Last weekend John, my sister-in-law Pat and I drove up to Gympie. There were two reasons for this: first to catch up with our Rockhampton friend Trevor who was in Gympie for the weekend, and secondly to see the Moth Migration Project at the Gympie Regional Gallery. I knew I couldn’t get to the opening, so decided to be an early bird and have a preview.

I basically knew what the installation would look like but wasn’t really expecting how much lovelier it would look in real life – the moths had been painted, printed or drawn and were pinned to the walls in great flocks (is that the right word?) and curved up and down the gallery walls. Some patches were thick with moths – and others thinned out as if they were flying off with a mind of their own. There are thousands of paper moths all contributed by artists world wide. We spent a long time looking at those moths!

I had submitted 15 moths. Half the moths had gone to Bundaberg Regional Gallery – so I had 7 or 8 to find. I did pretty well – between us we found 6 – as I said there were a lot of moths.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

There was another surprise. It is always nice to ‘meet the artist’ – this time it was New York artist Hilary Lorenz who instigated and has continued to organise the project. I knew she had been in Gympie installing the work, but hadn’t realised that she would be at the gallery running a linocut workshop. How good it was to have a chat with her. I have absolute admiration for the artists who get these projects off the ground, not only for their creativity, but for the stamina and enthusiasm involved in keeping a project going.