Toxic Debt and Smoking Crabs: Delightful

I've put stuff up here before about the printmaking collective I'm getting involved with-- it's called the Rizzeria, and it's all based around stencil press printmaking. I just finished the Mastercourse, and check out the beautiful poster I made! It's inspired by Macquarie Dictionary's Word of the Year: Toxic Debt. The RISO machine is so much fun, like screenprinting, but at 120 pages/minute. Just call me speed demon.























We also played around with GOCCO machines in the class; they are just as fun as the RISO, though significantly slower. I printed the crab on brown primed canvas using red RISO ink on a GOCCO stencil press. I liked the GOCCO so much, I ended up buying one for my personal use! The crab was drawn by Craig, and it's becoming a bit of a personal logo for him; he's even started spelling his name krb. Total insanity.
















This past weekend, Paul ( from this post ) came to town! He's been working for Australia's Immigration Department in Canberra. It was sort of bad that he came, because he was getting his visa to move back to Geneva; but it was still really nice to see him and hang out in Sydney. We took him on what we're starting to call "The Craig and Nija Awesome Food Tour of Sydney." I really enjoyed showing him around; it's strange, but somehow showing a friend around Sydney make me feel like I really know this place...like it might be home. I don't know everything about it, I haven't seen all of it. But I'm sort of starting to get it.

This coming weekend, I'm going to Canberra to see his town and hang out with him one last time before he moves back to the opposite quadrant of the world. I'm also going to check out ANU; I've been researching a few Master's programs, and it looks like ANU might have the best programs for me. I've heard a lot of bad things about Canberra, so I'm interested to see it for myself. I've heard it's really boring and spread out, it's the world's first planned community, it's like living in a park, and there's just not much life to it. I've also heard Canberra's a lot quieter than Sydney. Honestly, right now, as I'm listening to my neighbour's blaring television, people screaming at the bus stop right outside my front door, trucks and buses groaning by, and unmuffled motorcycles rage past, quiet sounds like it might be a really nice place to be.