Article about the artists

Fiona and I were approached by Kate Johns editor of Salt magazine to do a 'meet the designer' profile in the magazine. Salt is a great magazine that promotes all things bright and beautiful (art, fashion, food, tourism etc) on the Sunshine Coast.

Thanks to Kate and two of her team (Frances Frangenheim [words] and Anastasia Kariofyllidis [photos]) we are featured in the Salt - Winter '13 edition. You can read the Salt online version here.

The profile on us in the hard copy is pp. 104-107 - photo below is a bit of a hint that you have reached the article on us and our work. Couple more images here.

And because it is Wednesday I thought I'd throw in a couple of early morning iPhone photos - taken just as I was setting out for an early morning walk. I thought it must be wrong to be walking in the dark and cold - but then Fiona was off doing her circuit training with her women's group - so!!!!

©2013 Barry Smith - The lights of the Port of Brisbane

©2013 Barry Smith - Inky blue sky with faint morning light

In the photos (taken with the iPhone so beautifully pixelated) you can see the lights of of the Port of Brisbane - about 80klms away - cold clear morning.

Shop is up and running

It seems that for a long time Fiona and I have been planning and promising to get our Shops up and operating on our websites. From time to time we haves been asked how can folk buy our stuff on-line. The day has finally arrived and the 'mini shops' have been tested and launched. We have also revamped or websites a bit as part of the shop development.Yippee!!

©2012 Barry Smith - Screen shot of revamped website

 You can check out my shop by clicking Barry's Shop; and Fiona's shop by clicking Fiona's Shop.

©2012 Barry Smithy - Screen shoot of part of the Shop page

We have had to set a policy for our shops. In the main, our shops will have items for sale that are not held in any gallery stockrooms or physical shops; and most will be light and robust for ease of posting. This means I will mainly have bowls, leaves, light incense burner and my Found and Formed Jewellery. Many similar lines and pieces will also be sold through the studio and in particular will be for sale during open studio days.

I built shelves in my clean studio to set the shop pieces aside so they do not get confused with what is on display and for sale through the studio (601 MVR).

©2012 Barry Smith - Mini Shop stock (bottom two shelves)

The studio will have many other heavier pieces for sale such as my Light Catchers; personal shrines; other larger bowls; and outdoor sculptural pieces such as the 'posts' - similar to those below.

©2012 Barry Smith - Circle of Light - light catcher

©2012 Barry Smith - Large spiral bowl

©2012 Barry Smith - Flow (post)

Of course these other items are also for sale by request.  It has taken us some time but we are pleased that we have finally achieved our goal regarding our Shops.

Published - artists' books

As indicated on my website artists' books are one stream of my art work. Though a quick look at the portfolio gallery on the site will reveal that my 'books' are three dimensional and usually made of metal and wood.

Recently Linda Douglas invited me to submit an article for  her journal - Australian Book Arts Journal. I accepted the invitation and submitted my article and photos; and hey presto, the article on Sculptural Books (Beyond the Object) has been published in Issue 4 March 2011.

The article is on pages 10-11.

And there is a good photo of a piece called Spiral on the back cover.

Barry Smith © Spiral

I conclude the article by saying that "I believe my sculptural bookworks are more than simply objects; they also communicate content as would any book."  I was making the point that a book could be made from any material and take any shape as long as it also carries some content - a poem, a message, a saying, and instruction etc.

Finetuning on friday

We managed to get down into the studios for the whole afternoon - mind you we were not tempted to do anything outside as it has been raining on and off all day - it seems we are caught in a bit of a rain depression. Still the universe sometimes just says stay inside, keep to the plan and do creative stuff on Friday afternoon.

I focused on two things that are related: boxing up some leaf forms and bowls to go to Mainstreet Gallery's Mixed Stock-room Works - Featured Artists "Small Pleasures and Treasures" Mid Dec '10 - Jan '11; and creating more light catchers (another story).

The photos above show the 12 pieces I boxed ready to go to the Gallery. I am using my new BSA identity - clear stickers with my BSA chop on them are on the clear plastic lids of the boxes. Even with the flash off I still got a bit of reflection off the lids.

I managed to assemble two light catchers but they require quite a bit of polishing yet. The reason I have started to do more is the opportunity to do a small exhibition of a group of 8-12 of the light catchers on their own - more about that in a future post.

Updating art identity

As Fiona indicated in a post a couple of days ago that given the fact that we have a couple of upcoming exhibitions etc we are putting a bit more effort into our art identities and promotion.



We had our young designer friend Holly Webber design our new art business cards; and a splash page for our 'websites to be'. A photo of my cards is above - same fronts but three different images on the back. Square of course because I like squares and cubes.

Fiona's and my website will take a little longer to develop - we have to learn how to do it ourselves so that we can do our own updating. Still we have made a start.

Bit of blurb about me

Fiona posted yesterday on the fact that we had developed and published our portfolio in the form of a book.



The photo above show the cover of my book. If you are interested you can click here and have a bit of a preview of the book.

We produced the books as a way of promoting what we are doing this year. This has been a big step for us as we have just gone about our art quietly and have not been into self promotion much. But hey if you want to be out there I guess the first step is to have enough faith to say that what you do is worth admiring and buying. The books themselves are for sale at their published price as we are simply using them to promote our art.