Goodbye Colosseum

Hurry, last days! If you want to see the Colosseum before it's dismantled at the end of February then now's your chance. This isn't, of course, the Roman entertainment centre of old but its brilliant re-creation, the "Legosseum" of Lego-master Ryan McNaught of the City of Melbournium. 

The Legosseum is at the Nicholson Museum at Sydney University. Entry to the museum is free and, if you can find your way to the Quadrangle, it's just inside the southern entrance.

I can't imagine how much time it must have taken Mr McNaught to create this marvel. It certainly wasn't built in a day. On four or five trips to the Museum (Did I mention that it's free?) I spent hours poring over the detail and discovering things I'd previously overlooked. There is so much to see both in the building itself but also the people, ancient and modern.

The "Legosseum" of Ryan McNaught at the Nicholson Museum...

I did enjoy seeing the real thing on a trip to Rome a couple of years ago but I think the enjoyment came more from imagining how life might have been in the year 80 AD when the Colosseum was completed than admiring the ruin itself. And it really is a ruin: over the centuries every bit of decoration that could be carried off was looted and, when that was gone, the site became a quarry and much of the original stonework also disappeared.

...and it's Rome counterpart.

To stand in a place where emperors and popes stood and where countless people and animals met their deaths for the enjoyment of the people really was a buzz. And so it is too with McNaught's more politically correct creation.

McNaught cleverly recreated not just the ruined Colosseum as it exists today but the Colosseum as it would have looked in its heyday, complete with gladiators and Roman soldiers and also modern day tourists..

The old with the new.

Next to the Legosseum is a re-creation of the Arch of Constantine, built a couple hundred years after the Colosseum on orders from the Emperor Constantine the Great after his troops won a decisive battle, a battle  which---had it been lost---might have hastened the end of the Empire. A good enough reason to build a triumphal arch. 

The Lego Arch of Constantine.

There's a bit of Lego-licence here as real Arch isn't immediately next to the real Colosseum.

The pre-Lego version of the Arch.

Not everyone loves Lego. Most parents have spent endless hours searching for pieces under carpets and furniture and retrieving them from over-filled vacuum cleaner bags. And Lego bits are the bane of bare feet. More than a few parents have had "bricks" and helicopter rotors surgically removed from their person. But who isn't impressed with some of the Lego creations we've seen on the internet? Have a look at the Lego recreation of Barack Obama's first inauguration. (Click here)

Lost to Lego: two young Legomaniacs contemplating their next creation.

Along with the Legosseum, the Nicholson Museum has lots of displays---static and video---of Roman antiquities as well as their collection of other ancient relics so, even after the Lego is gone, the museum is well worth a look. Despite its small size, the museum it prides itself on having "the largest collection of antiquities in Australia and the Southern Hemisphere."

Check with the Museum for its opening hours and then hurry on down.

Arnedillo: the Perfect Writers' Retreat

Do you have a refuge, a quiet place you’d retreat to if you suddenly had an important project and wanted to avoid life’s daily distractions? I don’t mean an upstairs bedroom or a friend’s granny flat but a totally different hidey-hole, in a different country. I have a few possibilities.

In my fantasy inspiration would strike and I’d come up with a cracker idea for a novel, an idea so good that I’d auction the publication rights and pocket a huge advance. Now all I need to do is write the book away from harassing phone calls from Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson who would be after the film rights. Where would I go? High up on my list of hideaways is my own Spanish Shangri-la: Arnedillo.

Arnedillo, La Rioja, Spain

Arnedillo (arnay-DEE-yo), population 477, is nestled in a valley high up in the mountains of La Rioja in northern Spain. Arnedillo is dry, bitter cold in winter and very much off the beaten path. And it’s picturesque. Why work in an ugly and depressing place? The town doesn’t have the sort of UNESCO-listed historical attractions that would draw mobs of international tourists so it’s a quiet place. It’s also crime-free (according to the locals) and it’s a long way from a beach. In short, the perfect place to settle down for a few months to work.

Spanish tourists do go there but these are Spanish tourists, mainly from nearby Logroño. The shops aren’t filled with souvenirs: no “Arnedillo a Noche” postcards, Chinese-made castanets or even miniature bagpipes with “Requerdos de Arnedillo” printed on them. (Forget the flamenco---this is flute, drum and bagpipe country.)

In addition to being a beautiful town, Arnedillo is steeped in history. The Romans were there when Spain was a part of the Roman Empire and since then the Vandals, Visigoths and Moors came and went. There are a few remnants of these conquering peoples but it was in the High Middle Ages that the town took the shape it has today. The town is protected by heritage orders and the valley itself has been declared a Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO.

That tower is the little that's left of the 10th C castle of the bishops of Calahorra.

Okay so while I want to get away from major distractions I will need a few things to do to break up the boredom of writing. I like to walk and there are some lovely walks along the valley and up into the surrounding hills. There’s a tiny bit left of a ruined 10^th century castle and there are three hermitages up above the town that can only be accessed on foot. These date from the 10^th to the 16^th centuries and now look more like miniature churches than the hovels or caves the hermits would have lived in. No skinny bearded men raging against the evils of the world.

Vultures nest in the peaks around the town.

A bit of bird watching helps to break up the writing routine and Arnedillo has a colony of Griffon vultures that nest in a rocky crag above the town. The population of Griffon vultures in Europe had been diminishing but has come back thanks to public awareness interest. There was a bit of a hiccup a few years ago when the European Commission banned the leaving of carcasses out for the vultures because of the danger of spreading of BCE (Mad Cow Disease) but their numbers are growing again. These are magnificent birds.

Looking back along the Cidacos River to Arnedillo.

Still struggling with Chapter One and out of ideas I need another break. I think I’ll take a walk up to the town’s nevero artificial. No, I’d never heard of one either but some friendly people took me to see this one and explained its use. A “snow well” is the best translation I’ve found. It’s a stone-lined hole in the ground that neveros filled with snow in the winter. In summer the compressed snow and ice could be taken out though a bottom entrance---a source of ice all summer long. These apparently were common in Europe and the Middle East from at least 2000 BC. Where I grew up in New England, USA, you just waited for a lake or pond to freeze, sawed it into blocks and packed it in sawdust in a shed. Needless to say, industrial ice-making factories in the 19^th century and, later, fridges put the neveros out of a job just as happened with the ice-harvesters of New England.

There’s another walk to see dinosaur footprints but I’ll save this one for when I’m really stuck.

Iglesia de San Servando y San Germán

There are a couple of churches in town, both unlocked and generally people-free when there are no services. The grander of the two is the 16^th century Iglesia de San Servando y San Germán. This is just across a tiny square from the entrance to the lovely little boutique hotel where I’ve stayed and would stay again while I work on the novel. This is the Hospedería LasPedrolas.

17th Century organ in the Iglesia de San Servando y San Germán

Jill outside our hotel, the Hospederia Las Pedrolas.

Arnedillo does have three festivals dotted around the calendar and their own peculiar customs to celebrate them. One of them, in November, is la fiesta de San Andrés in which the streets are filled with smoke of burning rosemary and he (or she) who breathes is will be immune from sickness such as colds or the flu all winter.

It is also a gathering place in autumn for mycologists. One of the restaurants, Casa Cañas, hosts the annual Jornadas Micológicas de Arnedillo. For mushroom and funghi aficionados there are lectures, guided mushroom collecting walks and the restaurant serves mushroom degustaciones for those mycologists who have a gastronomic as well as scientific interest in their subject.

photo:  Casa Cañas

photo:  Casa Cañas

Arnedillo’s main attraction is its hot springs. At one side of the normally-icy Cidacos River, which skirts the town, water comes out of the ground at 52.5 degrees Celsius. The town has built a series of pools, one flowing into the next. By the time the water reaches the lowest pool it’s not too hot to get into so the usual procedure is to work your way up from the warm pool to the almost-painfully-hot one. Once in the hottest pool it’s very hard to move a muscle, even to get out, but somehow you feel good afterwards. There is a big hotel and spa on the outskirts of town with mud baths for those who believe in the medicinal benefits of the water and have a bit of loose change.

Arnedillo's thermal springs.

Anyway, Arnedillo would be one of my perfect retreats: good restaurants, good accommodation and just enough to do to kill the boredom but not enough to not so much that I couldn’t get my work done. At least that’s my fantasy.
I didn’t just happen upon Arnedillo by taking a wrong turn between Barcelona and Bilbao. 

Many years ago as a teenager living in Madrid, a young woman came to work for for my family. Charo---diminutive of “Rosario”---was not only an excellent cook and tireless house-keeper but she soon became a well-loved member of the family. Much of what we learned of the Spanish language and Spanish customs we owed to her.

Charo on the right and another friend on a picnic in the 1950s.

Charo had grown up in Arnedillo and moved to Madrid to work. We lost track of her for years after we left Spain but eventually found her living in Logroño in the Rioja region. She'd lived in England, been married and been widowed. To make the story short, I met up with her a couple of times on trips from Australia to Spain. She was still the lovely, intelligent woman I’d known all those years ago and the two of us were as close as ever. 

Jill, Charo and me in Arnedillo a few years ago.

Later, Charo's sister, Juli, contacted me to say that Charo had had a stoke and that she was looking after her back in their pueblo, Arnedillo. We visited her there a couple of times. Charo has since passed away but Jill and I have now been adopted by Juli, her husband, Roberto, and all their relatives and friends. Spaniards being the social animals that they are, on our last visit we were almost killed with kindness. 

Some of our Arnedillo family.

Roberto and I check the wine in his bodega and declare it ready for drinking.

At this point I'm having second thoughts about whether Arnedillo really would be the ideal hideaway. Maybe I'd better start thinking about hideaway No. 2 before inspiration strikes. But more on that at another time.

Mirror: The Art of Jeannie Baker

Jeannie Baker is the real thing. She's an artist, illustrator, author and film maker of great vision and dedication who over the past four decades has produced a series of wonderful picture books. The reason for this blog post is that those of us in Sydney have the rare opportunity to see the original artwork for Jeannie's book, Mirror.

These days picture book artwork usually begins as drawings or watercolours on paper or, more often, computer files created electronically using a digital art software package such as Corel Draw. In contrast, Jeannie makes meticulous constructions which are then photographed for the books. The books are wonderful but seeing the original artwork, quite literally, adds another dimension.

About her technique Jeannie says: "Where I can I like to use textures from the actual materials portrayed ­ such as bark, feathers, cracked paint, earth, knitted wool, tin so that their natural textures become an integral part of the work. The vegetation used is often natural. Using plants was a problem at first but I have learnt how to preserve them so they last and I add permanent colour."

The exhibition of the Mirror artwork is at the Blacktown Arts Centre till February 2nd. It's been touring Australia for the past two years and this is the end of the road. Don't miss it.

Mirror was published in 2010 won the 2011 Children's Book Council of Australia's Picture Book of the year, among other prizes.

Full credit to Walker Book Australia for tackling such a non-standard book

The book's unique design is really two books in the same cover. Open the cover and there is a book on the left, reading from left to right, and another, that reads from right to left. The wordless stories are of the lives of two families---one in Australia and the other in Morocco---as they go about their days. Turning one page at a time we can follow their parallel lives, one commuting through city traffic by car, the other going to the market on a donkey.

Sorry about my ham-fisted photographs. The works are in acrylic cases and, because of reflections from everywhere, haven't done them justice. Also some of them have lights built in and...well, seeing them in the flesh---and feathers, bark and fur---is the only way to see them.

Jeannie Baker signing a book for a young fan

Donna Rawlins and Jeannie Baker

At the opening of this final exhibition, editor and author Donna Rawlins summed up the unique place that Jeannie Baker's work holds today and why it will for many years to come. Don't miss the exhibition! If you liked the book you'll love the original artwork.

Photographs with permission from Jeannie Baker.

In Search of Lost Time to Waste

I learned to row when I was very young, I've made four trans-Atlantic crossings on ships and been on many ferries, canoes, kayaks and other pleasure craft and still I have to think for a minute about which is port and which is starboard. And I'm hopeless on pintles, gudgeons, barbettes, tyes, nippers, skegs and baggywrinkles. Still I find boats, especially wooden boats, wonderful to look at. Confession: I'm a closet boat model maker. I've got one model that stays in the closet from year to year only to be dragged out when I'm particularly inspired to do so or just bored witless.

Inserting the mast in the mast step on DSS Procrastination

Growing up in Boston, Massachusetts, I made lots of visits to the USS Constitution. This ship was built in 1797 and named by America's first president, George Washington. It's still afloat, although with the normal replacement of weathered and rotting timbers over the past 215 years, very little of it is truly original. But it does look fantastic and is well worth a visit if you're ever in Boston.

The Australian National Maritime Museum at Darling Harbour in Sydney is an easy walk from my house and I often drop in for a look, although not quite as often now that admission is no longer free. I know the permanent collection well but I keep coming back and back to see the ship models.

British corvette Atropos c 1810 made by Steve Adamantidis

Port Jackson schooner 1803 made by Richard Keyes

One of the best models is of James Cook's ship HMS Endeavour (below) which brought him to Australia. Mapping Australia and New Zealand was a bit of a sideline on a trip which was to observe the transit of Venus in Tahiti. Note the blunt bow and the flattish bottom. That's because HMS Endeavour was built as a coal carrier and formerly named Earl of Pembroke. The thick hull surely saved it from breaking up when it ran aground on Australia's Great Barrier Reef. Later it was used to transport troops to the American Revolutionary War and was scuttled somewhere in Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island in 1778 while blockading the Bay.

James Cook's ship HMS Endeavour

If you want to see a life-size replica of HMS Endeavour, there's one you can visit moored outside the Museum but I think I prefer the Lilliputian one.

Detail of HMS Endeavour's rigging

Probably the biggest ship model in the Museum is that of the Orcades II. Launched in 1937 it carried passengers to and from the U.K. and Australia till 1939. It was then used as a troop carrier during World War II but was torpedoed near Cape Town, South Africa, in 1942.

Orcades II

The thing about models is the detail.

Could ship models be dolls houses for men? Surely not.

One of the best exhibitions I've seen at the Australian National Maritime Museum was a collection of toy boats---Bateaux Jouets---from the Musée National de la Marine, Paris. These weren't exact reproductions of boats but just wonderful little---and sometimes big---toys. I can't think of an equivalent kids' toy in today's internet world. While we're on the subject try to say "toy boat" over and over as quickly as you can. Why is it so hard to say?

But back to bateaux jouets, Imagine a spoiled little rich boy in a sailor suit, perhaps Marcel Proust, searching for lost time while sailing the toy boat below in the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris. Bliss.

Tres joli bateau jouet

I'd have thought that ship and boat model making died out by now but on a recent visit to Hobbyco I found quite a few boat model kits. So I guess it's not dead yet.

As for me, I've put away DSS Procrastination for the moment to do some writing but already I can feel the lure of the sea, the luff of sailcloth and the smell of superglue.

Okay, but is it art?

Sydney's 18th Biennale has finished. This year it was at four venues: Cockatoo Island in Sydney Harbour, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the NSW Art Gallery, and Pier 2/3 at Walsh Bay. Children's Book Week has kept me on the hop but I did manage to see almost all the Biennale artworks. 

With over 100 artists represented from forty countries there was a lot to enjoy but of course not everything was for everyone. Okay so not everything was for me. Do bricks and leaves on a floor, or cloth hanging in a vast room, or some decrepit furniture on a platform qualify as works of art? I'm not hard to please. I just want works of art to make me feel something---other than exasperation---or works that make me think. It's also important that works of art pass the I-could-do-that test.

I'm afraid that these rocks scattered around a room didn't pass the I-could-do-that test. At first I didn't think that it was one of the entries but then I noticed the sign on the floor that said "Please do not touch the artwork".

How about this midden of oyster shells and tea cups? If you knew that it was the work of young Aboriginal artist, Jonathan Jones, who wanted us to think about the oyster middens of pre-European contact days with today's detritus---sort of a meeting of the middens---would that make a difference? Interesting but is it art?

How about a collection of tents in a vast warehouse. Inside the tents are television sets showing images of people in Cairo talking. This is Susan Hefuna's "Celebrate Life: I love Egypt." There is a lengthy explanation of the artist's intentions and a statement about the tents having been made in Cairo.

How about Fujiko Nakaya's fog sculpture, "Cloud"? The kids seemed to love running in and out of it. Are real clouds themselves or only artificial ones?

One of the problems for me was the written explanations of the artwork. One artist used "irony to create empathy" another "employs everyday objects and materials, de-constructing them to reveal their underlying codes". Another artist "overturns the relations between the work and its space". The artistic directors said that "the artworks gathered here engage with new models of reciprocity". New models of reciprocity? 

I gave up reading the explanatory material.

Things began to pick up for me with Canadian Artist, Cal Lane's "Domesticated Turf", a sculpted shipping container made to look like some kind of European gingerbread house. Clever and a lot of work sawing out all those bits of steel to liberate the cottage within. I was impressed.

And I loved New Zealand artist, Peter Robinson's, huge Styrofoam chains draped over some of the old rusting ship-building machinery. I didn't read the description of this installation but the internet tells me that Robinson "pursues multiple formal trajectories in his use of polystyrene, as if with its associations of disposability the possibility exists for any number of sculptural experiments to be tested, cast aside, reworked, reconsidered". Better to just look at it and enjoy it, I say.

For me the most impressive work at Cockatoo Island were Maria Fernanda Cardoso's Museum of Copulatory Organs, reproductions of reproductive organs. These much magnified---thanks to electron microscopy---models of male and female insect genitalia were not only wonderfully realised but quite beautiful simply as sculpture. Does an accurate reproduction from nature qualify as art? I think so. Certainly photos or paintings from nature can be art. Here science and art overlap. 

Back on dry land I went to the Museum of Contemporary Art at Circular Quay in Sydney to see the both the new wing and the Biennale exhibits there. Yeesookyung's Translated Vase, the Moon and Park Young-Sook’s Moon Jars easily passed the I-could-do-that test. 

And, by the way, don't tell everyone but the MCA has a cafe with the best view in Sydney. (See heading photo above.)

Liu Zhuoquan, Two-Headed Snake was the stand-out for me at the MCA at least as a technical feat. Using an old Chinese technique of painting inside bottles the artist made the bottles appear to have snakes in them. There were a huge number of bottles and the detail was quite breathtaking. Art? Well I felt something.

Also at the MCA, Alwar Balasubramaniams Nothing From my Hands. For me these are unknown shapes pushing out from behind a wall. (Click on his name and it'll take you to a talk by this fascinating sculptor.) 

Most moving of all for me was Judith Wright's installation, A Journey. (For a better view of it click here.) This is a haunting work, displayed nearly in darkness. Whatever it's "about" (and here I did read the artist's explanation) I found it moving. It's not a great technical feat but, well, for me it works and that's all that should matter.

This Judith Wright, by the way, is not the late Australian poet but a former ballet dancer, now a a visual artist living in Queensland.

From the Museum of Contemporary Art I went to the Art Gallery of NSW. Those are paper bags from designer shops that you can see in Perspex cases on the wall. the top of each one has been intricately carved  in such a way that the carved bit, hanging down but still attached to the top, forms a tree.

These are the work of the Japanese-born New York artist, Yuken Teruya. These have both beauty and a definite wow-factor. They were hard to photograph. To see his work properly click here.

The Sydney Biennale is over but there's still so much on the internet, including videos of the artists, that it can still be enjoyed from a distance. But if you're in Sydney and want to see a small but wonderful collection of contemporary art from China, you might want to go to The White Rabbit Gallery. It's a private collection but, as with the MCA and the NSW Art Gallery, there's no entry charge. Here it's important to read the descriptions and to talk to the very helpful gallery attendants. This show is called Double Take for a reason.

The White Rabbit rotates its collections about every six months and the present show opened at the beginning of September so you have time to get there in you're in or around Sydney.

Here's a taste to get you in:

Above is Zhang Chun Hong powerful calligraphy-like drawing of a long braid on a scroll that stretches down the wall and across the floor.

Taiwanese artist Ah Leon’s Elementary School days. This deceptively simple wooden table and chair are not what they seem but I won't spoil it for you except to say that Ah Leon is a ceramicist. There, I just ruined it for you.

Above and below is/are Li Hongbo's Paper, two identical figures sculpted from honeycomb paper, one of them with it's head beginning to ravel and the other stretched all around the floor. Li Hongbo was one a a few artists represented at the White Rabbit who also had works in the Biennale.

My favourite of the trompe-l'oeil works was this one. I inspected it closely and was about to walk away when a museum attendant stopped me and explained that this wasn't two chunks of a log connected by chains. This is two chunks of wood with the connecting piece of wood carved to make the "chains". No matter how closely I looked, those chain links looked like metal, not wood. A definite wow factor but is it art? 

Absolutely. Well I think so anyway.