Angels in Stone II 

Detail Angels in Stone 

Angels in Stone 

Detail Little Turtles 

Little Turtles 

Across Australia

I have talked about curating before and Across Australia is one of the shows I have curated in the past 6 years. It is presently at the Panormama Mesdag in The Hague,The Netherlands until 11 December, and it showcases the work of 28 different Australian artists. These phtographs are from the opening and show The Australian Ambassador, Mr Stephen Brady opening the exhibition, with Diana Vincent's 'Duststorm' immediately behind him and Sue Dennis' 'Silent Sentinels' to the right and in the second photo, the Australian Ambassador, Mr Stephen Brady , my daughter Siena and myself, with Jan Clark's 'Spotted Gum Trees II' in the background. I had hoped to have more installations shots but the batteries in my digital camera died and a Dutch friend Nelly van Elst sent these to me. Thanks Nelly!

I started curating out of sheer frustration I must say- getting selected for things is such a hit and miss game and I was missing out more than getting in-so I thought how do I change this? So in a moment of utter madness I decided to create my own exhibitions without an organisation to be the backing support.It's been hard work, an incredible learning curve,my family has at times suffered ( because I have been away for extended periods) and been dragged overseas for their luggage allowance,and I have made some of the most amazing friends and acquaintances. I have always tried to make sure that there has been a catalogue of some sort( as I believe quilters despite our presence on the net are not very good at archiving- myself included)- 3 exhibitons have had books, Australian Bounty, Under the Southern Cross ( Across Australia will have one for its tour of the Middle East organised by Jenny Bowker and her husband the Australian Ambassador Mr Bob Bowker), a fourth, Twisted Interpretations of the Natural Environment had a foldout poster style booklet and another one, Organic had a cd which was much less popular.

I do think I am getting to the end of the line with this curating - it is simply too hard to do it without institutional backing- and yet overseas love these works and their enthusiasm for the work of all the Australian artists is what keeps me going at times. I honestly wish at times I had a tape recorder with me to record the buzz as people look at these works, to let the artists who entrusted me with their work hear how people enjoy their work.
I will answer all other questions tomorrow!

Turtles and flowers

Calendula
The weather has been quite hot and sunny the last week and the garden is popping- so are the weeds. We now have a hothouse so I finally hope to have tomatoes by Christmas, and to have aubergines and lots of chillies. I also hope to grow lettuce in there continuously and generally extend the season. We ate our first crop of broad beans the other night. The artichokes are quite different this year compared to last year- for a start the buds are not as big and they are really tall about 2 metres high.

The pale pink old fashioned rose only flowers once a year but the fragrance it puts out is delightful.We have calendulas throughout the vegetable garden to attract bees .

Have been in a blah mood for working- so decided to make a little hanging with turtles- it is quite long and narrow- sometimes doing the sewing, and just doing something gets you going again. I did not feel like handsewing today- sometimes the motion of the sewing is too introspective .

So so week

Detail showing hand stitching
This photo shows the detail of the hand stitching I have been doing on the barnacle/urchin piece. It is looking distinctly more urchin like and the stitching is taking forever- serves me right for taking up hand stitching after years of only doing machine stitching.

It has been one of those blegh weeks and then a commission I was hoping to do over the next two months fell through- bye bye income, and I have not really got anything else planned to replace what I would have earnt. That is the problem with working freelance, when things fall through it can have a major impact on your practice because you have allocated time for the project , but if for some reason the project falls through you are stuck. The joys of being self employed. I guess i will have to do the summer markets again and hope for good weather on Saturdays. And unfortunately my studio is not finished so i can't teach in there yet either. The one upbeat thing is that I finally managed to get going on my nanowrimo novel and am now at the 12000 word mark. I just started writing, not too much planning and I am intrigued how the characters seem to take you to the next stage and how some of them dominate others despite you're best intentions. It is actually a strange process for when you write for a project oriented book everything needs to be defined and contained within parameters- but a novel is so open-ended. I am sure it is why Luigi Pirandello wrote Six Characters in Search of an Author- well i think they found me all of eighty or so years later....

Oh and btw- all of my work is for sale in case anyone is interested- and I am prepared to bargain if necessary (ggg). I also do commission work. I shall put pictures of new work on my picturetrail site tomorrow and I intend to do some dyeing next week when the fabric I have ordered arrives next week ( early I hope)- so I will put some more of the interesting dyed pieces on the site as well.

Someone asked about my book- I do have some for sale but if you are in America there are a couple of craft book places that have it for sale and it would be cheaper for you to order the book from them.
I am also planning my next trip to Europe next year for May- June 2006. If anyone out there is interested in having me come and teach please contact me and I can send you more details and workshop lists.

Look What I Just Found

Blue tongue lizard
It has been hot today and the kids got into the dam, after they came home school ,to cool off. However the weather is changing and I could hear thunder so i went outside to make the kids come in , and I found this blue tongue lizard sitting in the sun. Now, I am not all that keen on things slithery and crawlie but blue tongue lizards are reasonably harmless- if you get bitten the wound festers for some time ( though I have not been bitten). They are also quite docile so it's possible to get quite close without them getting aggressive ,unlike the snakes that also live around here ( thank goodness I don't see them often!) Blue tongue lizards are about 45 cms long ( 18 iches) and eat mice and insects.

Yesterday was the Melbourne Cup- a horse race that stops the nation. A lot of people , if they only bet once a year, will have a wager on the cup ( I don't - it's almost impossible to pick a winner)- the racing distance is two miles ( 3200 metres) and it takes a true stayer to cover the distance. It has produced champions that live on in the national lore like Pharlap- a galant horse that won once and came second the second time around carrying the biggest weight ever. He was taken to America for the Kentucky Derby, but died in mysterious circumstances, thought by many to have been poisoning- the nation was grief stricken. If we admire someone for their courage and determination we say "A heart as big as Pharlap's". Pharlap lives on in the national memory for he won in the depression years when it was still possible to wager pennies and tried his heart out and won the affection of a nation. Yesterday The Melbourne Cup produced another rare moment- a mare ,Makybe Diva, won the race for a third time- this has never happened before. It is fitting that a mare should parallel the legend of Pharlap and perhaps join him in the affection of the nation. I don't think I shall ever see this again.

Barnacles, Urchins?

Detail

I liked the small piece I made the other day so I made a bigger version 40 cm wide by 140 cm long ( 16" x 55"). I can see I will have to do quite a lot of hand stitching to liven up the negative space and I may put some french knots on the urchin shapes.

Barnacles, Urchins? 

Seven Pebbles

Seven pebbles

Saturday afternoon and evening we attended the Colac Eistedfod so that my daughters could participate. All three play piano, and Ynez played in the afternoon and played very well, then Siena and Celeste played in the evening. Celeste won her Grade 3 section and got an Honourable Mention in the Open section and Siena won her Grade 2 Section! It is organised by the regional music teachers to give kids the opportunity to perform in front of a Music Board adjudicator before the music board exams in mid-November, so hopefully this will be a good omen!.

However we had to sit and listen to all the other children play so I hand stitched these two little pieces whilst we sat and listened. The stitching by hand gives quite a different effect to the machine stitching. I am working on a bigger barnacle/sea urchin/oranges piece but to my utter dismay the cat ( a slightly weird but wonderful Burmese called Mitsou) has eaten large holes in the only piece of batting that would have fit the purpose- the only other thing to do is to join lots of pieces together- a job and a half! Not only that the local patchwork shop where I could buy batting when I have run out ( as I tend to buy in bulk) has shut down! argggh!!!!

Some people have made comments about the fact that i seem to work quickly and be prolific. Once the idea is in my head things do come together reasonably quickly- but it is also my job to do this work- so I treat it as a nine to five day, with overtime when I get enthused, and I might be up at 5 am and be sewing . I wish I could say to rate of pay matches my enthusiasm, but unfortunatley that is not so.

I am also creating work for an exhibition I am having in the South of France next year at Centre Europeen du Patchwork with Annette and Robert Claxton called Fusion. I am still umming and ahhing as to whether I will enter The New Quilt at Manly ( one of Australia's premier art quilt exhibitions)- I have a long string of rejects from that show and I am not sure I am in the mood for yet another reject .

And tomorrow Nanowrimo starts! So the nose will be to the grindstone then!

Stitched

Detail Stitched!

Stitched this piece today- it is about 8 incehs wide and 22 inches long. Again I can't get the colour right on the camera and this is as close as I can get it playing around with the image. I have again used the lutradur ( which is opaque white, but transparent at the same time) and transferred the dye onto it. I have done some hand stitching. I had been intending to make cards but liked the whole piece . I will make a larger version of this as a quilt. The circle things remind me of umbrellas or sea urchins.

Have to head off now and watch kids play piano in an Eistedfod at Colac- for 4 hours- that's the problem when they are all different age groups! I was going to take some hand stitching, but I already finished this piece and I don't want to hand stitch the whole piece- so will have to find something else to do.

Stitched! 

Another Stone Angel Pattern

Two Angel panels

Thank you all for the very nice comments about the first stone angel panels. I will try and answer the questions. Omega asked about the background fabric- I actually used it to photograph the piece on- but decide I liked it- don't know whether I will use it- but the fabric was discharged velveteen- and had shadowy ghost sort of shapes which seemed to set the mood for the piece. The number of squares do not match a rosary- but I do like the repeats, as prayers are repeated and I would have thought the original purpose of the stone bibles would have been to remind of prayers or some such things. Re the squiggle lines- I wasn't consciously repeating the waratah petal patterning- but yes it does look a little like it. I was trying to make it look like writing but just the pattern of writing rather than anythign in particular.

The second panel ended up different to what I thought. For a start I transfer dyed some turquoise with the stone angel printed in black- it was too dark to use. So I went back to the orange but used another piece of lutradur which was more transparent ( I had forgotten I had bought it) this allowed the background fabric much greater play- and I chose to use a aqua coloured background fabric, which in the actual piece gives a patina of corroded copper- which is quite lovely. Definitely worth working with this and playing some more. I have over the years collected many black and white postcards of sculptures in churches I have visited- with the intent of using them one day- I think I should be able to create my own lino-cuts inspired by these cards and then use them to create a series of panels. I have been looking for ways to incorporate the things I have seen when travelling into my work, and this might just be one way.

Detail - angels on aqua 

Felicity's Tag

Felicity in Kuwait ( hope to meet you next year!) tagged me for twenty things so I have included the good the bad and the ugly.
And I tag the following five:
Sandy Marcoux
Claire Fenton
Claire Bryant
Rayna Gilman
Lisa Call

So here are my twenty;

1. My mother tongue is Dutch and I have three children; Celeste, Siena, and Ynez and I am married to Collin
2. My father always claimed we were descended from French Huguenots- something we all took with a grain of salt but it turns out to be true, so maybe my mothers claims to Spanish ancestry will one day prove true as well.
3. I studied history and law at university.
4. I practiced law for nearly 10 years and then I travelled for a year with Collin after I quit being a lawyer and spent 6 months in Africa and 6 months in Europe.
5. Travelling in Africa changed my life- I saw the most devastating poverty and realized that the world is not a nice place and that there is no such thing as democracy
6. Africa freed my spirit for whilst I saw the most devastating poverty I also saw the most courageous dignity and the colour of life- I knew my life would never be the same again.
7. I was in Africa the day Nelson Mandela was freed- we knew something special had happened everyone was so happy- and we were in Ireland when he made his first visit to a western country after being freed

8. I love living in the country- as a rule I don’t like cities much unless of course you asked me to spend a year in Siena, Venice or Paris ( someone please ask me???)
9. We have a huge vegetable garden and orchard, and we process much of our own food and make our own wine ( though it usually runs out before the next harvest)
10. I think that the Black Madonna and Demeter myth are related- maybe it’s because of the Eleusinian mysteries
11. I have wanted to be a writer since I learned to read but I was nine before I could read properly- before that I memorized everything.
12. I like to have bare feet and dislike wearing shoes and I like sitting on the floor
13. I am sometimes grumpy and yell too much but I also like laughing so much that your sides hurt.
14. I run a business based around my art, fabric and teaching.
15. I collect ethnic textiles and have some good pieces because I have swapped them for my art and I also collect prints by young printmakers- under 25
16. We recycled a 1940’s wooden house and moved it to our land on a semi trailer- it is still not completely renovated but it is a roof over our heads.
17. I want to add to the world rather than take- even if it means planting trees and adding to the robustness of our environment
18. We all lived in a castle in the Morvan in France for 3 months
19. I have written a book called Tifaifai Renaissance- making my own designs in the tifaifai method, some history and some dyeing instructions.
20. I have a Masters in Visual and Performing Arts with textiles as my exhibition project.

Stone Angel in Fabric

Angel- full view

I decided I would finish this piece, even though I wasn't sure it was working. I tend to finish things, and have very few unfinished quilts( but still have to finish the Nanowrimo novel from last year...) I found I liked it much better when I got over the fact that I had not lined up the printed squares too neatly- I actually like the spaces that created and am thinking of doing some hand stitching in there to add to the texture , for that is what the stone bible is of course- a textured page to recall the prayer or thought or lesson. I also added in an almost emerald coloured thread to some of the squares- it seems to wash out a bit in the photo, and is much nicer in the real. The lutradur is hard to photograph because of the light- but on the other hand when light shines on it , it has a rather rich glowing effect which the camera seems to take away. The whole piece also has a rather pleasing crackling sound - like crumpling paper, which in a sense suits the image. It also feels very textures because whilst the lutradur sews very well its feel is somewhat stiffer and so the stitching really creates line sof texture. I think I will do another of these and reverse the colours- black on turquoise, using black and orange thread. the piece is 40 inches long ( 1.02 m x 27 cm) by 11 inches wide.
.

Detail- Angel 

Stone bible

original stone page with painted paper

I got all enthused with transfer printing a page from the little Ethiopian stone bible/prayer book I have. The image is carved in relief and I guess worked as a memory aid of sorts for remembering the prayer or the saint. The stone page printed quite well, and I then transferred onto polyester film- which I have discovered is called Lutradur ( non-woven ployester). I made a long panel and am sewing in the detail- I haven't decided yet whether it is worth continuing- the stitching does bring up the image a lot more,but is a whole panel of these images juxtaposed with imaginary writing interesting enough?

I haven't forgotten about memory either, but want to do some more searching. I am especially interested in using not so much my personal history as such but more the elements of that history divorced from myself as it were- so that they have been removed from the personal in some way but have grown out of that personal- I guess I am somehow trying to abstract my personal memory into some other kind of image/textile, because that is what I work with- imagery/textiles.

Transfer 

Ethiopian stone bible 

Waratahs and Memory

Waratah

This gorgeous tree is flowering in my garden- the flowers are the size of cupped hands held together and after the rain today it looked just magical.

Omega in her blog has done a post on memory as well- we are threading the same needle of memory or weaving the same tapestry of memory. I have made a word document of articles/ images/ and artists I have looked at on the internet in relation to the incorporation of memory and art or textile. I will try and put it in the body of a post sometime in the next few days and make sure all the links work. One thought that occurs to me that this might be an appropriate thing to move to a Wikispace, so that those interested in memory and art can contribute in a public space- and yet it be a resource for all those interested. A book that i found an interesting read in relation to memory was Frances Yates, The Art of Memory. Omega also mentioned Proust and the famous madeleine incident, but there is another book with such a moment and that is Rainer Maria Rilke's "The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge" where he looks at a demolished wall of a building and has a physical sensation of the inhabitants- perhaps a moment of the phenomonology of Merleau-Ponty ?

And Caitlin, who noted that the shadows and texture created with textiel and stitching is what draws her to work in textile and her defence of it- if you place a quilted piece onto a colour photocopier ( not a scanner as the scanner actually seems to react to the weave of the fabric) you will see exactly what you wrote about. It fascinates me that the eye does not see this so much as perceive it yet the colour photocopier is the piece of equipment that does.

The Waratah Tree 

Waratah with rain drops