Team
Mary Crock is a lawyer and professor who spends most of her time teaching university students about immigration law, refugees and children who find themselves in danger because they are refugees or just because they are migrants. She has written many big, serious books about the law. This is her first book just for children, about things that she hopes interest children (animals, the importance of friends and how to stay safe when there is a fire emergency). Mary and her husband Ron have three grown children and dreams of a clutch of grand-children and nieces and nephews that were starting to be realized as Little Walla went to press. Mary lives with Ron and their dog, Risky, who tried to be a guide dog but failed because he loved chasing balls too much. They love him anyway. A lot.
Mary Crock - Author & Illustrator
The paintings used as a basis for the book were done in a studio built in Mary's back yard, using home-made canvases created out of stretched hessian, or ‘found’ items such as discarded plywood and old particle board. Home-made gesso was used to create a working surface for the acrylic paint. Mary made a huge mess doing the paintings. It was way more fun than writing law books.
Riz Wakil, Saachi Owen and Nicolette Axiak formatted the images to create the actual book.
To prepare the paintings for exhibition and sale, Mary worked with builder friend, Wayde Love-Attard, to source some ancient rough-hewn timber from a long-abandoned farm shed. The slabs came from country where Little Walla and her friends would feel right at home. Wayde and Miki Spini sliced and diced the hardwood to frame the larger works. There remained nearly 30 smaller works painted on a range of surfaces, with some canvases created from discarded wood paneling. Through luck and happenstance, master craftsman Mario Tripolini joined the passion project, offering 60 years of experience and glorious off-cuts from his kitchen and furniture making business. The smaller works are framed in sample doors, discarded drawers. For one, we re-purposed a large yellow table top, a modest sketch transformed into a star-sun with LED light insertions. For others, frames were stitched together with slivers of timber, carefully collated off-cuts and luminous pieces of laminate in every colour of the rainbow.
The framing process was also way more fun than writing law books, but only a little bit more fun than teaching, which remains Mary’s longest-running passion project.
