Patti Smith: Just Kids

When I was 19 I discovered Patti Smith's album Horses. Someone had left it lying in the grubby trails of oil paints, clay and charcoal fingerprints that filled the studio I shared with two other art students. There was no-one around, and the acoustics were perfect. Dirty old floorboards greeted the keyboard intro to Gloria like old friends, and by the time the chorus came I felt like I, and everything in that room had woken from a deep slumber.

Patti Smith has stirred me once again with her recent autobiographical work Just Kids. Without focusing on the celebrity aspect of her life, she invites us through the back streets of her artistic journey, visiting her late teens and early twenties as she embraces the harshness and beauty of new York City in the late sixties. It is here that she meets the young Robert Mapplethorpe, and enters one of the most significant relationships of her life. Wild, young and free, little do either of them know that the incredible love and faith they have in one another would fuel their artistic careers to the extent that they did. This is a tale of magic and hardship, faith and courage, but above all, a tender memoir.

Photograph: Robert Mapplethorpe

Bird Wrinkles

                            

                                               'Crows' Feet' (silk cut lino print) © M. Burton


I have been getting really interested in skin lately, and so came up with this design. Lino and wrinkles are a match made in heaven!

No cake for Huckleberry

Sigmund Freud's field day

Holiday time

These dream comics I did a couple of years ago, which disappeared into my dusty, crumpled paper piles. I thought I'd bring them out of the 'archives.'

Time to set the Pigeons free

The year is winding down and what better way to finish than setting a new book free. Last Monday night we saw the release of 'Pigeons: Stories in the Post Volume II.' This is the result of a 6 month mentorship by post between a number of Australian authors and comic strip creators and a class of children from Footscray City Primary School to create short stories and comics. Hurrah! Here it is in print, and a rather delectable little book it is!

I worked with a young lad called Bill, who could barely keep the lid on his imagination throughout the project. The result was his lovingly rendered comic strip story 'The Six Days of Kookooness.' There are two other comics in the anthology, mentored by Bernard Caleo and Jen Breach.

So what's all this about Pigeons? 'Pigeons' is the energy of two passionate individuals, Jenna Williams and Lachlan Carter who generate community based projects to promote literacy and the sheer love of books and writing in young people. After doing an internship with the genius organisation 826 Valencia, founded by Dave Eggers in San Francisco, they have returned to Australia to create similar magic. Visit their website HERE.

Out of hibernation; the hatching of new artworks

  Multi-block lino print 'Bird Brain' © M. Burton

During my recent adventures as artist in residence at Luther Secondary College I created this linocut. Bird symbolism and human psychology seem to be an ongoing theme. Here are two more linocuts created in my present residency at Laughing Waters, Eltham:

'Rock, Paper, Scissors' © M. Burton

'Bird Stitchers' © M. Burton