Sunday 10 July 2011

coaxing colour from country




the colours of central Australia
are quite different from those
of the northern hemisphere
it's been good to be back in red dirt country



i'm betting there'll be a new style of textiles
coming out of Papunya soon
Narlie says she's going home to teach the other women
how to bundle cloth and leaves





15 comments:

  1. Thinking I need to move to your "red rock country".

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  2. I find this a very beautiful interaction of mutual sharing in a most delightful and potentially deep way...thank you!

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  3. Isn't it wonderful how the unexpected can be most far reaching and bring the greatest rewards.

    Your petals are drifting into new and satisfying connections . . .

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  4. I got a little hitch in my throat while viewing these photos, these women. There is a much bigger story here.

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  5. I agree with Sweetpea, I felt the same heart tug looking at the pics. Were they practising/re learnings skills that their forbears may have had? I wonder?

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  6. looks like a beautiful group, rainbows on clothes, on skin, on cloth. and the dirt, so much red dirt.

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  7. what a long awaited connecting this must feel like - a true coming home! jxx

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  8. a special moment shared.... thank you

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  9. in answer to Liniecat's musing on skills and their provenance :

    actually no. the indigenous people of Australia were a stone culture. they had no metals, hence no pots and thus never worked with boiled dyes.

    their colours were made by applying pastes and stains - to bodies, also to string and to objects made from wood, to rock walls...

    but until Europeans came with metal pots, any boiling of liquids was unknown.

    speaking of string, i did pass on Nalda Searle's gift of stringmaking and THAT skill was indeed an old, old one, returning to country in which it was once a common practice

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  10. Thank you for sharing these pictures of women and fabric--all bound together by a love for and a commitment to the land in which you all live.

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  11. I have been reading a book on Zen living today and your pictures fit so well- as we are all connected to the earth and to each other.

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  12. Beautiful India... I miss that dirt...

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  13. oh. That top photograph is gorgeous. I want to get my hands on that fabric and do some stitching in it. Gorgeous.

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  14. thanks for showing us these images. I met a few Aboriginies when l lived in Papua New Guinea. They came over to make pots with my PNG pottery friends. great experience.x

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  15. I cannot imagine what a ride it was to teach these people another way to interact with their country.

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