Edutainment > 36 Views of Green Island (4) - Conjola Sandflats

Conjola Sandflats
copyright Tom Kristensen, 2004

Tom Kristensen, born 1962, is a young artist from Australia who works in the tradition of Japanese woodblock printmaking. On this page, he writes about his latest print from the series "36 Views of Green Island ".

Here is the original text written by Tom Kristensen. Text and images are copyright protected and may not be used or distributed for other than private use without the prior consignment of the author/artist.

36 Views of Green Island

"These 36 views are presented in the Sosaku Hanga tradition: self-carved and hand printed, using Japanese tools, Japanese mulberry washi and traditional pigment colours. Each print is made from 4 to 6 blocks and printed in an edition of 25 copies."

Conjola Sandflats - No. 4

"Lake Conjola lies separated from the ocean behind a sand dune. At times the dune is breached and a channel drains to the sea. With the influx of the ocean at high tide, the freshwater lake becomes a brackish lagoon.

In this view four people are out on the wet sandflats at low tide searching for food or bait. They carry large plastic buckets hoping for a good haul or perhaps they use them to carry salt water to keep the catch fresh. They are likely to come across shellfish lying half-buried, while swarming armies of crabs scurry about. If they dig with skill they can find large worms.

People share the food of the sandflats with many birds, including the endangered Hooded Plover and the Pied Oystercatcher. Pelicans, cormorants, gulls, sandpipers and herons also feed here. The migratory Little Tern is another rare bird species to visit here. These threatened birds have a small nesting area fenced off in the sand dunes by the lagoon. The nesting terns lay their eggs in a small scrape of the sand, and there is a danger that people will accidentally trample the nests and frighten the birds away.

There are other ecological pressures on this landscape; an exotic aquarium plant, Caulerpa taxifolia, is spreading across the lagoon floor. The plant is toxic to marine invertebrates. The food may soon be gone."

Tom Kristensen
April 2005

Video Presentation of Tom Kristensen

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We produced a video with a short presentation of Tom Kristensen. Please click on the image or on the link to go to the video page.

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