Ball Polishing and Pick Buffing

Next month, we will have owned the Forbes Building for three years. I believe that our building is definitely female. She is stubborn, capricious, unreliable and unpredictable. She has put difficult obstacles in our way as we wrestled to restore her to her former glory.

The roof leaked like a sieve, the brickwork was exceedingly fretful, the plaster was crumbling, the mortar within some of the pillars was non-existent, the electricity was a joke, there was bugger all plumbing and the ancient septic tank gave up the ghost.

We have had to contract  the electricity, decorative brickwork and some of the plumbing out to suitably qualified contractors. Dave the Brave has been our primary electrician and has been with us since the beginning. Dave is so tidy and conscientious, he removed the remains of a mummified cat from the roof space without any comment. He has fearlessly climbed into places I wouldn't dream of entering.

We have spread the love around with a number of plumbers. They have all played their part in bringing water into the building and connecting us to deep sewerage. You know who you are...

Our handyman and carpenter, Guy - international man of mystery, muso, teacher and all round great bloke - has also been with us from the start. Dan our master brickie has created beautiful walls out of one-hundred-year-old bricks, which are an absolute pain to handle.

We've had plenty of assistance from trade assistance Gary. As we can't afford to pay much, Gary has been the only person who we have been able to employ for any length of time. But, Michael is the glue that has held the building's renovation together. Without him, nothing happens. So when he's been ill or injured, he has continued working. Twice, this lunacy has put into hospital with pneumonia. The other was an argument that Michael's hands had with a very long, very heavy steel member. The metal beam won that bout.

Since Easter, Michael's motivation has got up and left. He is pretty tired and fed up with the non-stop renovating and repairs. And now that our building is drying out, we are filling new cracks as the building contracts. And we still have forty-five square metres of the original work to finish.

He has made an executive decision. He has been longing to achieve more as an artist. So, he has made a space in his workshop that is not devoted to renovating materials. he has set up his spider production again - for the first time since 1998. He hopes to make about twenty to get the ball rolling. So to speak.

Yesterday, I watched the transformation of a dusty, rusty little mill bill into a gleaming spider abdomen. With an electric wire buffer. And today, he polished up two of the pick heads we'd found at Eulaminna. We found the name of the maker and his address in Ballarat, Victoria on one of the picks and it had ended up on the other side of the country in another goldfield and copper mine.

So, Michael has a cheerful spring in his step again. He has also discovered that making his metal spiders is a bit like riding a bike. Or polishing balls!

Mini Magda posing with the before and after of the polishing process..

and from another angle...

meanwhile, one pick...

two picks on display in the Gallery...

with the spider production nerve centre set up in his Studio.