Stories

September 22, 2023 - Street Art Stories

 

Find The Army of Ink including Robin Small, Amelia Bloom and Rose and Boots and their stories across five parks in Melville.  See Melville Storylines for information.

 

 

Stories are at the center of everything.  The most powerful and potentially debilitating being the ones inside our head.  The stories we tell ourselves.  The erosive stories we’ve been told.  Stories formed from our experiences.  That’s why it’s so vital we have access to and seek out alternative stories that give us strength and hope.  Help us realise our full potential.  Particularly our children and young people. 

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August 30, 2023 - Wisdoms of Rose Origin of Sadness

 

Wisdoms of Rose origin of sadness

Rose was very curious about the origin of sadness .

Rose welcomes all forms of feeling with a particular interest in ones of the socially unacceptable kind.  She has pioneered many expeditions into the realms of fear, sadness, anger, disillusionment and horrible muddled states of mind with quite profound results and a significant degree of personal resolve.  Long Live Rose.

Footnote:  We’re often not encouraged to feel what are often termed, ‘negative’ emotions – like anger and sadness.  This Rose seems to be suggesting that ‘to feel is to be real’.  Perhaps to be able to personally progress and move actually requires the acceptance and riding out all emotions.  Viewing them as valuable modes of transport to a better places rather than weakness and flaws in our character?

(Wisdom of Rose and Clunk & Jam 2019 books.  Reposted from 2013).

August 28, 2023 - Wisdoms of Rose Wish Upon Herself

 

rose magic wand

Rose never looked up to anyone – it saved her feeling small .

Rose has a tendency towards independence of a difficult kind.  She is not easily lead and exhibits a strong will to do things her own unusually diverse way.  Rose also sprouts a grounded view on equality which often clashes with the viewpoints of those she refused to look up to.  Still, she continues to look to herself for divine guidance.  Long Live Rose.

(Reposted from 2013.  Find Rose in her own pocket book and Clunk & Jam book 2019.

August 24, 2023 - Clown Girl – Roll Up, Roll Up

 

 

Footnote:  Boots arrived (during the pandemic isolation in March, 2020).  In the early stage of the drawing, Boots was leaning against the globe, ground to a halt.  But as the drawing progressed, the continents became stars.  The biggest, falling right on top of Boot’s head.  Stuck, she became in the –  ‘in-between’.

But this was not to be the end – of the drawing.  Of the world.  Boots raised a hand, cautiously turning back a corner of the fallen star.   And there, right alongside her, a faintly glowing object of mystery, rolled up, rolled up.

Was it a ball for juggling?  Mirroring a juggled conscience?  Dropped or forgotten?  Left behind or gone astray?  Or maybe it was that small thing that so easily gets lost or overlooked?  Still there.  Still waiting.  Perhaps something new?  A gift.  Small and precious.  A reminder that there are things that need much greater care that we ever imagine — and quite often forget.  Until something rolls up, rolls up…

(‘Boots – The Clown, The World’s Greatest Act, Part I’, out of isolation March 2020)

 

June 10, 2023 - Keep Coming Back – Rise Up

 


Yoann Bourgeois

For his performance with Pink on ‘TRUSTFALL’ see Instagram here.

 

 

September 18, 2022 - Robin Small Rocks

 

robin small rocks

 

Robin Small felt the turmoil on indecision in the balls of his feet as he rocked to – Will I?  Won’t I?

Footnote:  Sometimes when there are no answers, sitting it out for a while and taking some time makes good sense.   And sometimes things  never make sense but Robin’s ‘rocking’ seems to suggest he’s not stuck.  He’s working things out – in his own time.  Maybe he’s just wondering?  And wondering (or daydreaming) is so often perceived as ‘doing nothing’.  Nothing of value anyway.  But it’s where ideas come from.   It’s how we gain a deeper sense of things and their meaning –  that others might just pass on by. 

(Robin Small, Clunk & Jam, Second Edition 2019)