in place

Last month I quite suddenly found myself sliding down a slippery slope...from a year filled with workshops and exhibitions to... nix.

Thanks to the invisible scourge (our planet doing a bit of housekeeping) I now have a small fortune in flight credits (that I suspect may never be used) and all the time in the whirled to spend with my grand-daughter.

I'm very lucky that my self-isolation takes place on 500 acres ( "don't fence me in" was always my theme song ) and also that I quite like a solitary lifetstyle (I've spent nearly thirty years as a sole parent). I know others are not quite so fortunate, so I created an online gathering I have called "in place", that offers small daily classes, readings and prompts to help people get through the days of isolation.

"in place" began as a 23 day course, but has now been extended for as long as we endure the Great Pause. Together we are sailing our armchairs around the village well.

I've committed to keep posting a little something every day. Participants are stitching on used tea-towels to create work for what was intended as an online exhibition but has also now blossomed into an actual exhibition to be held at Fabrik Arts + Heritage, in the old Onkaparinga Woollen Mill complex at Lobethal in South Australia some time next year.

We have been drawing, stitching, writing.
Presently we are dabbling in a little indigo.
We are also making a small film together (clips are coming in from all over the whirled).

There's still time to join us if you like...the Great Pause doesn't look like finishing any time soon.

For an investment of $353 Australian dollars (or you can choose a 3 to 6 month payment plan) you'll have lifetime access to the course. The Aussie shekel is at an all time low at present (last time I looked it was worth 60 US cents) and so far 24 dailies have been uploaded.

I'll keep going until the Great Pause is over (meaning we can all go dance in the streets again) or the Beast knocks me off my feet. I hope it doesn't...I very much like the idea of continuing to sail my armchair (dog willing and with a fair wind).

Want to know more?  this link will take you there.  

longing(be)longing

two places have become available in the only fully residential retreat I will be leading this year, in beautiful Bretagne - Brittany, on the shining edge of the shimmering Atlantic Ocean.

this is one of the thin places of the whirled, where it feels as if you could easily step from this one to the next. 

the layers of history are dense and complex :: at our accommodation there is a fig tree with a girth so big it seems as though it could have been planted by a returning crusader

at the foot of the garden there is a path winding down to a burbling stream that wanders through a faerie-tale forest, the kind in which you expect to see unicorns leaping lightly over fallen logs or to find a strand of Melisande's hair

our workshop is called 'longing(be)longing' and will take us deeply into the investigation of the poetics of this place, one that seems to allow us to see further, hear more clearly and feel more deeply.

time slows in this place.

we will be hand stitching and dyeing, making a journal and capturing poetry as it drifts in on the breeze.

all meals are provided by our chef Geraldine (a specialist in mindful eating)

and at night, the Atlantic Ocean will sing you to sleep.

does this sound like something you need?

please contact Claire des Bruyeres to secure your place.

gardens of the heart and a free class

what a month it's been ... unpacking and documenting the lovingly stitched contributions to Gardens of the Heart, putting the pieces together with the help of lovely volunteers and installing the exhibition at Fabrik Arts + Heritage has taken up much of my time. I'm so grateful to the h.ART group and to the new Director at Fabrik, Melinda Rankin for unstinting and generous support.

here's a wee video to give you more of an idea of how it turned out. If you live in South Australia you have until March 17 to see the show for yourself. I keep expecting Oberon and Titania to step out of the shadows.

I've also made a free class for you at the School of Nomad Arts :: 'laundering leaf prints'.
so many people write to me asking how best to wash their naturally dyed and printed textiles that I thought I'd save myself a bit of email-answering time by offering some instructions.

you'll find a link to it here

gardens of the heart

staying at home for the summer has made so much sense.

it's given me the space (and grace) to play :: to make new work and to dream new ideas.

in January I made the wee book 'bagstories' and was stunned to find the welcome it received, and then delighted to see how the 'bagstories' group (on Facebook) so quickly became such a lovely supportive gathering of like-minded spirits.

that foray has led to me deciding that I should make a February project every year. Also, at long last, I will offer distance learning for those who suffer physical, geographical and/or economic difficulty in getting to a class.  more on that very soon.

but for now, let me tell you about 'gardens of the heart'...a  project in poetry and cloth that will culminate in an exhibition for the 2019 Adelaide Festival Fringe, that I am coordinating with the h.ART group who have been the backbone behind the establishment of an Artspace in the old Onkaparinga Woollen Mills in Lobethal, South Australia. You can sign up via the Facebook group, or (if you aren't on fb) leave me a comment below (or email me) and I will assign you a 'line number'. Why line numbers?

it's because 'gardens of the heart' is based on the three-line poetry that I have been sharing with students in recent years...which results in collaborative aleatory poetry...beautiful words gathered by chance from groups of (three) people.

each person stitches their line along a piece of cloth (450mm x 150mm  :: 18" x 6") together with the number of dots they've been assigned.

then all the pieces will be stitched together by me (and some friendly volunteers) next February to form three-line poems, which will be installed at the Woollen Mill Artspace in Lobethal, South Australia together with a cloud of suspended flowers.

are you in?

'gardens of the heart' group

the fabulous book I am reading right now

a link to the person who suggested reading it

email me to join the project (if you aren't in Facebook)

journeying

it's nearly 9 years (next March) since Eco Colour (a book i wanted to call 'botanical alchemy' but was told the title wouldn't sell) hit the bookstores. in that time what i initially referred to as 'ecoprint' has spread far and wide. thousands of people are making a living by printing with plants.

hilariously, though i was the first to publish the technique* i usually see myself referred to as an "also ran" in various media. a recent book about natural processes in textile art listed me merely as a "practitioner" of the technique (though instructions for ecoprinting are scattered generously throughout its pages).

i've seen colleagues absorb my work into their teaching practices, and observed "fashion labels" created after people have taken classes....sometimes only a one day class.

and there are so many people out there teaching "ecoprinting" (though much of it is not ecologically sustainable at all, as toxic adjuncts are increasingly employed) that i no longer offer basic "how to" classes. it would be like having to play "twinkle, twinkle, little star" over and over again.

not much fun for me, and ergo less for my students.

which is how 'being (t)here' took root and has grown into a retreat class that embraces being fully present and at the same time exploring the poetics of place.
it gives me such joy to be able to offer something more than just a class about printing with leaves.

for me, 'being (t)here' is a way of experiencing the whirled that helps open the cracks that let the light get in (thank you Leonard, for that phrase) no matter where you are. it offers a pathway to beauty that can be rolled out whether you're in a verdant forest, a shimmering desert, an urban wasteland or your own private paradise.

we observe and see, write and draw, print and dye. we fold paper into books...  the island book fold and its bigger cousin the river book, making a journals from single sheets of paper :: without having to thread a needle.

together we make discoveries, in ourselves AND in the dyepot. the other lovely thing that's been happening is that many of the students keep in touch with each other after the workshops. sometimes they make a facebook group, sometimes a blog. others just wrestle with an email list. but they maintain the connections and forge deep bonds. it's wonderful.

i've been teaching less through institutions (though i remain loyal to a select few), and more in beautiful and sometimes unusual places. the Yellow Ferry is one of these. there is something deeply magical about being on a boat, which is why i will be back there in February 2017.
i've reduced the class numbers and though the feedback from many people is that they consider the fee too high, the investment for the class is actually the same as for the first one, it's just that i have sourced a richer collection of materials for each person to work with, with treasures such as a limited edition silkymerino dress to take home.
 as a business proposition it is laughable because the expenses won't balance against the income...but to me it is absolutely worth it for the experience we will all have.

because it is the journey that matters, in the end.

and i am loving the ride.



*you'll see references to "nature printing" that are earlier, but that is a technique where the plant is dipped in paint or dye and pressed against a substrate of some kind

Deep in it.

time becomes slightly elastic when i land in New Orleans. 

i fly through the streets on my beloved bicycle, can't leave her alone for a moment though :: when i came out of the Bridge House after foraging for shirts i found her flirting with an almost more splendid velocipede. black feathers, no less. and fringy bits. bells, too.

i'm sure i heard her whimper as i rode her away from him.

i was in New Orleans to work on my preservation dye project at the Press Street Gardens, where i am a sort of de facto peripatetic artist-in-residence and discovered to my delight that Margee Green (the aptly named manager of growing things) has been growing coloured cotton.
blue and green, no less.

this cotton is softer than silk (though it comes tightly packed in hard sharp shells) and can be spun in the fingers to a lovely fine thread

the jars i set up last September are travelling well. i opened one to check and there were no nasty smells, everything behaving just as it ought. so i made nine or ten more and adorned the shelves of the glass house with them

while they were being sterilized in the big cauldron i found time to play on the tracks

possibly a little silly.

my friend let me bundle up a beautiful shiny new damask table runner. new in the sense it has never been used, though i am guessing it's some sixty years old at least.

it will be interesting to see if the preservation dye process manages to get colour into the cloth despite it never having been washed or scoured

i also had the joy of shooting for a new album cover with my friend John Fohl

(the link will take you to his last album from a couple of years back)...more about that when the next is released, fingers crossed my paws make the cut!

and then my friend Shelley kindly modelled for me.

the week in New Orleans went far too quickly.
after a day in the air i arrived back on the west coast
where the streets were littered with eucalyptus :: and where i kicked myself because i wasn't carrying a cauldron.

some of the eucalyptus was neatly piled in brown paper bags. i could have wept.
ah well. i hope someone else found it and used it

i spent my days here doing groundwork for the retreat in May (sold out, no drop outs, sorry)

and gathering materials together

wandering past the church of Saints Peter and Paul at a particularly ice-cream-cake moment

and taking time out for a glass of merlot at Caffe Trieste, so as to play with some paint swatch poetry. the trick is to choose a handful of colours at random, then write a line that corresponds to the romantic appellation of the shade. mostly nonsense but an amusing occupation between walking up and down the lovely hills of that fair city.

though when i reach the top of the Vallejo steps it occurred to me that losing the equivalent weight of this bag from my body would be a very fine idea indeed.

i'll let y'all know how that goes.

riding the rails

i deliberately scheduled a railway journey into New Orleans at the conclusion of our wandering in the land of enchantment. somehow i knew that i was going to need a good bit of thinking time, undisturbed by too much making or doing and preferably without the need to concentrate on driving

so

on April 2 i found myself sitting in a railway station

with a ticket for my destination

humming a song about being

"on a tour of one night stands

my suitcase and guitar in hand

and every stop is neatly planned 

for a poet and a one-man band"

none of which is true for me but

it's one of those songs that has stood the test of time

:::

i had secured a roomette to myself

and so could loll about in it in comfort

watching the whirled go by

and making soothing noises to myself

on the cedar flute newly acquired in Santa Fe

also

i made pictures with my batfone.

which was most entertaining, despite the fact that one of my favourite apps,

Autostitch, doesn't seem to work on the most recent version of the Fruit phone

 so i played with the Panorama setting instead 

which can be amusing on a moving train.

also i wrote.

the 31 hours on the train were enormously productive.

train travel allows the spirit to sit quietly on your shoulder

(it can sometimes fall off and get lost in flight)

at night i lay gazing at the stars until i was 

rocked to sleep in my little cradle shelf.

at some point in the night i awoke to see one streaking across the sky

in the hours before dawn the waning crescent moon rose 

i caught glimpses of my favourite constellation, the Pleiades.

train travel also allows poems to find you (sometimes when they stand by the roadside waiting with their thumbs out i'm simply travelling too fast to stop in time)

train travel can also put you into interesting social positions.

i discovered to my surprise that my ticket included meals.

on the first evening i shared dinner with a gentleman who had driven across America with his father because he didn't want his dear old dad driving a pickup across the country alone to his new abode in the Pacific North West. the trip back home was his first ever train ride. i think he said he had been on a train for four days already.
happily he was still enjoying it.

for breakfast i was directed to a table at which sat an older couple, on their way to share birthdays in New Orleans. they were quite clearly well off and seemed sweet but reduced me to the state of a stunned mullet when they left the table and he scooped up half the tip i had left for the server. (he had put down $5 for the two of them, i put down $4 for me and he then took $2 from mine. basically robbing the server).
i am rarely rendered speechless but by the time i had found my tongue they had gone.

my faith in humanity was restored by sharing lunch with a brother and sister (he slightly disabled, she taking him home from the west coast to live with her in Mississippi). i think, but i am not sure, that they were both adopted. the other person at our table was a grandmother of eighteen grandbabies who cheerfully announced that she was living day by day due to a brain tumour which, as she told us, had to be managed by "opening up my head every three years and scraping the surface back because the can't take it out" and that after that procedure she has to learn to walk and talk again but that the pain was worth it and she's just grateful to be here. 

the train crawled into New Orleans at sub-glacial speeds, which is probably just as well as the tracks are in a sorry state. and today, seeing the wobbly wooden trestles that the double-decker train had been balancing on, i was grateful for the slowness. 

(last night i was not so sure)

I may just possibly have fallen in love

I may just possibly have fallen in love with New Mexico and some of its people. 

The flight in was magical. 

Our first resting place was Casa del Sol, 

located within skipping distance of Georgia O'Keeffe's Ghost Ranch house. 

We were able to cook our dye pots over a fragrant open fire.
We wrote poetry and drew in our journals,
adding local colour by literally rubbing the earth into the pages. 

We took an excursion to the Chama River, in a region where the scent of Piñon was intoxicating

After unwinding ourselves at (or possibly from) Casa del Sol we moved on to Taos.
Here Carpio Bernal Watercrow graciously shared his story and created a special ceremonial circle for us, as the Taos Pueblo was closed for initiations and we were not able to visit.
A smoking juniper branch was passed among us.
There was drumming and singing and storytelling.
Later his partner Rose joined us and sang several of her original compositions
after which she handed her guitar to the man who had been shepherding our flock around the countryside (but is also a writer and musician who can build things)
and there was more singing and music
(pictured below, minus guitar)

 we had some splendid studio times, including a little "cheating",
using eucalyptus from a local florist (who was frankly delighted to make some
sales before closing for Easter)
...we also dyed with a local weed, Chamisa

there's magic in the local water,
some of the colour was rather interesting
and
not what i would expect at home.
then we dyed eggs

 wrapped in cloth

 one lunchtime i wandered up to the Mabel Dodge Luhan house
and fell in love some more.

i could quite happily live there.

the tour concluded in Santa Fe
where i was permitted to cook dinner for us all
which made me very happy
and
then
in the night
it snowed
which made me even happier,
even if i do look like a Babushka setting out to gather recyclables in St Petersburg.

The group bonded like true sisters and

working with Sharon Blomgren of Arts + Cultural Travel was a dream

so i'm delighted that we will be visiting New Mexico together again,

twice next year....for a start!