Hedge Society

A chip off the old writer's block

The past six months has not been blog friendly but frankly rather enjoyable. It seems like many hedge-y type folks have moved or are moving--getting rid of possessions, putting things up for sale and trying new adventures.

It has been a bit of a relief to be away from many things paper and publishing but the desire to admire beautiful things returns as sunny days turn to rainy and the few last boxes are unpacked.

And it's the perfect time of year for it. As you may remember, The Hedge Society ended last year with a calendar roundup. And that is where we shall begin again as the year bends towards 2010, chipping away at the old writer's block, stretching those creaky blogging muscles and thinking beyond 140 characters.

Ready made poster

One of the reasons I like secondhand books:

 

Let's start again...

In the Hedge with some DNA...

From PBS - DNA: The Secret of Life

T is for t-shirt: Part 3

I finally got the chance to order something from boygirlparty.com, the online shop of illustrator Susan Ghahremani. For a while, it was difficult to get her work in Canada unless you were able to access some of the things - magnets, journals, etc. - distributed by Chronicle Books. I think you can order through her Etsy shop to get things shipped to Canada now.

My Tiny Niece really likes this Finch Tree shirt. I and my shirts aim to please the tiny people of the world. 

 

T is for t-shirt: Part 2

My art work is still not up in the latest place. I bought this little piece from Tiny Showcase because it reminded me of the bungalow in Calgary that hosted so many projects and gatherings over more than a decade.

 

I also ordered a Ray Fenwick shirt. It was borrowed a number of times so I had to order another for myself and the borrower. (You know who you are.) I recommend spending some time at Fenwick's website and taking the time to be on the Tiny Showcase mailing list if only to be reminded every Tuesday that people are making good art.

 

Tiny Showcase has a number of great shirts. I've given this Jen Corace to a friend and recently purchased this Lizzy Stewart.

And now to order in some sunny days.

T for t-shirt: Part 1

There was no time for blogging. But now there is and the time between our last entry in May to now has brought some t-shirt weather. And so I happily re-begin the Hedge Society blogging with a look at some favorite wearable art.

It is difficult for many illustrators to produce t-shirts. If you produce buttons or prints, one size fits mostly all. Many independent artists make very little money on each piece and clothing requires different sizes and colors and can be bulky to mail, cutting into profit or requiring a higher price than some are willing to pay in an era of 2 for $15 mall shirts.

I'm partial to shirts that promote small causes or independent artists. We begin with Jeff Kulak, an artist I met at an independent art fair in Edmonton. I bought his book Alphabet Boys. I liked the look and feel of this collaborative work.

 

And I was able to pick up this fun little piece to wear on the occasional Canadian sunny day:

I wish I could find a source for this one as well. I'd take it in tiny and a little less tiny than tiny for me because it looks like a lot of fun.

Downtown: Securing Baked Goods.

Found this in the archives from a few years back:

While reading Canadian Art magazine and waiting for a friend:

Security Guard places a box near my table and speaks into the walkie-talkie on his shoulder:

"32 to control. Over."
"Control. Over."
"I have the muffins. Can you give me their delivery location. Over."
"We don't know. Over."

(Side conversation to muffin seller.)

"32 to control. Over."
"Control. Over."
"Delivery of muffins in progress. Over."
"Okay 32. Report in after muffins are delivered.Over."
"Roger control. Over."

On Failure

I came across something I scribbled down after reading that book I mentioned a few weeks ago by Tibor Scitovsky (still love that name!). He said there are two kinds of danger associated with failure: the chance of failure itself, and the consequences of failure.

That made me think happier thoughts about the project I'm working on. (Here's how I feel about the project lately.)

But thanks to Tibor, I realized that although the chance of failure is there, just like it always is anytime you try anything new, the consequences of failure aren't bad at all. If it fails, if I fail, not too much happens - unlike somebody walking tightropes, for example, where failure sometimes means a long fall with no pillows at the end.

In my case, failure means I'll just have to do something else. And that reminded me of a Martha Beck article I read once about answering panicked people who say, "But what are you going to do if THAT DOESN'T WORK???"

Something else.

Plastic blight to plastic use.

From Beyond magazine: Issue 14: Possible Words feature And Today  - a roundup of good things happening around the world:

Somalialand, Africa:

In Nelson Mandela’s autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, he describes returning to his South African village after years in prison, only to find the water polluted, the buildings run down and “the countryside littered with plastic bags and wrappers. We had not known of plastic when I was a boy, and though it surely improved life in some ways, its presence in Qunu appeared to me to be a kind of blight.”

This plastic blight can be spotted from the coasts of Mexico to the deserts of the Middle East. In the world’s oceans, one of the biggest problems is “nurdles”—a kind of plastic pellet that are both the building blocks and the end of plastic products breaking up under sunlight and water. It is estimated that there are six times as many nurdles as zooplankton in some of the world’s oceans and fish and birds that are autopsied are regularly filled with nurdles.

The government of Somalialand recently banned “the importation, production and use of plastic bags in the country”. The bags, caught in trees and shrubs, are ugly but also dangerous. Wildlife and cattle ingest them. Soil is contaminated as the plastic breaks down and discarded bags fill with rainwater providing a perfect breeding ground for malaria-carrying mosquitos.

While it remains to be seen whether the leaders of Somalialand will have the political will to follow up the ban, the attempt, the willingness to try, will continue to bring more attention to the problems of plastic.

And from Rocketboom:

A Poem for Beginnings and Endings

(Photo: Spring in Victoria, British Columbia)

Today is the last day of April. April showers bring May flowers, as the saying goes. But before the flowers come, April fades away for another year.

Last days are endings, a time for saying thank you, and goodbye. Gardeners know endings go deep underground, into the dark, then come back as beginnings - but those are the far reaches of the story. The deep dark comes first. Mary Oliver seems to know something about it.

To live in this world

you must be able

to do three things:

to love what is mortal;

to hold it

against your bones knowing

your own life depends on it;

and, when the time comes to let it go,

to let it go.

(From Mary Oliver’s In Blackwater Woods, 110 Poems of Love and Revelation, Harmony Books, New York, 2003)