Gellibrand Summer Morning

I woke this morning to find the mist in the valley being pierced by the rays of the rising sun, back lighting the trees up the back of our property. I can tell it is going to be a hot day! Christmas is over and commercialism and rampant haveism has managed to partially erase the memory of the unfolding horror of this day last year when the world became aware of the devastation wreaked by the Boxing day tsunami.

I am not a keen festive season celebrator despite having children- I just find it all a bit too much. My childhood memories are of St Nicholas where you as a child had to give something- a poem and food for St Nicholas' horse and in return you got a sweet meat and then you got a big gift on his name day.It is also the time of year when our major summer holiday happens and so many people are on holidays and expect that you are too. So the last three years I have been very busy with work at this time of year and am a little resentful of time taken away from creating-it's all good and well to take hand work but it is not quite the same as working and then suddenly having an ahha moment and being able to pursue it.

I have decided I want to do the creating a day thing next year but with a slightly different bent.I have an Italian friend , Ada Melegari and about 10 years ago she created work for a year by making marks for each day or the month- or that is what she set out to do. She ascribed a colour to each month which she prepared at the beginning of the month and then proceeded to work on the small coloured oblongs she had made, some days she did not make any marks and she left those blank because it is difficult to be creative every single day- she then assembled them all together so that they represented a month. The blanks actually created an interesting effect and I asked her if she could remember what she had done on those blank days. She couldn't but she could remember things she had done on the mark making days- so in a sense her pieces worked a little like a memory device- not quite like the rooms of Simeonedes- but still an memory aid.So i want to do this with cloth- perhaps one contrast colour to help with the mark making and stitching- just working small pieces and assembling them into a quilt representing twelve months.