Different Strokes

This is where I was today. At an expo in Fed Square that was part of the Melbourne Emerging Writers Festival.

So many talented, brave people with their works laid out before them. My ardour for artist books has increased and with a sum total of five I now consider myself a serious collector! The combination of image and poetic text seems so akin to music and lyric to me. When the right chord is struck the song is strikingly beautiful. And to be able to hold that in your hand...














It was a wonderful opportunity to meet inspiring people behind intriguing works. I did try my best to overcome shyness and engage but admit to being a little unnerved - like being watched while browsing in a book shop (but by the author of the book you just picked up!). Not the perfect situation to fully appreciate the works on display but it did serve the 'expo' purpose of encouraging me to want to find out more.



I 'collected' a catalogue sewn together with an antique industrial machine which states...

"This is a part of and an extension from the exhibition a perfect stillness where everything moves by Chay-ya Clancy. It is a limited edition artpiece unfolding and existing beyond the time and space constraints of an exhibition. Allowing the process of lines to continue on into your own hands."

Chay-ya has an intriguing blog or two that, time willing, I hope to explore further. I was quite taken with the Spanish mud!






And to top off my day of urban joy I took leave of those wonderful, creative bookish types and ran headlong into a row of shiny, macho Fords surrounded by an admiring crowd, quite similar and yet quite different to the crowd I had just left.