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

observations from another edge

this week past i had the joy of a roadtrip to the beautiful Arid Lands Botanic Garden at Port Augusta [South Australia]

where i installed 'elegy' 

a sculpture composed of bones

for the Arid Sculptural Exhibition

[in turn part of the wider Arid Festival]

the bones were from cows who had died on our paddocks

mostly due to age and infirmity

one of them from snakebite

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the exhibition [and festival] takes the theme ‘life on the edge’  and i had proposed an installation created from animal bones gathered while walking on the edge of the land, the edge that is the surface where the land meets the sky. these collected bones seemed to me to celebrate the lives that have passed while providing nourishment for future life.

i have for some years now undertaken the stacking of found rocks as a meditative aside to my work in textiles and writing. these bones are a softer material. i planned them to form an interlocking cairn, using white clay as a bonding medium. the bonecairn, a placemarker intersecting the edge between earth and sky, would mark the edge between life and death and be devised to respond to the elements. rain might soften the clay, wind might influence the form, wild animals could likely create interventions of their own. to all this i was open. 

arriving at my allocated site it seemed to me that a cairn was not appropriate.
i felt [rightly or wrongly] that it would be too intrusive, would pierce the sky

and so i worked just a few feet to one side of that spot. 

laid the bones out in a big curve and sat in its gentle arc, listened to the land

and then one by one

bone by bone

built a circle. no clay required.

and after that
i wandered off again

red work book

tucked in between the windowed envelopes

in the pile of mail that awaited my return from the West

was my Red Work Book

made on the spur of the moment

when Moleskine and Milk offered a 'special'.

now i wish i had ordered more than one copy

because it turned out beautifully

and would have been good to have on hand

as a giveaway to nice folks

next time...

still following the thread below

Marianna has added her piece of the story
over at her blog
skip over the rainbow to read...

land mark

work installed at 'The Cedars'

- home of the painter Hans Heysen [1877-1968] and well worth a visit in its own right -

for the Heysen Sculpture Biennial

part of the Adelaide Fringe

materials : 9 stones, repurposed wool blanket, eucalyptus dyes, earth and

a very convenient tree stump

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