Framelines Edition #6

FRAME LINES

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‘Well I may not be you, and you not me’

a free magazine edition #6

Oct/Nov 08

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Frame Lines #6 Fashion - The Face of Culture Frame Lines edition #6 Welcome to another edition of Frame Lines Magazine, this edition we focus on ‘Fashion - the Face of Culture’. Sure it can refer to styles of dress, but it can also include the social fabric, the culture of our society, the landscape, literature, art, architecture, and general comportment popular in culture at any given time. Such styles may change quickly, and ‘fashion’ in the more colloquial sense refers to the latest version of these styles. Inherent also in the term, is the idea that the mode will change more quickly than the culture as a whole.

I’d like to ask that we open up this definition to encompass much more than the fabric element, but to look at who is affected by what we wear, what impact it has on our societies, and its direction in our creative worlds.

I would also like to take this opportunity to welcome to the Frame Lines team – Lisa Bow, Renee Wiggan, Nick Kind and Lisa Camillo, who have recently joined us on this journey. So keep any eye out for Lisa Bow’s Newsletter, Renee’s word smithing, Nick’s photography in ‘What we see’ and Lisa Camillo’s profiling of non-profit organisations – I hope you get to know these guys and drop them a line to say hi if you can!!!

So sit back, grab that cuppa and we hope you enjoy edition #6 with over 37 artists from across the globe, ranging from the fashion designer to the photographer, from the runway to the canvas. We are delighted to showcase these artists, and we continue to dedicate our efforts to bringing you the best creative work - including art, design, writing, photography, poetry, illustration, music and much from around the globe - whilst enlivening the senses, stimulating the mind, and provoking discussion about the diversity in the world in which we live.

Enjoy!

Sarah, and the Frame Lines Crew!

4343 readers have hit the Frame Lines magazines since June alone! in 2008! ( Statistics calculated 01.06.08 - 10.10.08)

Thankyou to everyone who has supported Frame Lines and our featured arists!

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Dress. Nails. Accessories.

Fashion. How can it be defined? Let’s begin with a snapshot of a pouting female, six feet tall and rake-thin, wearing clothing most westerners could barely afford on a yearly salary. This is clearly an anorexic image, but here the yellow brick catwalk on which we all travel is being laid down, and the results often filter down to our un-model existences.

Fashion’s reach is infinitely broader than our under-fed and overpaid celebrities - it governs us far more than we dare admit. Fashion is under-wired into our DNA. As social creatures we long to be a part of something – fashion is present in our dreams, in our stomachs, on our battlefields and in our homes. It’s what’s popular, and popular quickly becomes present in our lives. We lead a pack existence, from dreadlocks to democracy, stock exchange to reality TV. Do we, the consumers, even get a say in its direction? Sometimes I feel we don’t.

Are we invited to text-message in our preferences, expanding the boundaries of style and genre with our votes, or are we only spectators, cheering as new colours, shapes and sounds dazzle us? Instead of new material offered up with each coming season, maybe it’s just the same formula, re-arranged in a refreshing way.

Maybe it’s not different at all. But maybe that doesn’t matter; we’re now part of a movement, part of a memory.

I urge all of you to go forth and make art.

Be an individual as best you can. Blaze new trails of thought, philosophy and emotion. Cease the flat-out acceptance of everything that is handed to you, be it plastic, cloth, flesh, paper or liquid crystal.

Find your space, fashion it into something so wonderfully you, that you can’t help but glow inside and out.

Let’s push things forward.

Jeremy Thomas - Associate Editor

Contents FRAME LINES

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Cover

‘Well I may not be you, and you not me’

Doug Rimington photogapher

Contributors Artevist T-shirts with attitude Ashley Capes

poet

Belinda Strodder photographer David Mclean a free magazine edition #6

poet

Ernest Williamson III artists

Oct/Nov 08

Regular features Non-Profit Profile

St Vincent DePaul - Hunter and Gather

Global Graffiti

Business is BOOMing - The fashion behind the fun.

Music

Felino Soriano poet Frederick Nérinckx

illustrator

Gary Beck poet Lenko fashion designer Noha Khalaf Jewellery Salvatore Buttaci poet

Sounds of the Street

Samantha Thompson artist

What we see

Srdjan Nikolic

Nick Kind - Fashion

Literature Reviews

Dinosaurs on the Roof by David Rabe The Monster of Florence by Douglas Preston Fall of Frost by Brian Hall

photographer

The Fashion Incubator non profit Tim Watts

poet

Vee Lee poet

Frame Lines Crew Director and Editor Frame Lines - Sarah Nolan Associate Editor / Culture Sleuth – Jeremy Thomas Sub editor - Renee Wiggan Senior Creative and Photographic Contributor - Lisa Bow Literature Reviewer - Lorraine Berry Frame Lines ‘What We See’ - Nick Kind Music Guru - Laura McNeice Non-Profit Profile - Lisa Camillio Frame Lines is a non profit organisation e-mail: info@framelines.org www.framelines.org

* All contributors bios and links to websites can be found at the Frame Lines website - www.framelines.org The articles appearing within this publication represent the opinions and attitudes of their respective authors and not necessarily those of the publishers or editorial team.

The reproduction of any editorial or images without prior permission is strictly prohibited.

All Photography, music and all works appearing in this magazine are protected by ©copyright Reproduction without expressed permission from the artist is strictly prohibited. All images are copyright of the artist.

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nda Strodder Photographer

Fashion - Performance Art

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fl. Give us a snapshot, as it were, of your life as a performance art photographer. Being a relative newcomer

to photography, I’m very excited about how my career is progressing. I work primarily in dance and theatre, creating imagery for editorial, archives portraiture, advertising and PR. I photograph anything performance-related including circus, acrobatics, cabaret, orchestras, headshots for actors, rehearsals – you name it.

My career in photography evolved naturally from a lifelong love for the performing arts. As I was growing up I thought I was going to be a dancer but I ended up falling in love with being a musician and all its opportunities. Performing for the opera, ballet, stage shows, symphony orchestra, chamber music and so on is an exciting and colourful life. And although I love the collaborative environment between orchestra and stage, I have become increasingly frustrated with sitting in a pit and not being 8 //framelines.org

able to see the action! As Joseph Campbell would say, I am “Following my bliss.”

I am very excited about my forthcoming trip to Christchurch in NZ, having been assigned to document an official Guinness Book of Records attempt at the largest synchronised dance ever. What a spectacle that should be! I am also covering a few days of the Body Festival – Dance and Physical Theatre. I’m really looking forward to capturing and experimenting with this cultural experience.

fl. What in this world inspires you? The dedication, passion

and energy of performance artists are my greatest inspirations. admire the blood, sweat and tears that all artists endure to produce their art. Its inspiring to be able to capture the beauty of dance and theatre in its rawest form, its sense of motion, its sense of depth, its colour… its awe.

“I aim to capture the unusual, the extraordinary, the elements not first obvious.�

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“Follow your bliss. If you’re sure, really sure that photography is what you want to do, then don’t let anybody talk you out of it. If you’re not sure, then find something that makes you truly happy, because it can be a tough way to make a living.”

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fl. Performance art and theatre offer a reflection of society in all of its problems and celebrations. It encourages discourse around the relevant subject matter, between people - the audience - that may never have assembled elsewhere. This is powerful. It builds communities and presents a point for discussion. What are your thoughts on this? I think you are right in that performance art can reflect society because social concepts such as cooperation, communication, collaboration, consensus, self-esteem, risk taking, sympathy, and empathy apply in theatre as well as daily life. In this sense theatre is life.

But the power to provoke thought is the great power of the theatre. The theatre is a platform upon which society can

examine itself and allow new channels of dialogue to open up between different races, ethnicities, and different creeds.

Dialogue takes place when the audience has an experience in the theatre. When the unravelling of the human predicament is allowed to take place, audience members feel the possibility of their individuality being expressed. The audience leaves the theatre enlightened, inspired and strengthened as individuals.

It’s interesting to see an audience emerge from a performance with a different energy from which they entered. Depending on the subject matter they are certainly getting a feeling of shared human experience but each audience member will view the theatre in a different way. In the end it is the audience that holds the power to find and interpret the truth.

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fl. What are your day-to-day challenges, and what have been your greatest successes? I have to be on my toes every minute. When photographing a show, especially for the first time you don’t know what’s going to happen next. Varied lighting situations that, depending on the show, change from moment to moment. Unexpected moments of movement, expressions and scene changes. I have to be prepared for anything, and that adrenalin rush is very addictive.

I guess my greatest success is that I am able to pursue what I love to do. Nothing beats that. It’s very exciting to have my work embraced by both the community and professional performing art scenes. A few years ago this was my goal, but then everything went just faster than I thought. Now I feel like my work is really making a difference.

fl. Performance art is your passion, and you have given time to find your voice and performance aesthetic to continue it throughout your life. What advice do you have for a novice? To capture a great collection of images

I think it’s important to have a good knowledge of stage craft and a keen instinct. I suppose I have been lucky to have been involved with the performing arts all my life and learned how to trust, develop and refine that instinct, especially with dance and physical theatre. My advice to any novice would be to see as much theatre as you can and gain all the experience possible.

It’s also crucial to be able to meet a variety of creative needs for different companies and artists. In general there is a limited budget, even uncertainty on the success of a piece. So I think it’s important to develop an affordable service that allows companies to use great images without investing much. This is why it’s so vital to be passionate about the arts and be willing to work just for the love of it. There is not a lot of money in this 12 //framelines.org

business. I support a lot of community theatre in Melbourne and quite often photograph a production purely because I am interested in it rather than for money. Passion is everything. Apart from trying to capture the true essence of a performance, I try to use my creative eye and explore the possibilities beyond the literal documentation of what a performance looks like. I aim to capture the unusual, the extraordinary, the elements not first obvious.

fl. If you could go on assignment to one show anywhere in the world to shoot whatever you wanted; where and what would it be, and why? Send me anywhere in the

world to cover contemporary dance and I’m there. I’ll do it for free! I love the fact that it relates to all aspects of expressions of contemporary society and pushes the boundaries. The sheer variety and the physical immediacy of the style, the body’s natural line and energy lend itself easily to extremely creative photography.

A year’s contract touring with the Famous Speigeltent? I’m your girl! I just love the variety of contemporary ground-braking shows that appear and the reactions from the audience are amazing.

fl. Is there anything that your experiences that could be helpful to others aspiring to pursue a career such as this?

Like the man said, ‘Follow your bliss.’ If you’re sure, really sure that photography is what you want to do, then don’t let anybody talk you out of it. Plenty of people tried this with me. If you’re not sure then find something that makes you truly happy, because it can be a tough way to make a living.

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As if once David Mclean

as if once memory were less than tomorrow, we had fallen forgetful and peeled names from our eyes, like words or nightmares. the old men stand among the trees, stark in their mourning that retells us a yesterday when reasons were given, and nothing loved us, time with its assigned sorrows, like registering a tiny oblivion flickering behind the night, like a statue that never asked to be carved there. we could forget the dead, yet that’s not very polite so we remember them, tonight imagine them a forgotten life like they imagined time

Faceless David Mclean

I was born faceless and my name was assigned by devils and memories, so I let it fall from me like a torn toga dyed with death and ageless Roman pain, empty as any sane days I inhabit this landscape like a ghoul mourning the meat he munches on, bunches of muscles under his fingers and the ganglia where pain still is, the heart beneath the ribs the soil waits for me, gaping so patiently, but society burns its trash today, only inside us dare dreams stay, dare we dream us awake

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Concern Gary Beck

Another city night birthing summer chaos, as Venus hangs above the tenements strutting her halo before worried Hispanic eyes, watching their precious children at play on squalid streets, uncertain if they will share the prosperous future.

Mild protest Gary Beck

Mild Protest Usually I spend my time pondering the sweep of history.

War, man’s greatest endeavor, takes the bulk of speculation.

Science should come next, but I was ill-educated and had to settle for economics.

International affairs now command less attention then events domestic, as my struggling society devolves.

So in a rare moment of literary indulgence I mused of petty changes forced upon my poems.

I no longer dream of the Persian Gulf, tainted by oil spills and Harpoon missiles.

I abandoned a courtly renaissance address, usurped by a pop culture Madonna.

It is difficult to yearn for Paris, when Bordeaux is spilled in Yankee sewers.

Although these may be trivial concerns, undefended ivory towers are fatally undermined by harmful emissions.

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Doug Rimington Fashion Photographer

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“I have never thought so deeply into fashion photography.

I suppose it could be said that it shows either the celebration of beauty or the sexualisation of our culture today.�

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“The hard core Paparazzi are an interesting bunch – they serve a need, there is a reason why the cheap and nasty magazines sell as much as they do.”

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fl. Doug, can you tell us about your career as a fashion photographer thus far? Well it’s been only short so far, 5 – 6

years or so, even shorter if you consider that it’s never been full time for me. I really fell into the fashion industry by accident and even now, I do it mostly because that is where the demand seems to be. The move to Sydney came about after visiting in 2007 to shoot Rosemount Fashion Week and it’s a good baby step to my end goal which will hopefully be either NY, LA or somewhere in Europe. Though I’d hate to leave the beautiful climate of Sydney, I need the industry.

Photography stayed as just fun for a while with me mucking about with a Canon EOS 300D – but I soon realised what I could do and what studio gear I would need to be able to do it. So I sold most of my possessions, moved back with my parents (at the old age of 24!) and starting investing in studio flashes, reflectors, pro lens… I never really do much in my life ‘just for fun’; sooner or later everything gets the 100% treatment, all or nothing.

and there will always be special things to capture – that’s just the nature of the randomness of life in the real world.

fl. Describe what black and white photography means to you. As odd as this may sound, I find black and white much more

‘emotional’ than colour. Maybe with the distractions of colour not there, we can see different things in the image. I certainly do not feel that it is the be all and end all of photography - it also has its own time and place to be used, but I try to have my EOS3 (film camera) by my side on as many jobs as possible.

fl. What are your thoughts on the paparazzi and their effects on photographers and photography? The hard

core paps are an interesting bunch – they serve a need, there is a reason why the cheap and nasty magazines sell as much as they do. I’m not defending what these guys do, but the fact is, if they didn’t get paid what they did, they probably wouldn’t go climbing into celebrities’ homes and shoot them with their pants down.

In the last two years or so I bought a Canon EOS3 second hand and started using film a bit more; usually only for my own enjoyment, although the paying customers always enjoy seeing real prints so I tend to throw in some quick scans for free. Using film has taught me to think about every frame, maybe because it’s so expensive to develop or maybe because you only have 36 or so on a roll and can’t just blast away until the memory is full.

I would say my photography has developed more in that as I was able to afford the gear required, I am now more able to create the vision that I see in my mind.

I would say the dodgy ‘Guy With Camera’ (GWC) trying to shoot every girl they can find does far more damage to the image of the average photographer. Now even more so with affordable dSLR’s readily available, there are lots of those who call themselves ‘photographers’.

fl. How do you feel about digital manipulation and to what extent do you utilize it? I myself do very little post

fl. Fashion photography can often been seen as a reflection of society and all of its problems and celebrations – what are youra thoughts on this? Well this might sound terrible but depending on

what you consider to be beauty or porn, and whether or not you see these values as good or bad. I’m sure these are some arguments people may have had over such photographers as Helmut Newton, or Howard Schatz – both show a lot of nudity but certainly in different styles.

fl. I see a definite ‘fine art’ style to some of your work. You have some beautiful black and white images. What kind of atmosphere do you try and create in your photos? I

try to create images depending on who I’m working for or with at the time. Somehow my own flavour just seems to creep in there without me intentionally doing so. I’m often in dispute with myself whether to make a shot raw and in film or super tech with digital, which is why I tend to shoot both film and digital!

fl. How do you feel about those missed shots which cannot be recreated? There are and will always be so many of these, but some things are not meant (or best not) to be seen by others, 22 //framelines.org

process on my images – even when I do some air brushing, I keep the opacity of the touched up layers very low. I like to see the pores of the skin if possible.

I try to follow the theory that an image must be 90% good to go from the camera and require as little post work as possible. If a lot of post work is needed, say the model had a bad skin day, then all effort is made to keep the image looking ‘real’.

“My reasons for doing photography are fairly simple: I need to ‘create.”

I quite like the response from someone who said I’ve done no re-touching, especially when I show them the before and after images. In saying all that, I love the super-processed images of some photographers and I believe some of them use it very well; once again, there is a time and place for that kind of style.

fl. What other thoughts would you like to share? My reasons

for doing photography are fairly simple: I need to ‘create’. I was no good at painting or drawing anything other than cartoons and my dreams of rock stardom faded away as I found it hard to meet the right musicians. Photography gives me the power to create something tangible without too much fuss (ok ok, apart from fashion editorials), which is another reason why I treasure proper prints. Photography allows me to give a gift that can not be bought in a shop or seen anywhere else.

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It was the best of buffets; it was the worst of buffets...

Jeremy Thomas I launch myself into the Russian buffet house Pelmeni XL like I haven’t eaten in a week. I’m in central Riga in central Latvia in the centre of summertime, and I’m feeling like a sunbeam myself. Though the Latvians can be decidedly chilly on the streets, I definitely feel I’m beginning to crack their code. Apparently the Russians living here are far more outgoing; I haven’t officially met one yet, though they can be seen everywhere in flash automobiles and suits or wearing short skirts and enough glittering apparel to be a fish-lure in human form.

A timber platform traces a parabolic stainless steel benchtop and a number of table and chair sets gather round in anticipation. To my left, what appears to be a security guard is blocking the route to the bowls. He looms over me. Suddenly dazzled, I shoot the dark-haired giant a look that requests directions while suggesting an inability to speak either Russian or Latvian. He smirks almost imperceptibly as he waves a football-sized mitt in the direction of the various porcelain vessels and plastic trays. I take one of each. In front of me are several recessed tubs which house different varieties of Russian-style tortellini and ravioli. The names, as well as the instructions are all in Latvian, so I sample a little of everything and crown it with a tomato mix and an oily herb tincture. Further to my right are the gherkins, the sour cream and two tubs of mayonnaiseheavy salad: pea and Krabju. I avoid the lot.

I’m now shifting back and forth crab-like and rather nervously, wondering whether I have enough pasta or sauce, while dodging Russian patrons who are obviously familiar with the process and have neither tolerance for beginners nor the English language. Eventually I snare an unmarked orange juice and shuffle sideways toward the counter. “Can I go back for more later?” I ask the middle-aged cashier, whose greasy blond hair is tied back into a loose ponytail. She glares back at me like I’m Oliver Twist with a speech impediment and a harelip. A perturbed silence follows and I realise she’s not in any hurry to assist, but thankfully there isn’t another toe-tapping Russian waiting behind me this time. We’ve accelerated toward the next ice age at a blinding and horrible speed before I spy the scales and realise she’s waiting to weigh my dish. I pass it to her and fire off a grin, hoping to break the tension as I fumble for the required coinage. Completing the transaction successfully I receive my receipt, all without the barest hint of recognition from the other party.

With tray in trembling hand, I wobble toward an empty table, asking myself where I went wrong in life. What had I done to endure such ire? But when I’m seated with the steaming bowl, I forget the preceding events and I’m blissful again, free of worry and wrath and rid of hunger. It isn’t long before I go back for more, and upon handing the cashier the next round of coin, spot a wry smile turning up the corners of her thin lips. Another satisfied customer.

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A sort of autumn Ashley Capes

I spend so much time worrying about the impermanence of things I love, that they slip into a sort of autumn in my mind, I’m wasting time by missing something I can still touch so I have to slip into bed tonight without waking you and stroke your back, let you know I’m there, without spoiling the moment in a darkness made incomplete by red numbers of the alarm clock I have to remind myself not to count everything, not to let now crumble into a memory of tomorrow.

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Srdjan Nikolic Fashion Photographer

Fashion - Beind the Scenes

“My approach to a typical photographic session begins with selecting the particular effect that will give the overall feel to the image. Once that is settled, I focus on the details. This is a cooperative process between the model, stylist, makeup and hair stylists and the photographer, to add to, or subtract from the image until it feels right.�

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Looking out from the runway 29

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“I don’t think I could make a distinction between the ‘artistic’ and ‘commercial’ aspects of fashion photography. Creating an image that feels right is what matters.”

“Most definitely my favourite part of photography is the social interaction. Working in this industry gives me the opportunity to meet so many interesting and energetic people passionate about what they are doing. Photographers, makeup artists, hair and wardrobe stylists, designers, models and magazine editors, all are working towards bringing style and beauty into the world”.

“In a fashion model, I’m looking for personality and trust. A person who is natural and not afraid to give anything a go just for the fun of it, and trust that the final product of the work will come out great.”

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“If I am given the freedom to choose, I would think about a shoot for days coming up with various scenarios, stories, images in my head. I definitely don’t plan any details. Once the overall feel is there, I let chance take over.”

“When shooting, I don’t think at all. I just let something from inside take over and feel the right moment to release the shutter. I have noticed that something happens when I look at the frame. I start scanning the space with the camera letting something inside of me take over. It is an inexplicable feeling, some kind of a homing device. At that moment, everything the eye sees through the viewfinder will feel right. If [the sense] is not strong enough, I will start looking for alternatives; modifying, directing, changing. Sometimes I will take more shots than needed, just to confirm that inner feeling.”

“I’d love to shoot underwater and nature fashion in the Greek islands: The slow motion of the garment under water being lit from strong sun rays broken by waves above.”

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Untitled Tim Watts

Six, Two, One, Four, Eight, Two. I align the combination before sliding the miniature silver key into its lock and turning. The latch releases and I pull open the door which is tight, having warped slightly, making the eroded hinges groan. Then, I wedge the cardboard tube into the locker; it’s a snug fit.

Before leaving, back into the warn, wet night, I linger to help a guy in shorts and a stained yellow tee shirt who is struggling with a slightly larger locker in the bottom row.

“They’re really old and the keys don’t fit like they should,” I tell him, jiggling with the opener and tapping the door with the side of my foot. After not too long I get it ajar and I think he might thank me but he just says, “Fucken piece of shit.” and waits for me to leave before making his deposit.

The walk to my building is thankfully short – past the bars and smokemarts and adult shops which pepper this side of town like bullet holes in a lace curtain. The relics of well-intentioned government housing initiatives – the supposed ultimate in purpose-built, eco-friendly, cookiecutter communities (‘Affordable, sustainable living for generations to come’ boast the peeling billboards) are still evident, though seriously dilapidated. About eight years ago local MPs and developers banded together and unveiled an ambitious plan to transform the suburb, demolishing entire districts to make way for their grand vision. After years suffocating the inner city with brutalist high-rise blocks, the idea was to repopulate the outer suburbs by converting cheaper, neglected areas into family friendly villages with names like “Thornton Lakes” and “Parson’s Walk”. Street after street of picture book neighborhoods were arduously erected, many with ‘For Sale’ signs still waiting patiently behind ramshackle picket fences. Ultimately however, no amount of election promises and ribbon cutting could persuade the dealers to up roots, and the gangs to surrender their turf, so the project was eventually abandoned.

Now the high school and childcare centre are veiled in gang tags and avenues of brick bungalows (the brochures offered a choice of nine styles) sport waist-high lawns and boardedup windows. Skeletal remains of old Toranas replace birdbaths or gnomes carrying spades as the ornamentation of choice.

I turn right by the bridge, passing the old skate park where I wave away come-ons from an assortment of busty, tattooed hookers and pre-op faggots turning tricks. Somewhere on the block a car alarm echoes like an abandoned dog howling for its master.

After not too long I reach my building (one of only two remaining apartment blocks; a monolithic homage to a bygone age) and walk the concrete flights to the eighth floor. Once inside, I slip off my sneakers, switch on the air-cooler, strip and head straight to bed.

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Smiles Vee Lee

The smile that conquers, The smile that kills, The smile that creates life: Every definition your smile offers Is ever so enthralling – Be it with such adoration Or extravagant seduction, It’s always sacred.

Through ribbons of the rainbow Through streaks of sunlight Through shimmers of the stars I find different ways to your smile To see something more precious than Those white pearls.

A treasure is there To give mirth to those lips They open with joy, The glow that comes through the window – The main window to your soul.

Do not deem it all sublime!

For your smile is also the gate of decadence.

When this extravagant feeling subjugates The treasure these lips part to show Lights up the flames of greed!

I fall in love with the treasure But I no longer want it to be yours – It should be mine, all mine!

But it all belongs to you – This, I understand, And this… I cannot take away: The reason for it being rare!

Whatever feelings your smile may engender I always take pleasure in, Something my ‘book of love’ reads for, Nothing less, nothing more – But no! I am wrong!

Your smile is the utter reason for ‘more,’ The more I see through the window, The more brightness I feel: Not the scorching brightness of the sun, But golden light wrapped in turquoise blue, Like the warm setting sun fading into the sea: You, being the glow of harmony.

I from solid coldness Turn into gentle, calm serenity – Exciting happiness mellowed in peaceful exhilaration, There is no further explanation for this inner joy!

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Fashion

Incubator & designer Lenko

Fashion Incubator Melbourne Central is a not-for-profit organisation that supports emerging Australian designers by means of providing them with the resources to establish and sustain their own fashion businesses. Based in Melbourne, Australia, it offers up and coming artists a retail environment and working space to create, manufacture, exhibit and sell their designs.

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Images: from Lenko Collection 38 //framelines.org

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FIMC runs solely on the hard work of volunteers, interns and work experience students, who assist our designers and administration on a day-to-day basis. Fashion Incubator also provides retail spaces for two designers at a time who are ready to start their own businesses; giving the opportunity to stand alone and sell their collections in their own space. Currently they are occupied

by Dana Lenko (Lenko) and Sideshow Designs due to open in late September.

Fashion Incubator believes that emerging Australian designers need the support of the community to flourish and survive, and provides these designers with business advice, promotional activities, staffing and subsidised rent to get their businesses off the ground.

Through the retail gallery, designers are able to test the market and sell their collections without having to incur costs, as well as the opportunity to exhibit their collections at trade and fashion shows throughout the year.

One of the supported designers at Fashion Incubator is Lenko.

Dana attributes the label’s success to the fact that all Lenko products have been hand made with actual love and ‘fit like a charm!’ Every print is a limited run illustration and is produced locally in Melbourne.

Lenko’s latest collection.

Think holiday postcards from far off places, plastic printed table cloths - the kind you find in a beach house - and the perfect meal for a hot summer’s day and you have ‘Fruit Salad’. Lenko’s latest collection is all about fun in the sun with soft cottons and seersuckers, sheer pastels with quirky prints and cooling textures. ‘Fruit Salad’ is a playful collection for the Spring/Summer season.

Bon appetite!

“I love being able to combine my love of illustration and texture into fashion pieces. I am constantly inspired by my customers and their enthusiasm for fashion”.

Lenko also supports the arts and community.

Lenko Collection Along with Lenko the fashion label, Dana Dana, the designer and brains behind “Fashion Incubator has taught me about is also very passionate about supporting Lenko, knew she had something bubbling back in 2000 when her friends at university business practices and inspires me daily with like-minded artists thinking outside the kept pestering her to make original iron- their love of fashion! They have truly launched square, and in a democratic celebration on t-shirts for them, so much that she my business through the hatchery project.” of the humble doodle, Lenko held an exhibition featuring work by more than would bring in her wares to lectures and 50 contributors from the fields of design, sell the lot. It wasn’t just her friends that were interested, “I’d be shopping and the shop assistant would art, fashion, bartending, accounting, supermarket check-outing and editorial hack work. Works include Big Bag of Piss by St. approach me to stock in their store.”

Jeromes’ barman August Skipper; Untitled by Catherine Lando; After completing her Creative Arts degree at Victorian College of The Gnome by Little Gonzales; and works by ‘Chip Chop’ the Arts, she knew what her calling was. Within a year, her t-shirts designer Hannah Chipkin, Melbourne-based curator Tristan were stocked around Melbourne and Sydney and the label has Jalleh, and someone named Beans. grown to encompass silk screen tops, women’s jackets, skirts, Contributors, regardless of fame, status, age or ability were displayed with equal importance. Why? Because doodling is jumpers, children’s wear and toys. not the prevail of the Art Star. It is an everyday window to the subconscious.

illustrations from the Lenko Doodle Art Show,

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The current collection can be viewed at Shop: Lenko Boutique, Shop 308a, Level 3, Melbourne Central LENKO - www.ilovelenko.com

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T-shirts

For th 42 //framelines.org

Artevist

hose who believe real change will only occur when activism is fashionably ‘in’ and complacency is decidedly ‘out’.

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Artevist is a community where artists can come together to share their ideas on big issues and create wearable art with meaning and purpose. The big issues can be local or global (everything is related) and they can span themes such as: AIDS, climate change, consumerism, extinction, human rights and pollution. It’s also a place where non-profit organisations and artists meet and produce work that helps spread their message to a larger audience.

There are some awesome T-shirt graphics out there, but let’s face it, very few have much meaning or purpose. With so much happening in the world today, it seems the opportunity to use design to really communicate important themes is being lost. There are plenty of individual artists and organisations producing great work, yet finding one online source for a variety of activist-inspired design is surprisingly difficult. Nor is it easy to find great designs paired with high quality, eco-friendly materials and production. That perfect combination of message, design and product eluded me, and so, Artevist was born.

“I came up with the idea for Artevist purely through personal experience. I had worked for many years in corporate branding for large organisations and really needed a change and something more meaningful. I took a year off to plan my next phase in life. During that time, I went from suits and ties to T-shirts, but I had no luck finding T-shirts (in one place) that were fashionable, organic and conveyed a message that really meant something to me. The turning point came when I saw the movie “Sharkwater”. I was so motivated by the movie that I went out looking for a T-shirt that said something Founder Eric Wilson about shark extinction. I found nothing, and I was most disappointed by the fact that even large organizations like The WWF or Greenpeace had very poor merchandising programs. Non-profit logos on $20 t-shirts seemed to be the norm. At the same time, however, I stumbled on the whole world of online arts and design competitions. A few months of research revealed that no-one was doing anything themed around activism and certainly not with a dedication to sustainable an ethical production. The web abounds with sweatshop T-shirts!” Said Eric Wilson - Founder of Artevist.

The concept is to provide a forum for activism and arts discussion. “I could have just created a T-shirt design site, but I wanted it to be so much more. It will take time and nurturing, and from that community I hope to inspire high calibre T-shirt design” said Eric.

Artists compete in open, peer-review T-shirt design contests. All Artevist members can vote for their favourites and leave comments.

The most popular submissions are reproduced on organic Tees (bamboo, hemp or cotton), which are ecologically and ethically produced and sourced. Artevist however, is more than Tees. It’s a forum where the community can learn, share and discuss. It’s relevant news and events, and there’s a classifieds section where non-profits and artists alike can find people and materials to help them with their projects.

Just some of the T-Shirt designs from Artevist - www.artevist.com

“We believe the world needs more art, not more brands. We’ll be donating a good portion of sales to environmental and social causes and are now looking into various options.”

All the T-shorts are 100% organic cotton or bamboo. While the bamboo fibre is imported form China, the T-shirts are made in the U.S. Printing is done through a reactive dye process, eliminating the use of PVC inks. While not impact-free, it’s considerably less than with traditional printing. The best part of all is that it really does produce a much nicer and very long lasting T-shirt, so get online and get your designs noticed - www.artevist.com.

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T-Shirt designs from Artevist - www.artevist.com

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Samantha Thompson Artist

Fashion - The Female Form

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Blond Showgirl 47

The Bathers

fl. Was there a defining moment, a turning point in your life, which resulted in you venturing down this current path? I always painted but never really thought that it was

a day job! So I guess the defining moment was when some friends of mine who own a café in St Kilda (Milk Toast) wanted to put some of my work up. I can’t remember how many I sold, I stopped counting at 25, but the point was made. If I could sell work then I could afford to devote time to art and focus on becoming a professional artist.

fl. Who would you say are your biggest influences, artistically? Without a doubt my Mother. She always had this

wonderful cartoon like style that was always so fun. She taught me that nothing was wrong in art, and as long as I am enjoying it, I shouldn’t care what anyone else thinks. I also learnt a lot from my sister Stephanie in terms of design and creating stories with my work.

fl. Which is your favourite piece and why? Oh that’s hard it’s hard comparing because they are all so different and mean different things at different stages of my life. At the moment, I’m in love with Death is a Red Horse. I had so much fun making it; I had no idea what to do with this massive blank canvas. One night as I was about to go home from my studio, I thought, ‘I’ll 48 //framelines.org

just put in an outline,’ and then the next thing I knew, I’d painted the entire thing. That’s what I love most about being an artist, the moments when everything stops and you are almost pulled around by the energy of getting something right.

fl. In the piece My Reflection, is that actually your reflection? Ha ha. You know I get that a lot and I wish I could say yes, but sadly no. Not physically anyway. I named that piece My Reflection because I think every women looking at it could relate to her sexuality and variability. There is something about her that is longing and content at the same time.

fl. In my (limited) experience, working with pastels has been nothing but fun. Are pastels your favourite medium to use? Definitely one of them, they’re something I will always

go back to. You just can’t get that creamy, iridescent look in any other medium. I also love working directly with my hands, not having to use any tools. That personal contact makes it more real for me.

fl. The theme of male and female sensuality is threaded constantly through your work. Do you find yourself approaching the two genders in different ways when

working on your art? I don’t usually paint men unless they

make good props! Ha, I have always found that I paint to represent myself and I’m a woman so I’m more focused on that.

I have no idea what men think and therefore would feel strange depicting them all the time.

Men are more square and angular, and are less subtle with their intentions and desires. Women tend to be more playful with sexuality rather than so upfront. So in that respect there are more stories that my mind conjures up when dealing with female subjects.

fl. Female sexuality is often a double-edged sword – both celebrated and derided. Do you think about these conflicting attitudes when depicting women? No, not really.

I have never thought that you can’t be beautiful and smart at the same time. I have always been fascinated with strong, smart and opinionated women. The old myths in so many countries are wary of the sexual powers of the female. Many a war and such have been fought over the beautiful and strong. I think it’s something I’m proud of, that sexual energy of being in control.

So no, it’s not a double edge sword to me, being aware of one’s sexuality is something that every woman should feel and in fact celebrate.

fl. I particularly admire the bold style of your work, both the colouring and the lines. Your pieces convey an overwhelming sense of energy and life, with a dash of playfulness. Is this a reflection of yourself? Thank you. I hope so. I have been very blessed in my life but I have also lost people close to me at an early age. Although I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, it did teach me that life is short, so I try to be happy and not sweat the small stuff. I think my work reflects my joy and the goodness and fun in life.

fl. Have you encountered any daunting or discouraging moments during your journey as an artist? How did you handle it? I think that question should be “When

haven’t you encountered any daunting……” Ha it’s not easy being an artist in any universe and almost after every show I

Paper-Bang, Bang, I shot you down

ask myself why I do it. I’ve been really lucky in the terms that I have sold lots of work and can support myself. Most artists are struggling all the time so we need to support them.

fl. What do you like to do when you’re not arm-deep in pastels? Well, I’m a mother and wife so I like to play with

my kids and do home things. I find I can be creative in so many aspects of my life, from helping my son build a Lego plane to making cushion covers. I love travelling and history, planting veggie patches and fast sports cars. I’m studying Textile design at RMIT at the moment so I’m always at the library or doing homework.

fl. Do you have any upcoming shows, exhibitions or other projects that we should look out for? I have had to

slow down this year due to my Uni commitments. I usually work on two solo shows a year, one in Melbourne and one overseas; however I’ve had to just focus on one a year which is still plenty!

I’m currently working on a show that combines my painting with fabric, called No one’s an island. It’s a reflection of how creatively inundated I have felt this year.

I’m also involved in several joint shows and I’m working on a stationary range that’s handmade in Australia called Yum Yum. Best to check out the website for details.

fl. Any advice for young hopefuls wanting to follow your lead? Just do it! Not everyone will be successful in terms of

My Reflection

fancy gallery shows etc, but who cares. That’s not the reason I create and if no one bought anything I would still do it and use them as Christmas presents or something. The act of being creative and working on an art work is so many things to so many people. And if you did want to world-dominate then get a professional-looking website, some business cards and start promoting yourself like a business. No one will ever discover you if your work never leaves your bedroom!

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Philosophy’s asymmetrical unbalance, due to the balancing act of society Felino Soriano

Specified longevity, attached to elongated thought, thought attached to undedicated to medicated minds of self reflection, a rarified species of Homo sapiens, for entrapment within sporadic speech, vernacular, caused by societal surroundings, atmospherical displays of doomed ensuing focuses on firing of forays into reliance on opened windows into preconceived assumptions whose surnames manage intertwining with posited developed antithetical, irrational dimensions of asymmetrical thought.

Movements of philosophy, space intellect with inquiry, interweaving a social conduct correctly diagnosed as erases within mindsets of au courant ideologies whose focus blurs representation of balance atop scaled diversity.

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Womb of shadows Felino Soriano

Shadows gather understanding space interacts with allowed gravitational imagination, positing sketches of graying animated devotion toward monotone concrete, an absence of specialized communication between blossomed butterflies enveloped mid-flight amidst slants of reflectional, spiraled embraces of firing echoes.

Within shadows’ darkness life experiments with existence, analyzes human experiences, realizing darkness only within itself a desire to become existential, solidified through shaping areas of awareness and individual becoming within manifestation.

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ERNEST WILLIAMSON III Poet and Artist

Fashion - The Poet and The Artist

fl. Poetry, abstract art.......are there any other skills you’d like to confess to having? I play piano, compose music,

attend Seton Hall University in pursuit of a PhD in Higher Education Leadership, and I am an adjunct professor of English at two institutions of higher learning. My website www.eyeoftheart.com/ ErnestWilliamsonIII is very informative.

fl. I’m a believer in the idea that creativity rests in a certain part of the brain. Do you feel yourself inspired to write poetry as you’re painting, or vice versa? I write

when I feel the need to do so and I paint when I feel the need to do so. There is no connectivity among my creative activities in terms of inspiration.

fl. Enlighten us a little about the colours or mediums that you are using in your paintings, and what they signify.

I use acrylics, oils, white out, red wine, and ink to create my paintings. Colours signify a range of emotions. Purple, for example, signifies love.

fl. Are you focusing on any big artistic projects right now?

If you are, describe for us how you are going about it. I

paint and write poetry very quickly. However, my book projects and film projects take much longer for me to complete.

My dissertation is my most important project right now as far as I’m concerned.

fl. And lastly, what does your art mean to you? My creative fl. What makes your Muse tick? Emotional journeys, the daily news, natural beauty or hydroelectricity? My muses tend to store experiences and emotions in my unconscious mind.

When the desire to express what is forming in my unconsciousness comes to the forefront, art is made manifest.

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products are my children. They need me and I need them. Art is a part of me and I am a part of it.

African Lovers & African Mask

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The Artist & Subject Part III 54 //framelines.org

A Bird’s Eye View of Man branded by the sun a litter of potential good sustained lying spliced and red bleeding for the sake of bleeding their praise is the unisex of finality burning smelt lifting sulphuric vapours to my nose pinching my putrid breath annulled is the finch in taxonomies foolish separations I’d rather watch the movement of the coffee black meddling with cream revealing my delight and your envy man is a big horn gifted but loud slurs in one hemisphere and compassion in the other

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Lady in Pink 56 //framelines.org

The Garden of Eden of Modern Bureaucracy when the soluble fibre dies and the reigning saints of old fall from their wings with the brunt of corrosive straight line winds mediating with crumpled sheet metal the babbling of Babylon will erect a stint in the hallway of my minutia with crossbow gripped by a confident hand squeezed with stealth and winsome parade I have regained the movement of my legs though unseen to expectancy I walk in lateral leaps over blue waters and red sands only to find my wings frozen in moulded spores stained with flights of lies as I fall from my legs into the monotony of wobbling alone on my belly

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Imagining Things Salvatore Buttaci

Davenport Brown snapped his fingers again because he wasn’t certain what caused the event that had transpired moments before. Maybe it was a figment of his wild imagination. Hadn’t Francine said over and over again, “Husband mine, you spend more time dreaming up ways of turning this world upside down than any man I’ve ever known.”

Yes, it is true, he admitted to himself. I won’t deny it. No, ma’am. No, sir. I take pleasure in imagining things: I like to fill my head with helium fantasies that lift off the mundane ground and float as high as the heavens.

“I’m talking to you, Davenport. Are you daydreaming again?” asked Francine, knowing fully well he hadn’t heard a single word, lost as he was in the workshop of his mind, stoking the flames of fabrication, delighting in giving every man, woman, and child a set of shiny wings and a golden bright harp so they could all fly and strum that harp here and now and not have to wait for the hereafter. Or he was envisioning a world without war or hunger or he pictured elephants that were really pink and tiny grown grey and enormous when some fool forgot his imbibing limits and drank himself to delirium.

And just a moment ago, sitting there on the front porch, where he had come to spend more and more of his after-work hours, he had seen it with his own eyes. It was not his wild imagination. It was not a scene in his rip-roaring head; it was outside his head, real as real could be, right there in his front yard. Only a moment before it had appeared, Davenport was pretending if he snapped his fingers, something incredible would come to pass.

If I snap my fingers, he told himself, perhaps I can suddenly stop being Davenport Brown, henpecked husband of Francine Brown, neglected father of the Brown offspring William and Mary who long since had sprung the coop for parts unknown. I could be a grand magician, snap my fingers and exchange this worthless spirit of mine for the spirit of Merlin. I could change the world or at least lose myself in it and be free of nagging Francine once and for all.

He had thought all this as he rocked in his wicker chair on his front porch while the early evening sun descended like an orange circus ball balancing on the nose of a honking seal. Like years and years of too many evenings, he watched day closing again, but this time he had snapped his finger Merlin-style and on the lawn mowed impeccably at the behest of Queen Francine, he saw the giant Frisbee hover soundlessly.

I was staring up at the clouds, wasn’t I? he asked himself, so why is it I did not see it coming? Why is it that I snapped my fingers and there in front of my eyes suddenly there-“Davenport, are you still out there?” boomed the voice of Francine from somewhere in their cottage.

“Come help me do the dishes, sweep the floor, take out the rubbish. Don’t make me lose my temper, husband mine!” But Davenport barely heard her. For once that sandpaper voice was not grating on his nerves; for once he was not gritting his remaining ten or eleven teeth. Her ranting like the background strains of traffic and crowd chatter kept its distance while Davenport stared at the spinning Frisbee suspended effortlessly a few feet above his lawn.

So he snapped his fingers again, squeezed his eyes shut except for a thin line of eyeball squinting out at what would develop. He saw nothing out there now. Fluttering his eyes open wide, he saw only that it was growing darker, the fizzled sun a pinhole on the horizon. But the Frisbee was gone! Nothing on the grass below where it had hovered indicated any sign it had been there at all. It was the same healthy, well-kept green as ever. No circle of cindered ground where the Frisbee’s circular exhaust shot hot flame legs down its perimeter.

“Davenport Brown, you are trying my patience!” screamed wild witch Francine. “You are begging for a taste of this fist of mine and be sure of it, I will plant in your mouth and take the rest of those pieces of cheap chalk you call teeth, and then I’ll start on both your legs!”

Davenport was not a man of science. He preferred magic, but he conceded that if one is to give credence to a phenomenon, he is bound to subject that phenomenon to empirical testing.

He had snapped his fingers and in a flash the Frisbee came. At first he had suspected a long-shot 58 //framelines.org

coincidence between his snapping and the appearance of the spacecraft. So he had snapped his fingers a second time and that same spacecraft had just as suddenly disappeared. He needed more proof. Two snaps would not a reality make, he thought to himself. Let’s go for three, he decided. So again he closed his eyes, raised his arm high towards the porch ceiling, ignored that crazy woman he had foolishly married too many years ago, and Davenport snapped his fingers a third time.

When he opened his eyes, he was not very surprised to see before him the return of that galactic Frisbee, that visiting circle from out of space, again shooting flames into his lawn as it hovered above the ground. Had he wished it here? When he first snapped his fingers, what in the world had he wished?

“Oh, yes! Oh, yes!” he said aloud. “I had asked for a sign. Something to say how these imaginations could take lives of their own, how all these things I’ve built in my mind be set into motion.” And he realized now the sign he had wished for had been granted by whatever genie had managed to break through its prison bottle.

He had snapped his fingers and as far away as beings from outer space had materialized from light years away in a fraction of a second, in the space of time it takes to snap two fingers. And just as instantaneously he had snapped those travellers back to where they had come from.

Inside the house it didn’t bother Davenport that Bad News Francine was banging chairs and smashing dishes and cursing like a soldier and sandpapering very threatening words at him in absentia, enumerating a litany of all the bone-crushing, teeth-breaking, eye-blackening promises she would soon be carrying out. It didn’t bother Davenport that Queen Francine could spit and cuss until her throat rasped to stone or that she had torturous plans for his frail old body or that she outweighed him, outsmarted him all these years or that she was at the end of her rope as she was now screaming. “I’m at the end of my rope, Husband mine. If you don’t get your skinny butt into this house by the time I count to three, I’m gonna have to bury you under the porch tonight!”

This time when he snapped his fingers he knew the little ones inside that little vehicle would not be out there.

It was only a sign. It was enough to convince him he held a potent magic in those hands of his. He clasped them and softly let the five fingers of one hand touch the five fingers of the other in a pose of near prayer.

The spirit of Merlin he could feel himself inhaling: a wind of fury and power osmosing into the core of himself as he had for so many years dreamed and hoped and prayed it could come true.

First he wished the moon be full, snapped his fingers, and up there in the black sky a half moon tore the cloak from itself and sat up there in its fullness--golden as the sun. Next Davenport touched his shoulders to memorize how frail they were, how they curved concavely like the old man he was. Then he said goodbye to the old shell he had dragged along for years, the old shell he had tried unsuccessfully to hide inside like frightened turtles hide within theirs.

He said a wish. He snapped his fingers. He wished a mirror the full length of him lit before him so that he could admire the body he now carried straight as the gate around their cottage, snapped his fingers again, and behold-- a mirror! Davenport allowed his eyes to feast on the young man before him. It was so incredible he had to turn his head left and then right to see if the young 20-year-old man in the mirror followed suit. They were one and the same!

He would have to attend to Francine. All at once he felt sorry for her. The old hag, the beast who once long ago had been his beauty. Francine who had beaten him into a docile, frightened fool. Francine who had been the impetus for his imaginings. In a way he knew had she been otherwise perhaps he would never have come to this day of true wishes. He pitied her now as she had constantly made it known how much she pitied him.

“Who the hell are you?” she said when the young Davenport Brown walked straight back into the living room.

He did not reply, nor did he mind the shambles she had made on the rug of his favorite ceramic pieces saved from boyhood. They did not matter anymore. “My husband is in the other room so don’t try any monkey business, “ she warned without conviction. Her sandpaper voice was a thick sheet without gravel, almost a whisper. He looked at her and smiled. There were at least fifty wishes he could make to repay Francine and not regret one.

But Davenport did not believe in revenge. Life was too short for that. Then he remembered his new-found magic and realized life for him would never be short again, and still he would not wish Francine any harm.

Without a word he turned his back on the woman-- a fantasy he had imagined all these years at least ten times a day-- and walked out of the cottage and down the front porch steps.

When he reached the grass, he could hear behind him that crazy woman calling “Davenport, Davenport!” in the sweetest voice he had ever heard her speak. But her old husband would not respond and his old wife would never break his bones or spirit again.

Davenport Brown looked up at the moon, made a wish, snapped his fingers and sprouted wings whiter than Francine’s face behind him. Her hysterical screaming hushed the night sound of crickets and cicadas, but Davenport heard little of it. He had unfurled those giant wings and after all those caged years finally taken flight.

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Noha Khalaf Jeweller

Fashion - Jewellery Design

fl. What inspired you to make jewellery? When did you first begin? I first started making jewellery about 10 years

ago. I was studying Architecture at the time, which is a pretty full on course and I needed a hobby that allowed me to relax and stop thinking. I started with beading, making very simple necklaces and earrings, and then over time the things I made became more complex and involved, but I was still only working in beads. I’d never really considered goldsmithing as a career until 2004 when I completed a visual arts course at CAE over my uni summer holiday. One of the units I took was ‘3d design’, and it introduced me to working with metal. I couldn’t get enough of it, all of a sudden there was this whole new world of possibility open to me and all I wanted to do was make things!

fl. Metalwork is not an activity that can be done without the use of certain tools. What are these tools, and where did you learn to use them? I was first introduced to the two

most important things a jeweller needs at CAE. They are a torch and a flexi-drive. The torches we use are basically mini welding torches using either propane or natural gas and oxygen for fuel.

A flexi-drive is a lot like a dentist drill. It’s used for all the drill bits and burrs and wheels which we need.

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fl. The toy piece is an example of your work that crosses into the realm of sculpture. Do you have any plans to create more sculptures in the future? I think that the line

between jewellery and small sculpture is very blurred, so I tend to look at all the pieces I create as sculptures in their own right. In the case of the toy piece, I was interested in exploring movement and the idea of an object which exists mainly in negative space, rather than being solid. These two themes really intrigue me and I will definitely be exploring them further, whether it be in the form of ‘sculpture’ or ‘jewellery’.

fl. How much time do you devote to your art per week, and what are you currently working on? If I had to quantify the amount of time I spend on my art formally I would say it’s about 20 hours a week, but the reality is I spend almost all my time thinking and coming up with new ideas! I can’t really help it, everything I see turns into an item of jewellery in my head. I’ve got a little visual diary which I carry around with me everywhere I go, and it’s full of scribbled notes and half formed ideas and sketches.

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At the moment I’m working on something for a competition I plan on entering in November. It’s made up of a few separate pieces which connect to make a whole… but I won’t give too much away now!

fl. There is an organic element in your work, especially in the brooch and the ring. Do you find yourself inspired by nature in your work? I guess in a roundabout way I am

somewhat inspired by nature, but it’s not ‘nature’ in the sense of trees and flowers and that sort of thing, it’s more the ideas and concepts in the natural world. The brooch is about movement and change, all the sticks swivel around independently so the wearer can adapt it to what suits them. As for the ring, the idea behind that was to create a transient and personal object. It is delicate and will inevitably ‘mould’ itself to suit the wearer’s finger and movements, but because of its readiness to do this, it will eventually expire.

fl. Take us through the process of creating a piece of wearable art such as these. I tend to work in themes and 62 //framelines.org

ideas first, rather than actual objects or drawings. I don’t have to choose what I’m going to explore either, usually it hits me like a slap in the face and I can’t stop seeing it everywhere I go. After the concept is nutted out, I will have arrived at a vague idea of the physical form for what I plan on making, and then it’s a matter of refining this so it works visually and functionally. I make as many mock ups as I need to get it right before I move into working with metal - it’s easier to get things wrong and change them in cardboard, which is a lot cheaper than silver or gold!

fl. Finally, what would be your ideal metal to work with?

Ask anyone who’s worked with metal and they will answer straight away: gold. It is one of the most forgiving and malleable metals you can work with, while at the same time being strong and tarnish resistant. The only problem with gold is that it’s pretty expensive, especially at the moment. I think it’s the most expensive it’s ever been, so I’m sticking to silver for now.

Noahs work will be in the NMIT Jewellery graduate exhibition ‘Profile’, which is on at the Northcote Town Hall from November 12-14, Melbourne Australia.

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Frédéric Nérinckx

Illustrator - Artist

Fashion - the Mythical I am Beauty. I am so far away from the thin top models you worship. A long time ago, I was a goddess. Unlike pin-ups nowadays, I meant life and love. When fashion, life and love are one again, I’ll be the beauty, the goddess I’ve never stopped being

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Fantasy. Everything is fantasy. The houses where we live, the clothes we have and the jewellery we wear. Fashion is the moving part of ourselves. If everything is movement, this must lead us somewhere. Maybe to the purest part of us.

The white swan. Remaining when we’re naked.

(opposite page)

’Something is medieval in me. But am I as ancient as I seem to be ? Male clothes…with female jewellery. Wouldn’t I be some woman from the twenty first century ? I would never wear this if I actually lived in the Middle age. Fashion is the daughter of times. Fashion is Past and Future’s son’.

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Medieval shoes, a watch from the XIXth, a patch-work vest, a bandana from the XXth and a face tattoo from the XXIInd, I am what Fashion is: eternal and short-lived.

(opposite page)

Lots of people believe that the Moon is a Lady. Some however say it is a Lord. A man galloping across the night, with the baby he cares for. Moon changes its face each day, just as Fashion does. But it remains the Moon.

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What We See

#6 // Fashion the front line Fashion is part of our culture - part of consumer culture, part of social culture, and part of the culture of the arts. But how does fashion reach us and how do we relate to fashion in the everyday? As a community of voyeurs, we like to watch what goes on beyond the immediate streetscape. We like to peer through the window at the scene that is unfolding beyond. We window shop.

On the other side of the glass is a place of desire. It is a world stopped still, like a single frame from a film, or a frozen scene from a play. The window display presents an enticing drama. The characters in these street theatres that we innocently observe are the mannequins. Through this ardent display we are brought face to face with the frontline of fashion.

We have created a plastic representation of the human form to passively display the fashion of the moment. But through placing these inanimate objects in a frozen theatre, we give the mannequin license to add its own sense of character to the scene. The body language of the mannequin is designed to simulate the expressive language of society. The supposedly passive, has become imbued with a sense of personality; a sexiness; a depth of emotion. It is the mannequin who is the star of the show. It is the mannequin who has become the face of fashion. - Nick Kind

with Nick Kind

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Global Graffiti Travel with Jeremy Thomas

Business is BOOMing: The Fashion Behind the Fun.

Boom Festival is an event that only comes once every two years. For one week in August, the countryside near Idanha-a-Nova, Portugal - normally the realm of cattle and cork oak – is transformed into a wonderland of colour, music, culture and psychedelia. And from all corners of the globe float the freaks, the fairies and the forest-folk; the trippers, the ravers and the randoms.

Two stages of electronic music and others of ambient and natural rhythms play day and night, and Boomers can select from a huge variety of food, from Portuguese picanhas to solar-powered vegan fare, from Brazilian açai to pallet-loads of beer and energy drinks. Boom is also a haven for psychedelic art, visuals, performance and a huge marketplace for clothes, jewellery and accessories from all over the world, many of them hand-made. The atmosphere is one of inspiration, perspiration, intoxication and conversation, in every language under the summer sun.

On the following pages, you may discover the wild designs, outfits and art that characterise outdoor festivals such as Boom. Enjoy also, a unique pictorial interview with Melbourne designer Sarah Seahorsie, made on a grassy slope on a sunny Thursday afternoon between dancing and drinking and dancing again.

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fl: I’m really excited about this interview, I mean, we’ve known each other for years and never spoken professionally, how’s business going at the festival?

This is the best stall I’ve ever had!

feeling that I can create much more interesting things to wear and express myself… I think of my clothing as wearable art, as it is a mixture of clothing, wearable art and costume. I’ve just come from Barcelona, where I fell in love with Gaudi’s work. I was amazed; I wanted to cry.

I pause for a second and survey the scene: Sarah is sitting cross-legged underneath a tree on a psychedelic patchwork quilt amongst small piles of clothing and assorted trippy nick-knacks. Not actually seeing a stall, I check to see if it crept up from behind while I was distracted.

Yeah, I was set up down the hill but they shut me down - the organisers didn’t want so many pirate shops in the gardens - so I moved up here! I’ve only got a couple of pieces left now.

Main Dancefloor

fl. You bounced onto the Melbourne scene several years ago, tell me about your story so far. I finished High School

at 17, and moved to Melbourne with a backpack to study Textile Design at RMIT. I didn’t like it, so I travelled for a bit and then found my calling with the Costume for Performance course at Swinburne TAFE. Now I’m on the overseas freak-out - where you have time and space and new inspirations to really find yourself and get focused.

fl. I’ve seen you in various shows in Australia - at the High Street Festival and of course at Rainbow Serpent amongst other outdoor events. How did you initially get into clothing design? Um...... Well, I could rant for ages! I began sewing as a kid. At one time I said to Mum, “I’m bored,” and I was given the sewing machine to play with. I’ve always been into creative stuff. Since I can remember, I’ve never been interested in current fashions, as I have always had the

Spanish designer Pinka Servillana

fl. I can’t stop looking at the quilt here in front of me, so many different patterns and textures. What materials are your favourites to work with? I’ve been collecting fabric since

I was a kid. The patchwork quilt was made from all the scraps.

One bit here was from a dress that my granny made for my mum in the 70’s. There’s fabric also from India, New Zealand, all over Australia - everywhere I travel I collect textiles and fabrics.

They all tell such a strong story, and have so many memories...

I find myself getting lost inside a little segment of green spirals on the quilt in front of me. When I waft back into reality, Sarah points out a wedge of tie-die swirls nearby.

Another thirty seconds or so drift away.

Right now, I’m working with all my collected stuff, things from the last eight years. I’ve got two suitcases full of scraps, and I want to start using them! I love working with silk and felt, and making patterns with the sewing machine.

fl. So, from where do you draw your utterly boundless inspiration from? Hmmm, fractals, seahorses, lizards, the

ocean and all its crazy spirits and manifestations; Gaudi, Ernest Haeckel, Tom Robbins - Jitterbug Perfume is my favourite book of all time! But I think most of from Mother Nature, natural design and especially the colours of nature... colour, colour, colour!

fl. Finally, just for the complete randomness, are you hell-bent on global domination? No, but I dream of a world

where Rainbow Pirates rock the Casbah and I travel in a purple and turquoise spotted bus with studio, home and costume shop bringing psychedelic colour and flamboyance to everyone.

The Bondage Zebras of Montreal

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Literature

Review with Lorraine Berry

An Interview with David Rabe , Author ‘Dinosaurs on the Roof’ I took DINOSAURS ON THE ROOF with me to a remote location in the mountains. Cut off from phone, internet, and contact with the world of humans, I read Mr. Rabe’s book in the late afternoons, after hiking and exploring and making contact with the wilderness.

Undoubtedly, Janet and Bernice are not easy characters to love: absolutely chockfull of flaws, both of them are ornery, self-centered, and slow to forgive. Yet there wasn’t a false note about them; they reminded me of people I knew, or have known, and so, I chose to hang out with them while they both made their way toward the epiphanies they sought: Bernice chasing the rapture of the Last Days, with Janet chasing human feeling while constantly numbing herself out with Jack Daniels.

It would be giving too much away to tell you which one of them finds a more true redemption, but I will say that there is much to admire in this book. Rabe is a playwright, and his gift for dialogue shines in this book. Much of the plot is moved forward by the conversations between characters, which is a remarkable feat in this day and age when we tend to admire the literary pyrotechnics of characters moving forward through metaphor and symbolism to get to their truths.

Here, human truths are hashed out in human ways: by talking through them--not always pleasantly. I found myself feeling like an eavesdropper, listening to two old women argue over the righteousness of their pastor, or Janet pleading for what she needs from people to whom she’s willing to really give nothing.

Mr. Rabe is a keen observer of the human condition, and this is not a book for those who seek immediate gratification. Given that so much of this book is about the quest for that kind of immediate gratification, Mr. Rabe has crafted a book whose form follows its message.

fl: What prompted the writing of DINOSAURS ON THE ROOF? Some years ago, a friend who lives in Dubuque, Iowa

where I grew up, told me a story that was pretty much the first event of the book. An elderly woman approached her and asked if she would promise to take care of the woman’s pets—some dogs and cats—starting the next morning. When my friend asked why this might be necessary, she was told that the woman was going to be taken off in the Rapture that night, and she was worried about what would happen to her dogs and cats after she was gone. The story stuck in my head the way some do. I kept thinking about the fact that the old woman believed she was about to fly off with Jesus, and yet her love for her animals compelled her to worry about them and no doubt feel loss and regret. What did her concern about her pets say about our lives?

There was an irony, certainly, but I wasn’t clear on it. I tried to write a short story about it, but that didn’t work out. And then I had an idea for a different approach to the material, though still as a story but the characters of Bernice and Hazel started to develop in unexpected way. I think I felt I was tapping into some memories and feelings that I didn’t know I had. I’d grown up in the Midwest but had lived away for almost fifty years. I felt I was in the presence of something I didn’t even know I knew-my mom and her friends (not that Bernice is my mom, or Hazel though there must be an influence) an absorption of people who I thought I had left behind in the Midwest. As the book developed and I could not get them to shut up or get to the church, I was surprised, but also excited. I felt they were so alive and funny and touching that I had to stay with them and let them be.

fl: In many ways, I found this book to be about how people search for redemption in American culture. I’m not so

sure American culture offers redemption. It pretty much gobbles people up and spits out what’s left. There’s a lot of talk about redemption, but what is it really in a cultural sense, what would it consist of? It’s a concept at core that is religious and a sacrifice.

My mind doesn’t go to your question easily, I guess, though I can see what you mean, if I place Bernice’s church somehow as a cultural offering, and Janet’s tangled pursuits as prompted and stimulated by cultural slogans and icons regarding satisfaction, regarding love, a solution in drugs. She is searching for something that probably doesn’t reside anywhere on the path she is following.

And so she settles for the self-induced oblivion which is one of the alternatives the culture aggressively promotes. Self medication would be the more standard description. It’s been suggested that the book attempts to render two lives lived in isolation, but that makes no sense to me. Bernice is hardly isolated with her friends, pets, her Hazel, her church, unless having an interior to which only she is privy makes her isolated. Don’t think so. To me, if such a succinct description needs to be offered, it’s about a life lived, and a life refused. Bernice dives into the fray, has dived into it, while Janet just cannot do it, though she desperately wants to, tries to.

fl: Were you surprised by how that quest works out for your two characters, Bernice and Janet? I’m not so sure American

culture offers redemption. It pretty much gobbles people up and spits out what’s left. There’s a lot of talk about redemption, but what is it really in a cultural sense, what would it consist of? It’s a concept at core that is religious and a sacrifice. My mind doesn’t go to your question easily, I guess, though I can see what you mean, if I place Bernice’s church somehow as a cultural offering, and Janet’s tangled pursuits as prompted and stimulated by

cultural slogans and icons regarding satisfaction, regarding love, a solution in drugs. She is searching for something that probably doesn’t reside anywhere on the path she is following.

And so she settles for the self-induced oblivion which is one of the alternatives the culture aggressively promotes. Self medication would be the more standard description. It’s been suggested that the book attempts to render two lives lived in isolation, but that makes no sense to me. Bernice is hardly isolated with her friends, pets, her Hazel, her church, unless having an interior to which only she is privy makes her isolated. Don’t think so. To me, if such a succinct description needs to be offered, it’s about a life lived, and a life refused. Bernice dives into the fray, has dived into it, while Janet just cannot do it, though she desperately wants to, tries to.

fl: Do you think your readers will identify with their struggles? I could not imagine otherwise. fl: What led you to focus on the feminine voice in this novel? It just occurred. I don’t doubt that it has something to

do with where I am in my life—my age, what has and hasn’t happened. What I’m attempting to understand unconsciously perhaps whether I know it or not. This has happened before with my play IN THE BOOM BOOM ROOM, and a film adaptation, I’M DANCING AS FAST AS I CAN. In both cases the main characters were women, the point of view was theirs. Recently, when thinking about this issue, I asked myself what would have happened if, when I was about to write Hurlyburly in the early 80s, someone had come to me and said, “Stop. Here’s a pile of money to go write a novel about these women—two old, one young.”

Well, the answer would have been, “Are you nuts?” Because I couldn’t have done it. It would not have been conceivable. Just as I would have had to pass if, as I set to work on DINOSARURS, the same deal had been offered for me to write about these divorced guys chasing around in Hollywood. This is a way of saying that the choice was dictated to me in both cases by my own psyche and the issues it was involved with at that time.

fl: Can you take us through your creative process? How do you write? What moves you to write? I have a thought,

fl: You are famous as a playwright, and your command of dialogue in DINOSAURS is superb-it moves the plot along where other novelists might resort to exposition. Did you build the novel around the dialogue, or was the process different from writing a play? I feel the dialogue in a play

is very different from that of a novel. Dramatic dialogue has tasks to fulfill every step of the way that the dialogue in a novel is freer to be lifelike, less regulated and so free to be associative and like the form itself, narrative rather than dramatic. As the story evolved, it seemed that an aspect of the narrative logic was that Bernice, and Hazel, were “on death row,” in a kind of prison movie as Bernice notes to herself in the night. Knowing her earthly life is about to end prompts her to cling to her life through memory and interior review, and then through talk with Hazel the following day—as they both, determinedly go over what has mattered to them—to recapitulate and reconsider it all before they disappear, either in the Rapture or their imminent deaths. I tried through their exchanges to bring to the surface key questions and events in their lives, while letting them be, or at least appear to be meandering and associative and deeply personal, at the same time that they gradually depict not only their histories but also the era that will be lost with them. The reason I placed the book carefully in 1997 was so that Bernice could have the memories she has, that my mother might have had, and Bernice would only be 70 years old, not too old to handle the events the story puts her through.

fl: Did you like your characters? Deeply. I was astonished by

the fact that they let me know so much about them, and that they would share, share, share. They were the best, the most illuminating and intimate. Talk about invisible friends. I spent a large amount of time alone, except for my dogs, as I wrote the book. And Janet and Bernice were almost real companions. It was strange, but they had a presence.

story, impulse—and start. It’s never very detailed; I never outline, or try to get too far ahead. I move forward hoping to have a sense of what’s coming next as I go day by day. And I’m often surprised. For example, in this book, when Janet went into the hardware store in pursuit of her mysterious errand and then met eyes with the young man, Robbie, in the aisle, sharing with him an erotic glance, I—like Janet—didn’t know that he would turn out in the next pages to be someone she taught when she was an elementary teacher and he was in the 4th grade. There were many examples of this as the book developed day by day. I knew a little more. When I was about halfway, or maybe three quarters of the way through, I knew where each character would end up, the final image for each. Only when I finished, did I see the shape as a whole and then begin to face what was the book’s l biggest gamble, which was the way I’d used the hook of the imminent Rapture and the hook of Janet’s suicide dream along with her sense of errand requiring her to purchase duct tape and garden hose, though she couldn’t recall who she was running the errand for. Because of the dream the reader would that the errand was hers, but she wouldn’t. Anyway, once I set those two hooks with their narrative pull, the gamble lay in the novel’s need to go off on what would appear to be unrelated tangents involving Hazel and Bernice, the pets, old friends, and memories on top of memories both internal and spoken. Janet, too, thinks her day will lead to any number of destinations, other than the one we know about. In the first draft, I just went with what felt alive and vital. Bernice and Hazel were so strong. But when I was finished with a draft and started reconsidering, and reworking I tried to focus the scenes more, and trimmed them and was aware of the risk, as I had not been in the first draft. But by then, as I rewrote, I had the endings and knew that finally they were both going to be thrust back into their lives, and so their lives had to be there. I knew that what had seemed tangents early were in fact the real subject, which was their lives. I understood that I could not let the demands of the apparent plot—the Rapture and possible suicide—intimidate and dwarf the actual subject or I would have nothing upon which to support the ending. If I did not run the risk of letting the front end seem disproportionate, then when I got to the ending there would be nothing substantial waiting to bring resonance when Bernice arrived at those last sentences. The melodrama of the possible rapture, the possible mad minister, as in Jim Jones and Heaven’s Gate, could have easily taken over and drowned out the ordinary human possibilities. As reworked, I was much more conscious of the way the narrative wanted to proceed, which was not logical and

willed, but via associations and accidents which the characters might seize upon and claim as their own. So there had to be a certain repetitiveness. Since many years ago, when certain events transpired in my own life, I have been preoccupied by the way unconscious material can entangle us, then pounce and overtake us. I think that effort may be partly why scenes go on the way they do, past what might seem proportionate. The over all architecture of the book, which I only recognized after I had a draft, dictated that what appears to be tangents in the first half of the book carried the weight of meaning, revealing itself as the real subject--which is their lives, as they have lived them, which I hoped would be sort of sanctified, a sense of immanence sanctifying the ordinary due to the Rapture being near, angels on the horizon.

fl: Both the songs “Angel” and “Whiter Shade of Pale” play significant roles in the novel. Why those two songs? Mainly they’re songs I like. Both appeal to me, embodying as they do,

longing and confusion. Since the advent of I-TUNES, I have this kind of “hobby” which consists of looking up a song I am fond of and then buying a dozen or more versions of that song. I’d done that with Whiter Shade of Pale. Had the original, a karaoke version, some jazz, a couple pianos, a saxophone rendition, then various singers. Maybe nineteen in all. I would play it as I worked, feeling the mood of the book was compatible with it, and then one day it occurred to me to make use of it in the book, as a song the minister adapts to his own purposes, writing his own lyrics and using it to celebrate the specialness of the day. Again, Angel is a song I’m fond of, though for no particular reason other than its own qualities. It seemed the kind of music Janet would care for and so it worked its way into the book and her mind at a crucial moment. A couple other songs used in the novel got there because of my hobby—some of those classics—like That Old Feeling of which I had a CD with many versions.

The Monster of Florence: A True Story by Douglas Preston with Mario Spezi. (Grand Central Publishing: 2008) The Tuscan hills are verdant; at certain times of the year they’re covered with poppies, which just seem to accentuate the beauty of the stone towers of the many hill towns that mark the countryside.

Narrow roads connect the towns, and it is not difficult to imagine that at night, pulling off to find a quiet, secluded place for love-making would be easy—and enticing.

In the early 1980’s, however, those lovers’ lanes became nightmares. Someone was stalking and killing young couples in their cars; the killer’s modus operandi was especially gruesome with his female victims, as he often took souvenirs of their body parts.

Douglas Preston, an American writer, moved with his family to Tuscany in the midst of the killing spree, and he soon became involved in writing about what was shattering the peace of the hills outside Florence. He made the acquaintance of Mario Spezi, a journalist for La Nazione, and the two of them began covering the case, dogging the police investigation, and uncovering evidence on their own.

Perhaps not surprisingly to those of us who have watched one-too-many of these crime docu-dramas on television, at one point, the two journalists, who seemed to know more about the case than the police, become suspects themselves.

Preston has written a compelling tale of madness in the colline. The tale has plenty of twists, and bizarre turns, and at times, Preston overplays stereotypes of Italian corruption. But for those who are fascinated by what may have inspired Thomas Harris to invent the character of Hannibal Lecter, The Monster of Florence is a must read (as long as the lights are on.)

Fall of Frost by Brian Hall (Viking: 2008) “Tis a fearful thing to love what death can touch”.

In Brian Hall’s lovely Fall of Frost, Robert Frost wanders his last days on a fool’s errand to convince Kruschev not to provoke JFK and the United States into a war. It is where the book begins, in the USSR, near the end of Frost’s life. The structure of the novel, however, is as if one is immersed in Frost’s thoughts, so that one moment we are with him in his childhood, the next, witnessing he and his wife Elinor’s grief as they bury their first child. Robert Frost was to outlive four of his six children, and that spectral sadness haunts each page, although the entire narrative is told out of order, and in bits and pieces that are almost stand-alone prose poems.

Frost had a reputation for being a difficult man—certainly there have been enough biographies to document that fact. Hall has not replicated these biographies, but has instead written a novel that, drawing from Frost’s poems, letters, his children’s journals, photographs, and from walking the New England countryside in Frost’s footsteps, creates an intimate portrait a 20th century icon.

Hall shows a great tenderness toward his subject/character, even as he never seeks to hide Frost’s enormous faults of character. Whether you think you know Robert Frost well, or only know a few lines of “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening,” Hall’s unique approach to Frost has revivified him for a 21st century audience.

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FANON by John Edgar Wideman, (Houghton Mifflin Books: 2008) “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

(William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun)

This review is tainted. I think it would be fair to say that I have lost critical objectivity in reading Fanon: it’s such a damn fine read, such a tremendously eloquent angry howl that I was rocked backwards, and could only shake my head at the gorgeousness of the prose and the cleverness of the plot.

Hardly the beginning of a dry review, but I believe this book deserves more than that.

Ostensibly, the book is a biographical novel about Frantz Fanon, the mixed-race French psychiatrist-cum-revolutionary, whose two most famous books: Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth, made Fanon, in the eyes of much of the world, the leading intellectual writing about colonialism’s pernicious, crippling effects on the colonized. Fanon died an early death: he was 36 when he succumbed to leukaemia in an American hospital.

I read The Wretched of the Earth as an undergraduate and remember being inspired by its articulation of the horrors of colonialism. When I picked up Fanon, I expected to learn more about the story of a life that had brought Fanon to that place whence the book emerged.

Instead, what I found was a quasi-memoir of Wideman, a collective biography of African-American males in American society. Not surprising really: African-American males were colonial subjects—enslaved to white colonial masters until the end of the American Civil War in 1865. Lynched in high numbers throughout the Jim Crow South (and parts of the North), denied proper voting rights until the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and still, to this day, subjects in a culture that sees them as potential thugs, a country in which black men are incarcerated at eight times the rate of white men, and “there are four times as many African American men in California prisons as in its university system.” (http://www.cjcj.org/pubs/one_million/onemillion.html) Wideman writes that he began the Fanon project years ago, but put it aside. Then, having moved to France and married a French woman, he took the project back up again, at times envisioning it as a letter written to Fanon’s ghost: The plague of race continues to blight people’s lives, becoming more virulent as it mutates and spreads over the globe. When I ask myself if your example made any difference, Fanon, ask if your words and deeds alleviate one iota the present catastrophe of hate, murder, theft, and greed, where else should I start looking besides the mirror? Where should I search if not in faces of people I love? Will I find an answer in your eyes, behind me in the mirror, gazing into the face I see seeing yours?

(My Fanon Project, Harper’s, January 2008 http://www.harpers. org/archive/2008/01/page/0019 Certain elements of Wideman’s own story show up in the book, and they’re obvious to those who are familiar with his previously written about experiences of own family members who have been incarcerated.

In a paragraph that creates a vise, squeezing hard facts together so that they are held steady before your eyes, he writes: How many black men in America’s prisons. How many angels fit on the head of a pin. I once kept track of the number of

prisoners—black, white, brown, male, female. Now I’ve lost count. Lots. Lots too many of us serving sentences lots too long, especially when one of the prisoners is your brother beside you, year after year, in the visiting room of the same facility where he’s been locked up over a quarter century and counting, a count adding years, subtracting years, depending on where you start, how you figure what he owes the state, what the state owes him, time remaining, good time, suspended time, double time, you could get caught up in numbers, in reckoning, how many angels can dance on a pinhead, how many black men in prison for how long, you could get confused by numbers, staggeringly large numbers, outraged by dire probabilities and obvious disproportions. Ugly masses of brute statistics impossible to make sense of, but some days a single possibility’s enough to overwhelm me—how likely, how easy, after all it would be to be my brother…This scene I’m writing could be my brother visiting me, the two of us side by side just as we sit today, myself, my brother, one declared guilty, one declared innocent, variables in an invariant formula but me in his place, him in mine, our fates switched, each of us nailed in our separate compartment of this hardass bench. (pg. 50) These questions: of race and gender and oppression never go away in the United States, founded upon the original sin of slavery. This year, however, they seem to have breached the surface as we collectively contemplate electing a black man (a black man with a white mother: why is he not white?). The pundits sit around their authoritative tables at night, speaking into our living rooms their veiled and not-so-veiled racisms. Not all; there are a limited few of the white writers and television talking heads who get it, truly get it, but it is cringe-inducing, nay, rageinducing to hear them night after night, talking about Obama’s lack of anger in his campaign—despite the slings and arrows of outrageous, dangerous talk directed at him—and refusing to acknowledge that the moment that Obama becomes the “angry, black man” he becomes unelectable.

Ultimately, Fanon is Wideman’s speaking truth to power, a parallel text to The Wretched of the Earth, but told on a smaller scale—in the run-down neighbourhood in Pittsburgh where his mother lives, in the small room where he meets with his incarcerated brother, in the house where he lives with his French wife. Wideman claims that he does not have many more books left in him; he’s only 65, and yet he puts out there that he doesn’t think he will write much longer. A shame, because he has so much truth to tell.

But as he writes: The urgency, compression, conviction, and force preserved in certain sections of The Wretched of the Earth remind me of Martin Luther King’s “Been to the mountaintop” speech, which was delivered as Fanon delivered his book, just before dying.

My point here is that when death is imminent, whether a person stands at a a podium in the Mason Temple in Memphis or lies terminally ill in bed or waits at the bottom of a trench to be shot, any place will do as actual location or metaphor to snap truth into focus with resounding clarity. Being there, bearing witness as the end approaches grants unimpeachable authority, a final truth, truth lost as it’s found and perhaps that’s why such witnessing convinces when it is eloquently reported—convinces and also overwhelms. Another’s life shaped into words—Fanon’s book, King’s speech—how much of it can anyone else really use. Its truth belongs to the witness. Darkness abides. The witness’s words are evidence of a known world closing down, its light, however bright bright or small, piercing or shallow, swallowed by the unknown. Fanon’s words, King’s words reveal a glimmer of troth earned by them, experienced by them, their lives large, their witness compelling because they struggled to know though the unknown, though the unknown shrinks not one iota.

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Sounds of the street Music with Laura

mcNeice

Sounds of the Street:

A Buskers Compilation features 11 of Melbourne’s finest buskers ranging from roots, blues & folk to flamenco, funk & dub.

Sounds of the Street is the first ever compilation where a bunch of musicians have come together to showcase the unique art of busking.

This is an independent release, so get behind these guys and get your hands on a copy!

Tom Richardson

Old blues grows new roots... Meet Tom Richardson, hailing from Victoria’s southwest coast. His infectious personality and onstage presence combine with furious, bluesy slide guitar, powerful deep voice and foot stomping rhythms, resulting in a new brand of blues and roots. Since winning the 2004 and 2005 Australian Busking Championships and more recently the 2007 Apollo Bay Music Festival Young Performer of the Year, Tom has performed at folk and blues festivals country-wide.

Tom has also shared the stage with artists such as Carus and the True Believers, Bomba, Rob Sawyer Band, Dallas Frasca and her Gentlemen, Liz Stringer, Dale Willis and The Little Stevies. www.myspace.com/tomrichardsonmusic

Rapskallion

Harvesting the many musical delights of Melbourne’s multicultural scene, Rapskallion present a smorgasbord of Vaudevillian Variety, which never ceases to amaze, delight and evoke raucous dancing! From the streets of Galway to the alley ways of Prague, from the arid winds of Andalucía to the cobbled stone pavements of the Edinburgh fringe. Rapskallion bring to you all these influences into a melting pot of sensual delights. Rapskallion are a group of multi-instrumentalists incorporating piano accordions, husky vocals, flamenco guitar, clarinet, saxophone, gypsy fiddle, flutes, pots and pans, glockenspiel and last but not least the melodica. Recently played the Spiegel Tent, Renaissance Festival, the Streets and Angel Circus, Rapskallion is an authentic, original, diverse band that will make you dance and sing... www.myspace.com/rapskallionmusic

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Bonjah

Upon arrival in Melbourne, with nary a penny to their name, they snagged the last ever legal busking license for a full-piece band and took to the streets. Two years later Bonjah have sold over 11,000 CDs (self produced), played over 450 shows-including 6 national tours, they have a legion of fans nation-wide and they recently took on a full-time percussionist, James Majernik.

Remarkably, the four original band members have lived exclusively off their music since their arrival in Australia. www.myspace.com/bonjahband

Coby Grant

At the young age of 19, Coby Grant made the life-changing move to Melbourne from her home town of Perth to kick-start her career as a musician. 2007 saw Coby tour extensively around Australia, selling out shows in Melbourne and Perth, supporting artists such as Bonjah, Rosie Burgess and Mr. Dillon. She also released her first EP, Coby Grant is your friend. In early 2008, Coby recorded her 10 track acoustic CD and is currently filming for a music video. www.myspace.com/cobygrant

Josh Dance

Josh is an honest and bluesy singer/songwriter from Geelong way but he has played many a tune in Melbourne’s CBD. Mixing fierce rhythms and slides and some excellent harmonica work, summoning the spirits of Tony Joe White, Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker, he plays like a true bluesman and certainly makes a captivating listen.

Rapskallion

Coby Grant

Bonjah.

Josh Dance

Tom Richardson

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Dub the Magic Dragon

MaxRobinson Robinson Max

Dub the Magic Dragon

The combining of Eastern and Western Music and a multicultural line-up creates an orgasmic dub experience. Their focal point, the sitar, leads the tantric sounds of Dub, Ragga, Reggae and Drum’n’Bass to produce a movable, hypnotic sexy sound. www.myspace.com/dubthemagicdragon

Steve Romig

Steve’s style ranges from funky and bluesy rock to moving and evocative acoustic ballads. Great rhythm and melody with originality adds to the time-tested techniques. He plays solo, duo or with his band. He has had much to be authentically blue about over the years and has recently gathered several prestigious song-writing awards in that genre. Steve’s album “The Friday Sessions” has now gathered 4 international awards. www.myspace.com/steveromig

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Steve Romig

Chris Mann

Max Robinson and Chris Mann

Max Robinson is a bass-playing virtuoso that can be found playing licks on a late night Brunswick Street, Fitzroy or Bourke Street Mall. With a sound not to dissimilar to Prince on steroids Max always brings a crowd with his whacked out bass effects.

Chris Mann is a drum-playing virtuoso that owns the corner of Johnson and Brunswick Street on weekends. His funky beats and tight rhythms drag a crowd any time of night. Both artists have carved reputations off of Brunswick Street’s thriving nightlife and on special occasions they team up and blow passersby away.

For the Sounds of the Street compilation they got together and recorded a special instrumental Street Funk that can only be found on the compilation!

George Kamikawa

George hails from Japan and has spent the last 10 years honing his skills to become an exemplary country blues artist. His playing is typified by its raw energy and broad tonal range - from delicate harmonics to searing rips

George Kamikawa Jessica Paige

Santos

and slides on guitar, soulful singing and driving rhythms on harmonica. George has recently won the Australian Busking Championship at the Mortlake Buskers Festival 2008. www.myspace.com/georgekamikawa

Jeff Evans

Jessica Paige

Santos

Jessica is a multi award-winning singer songwriter from Melbourne.

She plays solo and with her band. Jess and the Paige Boys. Her style is alt-pop with a pinch of jazz. Jessica started busking on Swanston St when she was 14 and she still busks often in the Bourke St mall. There is no doubt that paying her dues by busking (probably the hardest gig of all) has been largely responsible for her ease in front of an audience. The cover of Rolling Stone came early to Jessica – as her song was added to the CD on the cover of that venerable magazine in 2007. www.myspace.com/jessicapaigemuso

Jeff Evans is a music composer and producer. He has created a tribute to the buskers by capturing a soundscape directly from Swanston St, Melbourne.

The music style of Santos is unique, originating from the Gypsies of Southern France and Spain and enlightened with the drive and brilliance of Santana and the Gypsy Kings. They create a sound that captures the spirit of traditional Latin/ Flamenco rhythms, mixed with subdued and pensive ballads that bring the acoustic guitar to life. Ever popular on the Bourke Street Mall, Santos enchants crowds from all walks of life. www.myspace.com/santosgroup

For further information... soundsofthestreet@gmail.com www.myspace.com/buskerscomp

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Non - Profit St Vincent de Paul - with Lisa Camillio

The Evolution Begins: Hunter, Gatherer, Shopper They say vintage is the new black…

I remember the time when I was rummaging through op-shops for some cheap and funky outfits to exhibit to my strange friends on the week-end, trying not to look too cheap, of course. Those were the times when brand new cloths were expensive to buy – well, for me - and the “Made in China” wasn’t bloody everywhere to make us all look the same like nowadays. But this is not a nostalgic “We were better when we were worst” story.

Times change and what was “My nanna used to wear that and you look absolutely ridiculous; go and buy something decent ’cause disco times are over baby!” now is “Where the hell did you find that hot vintage dress - I want it too even if I have to spend my whole month rent/re-mortgage my Fitzroy house!” kinda thing. I guess I was right then, when I was trying to convince everyone else that this stuff was cool... The irony now is that they listened, (probably not to me, I was just a weirdo), but the trend is now: vintage vintage vintage!

Walking down Brunswick street, passing by yuppies with brand new cars to show off (just in case you didn’t hear their V8 engines roaring down the whole bloody street), druggies waiting on the dole and asking for change (for the tram, of course, DUH!) and musos posting flyers on poles (“Helloho, nobody reads them!”), you can’t miss the various funky vintage shops that started to pop up to keep up with the demand for unique 50s, 60s, 70s and now very much so the strange and wrong 80s! Even that craze caught up with me, what a disgrace! Put the 80s back to where they belong in the forgotten past, I say!

One day, one particular vintage shop caught my attention. It had particularly refined and wellselected stock, with pretty contained prices (even for a broke muso like myself), and some funky original retro-inspired accessories. That shop was

Hunter Gatherer.

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Despite their funky-ness, attractiveness, and their being disguised as any other profit-oriented private enterprise, these shops - one in Fitzroy and the other in St. Kilda, are run by the Brotherhood of St. Laurence and their existence is of a more important, meaningful and inspiring reason. As they state, these funky shops are more than just trendy boutiques, they are “innovative social enterprises selling recycled vintage clothing and new, ‘No SweatShop’ accredited clothing for the fashion-conscious youth market.” Using limited edition prints and oneoff fabrics designed and made in Melbourne, Hunter Gatherer’s retro inspired creations have attracted interest from the media and public alike.

The first HG shop opened in St. Kilda in 1998, selling vintage second hand clothing donations. By 2001 HG began designing and manufacturing its own clothing range to compliment the second hand stock. The launch of the label coincided with the opening of the second HG store in Fitzroy. Manufacturing was new to the Brotherhood and posed some new challenges for the organisation.

“Being aware of issues relating to working conditions in the garment production industry in Australia, we had to ensure our manufacturing was consistent with our commitment to ethical practices.”

The Textile Clothing and Footwear Union estimate that there are 144,000 homebased outworkers in Victoria alone. According to the Union, wages are often as low as $3.70 an hour and most workers do not receive sick leave, annual leave, superannuation or work cover. These workers, predominantly women, have little opportunity to raise concerns, and face no employment security or scope to regulate workloads. The hours are long and gruelling, often in excess of 14 hours a day, 6-7 days a week.

These issues lead to the Brotherhood signing the Homeworkers Code of Practice and becoming the first fashion brand in Australia to be accredited as a No SweatShop Label manufacturer and retailer. The accreditation means that all their new garments have been made in Australia under employment conditions that support the labour rights of all their workers, including homeworkers, printers and embroiderers.

So next time you shop for those hot 80s yellow-highlighter leggings, think about where you buy and where your latest fashion comes from, and what could be the real cost to the workers’ lives.

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‘Our ability to live in peace with each other, depends first and foremost on our ability to accept all that is different between us’ We wish to create new possibilities for artistic relationships and cultural exchange, supporting artists at all levels in the development of their craft. Frame Lines offers a unique access to a dynamic world of print and new media, like yourselves to the belief that art, writing and creative expression matter.

It doesn’t matter how the literal (by conventional definitions) quality of a piece of work is gauged, as long as we are convinced that you ripped a chunk of your soul and bared it to the world (with your eyes closed tight and heart as open as the sky), then you’ve earned your moment of marvel; your glitter of fairy dust; your glow of twilight in our world of darkness and lightness. And by whatever’s sacred, we’ll help you celebrate it

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