Chemically Coded Paintings

A few years ago I was invited to attend a launch at the Australia Council of the then new Indigenous Protocols booklets for media arts, music, performing arts, visual arts and writing. These publications were devised "to help Australians better understand the use of Indigenous cultural material".  Australia had a shocking record of misappropriating Aboriginal artwork and commercially corrupting it without any payment or indeed acknowledgement to the original creator. These booklets, which were written by Anita Heiss and Terry Janke, went part of the way to offering a solution by providing nine principles that dictate how we need to approach Indigenous artists across all art forms with full transparency, with professionalism, and with courtesy and respect (and I would add – humility!!!) for Indigenous culture and traditions. These nine principles include "secrecy and confidentiality, communication, consultation and consent, and attribution and copyright." One of the things I specifically remember about the launch was an absolutely heart wrenching story told by Terri Janke about an Aboriginal painter from North Queensland, whose sacred artwork was photographed by some unscrupulous white people who then posted it over a bunch of souvenirs and the like. The consequences for the Aboriginal painter were tragic – he was ostracised from his community and he suffered spiritually, emotionally and physically as a result. I can't remember the exact details but I do remember being one of many who wept openly upon hearing the story. Another Australian agency that is championing the rights of Indigenous artists is Viscopy, the Visual Arts Copyright Collecting Agency. I strongly recommend all Australian artists to become members. 

Which brings me to my major point – the University of Western Australia has created a secret chemical code which "has been painted into an Aboriginal art work in a world-first step to outwit forgers who prey on Indigenous artists". Five unique chemical were actually encoded into five colours on a painting by WA Aboriginal artist Mr Timm, whose other work has been targeted by forgers. According to an article on the Perth Now website, "... the coding is an extension of elemental fingerprinting technology developed by Professor John Watling 15 years ago, which used high-powered lasers to trace stolen gold and diamonds back to their place of origin ..." 

Apparently, this process has enormous applications even beyond the art world. I think this is a great day for Indigenous artists and indeed all artists. Thanks to Anita Heiss for drawing our attention to this article.

Welcome and Thank You Blog Visitors

A few weeks ago we installed Google Analytics onto our blogspot to see who was popping in to visit. We've been maintaining the blog for five months now and having a great time doing it but felt it was, in general, a one way conversation – not even a dialogue really except for those people who have taken time out to post comments. However, we were quite thrilled at the scope of the Analytics analysis with all its graphs, maps and stats. People weren't necessarily commenting but they were visiting. We had expected readers from Australia and the US mostly, and we were right in our assessment. This is by no means a contest but the USA came out on top with our homeland in second place within the Top 10. We were also delighted to see who took out the next eight positions, which are (in order) – Germany, Netherlands, the UK, Norway, Canada, Italy, France and Malaysia. Beyond that we also had visitors from Russia, New Zealand, Spain, Greece, Japan, Brazil, Belgium, Singapore, the Philipines, Romania, Indonesia, Hungary, India, South Africa, Sweden, Netherlands (Antilles), Finland and Saudi Arabia. We are very gratified and just want to say thank you for supporting us in cyberspace. We hope you'll make this a regular web pit stop in your busy day or week. Too bad we can't offer you real tea and biscuits because we sure would like to  ... maybe we can send you some virtual ones if we ever figure out how to do it!

More Pigs in Mud

Following on from my God Save the Pig post on 23 September and the follow on story Can't Get Enough of Dat Darn Pig, I've received lots of private and FaceBook feedback from some of our readers who were fascinated with the ongoing saga of Bruce. I also received another 'domestic pig gone wild' anecdote from my wonderful friend Sue Hudson from Armidale. Sue is an Archeological Consultant specialising in Aboriginal archeology. She sent me a photo of this beauty, wallowing in the mud and the following story:

Life is full of stressful situations:

When everything gets to be too much of a hassle, lie back, take things easy, look at the bright side of life and relax!

While investigating some land for rezoning and looking for Aboriginal sites and relics, I was driving down a narrow lane searching for things of antiquity and I found this amazing site – Miss Piggy lying in a muddy pool of water under a railway crossing. This spot was shared with some ducks who were busy going about their days foraging for food (stressful for ducks). Obviously Miss Piggy had been having a hard day (waiting for food to be deposited), stressed out by not being with other pigs, hot, dry and feeling the world was just TOO much. Being a pig required keeping her skin cool and free from annoying biting insects, so she relocated to piggy heaven. Not even my vehicle stopped her from enjoying this blissful de-stressing.

We should take good advice when it confront us – do what pigs do – just go to the nearest muddy pond and veg out!!! 

Best NY Comics Store

A Sydney Morning Herald travel article by Barry Divola recently identified the best specialty bookstores in New York. The vote for Best Comics store went to Rocketship in Brooklyn. 

If you're a comic book geek or graphic novel aficionado, cross the Brooklyn Bridge, my friend. Smith Street is a cool strip in Brooklyn's Cobble Hill area. Rocketship's selection is large and eclectic and you won't have to fight your way through 15-year olds with questionable bathing habits who are looking for Batman figurines. The stores stocks fantasy and superhero titles but a large proportion of the space is given over to more literate titles from the likes of modern masters such as Dan Clowes, Chris Ware and Adrian Tomine. They also have regular displays of original artwork and appearances by well-known comic artists.

You can bet your patootie that Jozef and I will be heading over there during our new trip to NYC for a quick squiz. 

The Swimming Lesson Revisited

A few years ago when Black Mermaid Productions™ (BMP) included Bruce Love (we casually called ourselves BMP [Classic] at the time, as opposed to BMP [New Wave] which is now the two-person team consisting of Jozef and myself), we toyed with the idea of releasing a children's picture book called The Swimming Lesson as our first foray back into publication. 

This book was a 32-page, full colour story featuring Tilaweed, Hyfus, and their offspring Illora, as well as Tentus and No~Fin as the supporting characters. Check out the Character Gallery on our website for more insight into their publishing history, although it must be noted that the original 'disfigured' Illora never saw print and has now completely been reinvented. 

At the time of writing this picture book, these characters had already gone through their physical and emotional metamorphoses and transition from ElfQuest: WaveDancers to the Eternal Spheres™ Elf~Fin™ universe. We also had had serious talks with a major children's book publisher in Sydney about releasing the book. However, the managing editor wanted us to reduce the story from 2000 words to no more than 600 words and re-conceive it as a starter book for four to five year olds, which we understood would fulfill her needs in terms of publishing trends in the market place but which we thought didn't serve the bigger picture of what we wanted to achieve long term with our Intellectual Property. 

The actual picture book idea came at a time when we were disillusioned with comics after a long legal battle in the USA over these very characters. The other dynamic within the BMP team itself was that we were pulling in three very different directions – Jozef wanted to do picture books, I wanted us to novelise and illustrate our stories, and Bruce wanted to do short films. Needless to say, this is not a good recipe for focus and success. Consequently, we didn't achieve very much during that time period except to rediscover our love for comics, as well as to essentially create the sequel to the Elf~Fin™ comic book series/graphic novel we're working on at the moment – the Hyfus and Tilaweed underwater love story, which is progressing nicely. In fact, we even started serious talks with a very decent publisher the other day, but discovered we had very different professional and business needs. We subsequently discontinued negotiation because it would have meant signing away a large chunk of our Intellectual Property, although we must add that we parted on very good terms. We were reluctant to proceed as too much work has already gone into developing the creative property as it stands now, our love for and attachment to our characters and stories, and because we are quite understandably – as we're sure you will appreciate – jittery about signing any contracts that involve assigning copyright.  

Anyway, we posted some of the picture book roughs onto the Eternal Spheres; Elf~Fin page of our website (scroll to the bottom of the page in question to see what we're talking about), but I discovered another lovely piece in our archive the other day, which we thought you might want to see. The original draft reintroduced Korillia into the story, but she was such a force to be reckoned with that we decided to give her major page-time in the third installment of the Elf~Fin™ series. 

The picture book has been put on the back burner for the moment, although Jozef is keen to add it to our repertoire down the track. It will offer a slice of life within the continuity of the greater story arc. The other good thing is that picture books and comics books are no longer perceived as being incompatible in the marketplace – some comic book publishers such as Jim Valentino's Shadowline and his new Silverline imprint are adding picture books to their lists (Bruce the Little Blue Spruce), and some traditional picture book illustrators such as Working Title Press in Australia are adding comics/graphic novels to their list (Captain Congo and the Crocodile King). 

Can't Get Enough of Dat Darn Pig!

More on Bruce the rogue pig – he has apparently become a stud-master at a piggery. I hope there's some accountability involved and he's not secretly sacrificed when he's no longer considered newsworthy. I looked at some new footage on ninemsn and I think his size has been grossly exaggerated. There are several breeding pigs on a property down the road from our farm, which we walk past every few days when we're exercising. Their size is on par with Bruce. If the piggery owners remain true to their word then this is a very happy outcome for the animal and we can all breathe easy from here on.

God Save the Pig!

A rogue "pony sized" pig that adopted 63-year old vegetarian, Caroline Hayes, has by the latest accounts apparently been saved from being destroyed. The pushy (and previously thought to be doomed) pig visited her rural property in northern New South Wales ten days ago and has refused to leave despite many forcible attempts by Council rangers to evict him. The Sydney Morning Herald reports:

Ms Hayes told the ABC she took pity on the pig when he wandered into her yard 10 days ago, nicknaming him Bruce and patching up a few ailmenets.

"When I found it, it had 15 ticks in its eyes which I actually took out," she said.

"One of its eyes it couldn't see out of, so I put cream in it and I fixed its back up, but apparently it's actually claimed my land and claimed my place."

Bruce – who by my reckoning has demonstrated remarkable resilience and intelligence – obviously knows a good person when he sees one. Despite having bailed up Ms Hayes in her outside toilet, ripped up a king sized mattress and rolled up a mat, he obviously has a champion in her. When council workers tried to remove Bruce, the distraught Ms Hayes, asked them to leave. I hope he stays permanently or if not finds another safe home. We'll just have to wait and see how the story pans out but I'll keep you posted. Thanks to my sister for giving me the hat tip. Check out photos at the ABC North Coast and the Daily Telegraph. In the meantime, hail to the pig and hail to the heroine!