The paper bowerbird

Back in the day, when I sat at a desk for a living, I stole an abandoned corkboard from some unused corridor in the building and propped it up in my little cubicle, behind my computer. It stayed bare for a long while, and as time went on, little by little, I would come across something I liked which inspired me,  and I covered said corkboard with the handiwork of some of my favourite illustrators and artists, most of which, I'm proud to say, were Australian.
With each job change, and hence cubicle re-location, all the little bits of paper print-outs, which I cared for like valuable canvases, that I had taped, tacked and wedged into the corkboard, would come off and then reassembled as a different white-ish quilt in their new 3m sq home.
For a while I had a girl who sat next to me, an art director and editor of a small food magazine, who had the same taste in pretty illustrations as me, and as we came across pictures we liked, we would swap links and print things off for each other, creating not-so-similar twin corkboards.
After the fateful "swift Exodus" from the building, all my bits of treasure that I had collected for years went into a manilla folder, and then into a box, and now live under my parents' house. Which kinda makes me sad.

My new 'office' no longer contains a desk, but I have recently acquired a new corkboard, that sits on my desk in my little wooden room, and while I wouldn't dream of recreating on my new corkboard the collage of favourites I had in my old cubicle, I missed seeing all these pretty images, and well, posting a few on  this little blog of mine is a different story...

Kat Macleod

Collaborator, author, and mixed-media extrodinaire.

Abby Mculloch

Portrait of Australian actress Toni Collette for the 2007 Archibald Prize.

Rebecca Wetzler

Illo for Australian fashion designer Marnie Skillings AFW show invite. My friend received this invite to the show, and I swiped it. Not to attend, but for the corkboard.

Sarah Larnach

Ok, a Kiwi, but in true Australian tradition, I'm including her. Ladyhawke's visual collaborator.