Opening Night at Zakay Glass Creations Gallery

Zakay Glass Creations

I made the drive down to Bangalow (at the last minute) from Brisbane to attend the opening night celebrations of Zakay Glass Creations Gallery.

Shop 3, Level 1, 42 Byron Street
(above Summerland Credit Union)
Bangalow, NSW 2479 Australia

I like how the street number for the gallery is 42 and that you have to walk up a stairway, and that the gallery is over the top of the "Summerland" Credit union.
" The Summerland is the name given by Theosophists, Wiccans and some earth-based contemporary pagan religions to their conceptualization of an afterlife."
The Summerland
"A common element is that the soul has little, if any, recollection of the Summerland once it arrives on the mortal plane again."

Michelle Macnamara's series 
"It's a Wonderful Life".

"The basic Wiccan belief of reincarnation is that you
are energy, a shapeless, sexless form that moves from one body which
is no longer needed to the next. 
You are placed on Earth to learn a lesson. 
Each incarnation you are born into, you must learn or relearn
a different lesson through experiencing a variety of different
lifestyles. 
When you have learned all you need to learn in your
present life, you move on, die. 
Death is not seen as a punishment or
a bad thing, but in a way, it's a good thing. 
It means you have completed one step on the incarnal ladder. 
After you die, you are brought to the Summerland which is kind of like the Wiccan equivalent of Heaven, but since we have no devil, we have no Hell. 
The Summerland is where the spirits that presently do not have an

earthly body wait for the right time to return to Earth."
Summerland - An Introduction

I ended up buying a star/merkabah similar to the one pictured above, which now hangs in my computer room above me.
Merkabah

My Merkabah hanging from the roof

Sparrow/Self-Reliance Syncs

The above painting reminded me of this old post of mine -
Supermarket Signs?
There were some great works for sale on the night, if you had a lot more money on your credit card than I had.
Just take a look at some of the other beautiful works displayed in the gallery.

Link to see a Zakay Glass Creations
Instagram featuring the above star

Green light from the star above
shining on the road below

Some of the artworks used light that was shone through them, like sunlight or artificial light coming through the artwork pictured above. 
While others were fitted with their own internal light, which shone outwards like the artwork pictured below.

It turned out to be a good day for me even though I struck the worst traffic I had ever been in getting down to Bangalow from Brisbane.
Maybe I just needed a better vehicle?-)

Another surprise for me when I finally made it into Bangalow was that the annual Bangalow Show was on, and I got a chance to walk around and take a look at my first Bangalow Show.

Beautiful old showground it was, too.

This ride didn't seem too popular with the kids
 when I was there for some reason

The two artists of the night, Asaf Zakay 

and Michelle Macnamara

A wonderful afternoon turned in to a wonderful night.
And I capped the night off with a meal and a couple of fortune cookies from the Chinese restaurant across the road, before driving back to Brisbane to hang my artwork.

I liked one of the fortunes so much that I now keep it in my wallet.

But I'll bet they tell that to all of their customers;-)

UPDATE: 13th Dec, 2014

I was going to mention the first message I got from the eight fortune cookies I bought on the night, but I couldn't find it, and without proof of a photo I thought it wasn't worth mentioning it.

But I found it in a pile of brochures this morning and thought that I should mention that I ran into two ladies who had left Zackay's Gallery and were having a meal in the outdoor section of the Chinese restaurant.

One of the ladies stopped me when I was going in to order my meal when she saw I had a bag from Zackay's and asked me what I had purchased.
Turns out she had purchased a similar artwork to mine and I ended up chatting to the two ladies about the night, before I looked at my watch and thought I had better order my meal before the restaurant closed for the night.
I mentioned that I was going to buy some fortune cookies, just for fun.

The reason I wanted to buy some fortune cookies was that I had come across the above novel cover used in a box at work for packaging.
There were no other parts of the novel to be  found in the box.
I remembered writing a post about Bryce Courtenay a while back, but I never ended up buying one of his novels, so I thought that maybe I should buy this book, or some fortune cookies, or both.
Bryce Courtenay: The Power of One
When I went to order my meal I was told inside dining was now closed, but I was quite welcome to order takeaway and could use the outdoor dining tables to eat at.
But the only table I could sit at was the table where the two ladies were sitting at, so I went back and sat there and we carried on talking.
One of the ladies asked me what my fortune was in my first cookie, but I wasn't game to show them the first one, so I just showed them the one I had placed in my wallet, not mentioning the first one I had opened. 

Fingers crossed:-)

The Art and Collections of Chris Bracey

"Chris Bracey, the British artist and designer who owned one of the largest collections of neon signs and sculpture outside the US, has died aged 59 (1 November 2014) ".
Chris Bracey, neon sign designer and collector, dies at 59
 His work can be seen in films as diverse as Batman, Blade Runner and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. 
The Rainbow Fancy Dress and Sonata Jazz Café signs in Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut are both his: they now form part of the 700-strong collection in the Walthamstow workshop-cum-neon-museum.

The Mullum(bimby) Music Festival 2014 (Part 2)

Glad to see you hopped on my magical Mullumbimby bus ride.
If this is your first ride on the bus, you might like to read part one of the post here -
The Mullum(bimby) Music Festival 2014 (Part 1)
which will give you the option to get off the bus before we get rolling again ... or stay on it if you didn't learn a lesson from that first post;-)

Civic Hall

 I went to Civic Hall to try and catch Nahko play and I did get a standing spot in the hall before the doors were closed and no more were admitted in, but while I stood in the hot crowded hall and was wondering whether it might not be better to go see another act and hopefully catch Nahko some other time, some filthy pig kept farting around my personal space.

 And while I kept trying to focus on thoughts of peace, after a while all I could think was -

So, instead of hanging around in a hot overcrowded hall playing the smell version of  "Where's Wally/Waldo ?" with some a#sehole that needed a cork shoved in 'em I decided to head out of the hall and buy some pizza from my pizza supplier who feeds me at Bluesfest and the Woodford Folkfest.

At $4 a slice his pizzas are value for money.

Mullumbimby High

I headed back to Mullumbimby High to catch the end of
Mia Dyson's set.

Mia Dyson at Mullumbimby High Sunday

Mia's show is one I'll have to try and catch again.
I love her album 'The Moment'.
I'm listening to it now at her website while I'm writing this post.
This is one I'll be buying.
I love her song 'When the Moment Comes'.

Ellen, the Mullum pot dealer. Ceramic pots that is

After Mia's show finished, I wandered across the road to have a look at the Mullumbimby Community Art Gallery, because someone mentioned I would be able to buy some pot from them ... but what they really meant was that I would be able to buy some pots from them.
Doh!;-)

I came back to the high school hall to catch Kooii play a few numbers and ended up buying their CD because I really like the song 'Kick It'.

'The Church' on stage at Mullumbimby High Sunday night

Then it was the time of the night I had come down from Brisbane to see, that's after a twenty-minute delay from a rigorous sound-check which didn't stop the equipment from playing up on the night with a small equipment fire thrown in there as well. 

'The Church' played a lot of new stuff on the night and while it was different to their older music, I loved the wall of guitars and drums in their rockier numbers.

I noticed this artwork in the corner to the left of the stage of a frog on a mushroom.

This artwork wasn't made for 'The Church' gig (that I know of) as it was there in the hall all weekend, but Steve Kilbey made the comment during the show that 'The Church' never played in Mullumbimby before, although they used to come down to this area looking for mushrooms in their early days when doing gigs up on Queensland's Gold Coast.

'The Church' put on a good gig, but after standing right next the main amplifier for half a concert I was in two minds to whether I should stay for Bobby Alu's show or head home.

Bobby Alu

I was in the mood for something a bit mellower than Bobby's most high energy music, so decided to hop on the bus one more time and either get off where I had parked the car, go see some jazz at the RSL, or just do a full circuit and go see Bobby Alu and his band.
But none of those options gelled with me for some reason and I was hoping the bus would just drop me off in a moment of synchronicity to discover some magical band I didn't know about.

It had already been a surreal day seeing and hearing 'The Church' play 'Under the Milky Way', which was used in the soundtrack for one of my favourite films, 'Donnie Darko', in a high school attended by Iggy Azalea, that was established in a key year for 'Back to the Future' fans (1955).

And in the month of November, to boot.
Not that I'm a real big BTTF fan though.

So, I'm sitting on the bus not really knowing what I want to do.
The bus approaches my car, but I stay on.
The bus heads up to the RSL, but I stay on.
The bus heads back to the high school, but I don't want to go back there, so I hop off at Drill Hall (because I hadn't been in there that day) and decide to take a peek inside and see who's playing, and if I didn't like their music I was going to head back to my car and go home.

Laura Targett and band playing Drill Hall Sunday night

I stood outside the hall listening to the piece that was being played and thought this music was interesting, so after that song was finished, I decided to go in, sit down and listen.

The very next song of Laura's was a song called 'Pigeon', about a bird flying into a window and knocking itself out?!
I have to say Laura had my attention from that point on, as this blog started because a bird (but not a pigeon) flew into my window and knocked itself out -
The Bird that Flew into the Window

I found the rest of the songs were like riding a melancholic, but at the same time uplifting merry-go-round.
Almost with a lullaby comforting quality to them.
To me Laura's music was the discovery of the day, and I would never have seen her show if I hadn't of let fate guide me to some obscure little hall to see her play.
But don't take my word for it, check Laura's songs out for yourself at her soundcloud site -
Laura Targett

The last thing I did at the Mullum Music Festival was buy a copy of Laura's CD outside Drill Hall, and it was one of the best decisions that I made on the day.
I've played Laura's CD many times since and would have to rate Laura's music the find of the festival for me.
And like big Arnie would say if he had attended this festival on Sunday, "I'll be back".