the way of the duck [and an angel playing piano]

yesterday was a truly splendid day

it began well

i awoke breathing

[always a good beginning]

the sun shone and twinkled

on ice-rimed grass

and the spring blossomsnow

was everywhere

we wandered to the farmer's market

a happy saturday habit

where we found

among other things

ducks

cartoonist Michael Leunig has good advice

'study the way of the duck'

these ducks had good ways

obviously

they needed to come home with us

and join the other rescued ducks

who knows what fates might otherwise have overtaken them?

someone might have thought they were food

not recognised their real purpose as great teachers

and philosophers

so here they are

with their new friends

i mentioned earlier that it was a splendid day

a wonderful day for weeding

finding small things that had been buried in the garden

and forgotten in the general buzz of things

there are few activities quite so satisfying

as carefully weeding out grass

from in between the freesias

while an old

and slightly tubby

Border Collie snores contentedly nearby

observed [a little disdainfully]

by a small fluffy CatfishWeaselBear

[for enlightenment scroll down the right hand side

to the image labelled 'Martha']

at sunset my parents and i

washed our hands and faces

put on clean socks

and tucked fresh hankies into our pockets

got into The Beastie

drove to Adelaide

and sat rapt in the audience

as David Helfgott

played piano, like an angel on speed

a truly splendid day

ps dear Mr Leunig, i know your images are copyright but i hope you don't mind me borrowing them cos they do link back to your site...

coCo aVant cHanel

here's a film well worth seeing

Coco avant Chanel

some new work

i've barely finished stitching this piece and haven't really had time to make friends with it properly and already it's rushed off to have fun in Sydney without me

it's made up of silk fragments dyed in Lier, London, San Francisco, Wellington, Warrnambool, Columbus and of course Hope Springs.

it's a document of wandering, hand-stitched together using linen thread

if you're in the Sydney area you can see it at

Planet

114 Commonwealth Street

Surry Hills

trails of entrails

i'm in the national capital this weekend...unusually not for work but in order to celebrate the semi-centenary of a very dear friend.

wandering about this morning trying with no little difficulty to navigate the labyrinth of convoluted paths that encircle the city it came to me that not many people really know the true story behind the designing of Canberra.

dear friends, i'm here to enlighten you.

Canberra is popularly believed to have been designed by Walter Burley Griffin.

i'm inclined to think the true story goes more like this. Mrs Burley Griffin [well, actually the architect Marion Lucy Mahony] had a large Persian cat called Pinky. one day when Walter had wandered into the kitchen in the middle of a tricky session of designer's block to fetch himself a calming cup of tea Pinky strolled into the studio in search of amusement.

she sat up on the drawing table and enjoyed a quick wash. regrettably her tail rested on Walter's watercolour palette [remember these were the days before CAD when plans and elevations where all rendered by hand]. just then Pinky espied a sparrow through the window. morphing instantly into killer-cat slink mode she swivelled across the page and hurled herself at the offending avian.

moments later the drafting assistant entered the rooom, spied the watercolour swirls on the paper and decided to ink them in. and there it was, cat-made marks in psychotropic swirls , just waiting to be embellished with trees,parks and houses.

thank goodness it was only a cat's prints and not the soothsayers casting of the entrails of a sheep....our demented deviations might have been a lot longer

messages in bottles

there's a little note on blogger-buzz [you'll find that on your blogspot dashboard] suggesting folks might like to write a post on what blogging means to them.

so here goes.

for me, it's quite simply a gentle and [relatively] environmentally friendly way of popping a message in a metaphorical bottle and setting it loose on the imaginary seas

without upsetting

the seals and whales or the whirled oceans

or getting my boots wet

every so often a bottle washes up on some distant shore

and 

every now and then

a message finds its way back again

what i find truly enchanting about the whirled wide web is that what was developed as a communicatory tool for an armed force [the US Army] has become the instrument of friendships around the whirled

and i'm not so innocent that i don't think it's also a handy way of scanning the thoughts of the masses for information

so here's a wave to you too, Big Brother, wherever you are. i know it's not Big Sister watching, she's much too busy collecting up all those socks that get eaten by washing machines each week.

exhibition opening

raku work by Lyn Reeves

the reason i was invited to Tasmania was to open an exhibition

those who know me well will be aware that i have a speech impediment

meaning

i'm not keen on making speeches

however i decided to be brave

and read a prepared text

which some people seemed to think was ok

under the circumstances

so

i thought perhaps i'd reprint it here...

Words spoken at the opening of ‘wabi-sabi – from rags to rust, the art of imperfection’ July 26, 2009

 

the older I become and the less time it seems likely I shall have on this beautiful earth the more I realise the importance of taking more time to be slow about the things I do

and to engage with the whirled

to take time to appreciate that string of pearls that is “the moments of now” that scatter like raindrops on a river as we wander our life journey

collections of  “moments of now” make up the works we see here today. We call them artworks but they are only the tips of the metaphorical iceberg that is the

Art   -   Work

the thought, hand, making and shaping that was involved in the realisation of the pieces we see

those “moments of now” cannot be pinned down like beetles in a museum.they slip elusively away shimmering and dancing; swooping like dragonflies on the pond of memory

for me the concept of wabi-sabi is as undefinable.

my wise friend the potter Petrus Spronk says that the spirit of wabi comes about as a result of the work being made with great care and attention

and that the spirit of sabi comes about as a result of equally great care and attention from the user

and that in this way the work becomes complete.

Leonard Koren writes that wabi sabi is

…a beauty of things humble….

ask a Japanese person to define it and the response often implies that the need to ask belies the possibility of understanding.

for me it is the difference between a philosophy that strives to say something with a work

and

one in which materials from nature are worked with care and respect to find a voice that gives the object meaning

in a similar spirit, as a traveller I find the most satisfying journeys have been those in which I have taken the time to listen to land and place

taken time for life to find me rather than seeking out experience or nailing myself to a timetable

it is a frugal approach that finds joy in small detail.

a wabi-sabi of wanderings, taking gentle walks

stopping to listen and being open to the magic that is all around

the works that are being displayed in this place show that others too have found this magic

the makers have been attentive and have listened to the whirled

they have allowed their materials to find a voice through their hands and hearts.

i have pleasure in welcoming you to enjoy the work and invite you to give it the care and attention the makers have brought to it

thank you

 

more island life

at dawn on Steele's Island the ground is covered with a thin fur of ice

essentially the island is a midden composed of enormous shells

moss grows almost to the waters' edge

a stitched and felted landskin soaking in the briny rivermouth before baptism in the dyebath

island life

despite being somewhat steam rollered by a Big Year a little voice told me to say 'yes, please' when an invitation came from the South Island [Tasmania]

to visit there and say a few words at the opening of an exhibition

and also

to hold a workshop

i left it all entirely in the hands of Desiree Fitzgibbon,

thinker, poet, painter

and now also friend and skinsister

on arrival she took me to Rosny Farm

where my work was showing as

Nine Patch

in the Schoolhouse Gallery

from there we wandered on to Steele's Island

a truly magical spot

by some miracle the owners were away and so i played Robinson Crusoe for a night 

marooned [very happily] on the island

taking a lovely walk in the last light

and greeting the day, all by myself on a frost encrusted beach on the morning of the workshop

and yes, i'm aware i live a fortunate life....and i am grateful.

 

a marvellous night for a moondance

there's rather a lot of fuss about the moon in recent days...and who left which footprint with what and where.

where were you when it was all going on 40 years ago?

i was at school in Germany. we started our day early at 8am...but by 1300hrs we were home again and sitting down to a lovely hot lunch cooked by my delightful great-aunt. there'd be at least 10 people around the table on any day, often quite a few more as starving students would turn up in the hope of a feed. after lunch we'd disappear into the park across the way or the beech forest just up the hill and play to our hearts content.

that month we watched the moon landing on a crackly black-and-white tv. i skeptically wondered why the flag was fluttering, and what the fuss was about

Woodstock had a much greater impact on me - but only about 10 years later, when i finally realised what it meant...not realising it had happened just down the road from where we lived only a little later that same year

here's a clip from the movie "A Walk in the Moon" filmed at a summer camp much like the one we lived at in the fall and winter of '69...excepting we were at Aloha Manor [Vermont] after summer camp was finished and everyone had gone home and back to school

imagine two children aged 10 and 7, running wild in the red leaf fall. paddling canoes on the lake, playing hide-and-seek in the forest. romping in the snow. good times.