Orbis
systematic, sweet, spinning & salty
It’s been a full few weeks with lots of new friends, conversations, flavors, and adventures.
Last week, I was honored to present my in-progress research in a seminar titled “Colour, Shape, and Space: Connecting Material, Physical, and Conceptual Spaces through Printmaking” at my Fulbright hosting institution, the Centre for Creative and Cultural Research at the University of Canberra.
This program organizes and archives an impressive array of interdisciplinary talks and discussions, and my presentation and others in the series can be viewed through the CCCR website.
Video still from presentation at the Centre for Creative and Cultural Research, University of Canberra
Desolation, Internment camp, Orange, NSW, 1941. Relief print by Ludwig Hirshfeld-Mack, 1941.
Part of my presentation included research I am currently doing on the work of Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack, whose life story is fascinating. Hirschfeld-Mack studied and taught at the Bauhaus and left his home country of Germany in 1936 due to escalating discrimination and the limitations on employment for people of Jewish heritage. By 1940, he was deported from Britain as an enemy alien and traveled on the infamous HMT Dunera to Australia. Along with the other passengers of this ship, Hirschfeld-Mack was interred in Australian refugee camps until 1941.
Many of the internees, including Hirschfeld-Mack, remained in Australia after WWII. He taught art as the Painting Master at Geelong Grammar School in Victoria for many years. Alongside his enduring work as an educator, painter, and printmaker, Hirschfeld-Mack’s pedagogical toy design, the ‘Optical Colour Mixer,’ has been in production for almost 100 years.
I invited my presentation audience to create their own versions of this mechanical toy, and we had fun creating new colorful and optical mixing effects. My lecture, linked above, explains more specifically how this relates to color and printmaking.
Achacha fruit
Circles have appeared often in these past few weeks. I’ve spotted them on the beach, encountered them in rare fruits, and studied them in books about the designs of color systems. One delightful experience my family and I had was to be given a hard-to-find achacha from our kind neighbor, Colleen.
The achacha fruit is originally from the Amazon region and was brought to Australia as an import for bespoke residential gardens. Based on the indigenous Guaraní language in Peru, ‘achacha’ means ‘honey kiss’.
There is an achacha orchard in Queensland. However, the harvesting season is short here, and there is only a January-February window to find this fruit at its best. Our neighbor, Colleen, surprised me one day with the gift of an achacha fruit from her daughter-in-law, who works as a writer in local food culture. The verdict? It’s a fantastic cross between a kiwi, dragonfruit, and melon; not too sweet and very refreshing!
More orbitals I’ve engaged with in recent weeks; from beaches, to hailstorms, to groceries, our dinner one evening, and my continuing research on color systems and theories.
Lastly, a marvellously uneven seagrass circle on the beachsand, that I carefully stepped around about a week ago.
Various and recent circles
Seagrass circle, Denhams Beach, NSW