gore [shucks]

after five delightful days teaching in the Nelson region i hop on another magic broomstick and fly to Invercargill via Christchurch

the ground below looks as though someone has casually flung a velvet quilt in a crumpled heap and sprinkled it with icing sugar

at Invercargill i am met and driven to Gore

there are wild animals on the outskirts of Edendale 

at Gore evening falls shortly after i find my digs. nonetheless i wander out to explore

 i discover that i've just missed the Golden Guitar Festival

luckily some of the stars are frozen in time

i take close-ups as well, but will spare you

down by the railway track there is treasure. had i the farm ute i would fill it with these brilliant fish plates.  ah well

in the morning i walk to my next workshop, marvelling at the vernacular architecture.

here Cape Cod meets arts-and-crafts

reminding me of a limerick

there was a young lass from Cape God

who thought babies were fashioned by God

twas not the Almighty

who hiked up her nightie

but Roger the lodger, the sod!

oh. alright. enough. 

Gore is an interesting place. they grow swedes [vegetables not people] the size of houses. everybody eats them....cows, sheep, people and even a dog i met. the animals eat them raw but some folks turn them into soup. the recipe includes peanut butter.

despite having lots of lovely rain the town water supply is pumped from a bore. something special in this water gives us the best and most beautiful green dye from a cocktail of Choisya ternata, ragwort and bronze fennel [incidentally the bulb of the latter is also tasty when steamed with mussels, tomatoes, chili and garlic....an excellent all purpose weed!]

the town also has a brilliant art gallery which boasts an extraordinary art collection

i am riveted by the work of Ralph Hotere 

more about him later

following a piece of dried marmalade along the map

shortly after 5 am on the 26th i pootle off to the airport

again

driving in fog

and in the dark

a nice person at the checkin desk

smiles sweetly when i make noises about

a window seat 

right-hand side of plane

in front of the wing

and so later i gaze happily at the alps as the aircraft heads towards Wellington

after a while there are clouds

thick clouds

like a fat feather quilt rumpled over a big bed

the next day dawns golden at Nelson

where we work at Fairfield

a beautiful old house saved for the enjoyment of the community

by dedicated workers who restored it

and run it with passion

despite standing on the brink of winter

we find beautiful leaves to dye with

steam wraiths play in the winter sunlight

sunset comes early so my evening wanderings begin at twilight 

the bare branches of Liriodendron tulipfera echo the patterns of the little rivulets traversing the mudflats exposed when the tide of Tasman Bay runs out

i am too mesmerised  by that view [some while later] to take a picture

 

golden sunsets look much warmer than they are

the snow sneaks up quietly

in the night

dusts the landscape like someone

sprinkling icing sugar over grannie's velvet shawl

secure in the flying cocoon

i gaze

and shoot

and gaze some more

flying south

via Invercargill

to visit Gore

slowness

on the way home from Warrnambool i spent time with someone whose work i respect and whose opinions and thoughts i value very highly. during conversation he introduced me to TED, a fascinating site that offers talks [by people with passion] about an diverse range of subject matter 

he also kindly took the photo above for me as i wasn't carrying a camera...

i wandered thither during a quiet moment yesterday and was delighted to find a talk by Carl Honore, advocate of slowness. his philosophy of undertaking tasks or activities individually rather than multi-tasking and of being fully engaged with the matter at hand sings most harmoniously with the mantra "time is your friend"... something i've been telling my students for a long time

the dyebath above ... a slow cauldron of choisya ternata in a copper pot, contained within a larger stainless steel pot [to save the copper pot from the flames] only revealed full potential after many hours of gentle steeping

but well worth the effort, the lovely fresh green it produced being notoriously tricky to achieve according to traditional plant dye texts

during that same week a slow windfall walk revealed other treasures too, colours that cannot be achieved through traditional dye extraction but are visible [ie unaffected by the water of the dyebath] when processed in contact

the print above was from a fungus growing in the lawn...

speaking of slowness and of taking time... news has reached me that a recent student is already formulating plans for a plant dye course she will teach at her college. a most laudable notion, certainly, but not something i would have felt comfortable proposing after a relatively short exposure to the field. perhaps, though, she has a long dye history that i'm completely unaware of, but given the bombardment of questions that were coming my way from that quarter for a month or so i suspect that may not be the case

the book Eco Colour was only published after many years research into dyeing with plants and now [some two years since handing the manuscript to my publisher] i feel i have as much still to learn. i'm deeply grateful to my many students for their brave experiments in classes over the years - fifteen people bringing their own hand to the same pool of materials discover so much more than one person working alone in a studio

and maybe there's the lesson in this, that by teaching a skill one actually learns more about it...

so i wish her luck and look forward to the development of new and exciting ecologically sustainable dye techniques emerging from the west country of that Green and Pleasant land

and remember, go slow... 

a pool in a forest

i wandered eastward last week 

refreshed a few incantations by dipping them in the sea

stood in reviving rain

found treasure by [yet another] railway track

gloried in green

on land as well as cloth

rediscovered friends

in various places

and then while taking a quiet moment in a forest

before beginning the road home

gazed down at The Beastie  

to find it transformed

casting bouquets of nasturtiums?

a participant in a recent workshop has suggested via email that there may have been a hidden ingredient in the dyepots used by the class, as said participant has apparently had difficulty in replicating class samples at home

it was even implied that the eucalyptus leaves i had brought from home had caused the results to be brighter and richer than might otherwise have been possible

said participant had made samples from leaves she had brought to the class herself. the samples were really very beautiful.  

the really funny thing in all this is that because the leaves i had brought with me were quite dry, ecoprints from them were mere shadows of what they might have been [although when brewed in the usual way they produced the anticipated rich orange-red] and were far eclipsed by the ecoprints produced by our friend.

i have only once before carried dye materials from home and that was specifically in order to demonstrate the difference that the water used as a substrate makes when extracting dyes from eucalypts. the sample from home was a deep rust red, the sample produced at Hyderabad for the UNESCO conference was a mustard yellow. same leaves [picked on same day from same tree], same merino jersey, stainless steel [non-reactive] vessel, but different water.

so, what have i learned from this exchange? i've learned to practice what i preach..use only local  materials and DON'T bring dye materials from elsewhere, it only leads to confusion. i'll stick to what i have done 99% of the time and just work with what i find available near the workshop location

there really ain't no mysteries to what i do, folks, just the simple magic of leaves, cloth and water

oh, and a few muttered incantations learned from an ancient crone in the shadow of a crystal boulder by an enchanted lake in a mysterious forest... east of the sun and west of the moon  

smoke and mirrors

spotted during my early morning perambulations in lovely Lier, Belgium

yes, you're seeing that correctly, those are leaf-shaped prints and here's a closer look 

lovely aren't they....but imagine the trouble involved in printing this fabric using synthetic dyes - when it could have been so much simpler [and far less poisonous] with a handful of leaves.

sigh

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...

loitering in London

on Monday i escaped the broom closet at the Anchor [VERY different to the light and airy room they use to illustrate their website]

felt a bit Potterish

but the proprietess [?] kindly brought me onion skins for the class

so tis mostly forgiven

unusually i had a day "off"

so i decided to wander

somehow i found myself at the Garden Museum

[near the Lambeth Bridge]

 

there i discovered the tomb of the Tradescant family, famous gardeners and collectors of plants

the Museum garden was home to the flowers that had been popular in their time

i sat on a bench amidst a fragrant cloud of lily-of-the-valley and happily painted splodgy watercolours

[mind you, no splodgier than those of Le Corbusier whose life is presently under examination in an exhibition at the Barbican centre ]

after a time i wandered on heading west along the Thames. near the Vauxhall bridge i came upon a small ramp where access to the shingle was possible

my feathered friends watched as i collected fragments of flint, blue-and-white porcelain, blue glass, perfect pocket pebbles and [oh delight] a pearl button