If you live in Australia, particularly in the country, you quite likely know about the Three Corner Jack. They’re horrid sharp little prickles that come out in summer every year, unless a person with a bit of land isn’t quick enough to rip them out and dispose of them.
They look quite arrtative as they begin growing, up until the flower grows a seed that turns into a painful prickle that can jab into foot, or hand, or any other body part that it gets too close to, and OUCH!
This is my poem: UNHOLY TRINITY Even lovers of plants would agree The fruit of this plant is devil-made!
Attractive leaves, a sweet flower too Grows well, even out of the shade
Its spreading nature may seem fine Greenery there where few plants strayed
Summer’s harsh sun killing many a plant This one stays, whether in desert or glade
An ideal plant one may think it But with one sharp prick, pleasure will fade
You’ll curse this damned evil weed, Of plants; one of Nature’s most ill-made!
I feel sorry for anybody who has had the misfortune to fall victim to this horris weed! I’ve both trodden on the prickles, and been stabbed in the hand by it when weeding. Barefoot and fancy free, uh uh, not when there’s any Three Corner Jacks around!
To be honest the main reason for taking on this new Art Installation project, titled “Redbanks RUST & FOUND Art Installation” is almost certainly a way of avoiding the writing of my much awaited first Murder Mystery novel … I’ve hit around 35000 words of that or more, but I’m dillydallying around in the middle of that novel without doing anything much in the way of actually solving the crime …
If I were to change the genre from cosy murder mystery to chick lit set in country Australia, I could probably wrap it up and finish it far more easily. But Cosy Murder Mystery is what I said I was going to write, so that is what I am going to do! Eventually.
In the meantime though, I’m doing to continue with the creation of this Art Installation with is so much more fiun, and it’s better for me too! To create this Installation, I have to actually go outside and find things, preferably rusty things! I have over 400 individual poieces so far, all, or almost all placed on my front gate, and fence.
There are rusty and/or found objects of many shapes and sizes, from rusty old beer caps to our actual fence, with stands at least a metre and a half high in parts, and is approximately 60 metres long. The fence is rusty, and found in as much as we obtained it when we found our home in the country way back in 1988!
I had no idea I might one day decide to use that fence of rusty barb wire and ordinary fencing wire in an Art piece! But this Installation has captured my mind, and my creative ideas, and I’m enjoying the creation of it, and the planning of further things regarding it far more than I was enoying almost anything else in my life at the moment!
And I’m not giving up writing, because I’ve actually written quite a bit about this new projet, and there is even going to be a non fiction book written (by me) about this project, to perhaps be launched in 2015. In the meantime, I will go on creating, and writing about this RUST & FOUND project, and hopefully it will be even more impressive once the time comes to open it!
There are a good few other pieces on the Medium platform too, relating to this new project, and I’ve picked up a few new readers on that other particular platform, which is always nice, for a writer.
I have a notable person organised already to do the launch, and he is excited about the part he will play in this project. He tells me he already knows what the rusty item is he will be speaking about with he does this his ‘opening’ duties! He won’t tell me what it is, and I”m looking forward to seeing what this old object might be!
So on 5th of May 2024 the Mayor of Adelaide Plains Council is going to launch the Redbanks RUST & FOUND Art Installation! Woo Hoo! I’d better get some actual promotional stuff written and printed and then handed out around the place, so there is a crowd of people for the Mayor to speak to!
Doing that kind of thing is certainly not my forte, but I need to work on getting better and better at it, for this project, and in fact all of the things I’m doing that I want to get other people excited about too! If I can get oh, twenty people there, that would be great! If there were ten of fewer, it would be a fizzler. And if there were more that twenty, woo hoo. Success!
I’m not going to make lots of money doing this, but it isn’t actually costing me anything really, to create this piece of visual art. I own the fence it’s all displayed on, and it’s being hooked onto the gate and fence, or leaning against it, or wired in place with found pieces of wire. I never before considered myself to be a visual artist, I’d have always declared literature to be my personal art form, but these days, there seems to be more visual art work happening, rather than the writing!
I’ve written spome poetry too, about this project, and some of the found objects, and expect to do more of that kind of thing from now on, so I have a few poems to read at the bit Opening event …
And the reasons why I’m doing this? There are a few – Art Installations tend to be conceptual artworks, and I have a range of concepts I’m working with for this project. The main concepts reange around the ideas of Recycle, Reuse, Repurpose, reimagine, and touching further on waste, and ways to lessen the amounts of waste produce, by finding other ways to deal with it.
So the things I find as I’m walking around, looking for rusty or other interesting things, these items will not be thown out as rubbish, they will be taken to the Art Installation and put on display. And when I’m out there walking, I will be picking items that don’t fit into my project, so I will throw them out in the bin, but that is still a better thing to do, than just throw things around where they become ugly waste items, or sometimes dangerous items out on the roads, where they could cause terrible accidents!
One of the items on display in the Art Installation, is a metal shovel I found dangerously close to the road. Other items have been metal tools of various sizes, or lengths of wire, found in the middle of the road – I barely like to think about what could have occured if I hadn’t taken them off the road, and placed them out on display in the Art Installation!
So that’s another big concept being looked at, that of Road Safety, and being out in the country, as I am, I am well aware of the dangers of coming across large items in the middle of the road, when driving at say 100 km per hour. I fact wrote off my car around ten years ago, driving over something in the middle of the road I was driving along. It was a piece of rubber from a car tyre, and when I was driving at night I didn’t see it, drove over it, and it got thrown up under my car and somehow lost the ability to steer my car, ultimately hitting the fence fortunately in the middle of the road, and stopping, rather than running into the traffic heading off in the opposite direction.
So I have personal knowledge of what can go wrong if these kinds of items are left on the road, and if possible, I am now doing my best to stop and pick such things up. And even if they are not suitable for the RUST & FOUND Art Installation, well saving people’s lives is an important thing to do as well!
And of course getting out and about, walking our dog, talking to people, cleaning up the place, and making my local area a safe and tidy place to be, as well as keeping fit from all of the walking I’m doing, these are all worthy things on their own. But put together, wow!
So there you have it, writer, recycling whiz, road safety zealot, physical exercise inspriation, Clean up Austalia promoter, and more, here I am – playing my part in making my life, and the lives of others better, safer, neater, more lovely even, and sharing my thoughts and ideas with others so they too may ome up with interesting ways to assist make their lives, and the lives of others more important, and better in many different ways!
Carolyn Cordon - Writer 