Fitting In

 

This great graphic supports my favourite quote by Krishnamurti:

'It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society' 

Image: Unknown source.

7 Years On

In October last year I received an email exactly 7 years after finishing and submitting my PhD thesis. It was from the executive director of the C.G. Jung Institute of Los Angeles and editorial board member of the Jungian journal Psychological Perspectives asking if I would be interested in 'writing an article (or two)' on some of the material in my PhD thesis. 'Our readers would surely be interested in these views and I would love to bring them to their attention'.

This is a tiny portion of my reply: 'Thankyou for your response. I was very moved - not many people 'get' what I was actually trying to do in my thesis.... Please run it past your editorial board and let me know what they think. I am happy to give permission for them to reproduce any images already in the thesis, as well as the sketches and visual research that wasn't included and which you haven't seen'.

Two days ago - just as I was just about to leave for work - I received this:

'I wanted to let you know that I submitted the first chapter of your thesis. Our editorial board like it very much and would like this chapter to become a paper - this decision because your thesis is only the first part of a more extended work. The board wanted an ending to the chapter so that it is self-contained. Ideally, they would like to make it more concise and include images of your art. I am sure that they would love your other chapters as well if they are re-written into separate papers. Would you be willing to re-write the first chapter so that we can publish? This decision is, in substance, what we hope would happen. I would be thrilled to have this first paper and, hopefully, more published'. 

When I was first asked to submit I felt pretty overwhelmed but thought the board might agree to publish the first couple of chapters as is. I haven't done any academic writing since I completed my PhD. I figured rewriting it would be a hell of a lot of work and I doubted I was up for the challenge. Academic journal articles are written in a different style than a thesis and I felt out of my depth. And what with the world ending in the not-too-distant future and many of our societal structures collapsing - including the respect academics have traditionally received - what was the point? I know being published is critical in academic circles but there is little to no chance it will increase my employment prospects. I would not receive a dollar either.

Anyway, I dragged out the first of four parts I had already divided my thesis into, took another look and started writing again. I found it easier than I thought - possibly because I had already started editing and had had a break from it for a few months. It's amazing how obvious the flaws are when you have some distance.

At my request the nice gentleman at the CG Jung Institute provided me with 3 examples of journal articles they had published and offered to be my 'sounding board'. So I guess I'm doing it. I'll see how I go with the first one before I commit to the other 3.

Myth #1

 

Tribe

I look at this very recent photo and I want to scream. I can't believe this is happening. This is 5000 year old peat in a designated biodiversity hotspot wilderness and our so-called 'authorities' are burning it DELIBERATELY, REPEATEDLY and SYSTEMATICALLY.

This issue is threatening to subsume my life. If I'm not at meetings alongside PhD scientists, ex-senate members, statisticians, environmental scientists, strategists and generally concerned members of the public - I'm at the computer creating logos and setting up websites for the group that is fighting this good fight. I'm out of my depth. I'm not a scientist but I am a valued member of the team because I have the communication, digital and design skills to take the campaign to a wider audience. 

I avoid groups, committees and meetings but in amongst these people - with whom there have already been 'artistic' differences - I feel as though I have found my tribe. 

Photo: From Prescribed Burns? Facebook page

Aussie Birds

 Some lovely pics of Aussie birds - just because they are beautiful and unique. This is a Pink Robin and is native to south eastern Australia. Pretty damn cute.

These are Red-tailed Cockatoos. Three just like these have been making a racket and a mess snacking on eucalyptus at our place recently.

Aboriginal man Ymntji Regan from the Prescribed Burns? Facebook group I belong to said this about them:

'Partners for Life ! a fragile existence. The female totally dependent on the male. Whilst nesting he brings her and the newly hatched food back to Hollow that she uses every year. She never leaves the nest. If there is a fire he will not return to the nest, mostly because of the Danger Element. Sadly she will die with the young if not by the fire but starvation. If he dies and she lives - she will never breed again with another male.

Our Navigators and guides off The Corridors - our connection to the Songlines'.

Finishing off with some more fluffy cuties. We see these little guys, or their close relatives, on our bush block every day when they swoop in to grab a feed and disappear back into the dense scrub.

Photo credits:

Pink Robin - Deepak Karra

Red-tailed Cockatoos - photographer or illustrator unknown. Supplied by Ymntji Regan from Prescribed Burns?

Splendid Fairy Wrens - Raelene Smith, RJS Photographs

Learning Curve

As people grappled with the restrictions and realities of COVID some unusual partnerships were born and many inspired projects began. Right at the start of the lockdown I answered a callout on the local online Facebook bulletin board for an illustrator to collaborate on a kid's book. The author was unpublished and so was I, so I figured we could join forces and get published together. This meant the gig was unpaid, but it was agreed I would receive half of the profits, which was very generous in principle. I was going to get a contract drawn up to ensure that part of the deal was locked in but we never got that far.

As you might be able to see from the following images, I can spend hours and hours creating individual elements and working out how best to illustrate just one scene, then spend more time rearranging elements on a page to get the best composition. The retro plane took me ages - I went down a few blind alleys before I got close to what the author wanted.

I 'drew' heavily on my own childhood - the boy looks like an animated version of my red-headed brother as a kid, and the house is a state owned fibro-asbestos dwelling typical of the time. The Hills Hoist clothesline is iconic Aussie backyard paraphernalia. I seem to remember the author wasn't sure about the little girl swinging from it, but as he was Scottish, he wouldn't have known that this was a common activity in the 60s which of course, I participated in (and got in trouble for). The back yard is also typical - generous blocks of land, with a couple of trees if you were lucky, and an expanse of lawn on which cricket and footie (Aussie rules football) were played.

Each element can be a lot of fun to design and create. Me renaming the 'Spludge gun' the 'Spludge-atron' is the kind of fun serendipitous thing that can happen during a collaboration. 

Characters can be tricky because they have to represent what the author sees when he writes about them. The brief for both characters was pretty specific but there was room for me to have some input which is really how it should work if you want the best result. I can appreciate it must be difficult for an author to 'hand over' their characters to the illustrator - they are probably rarely going to look exactly as they see them in their mind's-eye.

The author and I communicated well at first. He liked my style and I thought the story and the characters were interesting enough for me to translate into some nice illustrations. Things broke down a bit when I realised he didn't understand he needed to provide me with a finished story. I did a couple of mockups, like the first image above, to show that the text had to be finalised before I could work out what went where,  how many pages were going to be illustrated, which parts of the text I was going to illustrate and how they would be placed on the pages. 

COVID lockdown ended and the author got back to what he loves doing best - jazz singing. He apologised and agreed to rewrite the story in a format I could interpret as an illustrator. I left him with it but have heard nothing for about a year. I doubt I ever will.

Collaborations are often difficult, especially when there are 2 creatives working together. I think we did really well and I'm very glad I went through the process. I learnt a lot.

Images: Concept by story author, James Flynn. Illustrations by blog author trading as 'Mad Fish Designs'.

Hot Off The Press

I'm currently finishing off a new logo design for FaBWA. There was some controversy over the last one. It's impossible working for a committee - too many clients and people rarely agree. But this one above looks like being the final, or something very close to it. 

The one below was criticised for looking like a 'Disney character' and yeh, so what's the problem with that? The idea wasn't mine - I was given a photocollage of a small marsupial Mardo (Antechinus) jumping through a ring of fire. The quality of the image was very bad and I wasn't able to see any detail, so I designed this little guy.

There are a lot of PhD-type doctors in the group and I suspect some are worried about their academic credentials being associated with Disneyland. I think they need to get over themselves, but I also recognise my tastes are a bit 'out there' so redid the logo according to what I would have initially designed, if I had been asked.

Originally I volunteered my graphic design services to help FaBWA but the workload blew out so they accessed some funding and offered to pay me. I was a bit ambivalent but in the end, after they asked several times to send them an invoice, I charged them less than half of what my time would normally be worth. Of course going from volunteer to professional means the relationship has also changed, hence my capitulation and the new logo. 

I think the new logo is a great compromise.

Images: Author. Original designs, digitally created.

Stranger Than Fiction

'Mumford's works share a common concern with the ways that modern life as a whole, although providing possibilities for broader expression and development, simultaneously subverts those possibilities and actually ends up tending toward a diminution of purpose. He shows in lucid detail how the modern ethos released a Pandora's box of mechanical marvels which eventually threatened to absorb all human purposes into The Myth of the Machine, the title he used for his two-volume late work.'

'Internationally renowned for his writings on cities, architecture, technology, literature, and modern life, Lewis Mumford was called "the last of the great humanists" by Malcolm Cowley. His contributions to literary criticism....mark him as one of the most original voices of the twentieth-century.'

Looks like Mr Mumford made some insightful observations about modern life.

Lewis Mumford, 'A Brief Biography'

Keep on Truckin'

 I'm back at work this week and we'll see how that goes. I always have one foot out the door but I still need the job and feel a sense of responsibility to my students. If I left, the art program would probably shut down altogether. For many years they didn't have one because they couldn't find or keep an art lecturer. The job requires a particular combination of resilience, knowledge, cultural sensitivity and the ability to administer large doses of tough love.

It's reassuring to know that somewhere in the world emus are doing what they've been doing for millennia.

Photo: Christian Spencer