Blandowski: Echuca, Shepparton, Benalla

One wakes up in a hotel room with the light fanging in across the ceiling. Let's have some breakfast in the sun, David, and then hit the Murray.


Ah, thar she flows. Somewhere close was the junction of the Murray and Campaspe Rivers, but I couldn't find it before the time came to be on the road in order to get to the Shepparton Library. We had a great time there, particularly with the two classes from Izik College. Below, David. And no, I haven't been showing pictures of the kids because if you take a photo that shows a child's face you need to have their permission. And I didn't.


In fact, I don't have David's permission. Must talk to him about that. But I think the thumbs up indicate a 'yes'.


After finishing up at the library (and boy oh boy, does the Gallery around the corner have a good cafe? Yes, it does) we drive up the road and have a wander along the Goulburn. I see a fox.

The following day is yesterday, and we hurtle through rain to get to Benalla Art Gallery, where we are visited by a couple of groups of students from Benalla East Primary, who are great - really lively!


Okay, so clearly there's people without whom this whole 'Art of Scientific Observation' tour would never have happened, and a couple of them turn up at Benalla. No pressure. (This better be good) One is Vera Gin, from Scienceworks, who arrives with Michelle Saunders, also from Scienceworks. Vera and Sarah Edwards applied for the initial funding for the tour, from Questacon, in Canberra. Also turning up at Benalla was Geoff Crane, from Questacon!

He takes the photo below, of me in Wilhelm mode:


Finishing up, we load the gear into Puggle, the Discovery Program van, as rain continues to plash into Lake Benalla.


And onto the trolleys.


And onto David. (Hey Bernard, care to lend a hand here?)


The evening's biodiversity talk takes place at this very lovely hotel:


And is delivered by Ray Thomas, of The Regent Honeyeater Project, and he speaks to us about his incredible habitat regeneration work which has involved planting - with much farmer and volunteer generosity- stands of box-ironbark, yellow box and white box trees, whose nectar the critically endangered Regent Honeyeater loves.


Above, from left: David, Geof, Vera, Ray, Michelle and Rob, from the commitee of the Regent Honeyeater project - he's a farmer upon whose land some of the planting has been done.

A lovely night - and great food!

As David and I prepare to return to 'The Top of the Town' motel for the night, a question occurs to us:


Well?

Blandowski - week 1 ends, week 2 starts

Oh, that's right.

I forgot to say in the previous post that there is another element to Museum Victoria's 'The Art of Scientific Observation' regional tour, and that is at night, in pubs (sounds okay eh?), where we continue to celebrate The International Year of Biodiversity and National Science Week by hooking up with people in that part of Victoria who are doing work in the area of biodiversity. On Monday night last, in Ballarat, we met Emma and Janelle who work at Sovereign Hill's working farm, Narmbool.

Below, around the table, from left: Tim Sullivan Deputy CEO and Museums Director at Sovereign Hill; Emma and Janelle from Narmbool; Shane, a local teacher; and Amy Briese, my Week One travelling companion and fellow Museum Victoria person (she also works for Zoos Victoria at the Werribee Open Range Zoo). Emma and Janelle talked about the programs they offer at Narmbool, Shane talked about his experience incorporating animals into his classroom teaching, and Amy talked about her work at the zoo. My main contact with animals is with ones who are dead or extinct (one of the things I love about working at a museum) and all this talk about live animals and what they can teach live humans was amazing to me.


Okay so let's zip forward to Thursday where we drove from Mildura to the Swan Hill Regional Art Gallery where we we very soon met Barry, with his amazing Folio Society edition ofa book of plates by an early star of scientific illustration, Maria Sibylla Merian (April 2, 1647 – January 13, 1717)


which weighed about as much as I do. And I'm no featherweight. Beautiful, eh?


Here's our set-up in the gallery at Swan Hill, which is right next to the Murray River and the Pioneer Settlement.


As we drove away towards Bendigo, we passed Lake Boga, full after many years of dryness. It was significant for us because Blandowski stopped there in early 1857, on his way up to his famed camp Mondellimin, west of Mildura on the Murray. I use a drawing of a Crested Wedge Bill in the show, the original of which was drawn by Blandowski at Lake Boga, so it was great to see the lake looking so healthy.


And so full of bird life. Hello, maggie...


Ah, the open road. The McIvor Highway.


Ah, the Shamrock Hotel in Bendigo, and the view out of the window of the Billy Heffernan Suite by night...


...and by day...


And a view of the hotel itself, foregrounded by the building which is being made into a new socal history centre for Bendigo. (This drawing from the top of the Poppet Head tower in Rosalind (aka Fruit Bat) Park)


We set up in the Bendigo Art Gallery on Friday, and it is a grand building. In the foregound, drawing the magpie, is Margot, who works there and who was great. The painting behind the man's head is called 'Gentlemen..the Queen!' and features a lot of chaps in Edwardian red uniforms toasting their monarch. Work it into the show? You bet! (thanks to Georgie Meyer for pointing it out to me...)


Below, Amy and one of our great Bendigo illustrators.


Bendigo was our last stop last week, and yesterday Monday 16 August was our first day of Week #2. Below, setting up at the Kyabram Fauna Park.

On the left, Rhonda from Campaspe Shire who'd done a great job organising school groups to come along - from St. Patrick's Tongala in the morning (60 students), and Nanneella Estate Primary in the arvo (30 students). It was great to present the drawing program and the show to school groups - they were very enthusisatic!


On the right, that's David Holmes, my travelling companion for this week and a very very nice fellow.

Below: David going into a too-much-Blue-Castello-cheese-for-afternoon-tea catatonia, from which a cup of tea managed to rescue him. Outside Rooms 7 and 8 at the Echuca Hotel.


Last night, in a cellar at the Shamrock Hotel in Echuca, Nickee Freeman from the Department of Primary Industries gives a talk about Biodiversity and Land Management. David is later heard to mutter that it felt like we were part of a Resistance meeting...

C'est vrai, mon ami.

Sur le route mit Wilhelm

Ecce homo, my friends.

Here is the man.

The man, in this case, being Wilhelm von Blandowski (1822 - 1878, in Australia 1849 - 1859), who I am performing for a program called 'The Art of Scientific Observation'. This program has been developed by Museum Victoria to celebrate The International Year of Biodiversity and National Science Week and is travelling across country Victoria over the next three weeks.

The program has a drawing component, whereby we set out a bunch of drawing materials (pencils, crayons, pens, fineliners) and a whole bunch of museum natural history objects (birds, mammals, reptiles, shells, insects) and visitors can have a go at drawing them. We are at the gallery or art centre in question from 11am to 3pm, and at 11.30am and 1.30pm, I perform a 20 minute illustrated show, 'Wilhelm von Blandowski: a curious man'.

The article above is from Ballarat's 'The Courier', from Tuesday, reporting on the first show of the first day of the tour, at the Art Gallery of Ballarat, on Monday. The article was written by Pat Nolan and the picture taken by Craig Holloway (who made good on his promise NOT to use any of the shots where my moustache was dangling from my upper lip - thanks, Craig!).

One of the great things about visiting the galleries (two so far) has been checking out the exhibitions on display. On Monday I was GUTTED to realise that I had missed an exhibition called 'In Your Face! cartoons about politics and society 1760 - 2010' at the Art Gallery of Ballarat BY ONE DAY.

To console myself I bought the catologue, and what a show I missed! Gillrays! Hogarths! Cruikshanks! Tenniels! Gills! There's a cartoonist in there, Tom Carrington, who does work for the London and then Melbourne Punch, whose work is superb. And there's a bunch of brilliant Australian cartoonists, including Will Dyson, whose 'Anyhow it's cleansing' from 1925 for Melbourne Punch is below.


This guy looks a bit like Henry Lawson, no? And his cravat reads 'Labour Party', the implication being that a positive spin must be put on everything. Timely no?

The next picture is by S.T Gill (1818 - 1880), maybe the best known 'goldfields artist', who was also represented in the exhibition (although I don't know if this image was in it - this is from a postcard) 'The Unlucky Digger that Never Returned' has a desolate melancholy which I really like. There's an Eddie Campbell element to this picture. Yes? Yes.


Tuesday was an 'On The Road' day, Ballarat to Mildura, via Horsham, though grey skies and Mallee scrub.


At Ouyen, the Big Sheaf of Wheat.


Do three stalks make a sheaf?


Me and The Big Mallee Root, which is that massive dark thing that looks like poured concrete. Hectare after hectare of these things were ripped out of the ground so that wheat could be planted up here. This picture is for my dad, Salvatore, who is (still) a Mallee Boy. It was taken by Amy Briese, from the museum's Discovery Program, my travelling companion for this week and a lot of fun to be with.


The sandwich board outside the cafe in Ouyen when Amy and I had lunch yesterday. Nice cartooning and nice colours, Cowards!


Today, Wednesday, outside the Mildura Art Centre. The skies are all day permanent grey, and the winds are high. Last night there was a tornado in Moama. Are we in Kansas? I don't think so.


The Chaffey homestead 'Rio Vista', part of the Mildura Arts Centre. We set up in the drawing room, a lovely room, where Gemma and Joe from WIN TV came to shoot the second show of the day - we (Amy, Wilhelm and I) were the post-weather story on tonight's news!

After we packed up, we had a wander around Rio Vista and the galleries.



Hi, Amy.


When I have a top hat, I will also have a box for it.


The Mildura Arts Centre has a fine collection of works by Frank Brangwyn (1867 - 1956), including many working drawings and a quite overwhelmingly large picture, a study for a church mural back in England. The scale of the piece and the scale of the room are staggering.


Meanwhile, back in Rio Vista, the wood-lined smoking room. Ah. When I establish my Men's Club, the designer will need to visit Mildura to understand the aesthetic I'm after.

Don't worry, the comics gallery/library/atelier comes first. Once it's up and running, THEN the Men's Club.

Don't go to sleep!

We got to Sydney last Friday, Susan and I, and spent the weekend in an amazing parallel world where comics were, for two days, a combination of rock and roll and high art. Remarkable.

For one thing, GRAPHIC seemed to be everywhere: on billboards, in newspapers and the street press. It had a public presence that I've not seen for a comics event previously.


A group of larrikins, currency lads in the Green Room of the Opera House on Saturday morning, about to run a three hour comics making workshop in the Utzon Room. From left: Leigh Rigozzi, Andrew Weldon, Pat Grant, Mat Huynh and fuzzy Gabriel Clark.


Post-workshop, we are joined by Matt Taylor, a Sydney comics maker foreground right. Thanks for the cranberry and soda Matt! We are all wondering how you paint comics panels up on those sails...


Susan Bamford Caleo arrives. She's really into it.


Susan and Andrew practicing rock and roll comics attitude.


They are given some pointers in this by Jonathan Walker, the redoubtable writer of Five Wounds (Allen and Unwin, 2010) . Next time, they will remember the headphones around the neck dress code. We are all at the 'Publishing your Work' panel, featuring Gary Groth, Erica Wagner, Eddie Campbell and Jeremy Wortsman.


Eddie looking askance in a sort of 'what am I DOING here?' moment.


See what I mean? Signage.


Inside the Opera House, this room soon fills for Neil Gaiman reading 'The Truth is a Cove in the Black Mountains', with painted illustrations by Eddie Campbell and a live soundtrack by Fourplay string quartet.


At the afterparty (woo! yeah!), a fuzzy Neil Gaiman and a (more) in focus Jordan Verzar, the ringleader of the entire weekend. Jordan is also the fellow who brought out Jim Woodring a couple of years ago. More, Jordan! More!


Sunday we swing back over to the Opera House and Susan plays a computer game in the independant games exhibition - thanks ACMI!

Then it's into the Studio for an undoubted weekend highlight: 'Focus on Fantagraphics' - a My Life In Comics slideshow by Gary Groth. Many, many good stories including the time he organises Hunter S Thompson to attend an event: "This being the mid-70s and me having hair down to my middle, I had a can of mace in my pocket to deal with rednecks." Thompson of course nicks the can from Groth's pocket in order to spray some hapless hotel attendant. Hilarity ensues.


This is what I think of as my Gary-Groth-as-Robert-Mitchum drawing. And yes, he said that.

This is him interviewing Charles 'Peanuts' Schultz, and uncomforatble using the nickname:


Then there was the 'Evolution of an Idea' panel, which I chaired, also in the Studio. The speakers were Shaun Tan, Neil Gaiman and Eddie Campbell. We covered three environments where writers' and draw-ers' ideas evolve: collaborations, adaptations and reader reception. It all seemed to go pretty well.

After that, Susan and I hurried to see the second half of Regurgitator performing a live soundtrack to 'Akira', which was ear-bleedingly loud and fantastic. I really didn't understand the film the first time I saw it, at the Valhalla in Westgarth, 20 years ago, and on Sunday I understood it no better, but boy it made whole lot more sense.


And then - SOB!- it was time to go. Here Susan approaches Wendy, John (TheComicSpot Retallick) and Sonya. We had dinner together, then Susan and I left the city of rock and roll comics to return to the town of comic books as literature.

Thank you, Jordan. An incredible weekend.

Graphic! Novel! And operatic!

Hey there team, very excited to be going up to this: GRAPHIC, at the Sydney Opera House, next weekend August 7 and 8. An incredible lineup of speakers and presenters and events - have a look at the program. Congratulations to Jordan Verzar, who has organised it all! Take a bow, Jordan...

On the Saturday I am joining an all-star lineup of cartoonists (Pat Grant, Matt Huynh, Leigh Rigozzi and Andrew Weldon) to present a comics workshop, and on the Sunday I am being the anchorman for a panel,'The Evolution of an Idea', featuring the speakers Shaun Tan, Eddie Campbell and Neil Gaiman. What, as Susan would say, a hoot.

Folks, Gary Groth is going to be there. Gary. Groth. Who made it possible to use the words 'comics' and 'art' in the same sentence? Gary Groth did. He did for comics what Gary Gygax did for dice, and I say that without being facetious or didactic in any way.

Caleo comics media empire expands!

Tonight on TheComicSpot we had a special mystery guest, Joseph Ross Bamford Caleo, in his comics review radio debut - he talked about the Captain Congo series (he's a fan) and even suggested a Kid's Tango -hey lad, not a bad idea at all...

John, Jo and I then talked to Anna Brown about her very interesting 'photographing Australian comics artists' project.

And we spoke with 'El Presidente' of the Australian Cartoonist's Association Jules Faber, who announced the new 'comics' category of their annual Stanley Awards - very exciting! You need to be a member to be eligible, so join up. I am! I think this is a pretty exciting moment - 'single-panel and strip' (ie newspaper) cartoonists are extending a warm hand to 'comic book' cartoonists - let's take it and shake enthusiastically! Also, the next Stanley Awards ceremony is in Melbourne in early November, and those parties are the stuff of legend.

So join the ACA and let's get some great comics mixing it up with some great cartoons.