what's in the bag, indeed

having very publicly condemned the transport of bio-hazards around the whirled i thought i would share with you, for your amusement, the pre-flight clearing of the lovely Whipping+Post tote that carries the bits and bobs i seem to need each day

what the picture doesn't show [because i took them out already]

a journal [stuffed to the gills with scraps]

my passport

stones from Baker Beach, Lopez Island and Willunga Beach 

a seashell from Port Elliot

my SilkyMerino infinity scarf

my batfone

a lot of pencils and a small watercolour set

my trusty raybans

a couple of tsunobukuro shopping bags 

a rusty nail from New Orleans

and also a fan from the above

the bombay sapphire bottle i carry water in

several messy notes on the backs of envelopes

and the dress i was finishing while waiting somewhere

there's a reason this tote is called the Swiss Army Knife of bags!

and what got tipped onto the blanket

moo cards

a star-spangled baci wrapper

a lone gingin [thankyou Christine]

Aesop deliciousness

several buttons from a thrift store coat

random coinage from several countries

ticket stub from the fabulous Mr Laurie's concert

an empty Altoid box [in which i put water for painting]

a marquisite pin from St Thomas' thrift store

a pod from a gleditsia tree at Flinders University

lovely black felt pens for drawing

an Ikea pencil and others

the stub from a plane ticket

a drinking straw in a paper wrapper

several rubber bands

some string

and rather a lot of dry crumbled eucalyptus leaves

+  +  +

it's all clean and tidy now

lots of space for stocking up on Altoids

in San Francisco later this week.

and i think i might allow myself a new journal.

even though i should probably just make one.

poor fellow my country

i'm using the title of Xavier Herbert's significant contribution for good reason. 

"This book is the decisive story of how in those vital years, Australia threw away her chance of becoming a true commonwealth. The dream of Australia Felix, The Happy South Land.The book will long remain in the memory and is undoubtedly Herbert's supreme contribution to Australian literature."

Australia has now been handed to a party of  environmental destructivists.

the Liberal Party, led by someone whose avowed mission it is to cut down the last of the tall trees we have left, is going to be in charge of our sinking ship.

Australia is in deep environmental trouble. each bushfire that burns thousands of acres of forest contributes to reductions in rainfall. reduced leaves, reduced transpiration, reduced clouds, reduced rainfall

and when rainfall reduces, then regeneration does too. or we get massive crops of woody weeds instead of trees. so with the countryside already under threat [and remember we are the driest continent]

and with all the raving about reducing carbon emissions - wouldn't it make sense to leave the last tall trees [which are basically carbon + water + a few other things] standing to get on with the business of converting carbon dioxide to oxygen

rather than being pulped to provide newsprint and toilet paper. 

poor fellow, my country. 

bio-regional colour in Newburgh

it seemed we were just getting in to the swing of things at

the wayfarer's wandercloth class [in the Textile Centre, Newburgh]

when suddenly our three days were up.

 + + +

 wonderful food

provided by our thoughtful hosts

gave extra energy to the work of heart and hands

+ + +

all the colours were derived from plants gathered within walking distance

of the studio

plus a few onion skins that had been saved in local kitchens

but

the students came from farther afield

 Denmark : Sweden : California : France : Belgium : Italy : Scotland : England : Germany

here are some of the results

at last

at long last

in this dusty corner of

the driest state

on the driest continent

it is raining. not much

but enough to lift the spirits

housekeeping becomes a challenge for small arachnids

the resident goose is happy again

me too, i'm having raspberry lassie for breakfast

 

 the whirled is bedecked in moonstones

[my favourite gem]

 

all Sam wants is a lap

unfortunately for him, Felix is firmly in possession

daydreaming

 

idling through the Saturday papers [just a few days late]

with my coffee this morning

i stumbled upon something that looks remarkably like

a daydream i've been having for some years now

a place with a lake of its own

90 acres to plant and grow a collection of the best eucalypts [in terms of dyeing]

with an average rainfall of 1030 mm - that's 40.55 in inches

to sustain them...that's twice what we get at Mount Pleasant

it has a big old stone woolshed

just perfect for workshops [and dancing]

along with a separate storage building

that would make a rather nice gallery

 

the house has three bedrooms

and another room that could also become one

together with three bathrooms

so up to six people could live in for small classes 

work at their own pace

perhaps even take a longer residency

be nourished in body by food grown on the property

served in the lovely dining room

and in spirit by wandering the wonderful landscape in which the house sits

[really nice people would be allowed to help weed the garden

which is very good for the soul]

it's well away from other dwellings

[so i imagine that star-gazing would be fabulous]

but within 10 minutes of a freeway link to Adelaide

meaning far less frustration-by-caravan/horsefloat/grapetruck

there's space to create a walled vegetable garden

where chickens could have a fox-proof palace

and indigo could be grown 

safe from the hot north winds

and there would be plenty of room for a helpful border collie

as well as a flock of pet sheep for her to manage

if you look at the picture carefully

you'll see there is even a resident rainbow

the only catch is that there's a price tag of $2million

i can't even imagine that in marbles

let alone find it in dollars.

...er, i don't suppose there are a thousand brides out there wanting to commission wedding dresses, perchance?

i look forward to hearing from them. SOON.

meanwhile

i'll be here playing with those amulets...

and nursing Kowhai the piglet

the wrap [and what happened to a dress that was in the river]

yesterday i left New Orleans

it was a wonderful four weeks "in residence"

during which i found new excitement in my work

and gained a bit of an understanding 

 of some of the local flora

but it also went a good deal deeper. 

i first visited New Orleans in 1983

in the year of the Ash Wednesday fires

our family home had been one of the casualties

and the option of travelling to North America to help my grandparents pack their belongings for a return to Australia after some 24 years residence in Canada seemed a very good escape from a life that had become a merry-go-round of working at my job with the Arts Council during the week and then helping with the rebuild on the weekends when i wasn't on tour

in this month, hearing stories about what my friends and others went through after 'the storm' i've learned to be grateful

in comparison to flooding, fire is relatively clean. things are burned instead of being distributed across the region

and while there were some toxic things to be dealt with [ie piles of arsenic+copper ash from "green" pine posts] the earth and the remains were not soaked with chemicals and oil and sewage and ghastliness.

we didn't have to deal with refrigerators full of rotting food

or be evacuated hundreds of miles away from where we belonged
there were a few looters
but by and large people behaved in a civilized fashion
 

within a few days of the rain that followed the fires

lilies were pushing their way up through the blackened earth

and almost as soon as the ashes had cooled

the telephone company laid a line across them

so my parents had a phone amongst the debris

i'm telling you all this to give you an idea of [some of] what i was thinking while this new body of work was brewing.

 Chris Rose's book, "One dead in Attic" puts life very sharply into perspective.

and now on a much lighter note

here are a few details of the work in the Riverside gallery

the two below aren't in the show

as they were opened after it was hung

and the last bundle i opened

was a dress that had been to the river

i gave it a thorough wash test

in Schiro's laundromat

and am delighted to say

it "came up a treat"

i think i am beginning to get the hang of dyeing cotton

unexpected paperwork

last night i absentmindedly used the Cleveland wandering map

[kindly provided by Christine]

as a coaster.

i didn't want the condensation running down the side of my glass

to mark the lovely floor in my treehouse

this morning i thought i might go for a wander

and went to dream over the map

which was thoroughly stuck together.

now when this kind of thing happens in the movies

[or when somebody goes to surreptitiously steam open correspondence not intended for their eyes]

they simply whip the offending item over the steaming kettle

and within seconds the problem is solved.

in this instance

the problem was DIS-solved

- clearly the producers of the map have designed it to decompose quickly in the event of irresponsible tourists dropping said item in the Cleveland landscape.

note to students in the up-coming paperdye class : if you were thinking of bringing a local map to include in your work, don't.

stick with undyed, unprinted papers please...

ecoprint

the eucalyptus ecoprint began as a serendipitous discovery

back in the nineties [last century, in fact]

the situation was created by a broody hen

who sat on an egg during three days of rain

in a nest made of dried eucalyptus leaves

the warmth of her little fluffy bloomers

just enough to coax brown leaf prints

on to the shell

the egg led me to experiment with bundling eucalyptus leaves on cloth

where the results were so exciting [and so efficient in terms of the volume of plant material used in relation to the results achieved]

that i gave it the name

ecoprint

a concept that is now spreading like wildfire around the world.

even as far as a commercial printing conference in Berlin

being held this month

that bears no relation at all to the technique.

a friend [who happens to be a patent attorney] advised me to patent it, many other people have wondered why i published the method...the answer is that it's so simple and so easily replicated that i wanted to have evidence in the form of a book [now two books] that it came from me. just so i could say to my as-yet-not-even-thought-of grandchildren

"your granny did this"

and of course, that if more people are dyeing simply with plants and water

& leaving the more toxic dyes behind

then the whirled has a better chance of surviving a bit longer

the secret is in the pages of this book

 or you can take a class with me sometime

the green and pleasant land

the Dogs Above have rewarded us

the colours of the green and pleasant land are rather wonderful

[all found within a 5 mile radius of the workshop]

and to our delight

they echo the colours in the paintings on the wall

that are our windows to the whirled

from Sally Stafford's studio at Harts Barn

wandering on

we packed a lot into today

so much so that

 looking back it's become a bit of a blur

detail of a dyed page

comparing results

the magic of onionshells

an exquisite workspace

later

down by the ocean

i found a small rockpool

with an oilslick koru

the sands here are spotted with natural tar

you can smell it in the air

and later still, in my inbox

a message from Rowland Ricketts

about a beautiful indigo project

in Japan