Monday June 29th,

   

We started out the morning by going to a local architecture firm called Constructive Dialogue. Michael had gone to school with the principle that we met with. Nick (the guy we met with) also is going to give us a tour of his parents home this coming weekend up in the blue mountains. He gave us a really nice presentation and started out by making us sketch what we thought was interesting or important about the images he had shown us. I really enjoyed the way their firm focuses on diagrams and they create the diagrams for the buildings with the clients so that it is as much their building as anyone else's if not more so. 

After we hurried back to studio to meet with a local artist Rebecca Conroy from the BNG ARI. She was the first artist to really talk to us about performance art and the needs it may have. We started out the conversation in the cafe area of the architecture building but then moved outside when the fire alarm started going off. 

Michael and Adrian had a radio spot they had to go to after Adrian gave us a contemporary art lecture. We then went up to studio and began a design charrett for studio. It was pretty productive and gave us a good chance to get a lot of our ideas on paper and start to work some things out.  All in all it was a long day 10-6:30/7 and we were ready to go home.

Tuesday June 30th

Jenna, Emily and I set off a little early for the Museum of Contemporary Art and had coffee at a cafe right behind it. We were joined by to beautifully colored parrots. Yes parrots and cockatoos and the like fly around all over down here and even join you for meals sometimes. We then had a guided tour through parts of the MCA and looked at the gallery spaces. King Pins is an interesting artist group that did an amazing video piece in response to Starbuck's coming to Australia. We also got to see some of Mike Parr's work who is Adrian's father. 

We then set off to the Art Gallery of New South Whales. Gina and I stopped to grab some lunch and took the long route. When we got there we had another "guided" tour focusing on the Aboriginal work. I will just say this, it was a learning experience in the views on white man and the aboriginals and I am glad that in an art museum setting, or really any art gallery, unless the artist themselves is speaking I play little attention to what someone else is saying about the art.  Art is to be interpreted by the viewer rather than having someone else tell you what it is. 

Afterwards a few of us went to a Thai restaurant for dinner before Adrian's book launch at Glee Books. The book launch was really interesting and gave us a little more insight to the book itself. We also met a guy who had actually been to Ohio. He is from here but had gone to visit a friend from school.