pastpresentfuture

this year I was invited to participate in an exhibition being held for the Latvian Cultural Festival that has been held around Australia between Christmas and New Year since 1951 

the exhibition title "past present future" prompted me to create this autobiographical piece.

loosely based on traditional Latvian costume it includes an apron, a striped wool skirt, a wool blanket, a found antique linen blouse and rather a lot of bones. 

the stitched text translates poetically as "I'm walking and wondering why I leave no footprints"  and is borrowed from a poem by Janis Elsbergs 

(the literal translation is somewhat more specific)

dyed with eucalyptus, local colour infusing into something from elsewhere, from the ground up. 

the apron was reconstructed from a linen shirt and other items sourced during a trip to Latvia in August this year. 

thank you Lufthansa for the nice cotton napkin you left in my lap, which somehow became attached as well and which serendipitously made sense, as my background is Latvian and German.

the pockets full of whitewashed bones represent the cell memories we each carry within us and which I am convinced are handed down from one generation to the next.

I was born in the late 50s, and raised as a "European in exile", a child of two displaced persons from two different cultures.  

but the Australian landscape got under my skin.

I installed the work yesterday.

it was the last piece to go in, the rest of the exhibition had already been  hung.

frankly my work looks rather 'out of place' compared to the rest...everything else is precisely formed/woven/wrought/cut/stitched/shaped...I think it sticks out like the proverbial bull terrier's testicles.
but
I guess that's the truth as well.
and if it isn't true, it isn't worth doing.

everything we need is here

For the first time in ages (a scant week in Aotearoa doesn't really count) I'm making a substantial journey that doesn't involve teaching; having come to Europe primarily in the role of carer for my Ma, who despite falling and cracking her hip four weeks ago decided she would rather come on the trip anyway than languish in a hospital bed.

I came away thinking I might knit or write in any spare time. 

Ha. 

The Dogs Above had other ideas. 

First I accidentally found a silk shirt at the thrift store. 

Then I was poking around a ruin and found a dyepot. 

I hadn't even brought string...so I made some.

There was a barbecue arrangement but no matches. So I purloined a glowing coal from a nearby sauna. It was that, or use the toaster. Don't ask. 

The twigs were all a bit damp. Happily I had some firewater with me (thank you Schlosshotel Kronberg!!) and a piece of linen rag. It proved an effective combination. 

I gathered some old friends from the roadside 

At first the brew (unusually) turned green. 

Rather an idyllic location, don't you think?

Holidays. Gotta love em. 

a tangled web

today i was planning to write about what i'd been up to this week
that i needed to make a new scarf [gave the last one away to my uncle who drove from Colorado and back again to visit with me on the weekend]

with the added confession that i was missing the fragrance of home so much
that i actually went and bought some bunches of eucalyptus to play with [sound of hand being firmly smacked]

and that i then quite unexpectedly found a friend here in Portland
whilst wandering the Hoyt Arboretum [with aforementioned uncle]

it's a snow gum and so is an excellent choice for its location [in the wintergarden]
except that it may get bigger in this protected locality than at home in the Australian Alps
[where it would be clinging to a hillside and subject to horizontal ice storms]
and crowd out its neighbours

Eucalyptus pauciflora : snow gum

that it is getting cooler by the day
and so some armies were needed to keep my gathering paws warm

prints from windfall snowgum leaves

and the other side

note : the slender leaf prints are quite a different colour to those on the SilkyMerino shown in the photo at the very top. this is because the sleeves were snipped from a sweater that had been washed several times and thus had been premordanted with a sodium-rich substance

i was also going to mention that there are easier ways of straining bananas
than putting them through a pillowcase
the straining part is fine
it's the washing of the pillowcase that is the tedious part.
bananas have fine stickability and if even minute parts are left attached are almost impossible to dislodge once dry

wandering in the Japanese Garden again yesterday
i betook myself to the small shop there and leafed through a few books
one devoted to furoshiki offered a the perfect answer
reminding me that a piece of cloth can be used to hold all sorts of things
so i tied a piece of cloth to the handles of the strainer by the ears
because there were too many bananas to stuff into a sock

it does look a little as though i have just regurgitated my porridge
but more of that later

continuing my stroll i found an exquisite pond

in which leaves and fir needles were floating
here's a closer look

and then when you take the colour away

it looks curiously like a fusion between the hands of Dorothy Caldwell and Christine Mauersberger
which is kind of sweet, because i first met Christine when we both took Dorothy Caldwell's class in Ohio back in 2009

which was around about the time, or a little after, that i remember receiving a number of emails from Cassandra Tondro with questions about various processes described in my book Eco Colour

so it was a bit surprising to read in Handeye today her description of the ecoprint idea as coming to her from the pavements. maybe she had indeed previously discovered the technique that way [zeitgeist and all that], but if so she didn't mention it in the correspondence.

Christine  kindly said a few words which provoked a comment on her blog suggesting that i in turn had purloined the technique from Karen Diadick Casselman. actually, i didn't.

to set the record straight :

Karen Diadick Casselman's dyeing in bundles that i experienced [as her assistant] at the time she visited Australia in 1998 involved wrapping leaves and cloth together with a range of what i consider to be toxic mordants [as well as household substances such as cleaning sprays and perfumes]. She also did some very fine work with lichens and barbed wire.

We corresponded for a long time and I've always squirmed when people describe my work as 'eco-dye' because Karen coined that particular phrase and it really belongs to her. 

The descriptor 'ecoprint' came into use through my thesis work with eucalyptus as i considered at the time that being able to test the leaves for dye potential by steaming a leaf in a bundle for a short while as opposed to the energy-hungry process of boiling out the leaves for an hour and then heating the cloth in the resultant liquid for an hour [where the dye colour was going to be changed by the water quality anyway] to see what the colour might be [was more sustainable]. 

But I suppose i should have called it Latvian-Easter-Egg-Dyeing-But-On-Cloth which is where i got the idea from myself [before I met Karen]. My family has been dyeing eggs that way for at least 150 years [that's as far back as the handed-down-memories go] and so have many other European folk.
that would be the truest attribution. except it's a bit of a mouthful.

and as for printing on paper, my great-aunt, Master Bookbinder Ilse Schwerdtfeger was doing that back in the 1930s except that unlike her great-niece, she used pressure and time [and a few "eye-of-newt" mordants] whereas i use a cauldron. i wrote about her work in IAPMA Bulletin 52

and now if you've read this far you deserve a gold star. and what i had been planning to mention somewhere along the line and now comes just as you're dropping off is the hot news that Christine Mauersberger has recently been confirmed as teaching down-under next year at the Geelong Textile Retreat, that splendid annual event organised by Janet de Boer and her tireless team and TAFTA

the event also features other luminaries including Dorothy Caldwell and Sandra Brownlee [but i think their classes are already full]

and before you leap to the comment box and tell me to get back in mine...i'm not criticising Ms Tondro. i just found it curious that the appellation 'ecoprint', as well as the process should serendipitously appear from the pavements.

that's all.  and i think it should do for a while.

a sad farewell to a pair of good friends and an apology

there have been only three times in the last decade that i have cancelled a professional engagement. it isn't something i do lightly or without a great deal of consideration.

the first time occurred when two emails arrived; the first from the workshop host telling me that although the class was booked out he would only be paying me half my fee due to "unforseen financial difficulties" [meaning that not even my airfare would be covered] and the second was from a student-to-be in that same class telling me how excited she was to be sharing a room with me for the duration of the event. gulp.

the second was for private reasons, too complicated to be listed here.

the third; my taking advantage of the clause in the contract that allows either party to cancel the agreement at any time up to 30 days prior to the event, took place over a month ago after i had wrestled with flight bookings for the MISA class just passed and realised that there was a very real chance of finding myself stranded somewhere in the dark instead of arriving in good spirits and fine form ready to teach at Lopez Island in September.

now that i have actually been to Madeline Island i am glad i listened to my inner Border Collie. 

the island is very pretty and reminds me strongly of Latvia. lilacs and peonies abound, the road verges are bursting with wildflowers and strawberries, fireflies and owls bring entertainment to the dark, the dyepots produced amazing greens and my students were a joy to spend time with : but the process of getting there tried me somewhat. delayed inward flights, no less than three gate changes at Minneapolis airport [B to C to D - i think i've had the full tour now] before arriving at Duluth and a long journey in the back seat of a shuttle [during which my knees informed me that i'm not the spring chicken i once was] have vindicated the decision. [ my preferred mode of surface travel is in a car with me at the wheel and with a stop for wandering and wondering and leg-stretching about every 45 minutes ]

 

i'm truly sorry for the inconvenience and disappointment the cancellation has caused those students who signed up for the Fall class but when push comes to shove, the Lopez Islanders did book me first and do have a right to expect me to arrive on time and unflustered. just to get back to Minneapolis took more than half a day...and i had only allowed a day to travel between Madeline and Lopez. with not one but two ferries and three or four plane trips involved i could see disaster looming large on the horizon. all it takes is one good storm or one missed connection and it all goes down the gurgler. my fault entirely for wanting to accommodate as many folk as possible and for over-estimating my capabilities.

 

 the folks at MISA asked me to write to students and explain myself

- i figured it was best done here where it wouldn't get lost in translation.  

+ + +

and what is that picture of the boots about?

 

they became infested with a breeding colony of chiggers during my stay on the island and i was forced to abandon them in San Francisco. squirting the insides with insect repellent didn't quell the libidinous enthusiasm of the tiny terrors and so i had to leave my trusty friends behind.

sadly my command of Spanish was not adequate to explain to the kindly housekeeping person at the Kabuki that these boots harboured unpleasant surprises. i do hope she didn't try them on. if they sit in a Goodwill sorting shed for long enough, maybe those chiggers will have shuffled off this mortal coil -  i really couldn't risk bringing them home and introducing a new pest to Australia -

i'll spare you the image of what they've done to my leg but i can assure you i won't be exposing the bare flesh of my calves anytime soon.

...we don't want to frighten the children...

a bit of [her]story

while we're waiting for that velvety thing to come to its senses
you might like to swing over to my mother's pages
for a bit of background information

and to put her story in context
a link here to the Museum of Occupation in Riga

a lovely Latvian meadow