Preamble
For your convenience I have listed below the annual reviews that span the life of this blogspot.
It's Been An Exciting Year (2010/2011)
Another Cheer - Another Year (2011/2012)
Where Did The Year Go? (2012/2013)
The Year of the Horse (2013/2014)
Cold and Windy - But on the Dawn of Renewal (2014/2015)
A Time To Reflect - A Time To Select (2015/2016)
A Time to Remember (2016/2017)
To Be or Not to Be (2017/2018)
The Night Too Quickly Passes (2018/2019)
The Year of Living Dangerously (2019/2020)
Attempt The Impossible Since Failure Will Still Be Your Success (2020/2021)
A Year of Climate Extremes (2021/2022)
I Love A Sunburnt Country (2022/2023)
Australian Rules (2023/2024)
Introduction
Australian Rules football is a game that is unique to the Australian landscape. Australian Rules football evolved in Melbourne (Australia) in the mid-19th century. An Aboriginal game known as marngrook, and Gaelic football played in Ireland, have been cited as inspiration for the game.
In the winter of 1858 students from Scotch College and Melbourne Grammar competed against each other in several games of football. These matches are credited as the first organised games of Australian Rules football. The game was initially known as Melbourne, or Victorian, rules football. To put the origins of the game in better perspective, it should be noted that Melbourne was a burgeoning city built on the riches of the 1850s gold rush by the time Australian football first appeared in 1858. As with other areas of British settlement during the 19th century, cricket emerged as the primary summer sport. Concerned about off-season fitness, cricketer Thomas Wentworth Wills (1835–80), who was born in Australia, but educated at Rugby School in England, where he captained the cricket team and excelled in football—believed that a football club should be formed to keep his team mates fit during winter. The Melbourne Cricket Club agreed with Wills’s suggestion, and as there were no standardized football codes at that time, appointed a committee to devise a set of rules. The Melbourne and Geelong football clubs were established in 1858 and 1859, respectively, and are two of the oldest football clubs in the world. The rules agreed to by the committee on May 17 1859, were a compromise between those of several English public schools, notably Winchester, Harrow, and Rugby. Players were allowed to handle the ball but not to run farther than necessary to kick it. In 1866 H.C.A. Harrison (1836–1929), a cousin of Wills, rewrote the rules. These rules imposed no limit on the number of players, though in the 1880s, 20 men per team became standard.
An Australian Rules football match between Carlton and Melbourne Football Clubs in 1881.
By the 1870s crowds of 10,000 people were attending games at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) to watch this uniquely Australian game.
MCG, ca. 1914. The 1881 'Members Stand' is the smaller building on the left.
The first grandstand at the MCG was the original wooden members' stand built in 1854, while the first public grandstand was a 200-metre long 6000-seat temporary structure built in 1861. Another grandstand seating 2000, facing one way to the cricket ground and the other way to the park where football was played, was built in 1876.
By the 1870s football was well established in Melbourne. Clubs formed around suburbs, hotels, churches, schools and workplaces, and in a society of recently-arrived immigrants, provided a sense of belonging and community. Games began to be played regularly and an unofficial system of senior and junior clubs emerged. The starting time for senior games was soon fixed at 3pm on a Saturday afternoon, enabling some manual labourers to play.
Players and spectators represented the full gamut of Melbourne society. The games were still played on open parkland, there were no admission fees and crowds of 2,000 to 3,000 spectators regularly gathered to watch. Women too were regular attendees, parading in their finery around the playing area. However, the rising popularity of the game was making it increasingly chaotic. Enthusiastic spectators encroached onto the field and disrupted the game, sometimes intentionally.
In 1869 two matches were played on the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG). One took place between Melbourne and the Victorian Police Force, the other between Melbourne and the 14th Regiment.
Cricket clubs had refused regular requests to allow footballers onto their grounds on the basis that the unruly players and spectators would ruin the turf. Unfortunately, those first games at the MCG did nothing to convince them otherwise. Football was again banished to the parks. In Carlton in 1876 the football club fenced off a new ground and smoothed it out. An admission fee was introduced to cover costs and, although it was largely resented by spectators, 5,000 paid to watch Carlton play Melbourne.
The modern day Australian Football League (AFL) includes many teams that date back to the beginnings of the game. Apart from the Melbourne Football Club (1859) other early clubs still in existence in the AFL include: Geelong (1859), Carlton (1864), North Melbourne (aka Hotham) (1869), Port Adelaide (1870), Essendon (1872), St Kilda (1873), South Melbourne (now the Sydney Swans) (1874), and Footscray (now the Western Bulldogs) (1877). St Kilda Football Club was established in April 1858, and played for a number of seasons until they no longer had a ground in 1864. In 1872 when a new ground was found it was reformed. Many of the players from St Kilda in 1865 then played for the South Yarra Football Club (1858). In April 1872 there was a motion to join both clubs.
On 3 July 2006 the AFL announced that it had formed an International Development Committee to support overseas (non-Australian) football leagues. The AFL also hope to develop the game in other countries to the point where Australian football is played at an international level by top-quality sides from around the world. The AFL has hosted an International Cup regularly every three years, beginning in 2002, with the third game in 2008 corresponding to the 150th anniversary of the code.
The 2023 AFL season was the 127th season of the Australian Football League (AFL), the highest level Australian rules football competition in Australia. The season featured 18 clubs and ran from 16 March to 30 September 2023, comprising a 23-match home-and-away season for the first time in league history, followed by a four-week finals series featuring the top eight clubs. The premiership was won by the Collingwood Football Club for the sixteenth time, after defeating Brisbane Lions by four points in the 2023 AFL Grand Final.
The 2023 AFL grand final between Collingwood and the Brisbane Lions football teams had more than 100,000 spectators in attendance.
2024 season AFL ladder. Collingwood Football Club finished on top and so are called "Premiers" (P) with my team, Essendon, finishing eleventh on the ladder.
It is customary for Australian children to be christened at birth, and then later to be christened to a team. Since we lived near the suburb Essendon (which is the original home of the Essendon Football Team) I naturally became an Essendon supporter. Of course one criteria for a happy wife and therefore for a happy life was that one's spouse also cheered for the same team. Needless to say, my hubby was an Essendon supporter before we knew each other.
For the record, Essendon Football Club holds the distinction of being the only club to win a premiership in their inaugural season (1897). Unfortunately, Essendon has not been able to achieve significant on-field success in recent years. It won its last premiership in 2000 and last final in 2004.
Essendon football club's jumper.
The game has a humerous side. In an outback country pub, two men were discussing Australian Rules Football. One had been to Melbourne (the home of the game) and the other had never been down that way. "Tell me," said the latter, "is the Melbourne game (AFL) anything like Rugby or American Football." "No, its quite different," replied his friend. "In the Melbourne game there are thirty-six players, and at least thirty-six thousand umpires!"
Australian Rules
The number of categories on this blogspot keeps growing. They are as follows: (i) ArtCloth, Art Quilts, Textile Art; (ii) Art Essays; (iii) Art Exhibitions/Installations/Talks; (iv) Artist's Profiles; (v) Art Resources; (vi) Art Reviews; (vii) Book Reviews/Interviews; (viii) Craft and Quilt Fairs; (ix) Fabric Lengths; (x) Glossaries; (xi) Guest Artists/Authors/Creatives; (xii) Guest Editors; (xiii) Opinion Pieces; (xiv) Prints on Paper; (xv) Resource Reviews; (xvi) Technical Articles; (xvii) Wearable Art; (xviii) Workshops and Master Classes (i.e. my students outputs).
Note: Not all of these categories are present in any given year. For example, this season there were no Book Reviews/Interviews nor were there new Glossaries, even though several of the Glossaries were substantially increased in content (e.g., click on the following link - Glossary of Art, Artists, Art Motifs and Art Movements - to view the increase in its content.
I do realize that judging a post by a single criterion, namely, the most number of viewers, is not necessarily the smartest approach, since the length of stay of a viewer on that post might negate the former statistic. How often have you heard yourself say - oops I really didn't mean to google this hunk of a man when I innocently searched for "drawers!" Nevertheless, this one statistic makes it easier for me to make a judgement about which posts were popular, and so it will be used as the final arbitrator, except in the case when two posts differ by less than two viewers in total. Then I will decree that both are joint winners!
Note: Within each category we are only talking about differences in number of views, rather than the absolute number of views.
ArtCloth, Art Quilts, Textile Art
There were eight posts in this category in the 2023/2024 season. The two that got the largest number of page views were: African Stitch Resist, and Yoruba Stitch Resist, with the former the winner by eight more page views than the latter.
Dogon woman's indigo-dyed stitch-resist cloth from Mali.
Note: The embroidery on the cloth is a phrase from a popular song.
Art Essays
There were four post in this category in 2023/2024. The two posts that received the largest numbers of page views were published approximately two months apart, namely, Media and Society and Navajo Rugs of the Western Reservation. The winner by only eight page views was the latter.
Maker: Ella Yazzi Bia.
Comment: Ella Yazzi Bia of White Clay, Arizona, was commissioned to copy a design in Read Mullan's catalog. In six months the job was done but with tiny differences in design.
Size: 39 x 63 inches.
Courtesy: Tom E. Kirk Collection.
Art Exhibitions/Installations/Talks
There were eight posts in this category in 2023/2024. The two posts that received the largest number of page views were published within a fortnight of each other and they were: ATASDA's ‘A Touch of Gold’ 50th Anniversary Exhibition Part I and ATASDA’s ‘A Touch of Gold’ 50th Anniversary Exhibition Part II, with the former having 21 more views.
Artist: Marie-Therese Wisniowski.
Image: Amaranthine (Full View).
Technique and Media: Screenprinted - employing transparent, opaque and metallic pigments on supplied Batik block fabric.
Size: 22 x 22 cm.
Artist(s) Profile
There were ten posts in this category in 2023/2024 season. The two most viewed posts in this category was in 2023, namely: Cycle and Silk Designs of James Leman, with the former having five more views.
Cycle at work.
Art Resources
The Art Resources posts are generally the first post in any given month and so numerically they dominate the category of published posts in any given season. Hence there were eleven published posts in this category in the 2023/2024 season. Of course it is not surprising that the two most viewed posts in this category were the two that were longest on this blogspot, namely, Classification of Pigments - Part I and Classification of Pigments - Part II, with the former having sixteen more views than the latter.
Australian Yellow.
Guest Artists/Authors/Creatives
There were two posts in this category in 2023-2024, both being outstanding contributors to the world of art, namely, Mary Edna Fraser, and Janet De Boer. Visit both posts by clicking on their respective links given above.
There were only fifteen page views between them, with Janet having more visitors. Janet's sense of being true to herself with humour really comes to the fore in her post.
Janet's comment about this picture: "Oh yes - and I kayak. Note: Dismounting is not what it used to be and you should see me getting in it!"
Prints on Paper
There were five entries in this category this season, with the topmost two that were viewed belonging to the same series namely, Posters from World War II On, Since 1940s - Part I and Posters from World War II On, Since 1940s - Part II, with the latter having five more views.
Print of Churchill garning support for nation during World War II.
Wearable Art
There were only two posts in this category this season and both were related namely: Everyday Wear (Winter, 2003) - Part I and Everyday Wear (Winter, 2003) - Part II, with the former having 246 more views.
Stella McCartney.
For your convenience I have listed below the annual reviews that span the life of this blogspot.
It's Been An Exciting Year (2010/2011)
Another Cheer - Another Year (2011/2012)
Where Did The Year Go? (2012/2013)
The Year of the Horse (2013/2014)
Cold and Windy - But on the Dawn of Renewal (2014/2015)
A Time To Reflect - A Time To Select (2015/2016)
A Time to Remember (2016/2017)
To Be or Not to Be (2017/2018)
The Night Too Quickly Passes (2018/2019)
The Year of Living Dangerously (2019/2020)
Attempt The Impossible Since Failure Will Still Be Your Success (2020/2021)
A Year of Climate Extremes (2021/2022)
I Love A Sunburnt Country (2022/2023)
Australian Rules (2023/2024)
Introduction
Australian Rules football is a game that is unique to the Australian landscape. Australian Rules football evolved in Melbourne (Australia) in the mid-19th century. An Aboriginal game known as marngrook, and Gaelic football played in Ireland, have been cited as inspiration for the game.
In the winter of 1858 students from Scotch College and Melbourne Grammar competed against each other in several games of football. These matches are credited as the first organised games of Australian Rules football. The game was initially known as Melbourne, or Victorian, rules football. To put the origins of the game in better perspective, it should be noted that Melbourne was a burgeoning city built on the riches of the 1850s gold rush by the time Australian football first appeared in 1858. As with other areas of British settlement during the 19th century, cricket emerged as the primary summer sport. Concerned about off-season fitness, cricketer Thomas Wentworth Wills (1835–80), who was born in Australia, but educated at Rugby School in England, where he captained the cricket team and excelled in football—believed that a football club should be formed to keep his team mates fit during winter. The Melbourne Cricket Club agreed with Wills’s suggestion, and as there were no standardized football codes at that time, appointed a committee to devise a set of rules. The Melbourne and Geelong football clubs were established in 1858 and 1859, respectively, and are two of the oldest football clubs in the world. The rules agreed to by the committee on May 17 1859, were a compromise between those of several English public schools, notably Winchester, Harrow, and Rugby. Players were allowed to handle the ball but not to run farther than necessary to kick it. In 1866 H.C.A. Harrison (1836–1929), a cousin of Wills, rewrote the rules. These rules imposed no limit on the number of players, though in the 1880s, 20 men per team became standard.
By the 1870s crowds of 10,000 people were attending games at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) to watch this uniquely Australian game.
The first grandstand at the MCG was the original wooden members' stand built in 1854, while the first public grandstand was a 200-metre long 6000-seat temporary structure built in 1861. Another grandstand seating 2000, facing one way to the cricket ground and the other way to the park where football was played, was built in 1876.
By the 1870s football was well established in Melbourne. Clubs formed around suburbs, hotels, churches, schools and workplaces, and in a society of recently-arrived immigrants, provided a sense of belonging and community. Games began to be played regularly and an unofficial system of senior and junior clubs emerged. The starting time for senior games was soon fixed at 3pm on a Saturday afternoon, enabling some manual labourers to play.
Players and spectators represented the full gamut of Melbourne society. The games were still played on open parkland, there were no admission fees and crowds of 2,000 to 3,000 spectators regularly gathered to watch. Women too were regular attendees, parading in their finery around the playing area. However, the rising popularity of the game was making it increasingly chaotic. Enthusiastic spectators encroached onto the field and disrupted the game, sometimes intentionally.
In 1869 two matches were played on the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG). One took place between Melbourne and the Victorian Police Force, the other between Melbourne and the 14th Regiment.
Cricket clubs had refused regular requests to allow footballers onto their grounds on the basis that the unruly players and spectators would ruin the turf. Unfortunately, those first games at the MCG did nothing to convince them otherwise. Football was again banished to the parks. In Carlton in 1876 the football club fenced off a new ground and smoothed it out. An admission fee was introduced to cover costs and, although it was largely resented by spectators, 5,000 paid to watch Carlton play Melbourne.
The modern day Australian Football League (AFL) includes many teams that date back to the beginnings of the game. Apart from the Melbourne Football Club (1859) other early clubs still in existence in the AFL include: Geelong (1859), Carlton (1864), North Melbourne (aka Hotham) (1869), Port Adelaide (1870), Essendon (1872), St Kilda (1873), South Melbourne (now the Sydney Swans) (1874), and Footscray (now the Western Bulldogs) (1877). St Kilda Football Club was established in April 1858, and played for a number of seasons until they no longer had a ground in 1864. In 1872 when a new ground was found it was reformed. Many of the players from St Kilda in 1865 then played for the South Yarra Football Club (1858). In April 1872 there was a motion to join both clubs.
On 3 July 2006 the AFL announced that it had formed an International Development Committee to support overseas (non-Australian) football leagues. The AFL also hope to develop the game in other countries to the point where Australian football is played at an international level by top-quality sides from around the world. The AFL has hosted an International Cup regularly every three years, beginning in 2002, with the third game in 2008 corresponding to the 150th anniversary of the code.
The 2023 AFL season was the 127th season of the Australian Football League (AFL), the highest level Australian rules football competition in Australia. The season featured 18 clubs and ran from 16 March to 30 September 2023, comprising a 23-match home-and-away season for the first time in league history, followed by a four-week finals series featuring the top eight clubs. The premiership was won by the Collingwood Football Club for the sixteenth time, after defeating Brisbane Lions by four points in the 2023 AFL Grand Final.
It is customary for Australian children to be christened at birth, and then later to be christened to a team. Since we lived near the suburb Essendon (which is the original home of the Essendon Football Team) I naturally became an Essendon supporter. Of course one criteria for a happy wife and therefore for a happy life was that one's spouse also cheered for the same team. Needless to say, my hubby was an Essendon supporter before we knew each other.
For the record, Essendon Football Club holds the distinction of being the only club to win a premiership in their inaugural season (1897). Unfortunately, Essendon has not been able to achieve significant on-field success in recent years. It won its last premiership in 2000 and last final in 2004.
The game has a humerous side. In an outback country pub, two men were discussing Australian Rules Football. One had been to Melbourne (the home of the game) and the other had never been down that way. "Tell me," said the latter, "is the Melbourne game (AFL) anything like Rugby or American Football." "No, its quite different," replied his friend. "In the Melbourne game there are thirty-six players, and at least thirty-six thousand umpires!"
Australian Rules
The number of categories on this blogspot keeps growing. They are as follows: (i) ArtCloth, Art Quilts, Textile Art; (ii) Art Essays; (iii) Art Exhibitions/Installations/Talks; (iv) Artist's Profiles; (v) Art Resources; (vi) Art Reviews; (vii) Book Reviews/Interviews; (viii) Craft and Quilt Fairs; (ix) Fabric Lengths; (x) Glossaries; (xi) Guest Artists/Authors/Creatives; (xii) Guest Editors; (xiii) Opinion Pieces; (xiv) Prints on Paper; (xv) Resource Reviews; (xvi) Technical Articles; (xvii) Wearable Art; (xviii) Workshops and Master Classes (i.e. my students outputs).
Note: Not all of these categories are present in any given year. For example, this season there were no Book Reviews/Interviews nor were there new Glossaries, even though several of the Glossaries were substantially increased in content (e.g., click on the following link - Glossary of Art, Artists, Art Motifs and Art Movements - to view the increase in its content.
I do realize that judging a post by a single criterion, namely, the most number of viewers, is not necessarily the smartest approach, since the length of stay of a viewer on that post might negate the former statistic. How often have you heard yourself say - oops I really didn't mean to google this hunk of a man when I innocently searched for "drawers!" Nevertheless, this one statistic makes it easier for me to make a judgement about which posts were popular, and so it will be used as the final arbitrator, except in the case when two posts differ by less than two viewers in total. Then I will decree that both are joint winners!
Note: Within each category we are only talking about differences in number of views, rather than the absolute number of views.
ArtCloth, Art Quilts, Textile Art
There were eight posts in this category in the 2023/2024 season. The two that got the largest number of page views were: African Stitch Resist, and Yoruba Stitch Resist, with the former the winner by eight more page views than the latter.
Note: The embroidery on the cloth is a phrase from a popular song.
Art Essays
There were four post in this category in 2023/2024. The two posts that received the largest numbers of page views were published approximately two months apart, namely, Media and Society and Navajo Rugs of the Western Reservation. The winner by only eight page views was the latter.
Comment: Ella Yazzi Bia of White Clay, Arizona, was commissioned to copy a design in Read Mullan's catalog. In six months the job was done but with tiny differences in design.
Size: 39 x 63 inches.
Courtesy: Tom E. Kirk Collection.
Art Exhibitions/Installations/Talks
There were eight posts in this category in 2023/2024. The two posts that received the largest number of page views were published within a fortnight of each other and they were: ATASDA's ‘A Touch of Gold’ 50th Anniversary Exhibition Part I and ATASDA’s ‘A Touch of Gold’ 50th Anniversary Exhibition Part II, with the former having 21 more views.
Image: Amaranthine (Full View).
Technique and Media: Screenprinted - employing transparent, opaque and metallic pigments on supplied Batik block fabric.
Size: 22 x 22 cm.
Artist(s) Profile
There were ten posts in this category in 2023/2024 season. The two most viewed posts in this category was in 2023, namely: Cycle and Silk Designs of James Leman, with the former having five more views.
Art Resources
The Art Resources posts are generally the first post in any given month and so numerically they dominate the category of published posts in any given season. Hence there were eleven published posts in this category in the 2023/2024 season. Of course it is not surprising that the two most viewed posts in this category were the two that were longest on this blogspot, namely, Classification of Pigments - Part I and Classification of Pigments - Part II, with the former having sixteen more views than the latter.
Guest Artists/Authors/Creatives
There were two posts in this category in 2023-2024, both being outstanding contributors to the world of art, namely, Mary Edna Fraser, and Janet De Boer. Visit both posts by clicking on their respective links given above.
There were only fifteen page views between them, with Janet having more visitors. Janet's sense of being true to herself with humour really comes to the fore in her post.
Prints on Paper
There were five entries in this category this season, with the topmost two that were viewed belonging to the same series namely, Posters from World War II On, Since 1940s - Part I and Posters from World War II On, Since 1940s - Part II, with the latter having five more views.
Wearable Art
There were only two posts in this category this season and both were related namely: Everyday Wear (Winter, 2003) - Part I and Everyday Wear (Winter, 2003) - Part II, with the former having 246 more views.
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