I Hit a Wall on show

On Friday B and I headed off to the big smoke (Brisbane) on the train (for 50c each way!) to see an exhibition called Dearly Departed, at the State Library of Queensland.  The Library has put together an exhibition around death, dying, loss and grief and has sources lot son fascinating items from heir collection; the original layout maps of cemeteries, stonemasons tools, journals of nurses and doctors; and all many of things related to how we mark death and the grieving process.

I was thrilled to learn that my artist' book I Hit a Wall  had been selected to go on show alongside so many other precious items.

I have written about its progress before (plenty of link backs in that previous link) but here are the words that accompany it in the collection (but which are not display in the exhibition):

I hit a wall 
2024

After the year that was 2020 I regretted not creating any work that spoke of, or to, the pandemic.
In 2021 I thought I would pay attention and just note down key events.
My Dad had gifted me a number of my mother’s handkerchiefs and I thought to embroider a journal of sorts onto them.
I began by writing down events in my own handwriting, transferring them onto a hankie, and then hand embroidering my handwriting.
I had no idea what 2021 would hold and that in fact, it would be busier than 2020 had been.

Each month I would capture events, and start stitching.
It took all my creative time to try and keep up with policy shifts; quarantine; border closures; contact tracing; gatherings; social distancing; access to vaccines; short sharp lockdowns…
It was exhausting.
I persisted.  
But then.

There was too much. I was too tired of it all.  I felt numb and overwhelmed. I felt weary.
I transferred the month of August onto the hankie but couldn’t start stitching. So much happened in that month that I had to do the criss-cross writing so often seen in old correspondence where the written lines went in two directions. I felt it would never end.
And I submitted to a sense of overwhelmedness and simply stopped.  

I hit a wall.

Leaving this artists’ book partially completed represents us all at the tail end of that year. I had thought I might pick it up and complete it, but I haven’t been able to.  Like everybody I probably just want to park those times, not re-visit them in detail.

Reading the handkerchief pages of this book, I am amazed to recall the daily drama we dealt with.

But I hit a wall and have now simply tacked the pages together and it is complete just as it is…

31cm(h) x 31cm(w) x 1cm(d) closed; 31cm(h) x 62cm(w) x 1cm(d) open.

Cotton handkerchiefs and embroidery thread, Pilot Frixion pen

There were different themes across the exhibition, and my work was part of the Pandemics, epidemics and quarantine.

There is an interesting virtual tour of the exhibition for those who can't get to Brisbane, and here is a screen shot of my work on display.

Back to the book itself, August was the month that defeated me - so much happened and I felt overwhelmed by the thought of trying to capture it all, let alone sew it all.

And by October, I had nothing.

This remains a book that I am proud of, and that has a special place in my heart and in my mind. They were such difficult times, and with this book, we remember them.

The Shape of Things III

 Each of the three books I have made thus far for my collaboration and exchange with Annwyn Dean, have been about Covid, lockdowns and the impact of it all.. 

Part of me remains intrigued that we aren't really seeing much reference to those times (? these times) in art. I am yet to see too many movies that include references to the pandemic isolation and lockdown; nor any tv series. Some books are emerging and some artwork is being made. Perhaps it is all still too fresh.

Nevertheless, the bizarre manner in which we have basically decided as a nation that we won't talk about it, we won't give regular updates or statistics and we shall carry on as if nothing happened seriously does my head in at times.

It was this nagging notion that sat behind the making of this book, which I have framed in my head as Collective Amnesia.

Here is some of what I have written about it:

The Shape of Things III continues the theme of experiencing changes through the different phases of the Covid pandemic. 

 

Book I considered how fluid time felt; and how unfocussed. Book II identified that things were beginning to take shape in my mind. In Book III I reflect on the shape of things behind us, the years since Australia first went into lockdown and where we find ourselves now.

 

The inspiration for this book comes from my sense that so many of us, as communities and even as nations, are suffering from some sort of collective amnesia, in the sense that we seem to be in denial about what happened, and what is still happening.  We don’t talk about it, we don’t report on it, and we don’t want to know how many deaths there have been this week, month or year.  

 

It feels to me like if we don’t talk about it, we don’t have to deal with it and its ongoing impacts.

 

The Shape of Things III is a reflection on how we really don’t want to acknowledge the true impact of the pandemic, speak about it, or consider what it means for the future.

 

Lest we remember.

 

The first 10 blue pages you see as you begin the book relate to the now - the months from July 2022 (when Australia re-opened international borders without restrictions) to April 2023. We have returned to a variation on 'a new normal'. The 28 white pages in the middle relate to the months from March 2020 to June 2022 - a time when travel and movement were restricted. These were hard, harsh and difficult times and full of fear with lockdowns, border restrictions, masks everywhere, limited contact with people, supplies short, business closed, distances kept. The final 2 pages, again in blue, refer to January and February 2020 - the times before everything changed.

On 17 of the white pages I have included the words collective amnesia. I have used one letter in white Letraset, on a single page, so as you turn the pages slowly, the meaning is revealed.

This is the toughest time, of which we have somehow agreed not to speak.

Each blue page holds a smattering of tiny circles cut from Annwyn's papers, representing that we can remember things we did last week, last month. That we recall events and happenings, with far more clarity than we recall the time of the white amnesic pages...

Yet somehow in the here and now, we find it hard to speak of things like case numbers, deaths, intensive care bed occupied by folk with Covid; as if we never spoke of those things and they just tick along in the background - nothing to see here.

The Shape of Things III arrive!

 Annwyn and I decided that we would post our books to each other a bit earlier than planned, as I would be in the UK and it would simpler and easier to work within a mail system, rather than to navigate two mail systems doing things overseas. And it worked.

I returned from a 5 day trip to Orkney to find her book number 3 waiting in the post. She too has received my book 3 so all is well. 

I don't have mine with me to show them together, but here are some photos of my book for her before I left; and of her book with me here in Scotland.

The story of the making of my book 3 will come later.

Here is Annwyn's - it called The Shape of Pamphlet Stitch and she has blogged on it here.

I really love how she has so beautifully brought our two papers together in such a complementary way.

It is such an elegant design.

And I absolutely adore these tiny masterpieces with their pamphlet stitches...

And here is mine. It is quite a traditional book with a fair bit of stitching, and lots of pages. 

The pages are beautifully soft, and they fan ever so well.

Whilst they are not physically together this time; here they are on the screen together. I continue to enjoy how we are each pushed by using the other's papers, and yet we each create books that are quintessentially 'us'.

I will show my book 3 in a bit more detail soon I hope.

Continuing Making The Shape of Things II

 So I had worked out the format and the paper, and the folding and the layout and the writing.

The next phase was to select papers and decide placement of the various elements.

I tend to like odd numbers, and each book ended up with 5 cut outs, 7 embosses and 9 paper chunks.

I have mentioned previously that these collaborative books are for me, siblings. They are not perfect replicable editions of each other, and so I found that my calligraphy was larger in some places on one than the other; it went further across the page on one of them and the like.  And yet you just know they are related when you look at them.

Here I'm checking and comparing that I have the right number and same sizes of paper chunks. I think I was also comparing should one book be dark and one light? And you can see an error I made in the calligraphy underneath, as well as some variations on shapes where I thought something needed to be larger, and changing placement of bits for better balance.

A dark, a light and medium in progress...

And then converting to two light ones!

Folded with their title pages, ready to attach to their covers

Testing cover book cloth with card to make the slipcase, and thinking that the tonality is working.

Two sibling peas in their pods.

The siblings unfurled...

Making The Shape of Things II

 My inspiration for the second book in this series The Shape of Things II, came from doing this quick calendar of the year.  I had struggled so much to work out what the shape of the year looked like. I need the shape, the outline, the blocks of time before I can settle and work new things in and around my commitments.

Once we had decided we would head back to Scotland wth my Dad for probably his last trip, the year began to take shape, quite literally here. Chunks of time were blocked out.

One of the challenges Annwyn and I have set ourselves, is to use unfamiliar or not often used book formats.

Way back when (in the late 1990s) I made my first book. It was part of the submission process for CLAS and I became one of the first Australian calligraphers to be accepted at Intermediate Level.  

Anyhoo, it was a fold out book, based on a 15th Century Doctor's notebook found in the British Library (the pattern and information is found in the book BookWorks by Sue Doggett).

I felt the format worked as the original book format was medically based (as is my sense of time warp due to Covid and its associated impacts); and it also seemed to work as a guide to the future.

I chose to work again with A4 paper; partly because it will connect a number of my books in the series; and partly because I am never sure where I will be when I am making and it may be all I have available! My previous book was made in Scotland where I only had an A4 pad of watercolour paper...

So based on my calendar, and modifying the folds to reflect the 12 months of the year - 2 x 6 month rows - I tried to reflect the chunks of time a bit too literally.

On a practice sheet, I cut out a chunk and realised I would have no book structure left if I continued along that path, so indicative chunks and blocks of time it became. With options for embossing, papers and cut-outs to represent the chunks.

Some embossing chunks being prepared.

It never ceases to amaze me how many mockups and tests and trials I do - all to make the final book look so effortless, as if it could only ever have been the way it is!

I chose my paper and tested my words. I cut large sheets of paper down into A4 size to work with. I only needed two books, but I prepared four just in case I stuffed up along the way. See earlier note about tests and trials above!

The five lines read:

 Some edges now frame time

Events are set more solidly

Things still get bumped or disappear

Shapes emerge and hold

I begin to the shape of things

The next steps were cutting, embossing and pasting. More to follow...

2022, the year in Review

 Over the years, I have stopped at the end of a year or the beginning of the next to look back and see what I made during the year. It is so helpful to me to be reminded of achievements, of work that I loved, or that I struggled with.  My sense of time remains flexible and I honestly didn't recall that I had done so much in 2022!

I entered the process this year feeling a bit sad and disillusioned that I hadn't done half the things I had hoped or planned to do; and then as the year unfolded before my eyes I recalled some fabulous and lovely things and it felt great to have them alongside for a while. Note to self, memory can be flawed. 

 Here are my Top 10 things I made this year - things that I love, things I am proud of, things that make me smile, things that matter to me and things I am simply happy to have out in the world. They appear alphabetically rather than in any order of merit.

1. Carried

The opportunity to take part in the Vessel exhibition provided real impetus for me to think about new work, and be creative yet true to myself. This work took a long time to resolve, yet tells its story so beautifully. Making the envelopes out of papers I had rubbed on the cottage walls and on a special chair in Maleny made the envelopes special, along with words I had written and the crazy dangling threads I love so much...

2. Cottage Post

This whimsical piece emerged out of our trips to the cove in Scotland, gathering driftwood and bibs and bobs. Some pieces of timber really talk to you and I love how this piece came into being as I held timbers, turned them around, put them together...all with Barry's help of course!

3. Fragile Gains 2

Another work that took several turns about and circular movements rather than a straight line to completion, this body of work builds on my earlier Fragile Gains work (2014) which examines gains made by women which I still consider fragile. With the overturning of Roe v Wade through the year, it became blazingly clear that choices is definitely still at risk. This felt like important work; tho it is small and quiet - it speaks truth.

4. Gleaning

I fell in love with this book after making it, and am so glad it has landed with a friend. It represents my efforts this year  to re-use work and re-make work and see if tired work can gain a new lease of life. This book did it beautifully, and inspired two more similar book re-makings.

5. Locon's book

This was the loveliest of commissions and I really enjoyed thinking my way through how to represent a person's life (the small bits that I knew). It came together really well and the recipient was thrilled. I have just realised I never actually posted the completed work! Shall try to remedy that soon.

6. Postcards Home

My ponderings about what home is came together in small part when I used threads I had dyed from our garden in Scotland alongside threads I had dyed from Maleny garden plants to create this small accordion book. The soft colours of the threads make it a gentle transition between two places.

7. Silversmithing

One of my absolute most favourite things this year was attending an Introduction to Silversmithing course with Lindsey Gallacher in Thurso. It was such a delight to design, resolve and make a piece in the space of a day! Slightly smitten could describe my response...

8. Turning Point

I finished this book/s early in the year and it became a Finalist in the Libris Awards, going on to be purchased for the Mackay Art Gallery's Collection. It is a coming together of the anger women have about sexual assault, rape, abuse and violence - from Me Too to many others, women will no longer be silenced.

9. Validating I & II

Companion pieces to the works below, these two fabric scroll books continue our sense of uncertainty and unease as we emerged from the worst of the lockdowns to try and work out what on earth it means to live  with such a scurrilous virus still circulating. I love the look and the feel of them; and how they make you feel unsure as you approach them. and of course, we (x) find ourselves within them.

10. Validation I, II & III

These words have floated in and out of my brain for months and I am still not convinced that we are all fine and dandy and that everything is settled again. There seems to still be much disruption and uncertainty around us.  Fragility, Tentativeness, Suspension, Isolation... all of the feelings, and we should be OK about validating them. This trio allow us to do just that. 

Thanks as ever for coming along on the ride looking back over the year that was. It helped me remember that there were many beautiful things and moments of magic and that there will be again.

The softness of my palette is repeated yet again this year - with that bold dash of red and black in Turning Point being the only detour amongst them. I covered territory around women, about the nature of home, the joy of gleaning and creating, and around the ongoing impacts of the pandemic. All of which sounds about right regarding the things that have made want to make and create this year. And Letraset go ta really good run!

Thanks again, and go well.