One morning last November I was in the kitchen making coffee when a flicker of yellow caught my eye. It seemed its own source of light, a fresh vibrant glowing. I walked over and stared out across the neighbours’ back yards. Then got my camera.
The yellow combined the strength of mid-morning light with the painted wooden lattice support of a carport. It’s been there maybe 20 years.
What was different that morning? My attention was caught, and I looked.
In that little slice of Sydney suburbia there are multiple different wooden lattices. Roofs are concrete or terracotta tiles, various profiles of corrugated metal. Fences are slats of wood or colorbond, some are metal railings. Next door has beautiful rough-faced cream bricks. The yard is grass and concrete. So much pattern and texture, and that’s before I start on the natural world – palm trees, gums, jacarandas, grevillea. None of this was new information. I have looked and admired before, for almost half my life. There were more important things to think about. My husband had fallen, broken his arm near the shoulder a few days earlier. For the next couple of months access to that window was limited by the hired hospital bed. (He’s healing well, if slowly).
At that moment I was held, enthralled, by the novelty of that well-known view.
Why are moments memorable? How? A prosaic moment. Even that angle of sun and lattice recurs. And what happens to The Moment when you return to it? I have a few treasured memories that I try not to think about too closely, feeling they will dull, blur, distort, if I return too often.
I decided to experiment – take The Moment and keep exploring it, trying to keep it in some way distinct from every other glance eastward. … I just checked. Today is easy. The time is right but it’s overcast, has been raining and looks like more is coming. The grass is a bit greener, no clothes on the washing line, the jacarandas are in full leaf.
No photos – it would feel a breach of privacy. Instead:
my first ever etching, done in the last print-making class of the year.

Turning to gelli-printing over the summer break, I’ve created a series of stencils.
Elements of that particular lattice.

Jacaranda blossom

So many variations, literal and abstracted, of brick, tile, and roof shadow lines.



My hand-written text as I reflected on the project.

To create the stencils I bought a silhouette Cameo machine, then learnt Inkscape to create and edit my svg files. The Inkscape Masterclass from LogosByNick was a very worthwhile investment. (Free youtube tasters, valuable in their own right).
I did a little rudimentary gelli-printing as part of the OCA course, but there has been much, much more youtube, as I try to develop some skills. Some key artists:
- Froyle Davies https://www.youtube.com/@FroyleArt
- Elizabeth St. Hilaire https://www.youtube.com/@ElizabethStHilaire
- Robyn McClendon https://www.youtube.com/@RobynMcClendon
- Kory https://www.youtube.com/@KorysArtCafe
- Denise Lush https://www.youtube.com/@DeniseLush
- Vikki Reed https://www.youtube.com/@VikkiReed
- Mark Yeates https://www.youtube.com/@yeatesmakes
Use of script or shapes we interpret as script particularly intrigue me. There’s the blocky classic stencil letters, often capitals, sturdy – is the expression “tags”? Lots more flowing fonts avoid turning “o” into a void. I’m interested in something more fluid and visual, less legible. So far my search has turned up
- asemic writing – “wordless open semantic form of writing” according to wikipedia. It has an interesting and not straight-forward pedigree, but while I like being provisional or tangential I don’t want a “vacuum of meaning”.
- Robyn McClendon demonstrates her “intuitive scripting”, and makes the point that it is definitely not asemic. It is full of personal gestural meaning.
- There are some commercial stencils around that use a large looping form which suggests overlapping lines of script. I don’t know if there is actual text in them.
- zentangles is a copyrighted term and form, developed by a calligraphy artist when in a meditative state. An interesting origin story, but too removed from script for my purposes.
- Graffiti has a meaning and association that doesn’t work for me
- Calligraffiti has specific political and cultural dimensions
- Kory shares a method of mark-making using chiseled pens, which really seems to lend itself to use in a script-like form.
- “pareidolia” means “to impose a meaningful interpretation on a nebulous stimulus, usually visual, so that one sees an object or pattern or meaning where there is none.” The man in the moon is a classic example.
Is there a space / gap between script-like forms such as intuitive scripting and more general expressive, gestural mark-making? Would that be significant to me in my own work?
Lots of open questions. To my initial question, on the exploration of a brief moment, my response so far is that is fascinating to combine the focus and force of a moment with the stretched time of flow when making – both making svg files and working in paint and ink. It’s strongest when experimenting with collage. I’ve spent hours, days, thinking back to The Moment and developing materials related to it. Then with everything collected on the work table, glue brush in hand, I almost forget that scene. I’m deep in the moment-by-moment decision making and struggle to create something that seems right to me Now.
I’ll finish with some images of exploration so far – just focus on the exciting potential, not the beginner clumsiness.😊 As well as cutting stencils the Cameo can draw the vectors, which can be seen on one of the prints below. Also I’ve done an initial experiment scaling down a design and using the stencil to emboss and colour polymer clay.












