Sunday 27 March 2011

Wall Hanging for a Baby

This wall-hanging with pockets was made for a baby in Canada - her grandmother chose a forest theme as winters are so long and cold in Montreal - as my beautiful sister Lizzy knows.
It has twelve pockets, and is hand-appliqued and embroidered. Most of the material is remnant cotton and viscose from a flag-making factory my cousin Alisa worked in for a while. It's a little slippery to work with, but so bright and colourful, and it should be fade-safe, too!





I am being paid $300 for this piece. I'm very happy to take more commissions!

One more time

Please forgive me - I am learning as I go. I hope the image of 'Raft' will appear this time. It was made in Jakarta in 2008, from driftwood and found objects, including antique pony beads dug up from Toowong Creek.

Raft, a piece of wearable art

For some reason the photo didn't appear in the previous posting, so I will try again.

Everything is Junk

I caught the end of a terrifying reality program the other day: people were being 'assisted' in clearing their homes of all their lovingly hoarded junk! Some of them were going to sell bits and pieces of furniture and bric-a-brac so that they could 'see a mental health professional'. Relatives stood by, weeping with relief as the ex-hoarders stood, spiritually naked, in their empty basements. My heart went out to them.
A cool, sunny day in early autumn after a week of rain. The baby is wrapping her dad's dirty sock around her neck and saying 'nice'. Time to put on a wash. I wondered why the house smells of fish and then remembered - I'm cooking up a pot of native grasses and seaweed to make paper.

Thursday 24 March 2011

Nothing is Junk

The good thing about making artworks from found objects and recycled materials is that inspiration is all around: on the bush track, by the side of the road, in a neighbourhood skip - wherever you go, there's a beautiful feather or artfully twisted piece of wire begging to be picked up and used. The downside is that the amount of fabulous stuff lying around waiting to become art - pebbles, cloth, bones, driftwood, leaves, paper, seashells, doll body-parts, etc etc etc - can become overwhelming. Even with my own shed and art-room (spoiled, aren't I) my junk spills into every other room in the house. In the two years that we've owned the house I've been slowly converting as much as possible into things for us - cushion-covers, garden features, a mobile for the baby's room and one for Mum and Dad - and into artworks for exhibition and/or sale.
The image above is one side of a double-sided screen I made for a family friend - a commission - monoprints of leaves, hair, feathers and lace on various kinds of paper, including washi (Japanese paper, my favourite).
I've been making a lot of my own paper this summer, using native and introduced grasses, plum-tree bark, tiny scraps of silk and any scrap of paper too small for anything else. It's starting to get too cold to make paper now, but I tear up paper scraps all through winter, ready for the next sunny day. Any scrap of material gets cut down into blendable pieces, too. A cupboard-full of torn up paper fermenting in orange-juice containers - lovely.

Tuesday 22 March 2011

The Porcupine Dream

Today is a cool, rainy day in the Adelaide Hills. Baby Amelia has a slight cold but she went to Grandma and Grandpa's happily. This is my work morning - precious hours in which to work and think uninterrupted.
I dreamt last night that I helped pull porcupine quills out of the hands of a boy who had tried to rescue a wounded porcupine. The porcupine was very strong and struggled madly, but the boy wouldn't let it go, even though he was in a lot of pain. Got the quills out of the boy and the porcupine had to be de-quilled too, in order to be treated - it was going to be okay, but it wasn't happy about being bald. Without quills it looked really cute, like a blonde baby wombat.
A good dream, and it prompted me to look up American Indian medicine bundles on the net. One of the first sites showed photos of Fiona Hall's 'Medicine Bundle for a Non-born Child'. I admire Hall's work very much, but this - a baby's layette crocheted out of shredded coke cans - isn't one of my favourite pieces.
I sent an hour or so playing with my collection of porcupine quills (collected for me by Audrey Kutschke, in Knowlton, Quebec), my bird-bones, perforated shells and carved bone beads, thinking about a more organic kind of medicine bundle. I'll keep you posted!

From an earlier work journal:
I’ve always had precious found objects, ever since I was a little girl. They are talismans. Some were given to me, like the nub of wood from a tree a man was cutting down on Nauru – I still have that piece of wood, which is also a day from my childhood, and a part of Nauru. It is beautiful in itself, with swirling lines all over its salmon-coloured outer surface.
Some I found, like the onyx man’s ring which I can wear now, after keeping it in a cigar box for years (I had it resized to fit my finger). Boxes are also important – reliquaries, treasure-holders, treasures in themselves.
A bird’s claw I kept in a matchbox, grisly and magical.
As a child I believed that some things could be used to work magic – feathers, a christmas light casing, a brass bead – and some of that belief lingers in the artworks I make now. Each one has to be magic – has to call something into being, or make a whole out of broken things.
          On Sumba a rato (animist priest) watched me washing my collection of sea-finds with great interest. I told him jokingly that I was also a follower of marapu (animism) because it was the only way I could explain what the pieces meant to me. He understood, I think.

My beautiful big girl, Miriam, wearing 'The Ancestor of Cats' in 2006 - silk, feathers, mother-of-pearl, cuttlefish beak and cat skull. I don't kill or hurt live animals, but I do collect fallen feathers and quills, and also bones - we have a crow, rabbit and koala decomposing in our compost heap at the moment.

The Reluctant Blogger or Everything is Art

Dear Friends,
Even though 'blog' is probably one of the ugliest words in 21st century English, I've decided to write one, mainly to display (and hopefully sell) my artworks and books. I'll also be keeping a work journal in which I describe my methods and techniques, ideas and inspirations, the journey being at least as interesting as the finished product.
I lost my first post, so I'm keeping this one short - fingers crossed!
I look forward to your comments
Beck