and I'm so glad I was invited to participate. Now, if I could just catch up to this time zone, which is 14 hours ahead of my home one, I'd be in great shape for the rest of the trip.