ALMOND LAND

Oh yeah .. thats right ..the blog !

here is a photo montage of the last 3 months - its been MAJOR - some very good / some very sad / some OK and some amazing ... get a cup of tea, this could take awhile ..

we had the Bark Petition Day - celebrating 50 Years of the Bark Petition - as part of NAIDOC week , it was an all day celebration - Julie was supposed to open the new gallery but she got kicked out so Rudd came instead... now he's gone

Kade made merch - teeshirts that RULE, that was the highlight, that and Nyapanyapa giving K-Rudd a big ol' hug ...

group shot with K-Rudd

Yirrkala tee-shrits

50 Years polo

and Rosie. the women who made it all happen

Two volunteer printmakers arrived in June to save my bacon ....

Kaitlyn

and Cassie

these two AMAZING women flew up from Melbourne - where they study printmaking at RMIT - and volunteered two weeks of their time and expertise to help Paula and me get at least some prints ready for Garma in August. There was 11 new editions to start and i had thought we might got 10 of each in time for Garma BUT NO - these guys were so incredible that in the space of two weeks we printed over 400 prints and completed ALL the work .. ALL THE WORK - i can't thank them enough for their hard work and energy - without them Gapan Gallery would have been trees with nothing on them ...

Cassie, Kaitlyn, me and Paula -

Garma Printing Team Extraordanaire

in the print studio ...

signing with ruby and nyapsie

and ellen marrkapmi

John Wolseley came to visit too - just before Cassie and Kaitlyn arrived and charmed us all, including them ...

he was here making big woodblock prints with local artist Mulkun Wirrpanda - as well as collecting strange plants from the bush and doing art with them ...

just before all of that - we went camping - just the family to have a break

Kade got stung by a scorpion so we left early incase he died !

when we found out he wouldn't (thank you google) we stopped for a swim at Goanna Lagoon and ended up digging these guys out for FOUR HOURS ...

ultimate bog !

we took Judith Ryan, Cassie, Katiyln and family to Oyster Beach for a day trip

Kade tried to collect oysters but waves, slightly too big !

In July we went to Melbourne,

and on our return - straight into the Garma Festival and the Gapan Gallery -

here are our my prints hanging on the stringybark trees at the Gapan site, looking amazing if i do say so myself .... it was a good weekend - hard work and fun, watching dancing in the evening and feleling exhausted from melbourne and selling art and arranging people and places and and .. and then it was over