Blogs about travel to weird and wonderful countries
A recent new venture for me, I want to drive more Australian art into my brain and I figured the best way to do this is to travel the country for an extended period of time. Obviously it won’t happen now for a while until Covid 19 has all ended but one day……….
As such, I bought an empty Ford Transit and we converted it ourselves into an off grid camper with full solar set up. I have done a van tour with my wife Gaynor which you can find on this YouTube link
What a great trip we’ve just had. Two blissful weeks in the United States with a holiday built around attending the Society of Animal Artists annual exhibition in Oradell, New Jersey. I have to admit I was delighted to be even juried into the society as a member a couple of years ago because their standards are extremely high. Then I found I was juried in as a signature member, the highest level you can be juried in at. Surprise number three came when I was accepted to their annual exhibition at my first attempt. Anything else would be the icing on the cake so image my joy when I won an Award of Excellence, the highest award they give at the exhibition. Blown away!!
The rest of the trip was a blast. We hiked in the Appalachians in New York State with great friends and fellow scratchboard artists Lori Dunn and Cathy Sheeter, took photographs of Peregrine Falcons right across from New York City, and then we did the usual touristy things in Manhattan.
This is the medal I will be receiving for my Award of Excellence
With my Meerkat Montage
Lori Dunn, also a recipient of an Award of Excellence, with her wonderful art. There were six scratchboards out of 125 pieces in the exhibition and two of them received Awards of Excellence (eight were awarded) a strike rate we can be proud of.
Cathy Sheeter with her amazing kingfisher clayboard
Tamara Pokorny with her incredible scratchboard of a lionfish. I don’t even know how she does what she does!
Julie Askew with her piece Lifeline 4, Red-Crowned Cranes
Kim Diment won the cover of the exhibition catalogue with her Green Sea Turtle “Adrift in Turquoise”
The long and short of it, SAA President Reneé Bemis being dwarfed by artist Rachelle Siegrist and board member Cynthie Fisher
Our home for a week. The Hiram Blauvelt artist in residence Cathy Sheeter lives here and kindly hosted Gaynor and I. It was such a beautiful place.
Exhibition venue the Hiram Blauvelt Wildlife Art Museum
The Mansion on the same grounds. It is in a state of disrepair and if ever there was a perfect venue for a haunted mansion movie, this is it.
Peregrine Falcon with a bluejay dinner. This was quite a distance away so I am zoomed in as far as I can go
Black Rat Snake
Pupae of a Sphinx Moth
Gaynor and I signing off from an amazing trip.
I mentioned in my last blog that I went to Frankfurt Zoo on the way from West Africa to Adelaide, Australia, where I live. I was hanging out for some wildlife and although you can’t really call zoo animals ‘wildlife’, it was great to see what can be done with a small space in the middle of a huge city when people who care set their minds to it.
Unfortunately my camera display had been broken by a clumsy x-ray operator in Frankfurt airport going from one section to another, so at the zoo I had to simply click away and hope something was happening, since I couldn’t see the results on the screen (or apply any special settings) so it was a nice surprise when I got home and saw some awesome photos to work from. The following two pieces are a ‘variegated spider monkey’ and a ‘bonobo’ and there will be more to come from this visit. I need to get ready for an exhibition at the Adelaide Zoo with another artist, the amazing Kerryn Hocking, so I’ll be doing as many wildlife pieces as I can before tackling some portraits from Benin with the rich cultural history that can be found there.
In a future blog I’ll be giving a rundown on my trip to West Africa, especially when I have created some art from it. However, since West Africa isn’t exactly blessed with wildlife, being so full of people, I had to get my animal fix on the way back home at Frankfurt Zoo. Yes, I flew the long way home with a very complicated business class ticket created out of cheap points (just to make you jealous, flying business class all the way from Adelaide to Accra in Ghana (and back) and using the flash lounges in the various airports, cost less than an economy airfare by playing the game of using Star Alliance points and matching up the various airlines in the network. More of that another time).
In the Frankfurt Zoo I saw this orangutan and coupled with West Africa’s lack of wildlife (displaced, destroyed or eaten) and the orangutan’s own Indonesian issues with homeland being decimated to make way for our insatiable urge to produce palm oil, I created this protest piece.
Sometimes you come to a point where you say “enough is enough”. That point came for me when all I saw of wildlife in West Africa were goats and lizards. I guess you can’t eat lizards and they are not going to hurt you, so they stay safe. Snakes and other reptiles are pretty much gone and goats are everywhere, destroying the soil. We did get to a national park but it was the end of the rainy season and the elephant grass was so tall that we didn’t see much. Having said that, it was still a great feeling to be there.
I have one funny story from that park. A river runs through it and with the recent rains, this river was impassable up until the day we tried. When we got to it, the level had dropped but the driver was still unsure of whether he could get through. He asked us to get out and wade across and he would follow in the Jeep. We told him “NO”!! So we drove across in the Jeep – fairly easily.
When we went to leave the park in the afternoon we arrived back at the river, and there, exactly where we were told to walk across – by a professional no less – was this! (You can see our old tyre tracks just beyond it). So there you go – trust your own instincts!
Long time no blog. I’ve been putting too many hours in at the office and haven’t blogged for a while so it’s time to remedy that. I’m writing this from the Singapore Airlines business class lounge – very swish – in Bangkok airport. I have a new trip planned to gather reference material for my art and, as I simply have to every now and then, I’m off back to Africa. This time it’s West Africa. I grew up in Africa and have re-visited many many times but I’ve never been to the west, so here’s to a new adventure. It’s a complicated route to get there; Adelaide – Singapore (one night) – Bangkok – Frankfurt (one night) – Accra in Ghana (and the same route back). The long trip is made all the more bearable because it’s business class all the way – I came across many Star Alliance points when special offers where being dished out and the dollar was in my favour so my luxury ticket has cost less than an economy fare. Don’t I feel clever (for once!).
I’m spending 21 days going through Ghana, Togo and Benin and I know I’ve got some very cool places to go to such as a village of 10,000 people who live in the middle of a lake on stilt houses, and another village of two story mud huts. Of course, wild animals are in my itinerary too and my camera is going to get a serious workout.
I’ll be back with a vengeance on this blog with new art and experiences, but for a while, I will definitely lose wi-fi. That’s the way an adventure should be!
Patrick Hedges 