Last year the City of Stonnington gave us some seed money to create a book about birds in Stonnington. The artists worked hard to create images in various techniques and here they are.

They are all hanging in the gallery, a wonderful testament to our talented artists..  The Book Arts Group is slowly making the bindings for the images. I'll write more when the book is finished.
The Fantasy Birds from Faraway are also destined to be a book... more fun and less formal. There are 9 of them.

Thank you Lee,  for giving us this gorgeous wee press. Its going to be so useful and although very heavy, it is still portable enough to take for demonstrative purposes. Sturdy. Wonderful.

Imagine our excitement when we received an email asking us if we would like to have a press for the cost of the removal! Post-haste the Committee went to view and decided YES, it was a good press and suitable for our back room and would cater for our enthusiastic relief printers.
We got the Friendly Moving Men in to shift it. They used three young strong strapping fellows. I don't usually advertise in these pages, but I have to say they were extremely easy to work with. Highly recommended.

So then it needed an overhaul, a clean up and to be fixed in position.. Thankfully Allan Dabscheck is an old hand with presses and he is in the process of getting it ready to use. We are really excited about this new press. Its going to be fantastic!

One of our members is a member of a small social group that meets monthly to do exciting things together. She suggested to them that they try their hand at printing on acetate here at the Firestation. We organised the class together and they had a ball. Lots of laughs and excitement in the studio. John Hinds took the class and initiated them into the wonders of the printing press! If you would like to do the same, just contact me here at FPS

Carmel O'Connor generously donated her time and expertise to Firestation and take this workshop for 15 eager participants.
Carmel is a Archibald prize finalist and a full time artist, both painting and printmaking. We were very excited about this initiative which has brought many more people to our facility from all parts of Melbourne. A couple of her portraits are shown below.

Evelyn Yee did a fabulous portrait on the day. Unfortunately my camera was giving me problems and I didn't get any other photos..