Thursday Thoughts...

“Art is not a passive activity. We have to get involved. Imagination always means involvement, and as soon as your mind is open to a different level of seeing, thinking, hearing, or understanding, you start asking questions.” 

Jeanette Winterson, What is Art for?

Art can definitely be a threshold; a way in, an opening, into different ways of thinking and seeing.  It can challenge us; make us feel uncomfortable, or joyous. The bottom line is it can make us feel.

In terms of passive versus active, I agree that art is often an activator; a catalyst; a thing that sparks another thing. But I also feel as if it can also be passive. It can be something that we sit quietly and absorb, and enjoy. It can offer solace and quietude.

I imagine Ms Winton is trying to shake people up out of  passive observation of art; when it is not about experiencing pleasure by absorbing beauty and calm and peace; but rather the passivity of feeling nothing; of not being moved; of not being interested or involved. 

Disengagement from art means you are not activating your imagination or your responses. You are not asking why does it make me feel that way? You are not wondering how have they achieved that sense of ....? You are not dissecting techniques nor considering is there a call to action in this? 

It feels as if asking questions is critical to understanding and engaging with art.

Flowers by Wotje Weavers 2021

Life is full and varied!

 The title says it all - even tho it was almost going to be simply "just a bit more of this and that".

Time is precious at the moment and there are commitments on many fronts. Not as much making is happening as I would like, but I do think I am managing to stay broadly on track for the Scottish exhibition.

Here is a sample of the second half of week...

Wednesday morning I gathered some fallen autumn leaves and made some small posies from the garden - lavender and violets - in preparation for setting the dinner table that night.

Wednesday afternoon we hung Tory's painting for Dad. My brothers and I purchased it for Dad as he had admired it several times at the Pebbles exhibition. One very chuffed fellow.

Come home and tried to sew up these two cubes, after having printed these blended images onto calico, and cut them into 6 squares.

Hosted dinner Wednesday night and then flew to Melbourne on Thursday - away for less than 24 hours; in Melbourne for about  18! Attended the Joan Kirner Social Justice Oration at the State Library of Victoria. An important and powerful speech by Tanya Plibersek.

The table settings were just my kind of thing!

Flew home Friday and the sun gave us this show later in the day as it set...

And then Saturday morning was misty!

Saturday morning I got the chance to test stitching some travel lines on the trial cube - checking one or two strands of thread; how to use the frixon pen (can I iron fabric which is over a cement cube to erase it???)

I liked the two strands of thread best. And yes, I can iron away the blue of the pen!

And then Saturday lunchtime to Sunday afternoon, we hosted the Live Streaming of the Sydney Writers' Festival here in Maleny! It was a great couple of days - so many interesting people, conversations and books.

Life is never dull, and now here I am late on Sunday afternoon, hoping to sit and stitch a bit more of my fourth scroll...

Thursday Thoughts...

I've always known when I start a story what the last line is. It's always been the case, since the first story I ever wrote. I don't know how it's going to get there, but I seem to need the destination. I need to know where I end up. It never changes, ever. 

Amy Hempel

I may not ponder this in depth, but I am definitely thinking about it!  I have never read Amy Hempel, and now of course, the first thing I want to do is go look at a book of her short stories and read the last line of each one, before I read the actual stories!

It is an intriguing approach and what a remarkable gift to have. To know the ending, no matter what the story.

I recall that Stephen Covey's ultra successful book the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People has as Habit 2 "Begin with the End in Mind", so perhaps that's really all it is. If you know where you are heading with a story, you can craft a path to get there.

On reflection, her approach may not be as startling as it first felt; but I still think there is something remarkable about the specificity of knowing the actual words of the last line; not just kind of how things will end up.

Not exactly sure where this end up...

Bundles before burning

 I mentioned here about my plans, thoughts, experiments around burning bundles for a piece of artwork for the Scottish exhibition.

I received some excellent advice around perhaps dampening down the cord before putting it through the flame, which I did this time around and which gave me much more control. I got quite a good length of cord slightly singed and smoked.

And then onto the bundles before...

The autumn/winter light in the studio is lovely. I particularly enjoy how the sun moves through the foliage to the north of the studio and produces little dancing moments on the concrete floor.

 Into this dappled light I placed my bundles to photograph.

They are truly beautiful and part of me looks on anxiously as I consider singeing them, hoping not to burn them too much...

Perhaps that is why I chose to photograph them before! This way I will always have a reminder of how beautiful they were.

Especially in that dappled, dancing light.

I spent some time singeing things that may become parts of the bundles, and smoking them. The look and feel is definitely coming together.

Busy with bits and pieces

 It is a week now since the Pebbles, Stones and Rocks exhibition closed, and it has been a time still busy with tidying, re-arranging, calculating sales, payments and transfers, delivering work, making appointments for folk to collect work and trying to work on the work for Scotland if only my brain would allow me!

There are so many fragments to push forward and along. I think it will be a while yet before I can say, something is actually complete, but sometimes that is the way of things.

We re-arranged the studio, and I like the way this little gathering of Barry's timber dry bud vases is now settled.

I continue to play around with how to get messages onto the fabric for the cubes I'm hoping to sew and cover.

I am also working on getting the lettering prepared to go on the wall of the gallery in Scotland. This little sequence is funny. I had selected 6 fonts that I thought might work. Barry and I narrowed them down to three. I sent the three off to the lettering-cutter and he indicated he could work with two of the fonts, so we landed on this one.

From there I simply had to work out the layout. How much space would they take up on the wall? What sizes would I use for the various elements? And how would they appear? The top one is left justified. We decided to do the second one fully justified. Tick. But Barry had also suggested we should move the name closer tot eh definition, but I didn't like it.

So in the third one I made more spacing - and it was too much!

By the fourth we had a goldilocks moment - the spacing was 'just right'.

In between we had sold a small Adana press and as part of the package I prepared a random alphabet to go with it.

I wrote all the words for the fourth and longest scroll, and began stitching with my variegated purple threads.

Whilst I was waiting for folk to come in to the studio and collect their wares, I thought I could manage to transfer some type between trays. It is a nice, quiet, almost mindless task that can take the odd interruption. Not all tasks can be interrupted!

And then just for fun the wildlife of the weekend... Saturday a small wallaby with her joey waiting to cross the street (grin)

And Sunday morning a platypus in the creek.

We live in a pretty magical place.

Thursday Thoughts...

“If we doubted our fears instead of doubting our dreams, imagine how much in life we’d accomplish.” 

Joel Brown

Occasionally I come across quotes that appear quite deep and require me to read them a few times before I can even work out what I think they might mean. Others I read and go - oh yes, that's a really simple truth! This one feels like one of those, not trite or twee I hope, just a simple question with an interesting, and maybe challenging at times, premise.

Sure enough it's a motivational quote, from an entrepreneurial coach, but I think there is a nice ring of truth to it. I thought about how often I doubt my dreams and my hopes; and it is kind of often enough. I then thought how often I doubt my fears, and realised that it takes a lot more to convince me that my fears are unfounded; than it does to convince that my dreams are realistic. Interesting.

It made me wonder what doubting a fear might look like, and I think it would involve a series of questions and challenging of myself. Quite the conversation on occasions!

Of course its not always true that you achieve things simply because you back yourself; I think we might attempt more things if we didn't doubt our dreams so much, and therefore yes the chance of achieving things increases because you have in fact attempted it.

So all in all, I think this one gives me a chance to think about the next time I am doubting a dream; to step back and think about doing it anyway; and when feeling a fear, perhaps I  will interrogate it a bit further, and maybe do it anyway.

Gift for stitching

I have completed three of my seven scrolls for a major work for the Scottish exhibition, and it is stitched in a lovely russet colour. Here's the back!

But a few weeks ago I was gifted this timber box from a relative, and whilst I thought it might have some threads in it, I was thrilled to discover so many! 

I think there will be hours of sorting here; but I am glad that so many of them are already grouped in colour ways.

And clearly, there are lots of cards for rolling threads onto and writing down their numbers...

But it was this pair that really caught my eye. I have taken them out and am letting them air; and think the variegated mauve one might be the one to begin stitching the longest scroll with. The variegated russet and green one is also very tempting!

As we head through Autumn and into Winter, I can see my future holds evenings inside, steadily rolling and wrapping and writing...

Farewell to Pebbles, Stones and Rocks

 The last weekend was a rather frantic time with lots of visitors stopping by to look at the showing, to purchase and to talk art and making and creating.  It was fabulous to have so many kind folk take the time to visit and even more wonderful to see their responses; and their enjoyment of the works on show.

I was making jewellery right up until the final days as I replaced many of the pieces that had sold along the way.

And sharing photos of potential pebble pendants with folk after they had purchased some earrings...

Peaceful Pebbles I and II had sold, so I added III and IV to the shop. This was a nice small task to undertake in between visitors!

Today, all four of us were there together and chatting to folk as they collected their work; and as we packed up and took work home with us to deliver...it was nice to share the space together and the stories. 

It absolutely NEVER ceases to amaze how quickly a show comes down; compared to how long it takes to set up!!!

The space is settling back into itself again, with a bit of re-imagining to happen perhaps, and we shall see what happens next.

Now back to preparing for Scotland!

Exhibition walk through

This could be my shortest post ever!

Just in time, and before we close the show on Sunday 12 May, I made a short walk through video for folk who can't get to the exhibition, and here it is...

I hope you enjoy, and forgive the odd stutter and stumble, and that it proves to be a nice way to 'view' it from afar...