Before I turned the lights off on my previous website I made the decision to save all of my blog entries with the idea that I’d repost them here. However, with a fresh new design and an accompanying burst of energy, it feels like backtracking over old thoughts is perhaps a little bit unnecessary. So, I won’t!
Onward upward.
So let’s talk about what I’m currently up to:
Last week saw my latest projection artwork go live. A NAIDOC Week dedication to Aboriginal Elders, both past and present, was featured on Geelong Town Hall (2-9 July, 2023). The artwork featured 25+ Elders from Geelong and across Victoria, set against a backdrop of the Milky Way with a moving star scape, a forest shedding a multitude of colourful leaves, and a kaleidoscope of design elements. My favourite aspect of the work was a rotoscoped artwork featuring my grandfather, Jack Patten (1905-1957). To achieve this element I filmed myself, squished the footage, because my grandfather was not as tall as I am, and then rotoscoped the work, averaging one frame’s worth of drawing my grandfather’s face transposed over my own every 10 minutes. In the end, that part of the animation was probably 30 hours worth of dedicated, passion driven work.
In the meantime, I’ve been working on a mural for Hume City Council, on a CFA water tank, located on Konagaderra Road, Oaklands Junction. Trying to paint on weekends, whilst dodging the season-appropriate rainfalls has been tricky. However, this past weekend I finished the work, and the next day I started into my next mural project – a pair of smaller, but detailed murals at a local preschool. One features Bunjil the Eagle, an important totemic figure for a number of Victorian Koori peoples, and the other is of Tiddalik, a figure found in a prominent Koori Creation Story, which I have a long history with.
So it’s a busy time. Afterwards I might take a little break (not really – I’ll just do some unpaid personal projects!). One goal I have is to continue work on my long gestating graphic novel, but not before I carve a couple of boomerangs for a mate (apologies Dave!), which are overdue (due to said poor weather), and I’ll also deliver the rest of my scheduled ochre painting workshops at Olinda.
Ahh.. summer can’t come soon enough!