William Pollock

Art is not his favorite subject. He's never excelled at or been drawn to artsy/crafty/creative things. Unless... they involve BUILDING stuff or are outrageously MESSY. His recent school art exhibit gave him the chance to really go at it in the messy department.

Inspired by none other than Jackson Pollock (a school field trip allowed him to admire this original at the Australian National Gallery here in Canberra) he let loose with the paints and I must say we were all impressed with the end result.

I like that it required practice and time and patience and planning and waiting (for each of those layers to dry.) He liked that he could just splat and spray and dribble and plop to his heart's content and see what blossomed on the canvas.

Maybe there's a little artist in there after all...

I loved seeing him so proud. And he was certainly a hit at the fancy art show - all night he had a crowd admiring his "work" and asking questions. Love that kid.

Glassworks

A while back the embassy organized a group of kids to take a tour of our local Glassworks building and do some creating themselves. It was a treat to see all their back rooms and machinery in action. As always though, the actual glass blowing was the most impressive. We watched him cool/harden a ball of hot glass mid-drip and then blow glass bubbles and shatter them. What a medium to work with. I can't imagine the stress as just the tiniest mistake in timing or temp can ruin weeks or even months worth of work.

The tour included a special exhibit they had on display - can't even begin to appreciate how hard it is to get glass to cool in these shapes.

At the end they got to create their own glass tiles. They were all over this. Safety goggles, diamond edged glass cutters, glass dust and shards in all colors of the rainbow... The hardest part was choosing their design. Pretty fun.

The final product was fired then cooled and ready a week later. And although it doesn't look like the professionals above, it was pretty eye-opening to what an impressive art form glassworking is.

Crafty Nesting

Darren tends to observe my obsessive cleaning spurts, cooking adventures, and kids projects as "nesting." True or not, we certainly all benefit from this stage of pregnancy. You'll probably recognize many of these ideas, but we've thoroughly enjoyed getting artsy and crafty, especially over the break. (And it doesn't hurt that they have these great art/writing competitions around Australia that offer $500 prizes and game consoles and such...)

 Fingerprint, Q-tip and bottle art...

Contact paper with tissue art (can be made shapeable as "sculptures" by hangers/wire as seen here.)

 Good old sharpie and tin foil art (their fave.)

Summer can eventually be found drifting back to her color sorting, (and has become a gracious playdate host of late.)

 They also discovered this awesome aboriginal hosted funky dance show - HILarious to see them try to catch on.

 And we've enjoyed a few field trips... this particular one out in the boonies where we toured Canberra's Deep Space Communication Complex.

 It's truly hard to capture the size of this dish. It's one of three largest in the world. You can fit a whole football stadium in it with ease and it moves with hairwidth precision to see out deeper in space than any place on earth.

Next year is a big anniversary year with some fun celebrations and even an opportunity to watch a new rover landing live on Mars.

Followed up by an impromptu FWD adventure. They got nervous when mom checked the manual... (nervous enough to GET OUT OF THE CAR before I drove down this hill - steeper than it looks since they couldn't even walk down and had to slide down on their bottoms) but I sufficiently won their trust in the end as we drove through rivers and bounced up and down hills.

Probably not my smartest move prego with 4 kids and far from cell service, but we did have fun.

The Artiste(s)

I joke about marrying a renaissance man, but when I bought the art set for our birthday girl, I never dreamed it would come to this...

Apparently, Dare's a crazy good painter - busted this outta nowhere, having never before picked up a brush!

Like I said, he's picked up more hobbies since we moved here than in the last 10 years combined. His Mid-life Awakening, shall I call it? Four-wheeling, telescopic photography, cooking (fish, at least), building computers, plunked out his favorite hymn on the piano, dons his painter's pallette in the evenings... What's next?! Keeps life interesting, that's for sure.

A closer look at some of his recent work - check out those brushstrokes:

 Kenna, Annie & Will got in on the action too.

And of course, I couldn't resist trying my hand as well.

(I have to say I enjoyed doing the funky use-up-the-excess-paint ones best. No stress of messing anything up there.)

These were all acrylics, but D's been online researching oil paints and brush sets and I bought a bunch of canvases, so looks like we've birthed a new family hobby for the cozy winter evenings ahead. Thanks, Dad Van Gogh!