August rambles - 15/8/24

So, I began this website it’s one of my five pieces of the professional practice for the Professional Portfolio assessment of the Indigenous Arts Industry (3963QCA_3245) Assignments. WOW, the first sentence of my very first blog post is BORING! Anyway, while procrastinating getting out of bed this morning because sleeping lately is not easy, I was thinking about all the random things I can talk about and actually attempt to maybe the rambles will help my brain and could be interesting for some people to read. If they read past the first boring line.

2024 so far has been A LOT! I’ll be mainly focusing on my arts practice in these ramblings but obviously life will come into it because art is from life, right? I don’t think I can start at the beginning of 2024 because that isn’t how my brain works. As an ADHD (just one of my acronyms) person I tend to talk in circles, well maybe more like squiggles but eventually I’ll get there. During my studies I’ve read a lot of things and Tyson Yunkaporta’s books have been the best reads for me because he also thinks non-lineal and Sand Talk and Right Story, Wrong Story were two of the best books I’ve read (well I started the latter). because he seems to write as he would talk and this made reading easy. People with my acronym have problems reading, especially academic texts, because as my first line of this post, they are BORING! I understand why they’re written that way as all of the last 4 years of assignments of mine have been written this way too and by the time I upload them for marking I literally want to burn my keyboard because what I have written is not me, it’s what university wants so it’s what we do. But maybe in the future I can write my way about the things that I have read about and people might find it interesting.

Back on tangent … maybe. I typed a whole rant about some identity stuff but that can wait for another day. First post, talk about interesting art things. I’m going to work sort of backwards.

Last year I did a pretty good portrait of Uncle Jacko (now his post should be a full book). I entered it in the the 2023 Brisbane Portrait Prize even though I didn’t have the money to enter I had an amazing friend sponsor me. I didn’t get in. However, it did go on a trip to the 2023 Cairns Indigenous Art Fair as part of Past Present Future; CAIA community - a beginning conversation. This was a big deal for me. My first “real” exhibition. But, still a part of uni really. I might talk about it another time. After this one of my amazing teachers Debbie Taylor Worley put together Sovereignty - Centre Stage. A show of the First Nations entrants which was held at the Thomas Dixon Centre in West End from January to April. This then went back up to CIAF for this year. Now, here’s me feeling like a one hit wonder. Because that’s what my brain does. It takes some amazing news, like being part of these two amazing exhibitions with other artists, some of those very well know established artists, and my brain tells me yeah it’s not all that good. Uncle Jacko has now been a part of three exhibitions. BE EXCITED BETH!

Come to Brisbane Portrait Prize 2024. I think, well hey, I got pretty close maybe I should try again. This time maybe I should do a painting of someone known. But who do I know. Maybe I should do a portrait of another person who I think is amazing and has been a huge help to my personal and university journey. Insert Melissa Stannard. This woman! She has all the time for everyone while being an artist herself. She teaches at uni and just finished her honours last year. I could say so much about Mel she really is just so so very awesome. I ask Mel if I could do a painting of her and she’s excited. We hang out up where she lives and go wandering around a big lake and poke around play with ochre and I climb trees and attempt to pat a stingray, then we take some photos for reference. Mel has an idea so we take some photos of that. My usual procrastination self then doesn’t do the painting. I edited the photos sent some to Mel was pretty ok with them. But I didn’t do the painting. The photo I had to do the painting just sat in the painting studio while I fluffed around for my Painting 3 subject and do rather average in that. The closing date was close for BPP so I thought STUFF IT just send a photo. Then I did a really big painting of my head and sent that too. Why not try twice hey. Deb had also asked if I had anything else to send up to Sovereign in CIAF and I though that this photo of Mel could help fill some room as nothing else was relevant at the time.

I kind of forgot about the whole process lost in uni again and the fact I did rather average in my painting class and I get a phone call. “Hi Beth it’s Lisa from Brisbane Portrait Prize. I just want to know if your photo of Mel is a one off or is it available to print again?” Me, sick with COVID after a roller derby tournament in Adelaide doesn’t really process this but yeah of course I can print more but I had thought I really wanted this limited as it’s of a beautiful friend and she is a limited edition herself. So my answer is yes and she says “well that’s great congratulations then you’re a finalist in Brisbane Portrait Prize”. WAIT WHAT??? Me, and a photo, a finalist. But it’s just a photo! I’ve done these sorts of photos for the last 15 years … OMG SHUT UP BPD BRAIN BE EXCITED!

Now my ADHD brain has gotten that out, yeah I was a finalist 64 out of over 2500 entries (well 2 were mine). I still am not really processing this. I didn’t win anything as much as I attempted to manifest winning in my brain I still think “it’s just a photo” so the manifesting didn’t work. But it’s a photo in a an exhibition even though it’s just Brisbane. It might be small to other artists. This one isn’t to me. I did a bloody great photo of an absolutely amazing woman and we both deserve to be seen!

So, Mel 2024 is pretty important. She’s currently in the State Library Queensland. With a group of just awesome artists. You can go and vote for her for Peoples Choice. That would be pretty mad if I won that! Haha MANIFEST!!!

CLICK THIS LINK TO VOTE FOR MEL

I’m really sorry if you read this ADHD BPD weird ramble of not much sense but I might post more and if you read more the ramble might make more sense … might?!?