I have been slow to recover from Covid and that combined with mum's ongoing health issues meant i had a very slow start to the month indeed. My mother has refused to entertain aged care even though that was the advise from the medical team at Austin Repat Hospital- and that creates a whole other series of problems as she has to be safe and cared for. I live too far away to do anything on a weekly basis even though I partly moved to Gippsland to be closer to Mum to be helpful (which I was when she lived in Gembrook) but she was moved to nearly the other side of Melbourne which means wasting hoursin city traffic. On the other hand she apparently made quite a recovery when she was told that she needed to consider aged care because of her inability to look after herself or her dog.
However crunch time did arrive in order to create some new work for an exhibition I am a part of at Meeniyan Gallery starting 1 February with three other textile artists. There will be a meet the artist session at 2.00pm on Sunday February 12 .
Yesterday I had to deliver the works. I promised myself that I would create some new work for this, but going back and forth to Melbourne really depleted my energy levels ( and my garden is a weedy mess) and then I had dyed some fabric which wasn't quite what I had in mind. The fabric was lovely, but as I had set out with an idea , it was different to the idea. This meant adjusting my idea or dyeing more fabric and I really did not have enough fabric to dye more so I had to readjust my idea. I had also wanted to create some of the nardoo work with free motion stitching on the machine. So it has been a stitching marathon on my machine. I own a normal bottom of the range Bernina domestic sewing machine and I can tell you they are great for what I call free motion drawing. Essentially what I make are large drawings on the machine.
below are images of the nardoo pieces I made. Each measures about 52 cm wide by 102 cm long. There are some differences between the two as I tried two slightly different things- can you spot the difference?
And then work started on the whole cloth printed forest piece. If you recall seeing previous forest pieces you will remember that they are usually quite greenish and really suggestive of the forest. However when I dyed the fabric it was not nearly as forresty as I would have liked. This meant having to rethink thread colours and even how I stitched it. In the end it reminded me a lot of the bushland where I walk in the summer.
In the end I did not have time to procrastinate and I just had to do it. I quite like the outcome. I love the yellow in the top third- it reminds me of the summery scenes Bonnard used to paint but this time its the Australian bush- and I love yellow- in Australia (and the south of France) it is such a summer colour.
I am thinking about starting a newsletter . My question is would you be interested in subscribing to a newsletter ? before I run of to do the homework to explore the how. I would envisage content would include some of my work methodology, some writing about the narratives that my work usually incorporates, updates of upcoming events/ teaching i might be doing. It would also includes some of the things that I find inspirational, including good books to read and inspirational books to read ( nothing beats a book) I would probably post out once a month or 6 weeks. I am also thinking of including a section where I would answer one readers question in the subsequent newsletter. As always it would be called Musings of a Textile Itinerant. Subscription would be free but with an option to donate a cup of coffee if you were so inclined ,that would be entirely up to you and content would be the same regardless. Let me know if a newsletter would be of interest and what kind of material would be of interest to you? You can either reply on my blog or email me.
