an invitation

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Solace

We live in troubled times. The news is frequently dismal.  Sometimes it seems our beautiful blue planet is under threat from all sides and I for one feel helpless when I hear of plans to send more and more young people to foreign countries as cannon fodder.

Spending a week in the arid lands of South Australia, revisiting a place I left nearly 24 years ago, gave me quiet time away from the depressing news bombardments. Time to think. It gave me solace.

And it gave me an idea.

Reflecting on Emily Dickinson’s “Gorgeous Nothings”, on the beauty of Tibetan Prayer Flags, on Claudia Grau’s lovely wishing trees and on the aleatory [impromptu or randomly generated] poetry that plays a role in my teaching I came up with the solace project. 

The notion of a collective impromptu poem, recorded on cloth, to sing in the winds.

Participation is open to anyone and is quite simple. 

Make a triangular flag or pennon [meaning a personal ensign, derived from the Latin penna meaning a wing or a feather] preferably using a piece of pre-loved cloth.

Stitch on it a word or a phrase or a sentence that might act as a wish for peace or an acknowledgement of beauty, imply a sense of stillness or simply something that  gives you solace. It can be as brief or as long as you like. A haiku, a snatch of song, a word that takes you where you want to be.

Attach ties to the tethering end of your flag as in the sketch below.

Post the flag [preferably packaged in paper* not plastic] to :

‘solace’

c/- The Observatory

PO Box 96

Andamooka 5722

South Australia

Australia


and what happens next?

 

During June next year I will be in residence at The Observatory. 

I shall spend time connecting each of the flags in the sequence of their arrival, recording the words on them as one complete circular poem.

Following this I shall prepare an organic indigo vat and on the day of the southern midwinter solstice in 2015 will overdye the flags in the blue of the heavens before installing them as a circle. if there are hundreds, then a series of concentric circles :-))

The flags will be documented photographically over time and the images and text will be available online as well as in a limited edition book. It may even be possible to make a short film. While I do not have the financial resources to distribute free books to participants, each person who makes and sends a flag will receive a limited edition postcard image of the installation, personally addressed to them and posted from the Andamooka post office. [remember to include your address if you hope for a postcard!]

It is important the flags be made from natural fibre fabrics as they will remain in place following prayer flag tradition, to dispense blessings and good wishes to the four winds...any shreds that part company from the whole must be bio-degradable. Additional decorations such as stone or glass beads, shell or wooden buttons are welcome, but please, no plastic.

Some of the proceeds from book sales will be donated to the Royal Flying Doctor Service, the remainder will go toward maintaining The Observatory. The solace project might not solve any of the world’s long-term problems; I see it more as a simple and beautiful collective gesture of goodwill...a glorious blue installation in the red dust lands.

and I hope you join me.

 

Yoda-san has.

*paper-based packaging from flags will be used in a subsequent project

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.

pescadero sloppy hoodie

i am going to be so snuggly warm in my hoodie

stacking rocks at dawn on the Atlantic coast next month

the photos [using shake-it photo app] don't really do it justice

[but they make old-fashioned polaroid noises come out of the batfone]

stitching a few shiny pearl buttons on

to ward off the evil eye [just in case]

and of course

there is a pocket for a poem

a mite overexposed...

drawing with a sewing machine

i wondered what would happen
if i cut along the seams of two shirts
and sewed them together
without removing any bits?

and quite liked the result

what lies beneath

i'm back in the season where day comes late

and night falls early

keeping watch on the sofa in the wee small hours

with my now very frail best friend

between pats she sleeps

head on my knee, wrapped in an old padded kimono

and while she sleeps i wander virtually

found news of an exhibition worth sharing

Substrate, Structure, Surface - Leonie Andrews

click on the link to read the review written by Julie Ryder

gugger petter

Female Head/Madonna No. 14, by Gugger Petter,
a work made from newspaper.

while researching 're-use and recycling' for the manuscript that is occupying my waking moments i found an artist

Gugger Petter

who has been working with newspapers as her material for over twenty years.

interestingly she doesn't regard what she does as recycling

"Holding a profound respect for this material, I have never regarded it as "recycled" or "trash." Even the yellowing aspect of newsprint has been an important factor in my work, and I often encourage this process of yellowing before my work leaves my studio."

visit her homepage to read more of her own words...

Boro: Rags and Tatters from the Far North of Japan

gentle readers,

does anybody out there have a copy of this book that they would be prepared to part with?

Boro:

Rags and Tatters from the Far North of Japan

i'd be happy to give it a good home in exchange for money or if you prefer, a length of ecoprint silk or wool

please leave me a comment if you have it or know where i can find it

Readings Bookstore have just advised they are unable to source this book after all...does anybody have a copy they'd be willing to trade?

take two

this time i do make it to Golden Gate Park. some of the locals are very friendly indeed...

i visit the de Young Museum, keen to study the textile collection. 

that particular section is closed. hmm.

i'm doubly grateful to the Universe for diverting me on my first attempt...but hey, the architecture of this building alone is worth a visit 

clad in a copper skin

and with a tall tower so one can see the whirled from above the tree-tops [monster eucalypts close by and not a cocky in sight]

near the foot of the elevator are some exquisite objects that cast delicious shadows. the creator is a San Franciscan. foolishly i didn't note her name.

outside there is an Andy Goldsworthy sculpture 

a series of stones through each of which runs a squiggly fault line that also traces a path from one island to the next. i've borrowed their picture cos mine was full of people 

detail of a 'cloth' constructed by African artist El Anatsui. it's made from the aluminium caps of whisky bottles joined with copper wire in a format that references kente cloth

remember when his work draped a building in one of the Venice Biennales?

later walking down Haight on the trek back to base camp i find more art underfoot

blethering in belgium

a last few images from my 'day off' in London...those above from an architectural salvage firm near the old Cremorne pumping station

here's my mudlarking haul. that spotted egg is a nice addition to my collection of darning stones

after London i went to Belgium, a place i'd only ever shot through on a fast train. now that i've discovered just how delightful it is i'll be back often, i hope. travelling to London City Airport [arguably the nicest airport i've yet graced with my presence] on the Docklands Light Railway i spotted this splendid sinuous structure...is there someone out there who'd care to tell me what it is, please?

these friendly furries allowed us to collect leaves in their domain

my friend Marina organised a workshop to be held in her lovely garden...a labyrinth of delight full of trees and flowers, ponds and hidden corners

not to mention luscious weathered paintwork [which reminded me of the Rosalie Gascoigne exhibition in Melbourne a few months ago]

 

hard to believe this garden was coaxed from piles of rubble and metal left by a former ironmonger

the usual suspects, bundles full of promise...

we discovered that my oft-repeated phrase "time is your friend" was particularly relevant to strawberry leaf prints when they'd been made in the presence of iron. without any mordants they printed bright green, with iron [scrap, NOT ferrous sulphate] present they were first a gentle gold, but if kept moist would develop this lovely purple after a couple of hours

here's Wieteke, inspecting her woollen scarf [click on her name to visit her website, a wonderland of possibilities]

eucalyptus looking particularly gorgeous against the verdant green

and that lovely teal emerging in the dyepot is what happens to the dye made from red hazelnut leaves when it's allowed to lurk in an aluminium pot for an hour or so...