Macrocarpa Men

I made a few of these creatures inspired by an exhibition I was involved in. All the artists found something to inspire them from the pages of “Landfall” editions.

I chose the short story “A Whale Sunday” by Kerry Louise Harrison. Her description of crawling inside a macrocarpa hedge took me straight back to my childhood, where I have spent a bit of time crawling around in macrocarpa hedges.

“We vaulted up the sand dunes to the hole in the macrocarpa hedge. Inside we crawled. It was my grandmother’s hedge and it smelt of dark green forest, held within it whole armies of bloodied men and the odd gnarled creature.”

Wow! Magic writing, drawing pictures in my mind.

So what do I do with a few large, creepy-looking tree monsters after the show? I can’t sit them in the middle of the lounge, they’d get me tangled up every time I walked by, not to mention blocking the view of the TV.

So I took them on a trip, got tangled up in a lot of branches, tripped over a few times and took some photos.

*Landfall Autumn 1994 (187) page 120

Field Trip

One of the fun things with making paper Mache beasties is that you can have a lot of fun photographing them! Its great to pack a couple up and take them off on a journey, posing them beside streams, in layers of soft green moss, hanging from branches. I have had a few strange looks!

For Christmas, my wonderful family gave me an awesome camera. It takes beautiful photos, one day I even plan to take it out of its automatic setting. Truth be told, I’m a little terrified of all its fancy knobs and dials, living in constant fear of accidently pressing a wrong button and taking it off automatic, never to find it again.

The main problem is that I seem to end up out in the forestry, all knowledge of what the different settings do has evaporated out of my head and my glasses have been left at home so the teeny tiny writing is all but invisible. For the time being I’ve decided that the camera knows more than me, so I’ll use its expertise.

A lot of my inspiration comes from walking in the bush or forestry, the patterns the branches make, the moss covered trees, the play of light and dark. I love the way, in certain light, the trees look mysterious, like they might move towards me, or scuttle off into the darkness. When the lighting is right, I intend on gathering up some artworks, rushing off and catching some more pics in the fog or sunset.

Max, my trusty (sometimes untrustworthy) assistant usually comes along for the ride.