Do Art

Amanda Mayrhofer, Remember Me, oil on canvas, 60cm x 90cm, 2011 2010 NADC Advanced Diploma of Fine Art graduate Amanda Mayrhofer has been selected as a finalist for the Gallipoli Art Prize. Amanda's painting, which features an image of Flander's poppies, will be on display in the Gallipoli Club in Loftus St, Sydney CBD from April 21st to May 1st. Having just won the painting division of NADC's Student Acquisitive Art Prize with her painting of a Chinese Lantern flower, Amanda's beautiful depictions of flowers are really striking a chord at the moment. Amanda has been selected as a finalist alongside some of Australia's best-known painters including Garry Shead and Robert Hannaford. The winner of the $20, 000 Gallipoli Art Prize will be announced on the 20th  of April. Congratulations on your selection as a finalist Amanda, and good luck on the 20th!

A Nobel laureate, a MacArthur "genius" fellow and a first-time author are all shortlisted for the Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, the winner of which is to be announced during the first ever Bocas Literary Festival to be held in Trinidad this April. Here are the first lines from the three books shortlisted from Edwidge Danticat, Nobel laureate Derek Walcott and first-time author Tiphanie Yanique: * * * >>>EDWIDGE DANTICAT : Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work (Princeton University Press, 208 pp.) On November 12, 1964, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, a huge crowd gathered to witness an execution. The president of Haiti at that time was the dictator Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier, who was seven years into what would be a fifteen-year term. On the day of the execution, he decreed that government offices be closed so that hundreds of state employees could be in the crowd. Schools were shut down and principals ordered to bring their students. Hundreds...

  Head Teacher Cath Barcan speaks at Braemar Gallery  Head Teacher of Fine Art at NADC Cath Barcan recently spoke at the annual International Women's Day Art exhibition at Braemar Gallery, Springwood. The official closing event for the exhibition was held on Sunday March 27, and the exhibiting artists and other community members came along to celebrate the success of the show.  The exhibition was open to all women in the Blue Mountains region, giving a valuable opportunity for new, emerging and established artists to put their work on show. Cath spoke about the nature and value of creativity, the challenges and rewards of being an artist, and told the assembled crowd a little about NADC, the centre of excellence for arts education training in Western Sydney. 2011 marked the 100th Anniversary of International Women's day.

All throughout the world people are praying, donating, hoping and wishing for Japan and its people. So Japan might be islands but not it's people. This wave of support inspired me yesterday evening to draw this: "The interconnectedness of Japan" I will send this drawing to the Japanese Embassy in Berlin, when things go more smoothly for them.

Check out our book! Our official book launch will be at the opening of the 2011 Me, Myself and I show. Join us in the Trapezium Gallery on Wednesday March 30th at 12 noon . You'll be able to look through hard copies at the opening and then order online, but if you can't wait you can order one right here, right now! me, myself, and i by Nepean Arts and Design Centre, TAFE NSW - Western Sydney Institute Make Your Own Book At the moment your only option is hardcover (softcover coming soon), and you will find it cheaper if you choose to pay in $US rather than $AU. Blurb is astonishingly quick with printing and shipping (judging by the orders we've made so far you will receive your book within 7-10 days) and offers flat rate shipping for up to 3 books. Brilliant! If you're a current NADC student, don't forget to get your entries in for this year's show - you could be in our next book!

click for larger image Fine Arts Head Teacher Cath Barcan is exhibiting in a group show at Victoria University, Melbourne. Entitled Aura: the haunted  image , the show features a range of works including photo booth snaps, polaroids and the technique of cyanotype through to manipulated video and installation work.   As well as 5 large photographic portraits, Cath has produced a series of 12 works for the show that utilise the 19th century blue emulsion known as cyanotype. The exhibition takes as its cue Walter Benjamin's concept of aura : the unique intensity created in visual material through the dynamic relationship between the beholder and the artifact.   The show attempts to  expose the ghosts hidden within the works: lingering afterlives resonant with memories of past ruptures, both personal and historical.    Cath Barcan,'F1' from the series 'Blind Faith',         20cm 25cm, photogram on cyanotype paper, 2011 Aura: ...

* * Alicia says of 1):  This body of work was specifically created for the joint show Line and Colour at the Gallery, Caribbean Art Project in Grenada.The work continues to explore ideas about the box, introduced in previous works. I am very interested in the physical and mental boxes we allow ourselves to be in. Shifting from the idea that they are imposed by others and acknowledging that they are to a great extent self inflicted. I find myself constantly considering being in and out of these boxes.  Of 2): This project stemmed from an interest in using the human body to make art; the body as the medium of the work as opposed to the maker of the work. I began an inquiry into my body and the ways I was comfortable and uncomfortable using it. The core issues (for me) that impact ones comfort level in exposing the body inevitably surfaced (to my dissatisfaction). These issues are what gave the work it's strength. There are strong references to family and religion and for me they...

No words can describe this. Perhaps: The horror! The horror! Neil Patrick Harris (Dr Dougie Houser) will never recover from this. There is even a 3-D Gargamel: It all gets the tagline: "This summer, our turf gets smurf'd". Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for thou art with me: thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.

I'm in constant awe of the japanese people, they handle this disaster so amazingly. And I believe strongly in my fellow engineers in Fukushima. You can and you will get this reactor under control. You are engineers, we can do everything!!!  No, my field of expertise isn't nuclear technologies, I'm in technology and knowledge transfer. Nevertheless I'm an engineer and I'm confident that you can solve this problem. You did a great job so far, with most of the reactors shutting down automaticly. Well done. Now get this last one fixed, you will do it. Just keep moving forward!! All the world over, engineers are crossing their fingers for you and are believing in you and your abilities.  I drew this while waiting for news from Japan, on Friday, while reading bbc news on the net and checking facebook for my japanese friends, luckily they are safe and alive. The drawing provided a much needed anchor for my brain.

Better week foodwise. It pays off with a no more itching scalp.

  From top to bottom: Suzanne McDonald, Tony Fogarty and Robert Musgrave  with their self-portraits from their Diploma Fine Arts, Year 2 drawing class.   Entries are starting to flow in for our annual A4 self-portrait show. Pictured above are some drawings, by Diploma of Fine Arts Year 2 drawing students, made in Di Holdsworth's drawing class. The aim of their drawings was to interpret themselves through a mask for the  annual “Me Myself and I” exhibition.  Each year, the Trapezium Gallery at Nepean College is filled to over-flowing with A4 self-portraits from students and staff of the Nepean Arts and Design Centre. If you are a student or staff member of NADC and  thinking of entering our annual A4 self-portrait show, you have until 9am Monday March 28 to get your work in. This year's exhibition will open in the Trapezium Gallery on Wednesday March 30th at 12 noon. The exhibition opening will also be an official book launch for Me Myself and I: 101 self p...

Two figures (likely male, though possibly female) are upside-down. They wear t-shirts (or are they robes? Kurtas?) that hang with v-shaped necklines over their chests. On closer inspection, the 'v's are more like arches that look something like this { as opposed to < (or rather ^). The two arches that serve as necklines are, on closer inspection, also different. One is slightly pointed (or more pointed, more pointedly). One arch is arguably Muslim in style (though I will not vouch for this), the other is possibly Hindu or Christian. One is filled with silver glitter, the other gold. This is a description of the kind of play that happens when you encounter a piece in The Ideal Marriage , a new exhibition by Ashraph at Y Art and Framing Gallery at 26 Taylor Street, Woodbrook. The piece described above is completed with two drawings of the same arches meeting at the bottom of the canvas with a small circle (ring, eye, egg) inside. The show, said to be in the works for "a c...

The Quarto Player, photo courtesy CarnivalMix blog. If You Say So : Jackie Hinkson at Softbox Studios, 9 Alcazar Street, St Clair, Trinidad, from February 16 to March 16. If You Say So is an exhibition of more than a decade's worth of sculpture by Jackie Hinkson. FROM MR HINKSON:  "This project has been an exciting challenge for me, one that has tested my powers of discipline and perseverance in a way very different from, let's say, watercolour. "I had considerable difficulty in establishing the proportions of my envisaged forms because the wood I used, cedar, has an outer ring of unusable sap and it was only after I had started working the figure and removing the sap that I could be reasonably sure of my final proportions. This uncertainty sometimes resulted in unexpectedly elongated forms. "Happily, I was able to exploit this distortion to elicit greater emotional expressiveness. Distortion can be a powerful tool in visual expression...I cannot over-emphasize...

From Brianna McCarthy's blog Passion Fruit . SEE more here .

There were many contenders. From Kes's "Wotless" to Benjai's "Trini". But one track rose above all of them. "Burning Up" by Machel Montano and company: A very, very close second place was "Bend Over" by Mr Montano once more (let's face it when all the dust settles, Machel's music is good soca).

IF A SINGLE dish can define a restaurant, then for Chaud Creole it must be the corn soup. This is not corn soup as you know it. This is corn soup broken down, post-modern style, analysed and reassembled into something fun, fresh and completely unexpected once plated in front of you. Corn soup purists everywhere may be slightly alarmed at this. But they have no reason to fear. Here is a soup where the solid ingredients (silky dumplings, christophine, potato and vegetables) have been uprooted, revived through their exile and then re-introduced to the corny goodness. The vegetables were cooked separately, plated and then the corn-soup itself thrown over them like a ridiculously rich sauce. This allowed each ingredient to maintain its integrity; for flavours to pop in the maize stew and, thus, avoided the sometimes bland melding together that tends to happen in a long-gestating broth. It was absolute genius to have this dish unfold. Here was a traditional local dish, re-invented in a way ...