Mostly Down, actually

Yup, try as I might I haven't really managed to be 'up' recently. My family might not believe me given how grumpy I've been for the last few days but I have been trying to sort myself out!

Anyway, they say a change is as good as a rest so despite feeling slightly worried about it, I'm off bright and early tomorrow morning to start a 2-week residency with Tim Mosely in Lismore. For the last few years Tim has been the driving force behind a project called 'Codex' at the Visual Arts Department of Southern Cross University. A couple of years ago, when I'd only been in Australia for a few weeks, I was invited to be a part of Codex 4, and now I'm going to be part of Codex 6. My memories of Codex 4 are slightly blurred by the fact that I managed to contract Giardia part-way through and missed a few days, but the end result was great and did a lot for me in terms of opening doors in the arts world over here.

Tim usually suggests a theme for the project and this year its 'Resistance'. He's gone for Che Guevara, but I've been thinking more about things like antibiotic resistance and insulin resistance, genetic resistance and electrical resistance. It will be interesting to see what the first day or so throws up in the way of discussion! We'll all meet for the first time tomorrow, mid-morning, and it's up to us to negotiate how we proceed. The only real parameters are the time-frame involved (roughly two weeks from now, give or take a few days), the facilities and the fact that this is a project centred around hand-made paper so we'll be making the paper to make the book or whatever it is we decide upon. Knowing Tim, we'll also be doing some pulp printing, which is his special technique for screen-printing coloured paper-pulp onto freshly pulled wet sheets of paper so that text and image can become an integral part of the paper.

I remember last time as being stinking hot! The weather forecast is predicting around 32 degrees C in Lismore, and the university campus is an airless hole, situated in a natural depression that was once the caldera of a local volcano. So I'm taking shorts and T shirts - out with glamour, in with sweat for the next few days, I think!