Thursday Thoughts...

"If you are depressed you are living in the past. If you are anxious you are living in the future. If you are at peace you are living in the present". 

Lao Tzu

I oftentimes read a quote like this and something clicks. Perhaps it is that I respond to simple theories and categorisations; or perhaps it because somebody has captured the essence of something, from which we can build.

When I first read this, I wondered how accurate it could be, and I tried to analyse it. I think like many truisms or simple statements it can hold up; yet can also be challenged.

The last part about being at peace if you are living in the present, seems to be strongly linked to mindfulness approaches and that being present is all that we really can be. That this moment is really all that we have.  I pondered how this is oftentimes true; if we are here in the now, then the past and the future are not affecting us, along with the burdens and or gifts that they carry.

However; of course, for many folk right here and right now is the fearful place. It is the place of bombing, of sirens, of burning; the place of great sadness or of anger. The present is not always peaceful; nor are we sure to be at peace if we are present. But broadly speaking it holds in the general spirit of things I think.

Living in the future and being anxious was a good way for me to think about it as well; because for me anxiety is nearly always about something that is out there, to be done, to be faced, to await. Anxiety for me seems to be linked to waiting for something to happen and wondering how awful it will be; or assuming that a moment in the future will be stressful. Or simply that the future itself is stressful. Which at the moment it kind of is.

And the first/final notion of being depressed being linked to living in the past was also a simple descriptor which got me thinking. I am fortunate to not have lived experience of any serious or lengthy depressions. I have had sadness and grief and dark times and I wonder how much of that is about regret, or loss of things from the past. Death and grief lead you to be sad for the loss of relationships that you had; but I am not sure I am qualified to interrogate this notion too closely.  There is however, something in this notion that has a ring of small truth to it, for me.

A friend recently sent this photo of the lands near our cottage in Scotland. I look a this and I can breathe. The air, the empty spaces, the long long vistas... a place to feel present.

Boxes and displaying things

I have almost finished my book for Narratives. The pages are done and the cover is done and the colophon is done. The backing sheets have been glued into place. I have gathered some extra bibs and bobs.

And my mind has turned to storage and display. I had planned to make a display tray with a divider to hold the book and some bits alongside it.  At different points over the past few weeks I have watched some videos; drawn some ideas; plotted out a path or paths to making a box with grey board and book cloth. I chose the book cloth and got the grey board!

Sunday was the day I had on my To Do List - make box. 

So I set aside time and sat down to think my way through once again. Playing around here with some cardboard and getting a feel for how big I wanted it to be; how high I wanted the walls to be.

I decided I would do a trial run using Bristol Board/very lightweight card.

It was great to get out of my head and into my hands. As I went about doing the things I thought I should do (in my head) my hands remembered that I needed to do other things, and do some things differently. Thank you hands.

So I made a display tray with tape holding it together and thought yep I have the dimensions right and some of the logic about which side are slightly higher; which ones might be slightly longer than the internal dimensions and so on.

I was happy with the dimensions - it felt as if the book would sit nicely in its place and the other compartment could hold the extra bibs and bobs - the proportions worked. 

You can just see it here below, but I also wanted to include a notch in the divider so that you could lift the book out quite easily.

I showed it to Barry at this point and we agreed I had a good plan and the thing looked good. I then went - now I just have to work out how to cover it. And I pondered that in my brain and came up with some thoughts. My brain was really hurting here! I thought I might cover the divider before gluing it in and then when I looked at it I thought oh my goodness; it is going to be really hard to cover that notch neatly.

And I stopped dead right there.

This was the point at which I thought I have run into a real road block. I realised I had bitten off far more than I could chew and that I needed to re-assess everything about this book and its presentation and display. It felt as if there was no way I could bring a beautiful and professional looking finish to this work with my current plans and thoughts.

I had also planned to do another tray that would fit over the top and which you would lift off to reveal the book and its bits. Whilst this seemed simpler than the divider tray - it also would have to look perfect and so there was yet another job to do.

So it was back to the drawing board and looking at a multiplicity of alternatives that might somehow do what I wanted.

Dear Reader, I am still contemplating! Fingers crossed something reveals itself to me in a way that looks good and is manageable within the timeframe (just under three weeks). Stay tuned.

In addition to the twigs, I have been gathering other bits I thought could go with the book....

Much pondering still needed!

So many steps to a book

Well, in between rain showers and storms I have been slowly pottering along progressing a couple of things. A calligraphic commission has been posted, the book for Narratives is edging closer, and the second book of Silences is oh so close to being finalised!

Here I am creating a prototype to double check that the pages I have printed are in fact the pages I meant to print; and that they are in the order in which I planned it. For some reason I reached the end of printing and worried that I might have forgotten something, hence the double check prototype and the good news was that all was on track. Tick.

Laying out all the printed pages ready to fold.

Folded.

Collated 

The delight of a deckled edge on the cover.

The task ahead after stitching - trimming the pages down. At this point I felt a bit sad we no longer had a guillotine; but I knew if I took things slowly and had some rests in between times that I would be able to hand trim the 21 books.

Evidence of ongoing trimming. I actually took this shot at what I thought was the end of the task; only to discover a bit later that there were 5 books hidden under a sheet of paper that still needed to be stitched AND trimmed! Laugh.

Now just some lovely closeups of the spines and the edges.  I never tire of looking at these.

And then I began to tag them and make piles for sorting - which ones get handed out; which ones get posted within Australia; which ones head to the UK; and which ones go to Canada and the US. I think I have it all straight in my brain.

Now to wrap, pack and post and take a walk through all the second silences...

Thursday Thoughts...

"......collecting scraps of talk, setting them down like birdsong in my notebook, where someday I would go prospecting for my life." 

 Linda Pastan, Waiting for my Life

It interesting that I came across this one this morning.  Interesting only because just yesterday, I was putting together my presentation for the Artist's Talk I am doing in Brisbane on 28 March, and part of the chat goes something along these lines - "words are the way I make my way through the world. Some artists carry a journal around with them and make quick studies; sketch an outline or a scene. Me, I gather words. Snippets of conversations, beautiful descriptions. Clear and concise understandings". 

And lo, so too does this quote - altho far more poetically.

Perhaps Ms Pastan is speaking more of gathering and collecting scraps  of talk such that they can be used in the future to remind her of something in her life. To hold a light on a time which was important; people who mattered; or things that she learned.

For me; the words I capture spark something into the future. They act as some form of inspiration that might lead to work; they somehow describe something so perfectly that I want to respond to it artistically.

I really do like the notion of collecting scraps of talk and setting them down like birdsong...

from somewhere on instagram...

The love of nests

 I got a wonderfull surprise last week when B came home from his art class, bearing a box with three nests and some eggs in it! His marvellous teacher had told him to "take them home so Fiona can photograph them"!

And that is exactly what I did.

The eggs are a mix of chicken eggs and quail eggs and don't belong to the actual nests themselves, but they do look lovely within them.

Here follows a bunch of photos in all sorts way in celebration of nests (and birds, and feathers, and eggs).

I love the fragment of fabric here...

The final ones are taken using the app that the square point of sale device which we use recommends for taking shots of items for retail online shops...interesting and slightly ethereal.

Deep sigh. They are such glorious things. So clever, so remarkable, so robust.

International Women's Day

 8 March is International Women's Day - first celebrated in 1911, the Day seeks to celebrate the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. It also marks a call to action to accelerate gender equality.

As we sit and watch a world, led mostly by middle-aged or old white men, take us to war in so many places, wreak havoc, and cause death, despair and destruction I wonder to myself - wouldn't women do it better? And I am mostly certainly sure that they would.

But here we are. 

In small ways we do what we can to promote women; to uphold and support women, and to cheer women on. To have their backs, to bolster and boost them and to promote their excellence. Go girls!!!

I make work about women, and I make work about women friends. I hope to do a much larger body of work about women friends mid year; but for today, I am sharing my feminist poster works and postcards.

I have loaded them into the online shop and for the next week, all women's work is 10% off.

A sample of them along with two of my Fragile Gains series.

One of my favourite A4 posters...

This one speaks to me so much of all that is held within the Epstein files - such depravity and abuse of power.

We are so tired of it all - we have had enough.

Women still struggle to be heard when they are talked over or mansplained to.

This should be the starting point in any claim of sexual assault. So awful that so many women have testified to assaults in the Epstein files, and still...no justice for them yet.

We are all so much more than this; and women are worthy of respect, empathy, and understanding even if they aren't your daughter.

A catch cry for women everywhere to keep on protesting, to keep on resisting, to keep on writing and calling their political representatives...

There is only one set of these seven postcards left...

And these fragile eggshells, speak so eloquently of the gains we have made, which we must protect. 

Thursday Thoughts...

 "In books lies the soul of the whole past time the articulate and audible voice of the past when the body and material substance of it has altogether vanished like a dream".

Thomas Carlyle, 1840

I visited the State Library of NSW yesterday with a dear friend, and we both stopped and read this quote, incised into sandstone in the Mitchell vestibule, and sighed. So true we said.

With these words Thomas Carlyle seems to be reminding us that once we have died, have vanished like a dream; it is books that remain and it is books that shall hold memory.

That books shall hold both the soul of the past matters as much to me, as that they hold the stories and facts of the past,. That they retain the intention, the purpose, the desires of the past as well as acting as reminders of what happened and who said what and where and when is a special combination.

The notion of books offering both an audible and articulate voice to the past is comforting. That the past can still be heard and understood in elegant ways, because of books.

Next steps for a book & pebbles!

 I am pushing a couple of things forward at the same time - the wee book for Narratives, and the second Book of Silences. Both are in fact pretty big projects; but the deadlines for both are only a few weeks away for me (given we have plans to return to Scotland. I say plans, because as we have all observed, the planet is a risky place right now).

So the stitching is happening on the pages of the Nest book. I am varying the placement and length of lines of stitching, but have decided on three lines of stitching for each. 

One thing I am missing from the larger public studio space is the light for photographing things. I used to put things on the concrete floor, in an area without direct light and the colours were always pretty true. I am yet to find my happy place for photographs here at home, but over time I hope I will. I think this last photo is the truest to the colour of the pages.

So that work continues, and I have also added some of my calligraphic pebbles to the shop. I was trying hard to work out a way for people to select their own word and I had a few tricks up my sleeve; but without adding 26 letters of the alphabet as items and have people choose 1 x P + 2 x E + 1 x A = 1 x C to create PEACE I couldn't make it work. I thought having 26 items on top of other things in there (like jewellery and book-ets) would just make it look way too messy and be a bit too fussy for folk. So I selected a few phrases and words and priced them; and offer folk the opportunity to email me with requests.

I did work out how to let folk choose if they wanted upper case or lower case so that felt like a win!

The pebbles are $2.00 each; and if any locals want to buy them, there is no postage.  Well depending on how I go manipulating the website, there might be postage, but it will be swiftly refunded!

So many things...

Re-imagining the shop

Once again, my art life is jumping this way and that at the moment. I am trying to stick with the book to be made for the Narratives exhibition; as well as get the second book of Silences printed; and do an unexpected calligraphic commission; and of course update the websites and shops, keeping them stocked and looking nice and friendly. And packing and posting as things get sold.

Oh, and designing and printing some new business cards! I have never had business cards that reflect my jewellery, so these ones now do this; and I have two more designs to consider and get printed then I should be able to include the right card with the right sort of item...

As ever, life is full and varied.

I did want to record and spend a bit time taking stock of the steps for the new shops in a way. The time we spent thinking through what we would and could keep doing after we left the big space was a fascinating time for me. It truly was a time of re-imagining. I had to re-imagine working in such a reduced space; I had to re-imagine what I might teach into the future; we  had to re-imagine how we would sell things if we couldn't display them in our physical shop; and we had to re-imagine what sort of work we continued to make.

It was a time of selection and farewell. Of commitment and release. Of reflecting on the past; but looking to the future. 

One of the jobs with the websites was deciding what categories I would use to put new items in (we deleted our entire inventory - gulp - and started from scratch). In thinking through 'how do the things I make group together', I went looking for through lines.

Previously my shop categories had been pretty descriptive - cards, artists books, posters and so on. Very descriptive of the item - the 'what it is'. What I felt was missing was the 'what it is about bit'. My sense is that people know me for my cards and my artists' books; a relatively frequent refrain when we had the shop space was " Are you the grief card lady???". And yes, indeed, I am. 

But they also know me for my women's work; and my grief work for example.

How best to reflect those sorts of things became a task I dipped into and out of. I would scratch down some thoughts and return to them. I would list things that might cover things;  and would then have to check if some items I wanted to keep making could still find a home. 

So this is where I landed (and may I say the logistics of getting that drop down menu to appear, and then get it in the right order was a Herculean effort for somebody who doesn't do website stuff for a living!).

I ended up with eight categories. Four of which are item categories; four of which are more thematic categories. 

Items: Artists' Books, Jewellery, Cards and Booklets

Thematic: Pebbles, Women, Grief and Pausing.

What I hope I have achieved (and the shops are still not fully stocked, because you know... life) is that when somebody clicks on Grief - they will find Grief cards and booklets (just not yet). If they click on pebbles, they will find jewellery an artists book and some calligraphic pebbles (again, not just yet). With Pausing they will find an artists' book and daily rainbow words... and I think this is where any peace work I do will land as well.

I think this offers options for folk; and also helps me see the interrelatedness of say my jewellery, and my grief is a stone book-ets. And also that I have enjoyed writing on pebbles for decades now... pebbles are a thing for me so I might as well own it!

To support these categories and the shops in general; we have re-imagined the entire shop and display into plastic tubs in a cupboard. What a hoot - so here is the behind the scenes look at our 'shop' these days!

Although I promise we are not selling the pandemic at all - that relates to work-work we did nearly two decades ago which proved rather prescient in 2020...

I expect that as my art continues and grows that I might re-assess these categories or groupings. New loves may appear and require their own name and place. It will evolve.

What started out as a task about "the categories for the shop" became a real investigation of myself as an artist; and a clarifying of what it is I do; what I love; and how I present myself. Fascinating.