Validation

 I have been working away with my textile fragments and my Letraset, creating 'pages' for a couple of books. And also for a couple of 'framed' pieces.

They started out considering our feelings around Covid.  The way we felt as it emerged, raced away from us, as we shut down, closed down and locked down; as we re-emerged; as we opened up and we learnt to 'live with it'. 

It has seemed to me that whilst we are beginning to operate in an ongoing kind of sort of normal way; that we do so against this gentle buzz and hum of uncertainty.  That somewhere in the deep recesses of our minds we remain slightly unsure and a bit ambivalent about how long things will stay 'normal'. We have all had our plans whipped out from under us like a magic trick with tablecloths.

We are no longer as confident as we were that life is good and we are doing it well. Many of us are not convinced that the government decisions being taken to remove all restrictions are necessarily about looking after us.

I think these feelings have more recently been added to by the Russian invasion of Ukraine - and our sense of helplessness and powerlessness around helping or doing something to make him stop.  On the east coast of Australia we are coming to grips with the fact that extreme weather events are part of our new normal; and that the huge losses of life, property, vehicles, businesses and the like will be experienced by more and more of us.

Both of these recent events (building on Covid) are now also impacting on costs of living; housing availability, fuel supplies and supply chains in general.  We are all facing uncertainty around what will be on our supermarket shelves, how can we replace our cars ruined by floodwaters, will we be able to get things from overseas, when will our hardware have those clips again???

And so I have this sense that my 'feelings' work still holds and reflects an ongoing response to world events.

Here are some images of the work in progress.  I am still not entirely sure how it will be in the end; but am enjoying the process, and just wandering along with it.

I love the layering and the glimpses through and between the layers.

This fabric is divine, and I will be sad when I have used it all.

Lying awake one night thinking about resolving these books, I realised I wanted a page that put me in the story.  That showed I was a part of this, and that I was in amongst all of these feelings.

So many of us...