Author: Sandy Webster

I was just plain stuck into thinking about the friends in Tasmania, all gathered together to make baskets, dye cloth, and stitch. I had drawn one of the stones I had covered in patched cloth and then saw their balls of cloth scraps of material. these would be so much fun to toss back and forth in a nursing home…not the rock ones I make, not those! Anyway, I only have two or three pages left in this book so will make another one to keep up with my pretending I am there when they gather. I don’t know why I thought this one book would be all that was needed. They are never going to stop their gatherings and I am never going to not want to pretend I am there. I have enough of all the papers used for this book and can easily make Vol. II.

There were some new leaves in the yard. And they needed to be added to the leaf section of the six way book.

I don’t remember dogwoods having these seed pods in Spring.  But they were interesting to draw. these latest drawings seem a bit weak, but there is always the next leaf to do. Just keep at it.

I have been working on my book about the importance of letters and how different the words are when hand written versus text or email. Letters are so important, to write as well as receive. But are becoming more and more infrequent. Some words just need to be hand drawn out while others can be rushed into the ether in anticipation of immediate responses.

Another thing that has been on my mind is do you notice how many people are tattooed? Some cover their whole bodies without a thought as to how hard it will be to see bruising in an emergency room. Or how all those tiny dragonflies and butterflies will look like they flew into a tree trunk years later. Why do people want to make the marks of decorative bruises on their skin? I remember one fellow who during his Navy days long ago had a sexy buxom girl in very short shorts tattooed onto his forearm muscle. I would ask him over and over to make her move in a very flirtatious way. Over the years she became slower and then gave up altogether. I still smile at the memory.

But now, the goal seems to be to cover yourself with symbols that shout out who and what you are or hope to be. Think of the creepy Secretary of Defense here in the US. Years from now his body will be a documentation of unfulfilled aspirations.  I did know a bartender who showed me her leg-long octopus once. By the time she enters the nursing home it will likely have fallen into seaweed.

Other than writing someone’s phone number on your palm, body marks, and permanent ones at that, totally escape my appreciation. And it is that color, too. the color of fresh bruises. Yes, I know there are all types of color tattoos now. I knew a diner cook who sported a frying pan with yellow-yolked eggs on her upper arm. I never dared ask if they flipped over when she flexed.

So that is all I had to say about paid for marked up bodies. I will return to writing about things I understand.

Here is a shot of Sadie on her chair this week.

She is such good company.

I bought more fabric for shirts recently and the green that looked more sage in the picture turns out to be a pale mint color. I am going to tie it up and toss it into a bath of black tea and iron just to see what happens. Might just do that today after my workout. There is no way I would be allowed to hang it out on a line in this neighborhood but there is the garage…and it is only two yards.

Should stop, find some lunch, do my workout and start cooking up that tea in the dye pot.

Til later…

On my way to meet for breakfast. We had not tried eating from the deli at our local grocery store. Now I know why…pretty bad when the only thing on offer was tiny biscuits with sludge gravy. I went for biscuits and asked for jam since they had no butter. In the box was two packages of jam that was hard and a fork to spread it with. Bought the smallest coffee (latte) I could at the Starbucks and it was just under $5. Think we no longer have to wonder what deli breakfast is like there.

Since Anzac Day was coming up, I baked the cookies for the Australian bike shop owner. The rest will go to the men for breakfast tomorrow morning.

I was thinking about the artwork I have around the house. The work I made myself. It seems that what I see on the internet or in person is more about learning some sort of technique or made to be a decoration. Nothing there to make you wonder why certain elements were chosen…what the placement means, why those colors…

Here is a piece, or rather details of a piece I made years ago and hangs over my bed. It started with a piece of bark from a tree that had worm tracks all through it. I could not put it back on the ground. I wondered if I was trying to read a secret language of something instructional. A message made by one species to be translated to another.

What if bugs were communicating to, say moths, on where and how to fly to find something important. I had a tissue paper covered with moth images that were much brighter years ago. And carefully cut them out to “follow instructions” left by the insects. Brass wires twined fine branches and palm inflorescence waiting to be used in my studio. I had an abundance of imagination back then. I even put a gold metallic thread on my sewing machine to pick up the shine of the brass wire and look like more markings along the “trail”. I never get tired of looking at this piece. I never lose interest in figuring out what one insect tried to communicate to another.

The moths and I have grown old and faded together. There is nothing on my artwork and my body that is not without layers of meaning and experiences.

Here is the last of the Curiosity Boxes that hangs next to the Moth piece.

I titled it The Witches Daughter’s Box because I found a poem with that title in an old, very old, book. The poem is bound into the long narrow book to the right side of the tall opening. The background is a scrap from test collographs I made in undergraduate school while learning various printmaking techniques.  This gave a dark mysterious pattern that fit the mood of the box. Next an odd shaped and colored foundry mold placed next to the book, a basket I wove from grasses I found in the yard (I think a witch would have woven these to hold small bits). Mine holds a feather.

Under the floor is a brass bird, nut shell, and a shaped ball from a piece of shifu spun paper containing a hidden message.

Then above is another space filled with bundles of important papers on a shelf. And above that an attic space containing bones and some symbolic dial in the background, a clay bead and glass vial of shards next to another coptic bound book.

And finally laying on top is a hunk of wood that contains all the techniques I learned in a metals workshop taught over two days by a Native American. It is like a rattle and makes the most pleasing sound when gently shaken. Nothing went into this piece without careful consideration as to why it was needed.

I wish I could see more work that told stories, held secrets, and had some kind of meaning that took looking and imagination to decipher.

In the meantime, the last couple of days of the basket gathering in Tasmania inspired me to share long distance time with them in the Gathering Book. I have lots of spaces to fill and a stitched section to do before these two pages are finished.

I might go take a nap. It is too late in the day for me to go back to my writing and too early for some Aussie red. But just the right time to stretch out with my cats.

Til later….

 

 

 

 

I spent a couple days this past week stitching some of Aukje’s silk fabric with other cloth bits to add to the gathering book. I knew they were coming together to stitch and weave baskets in a favorite place in Tasmania. I loved going there and teaching workshops. My book, covered in a paper I made in one of Claudia Lee’s papermaking workshops, only has so many pages and I am getting near the end.

The book opens to this page showing a drawing of one of Anna Lizzotte’s baskets I bought at a gathering years ago from her. The cutout window reveals a twined base for a small basket.

Here are some pages from a year ago.

The cottage where they meet and a detail of one of Mahdi Chandler’s pottery contact printed baskets visible in a cut out window. A small cottage is stitched onto handmade paper with drawn palm inflorescence (a favored basket material of the makers).

And this one closely related to the coiled baskets made from old blankets that are repurposed. I especially love this large two page drawing. Getting the look of a soft wool gently coiled around was fun to do.

I work on the pages for this book because it makes me feel like I am there with them. Often a glass of red wine from a vineyard down under will be sitting nearby.

This past week I went to the monthly wine tasting event here in town. I was delighted to see the wines the sommelier chose were from New Zealand and Australia. I bought two bottles of MT Yengo Riverina Sparkling Beelbangera Australia. It tastes much like champagne and the vineyard is owned and operated by Aborigines with all proceeds going to their schools there. Both bottles are in my fridge right now, one for me and the second for a thoughtful neighbor who loves champagne. I bought one bottle of William Downie Cathedral Pinot Noir from Gippsland, Victoria. And then two bottles of Sunspell Cabernet Sauvignon from the Barossa Valley. The sommelier reminded us that all the wines were superior to the mass produced ones shipped to the states…Yellow Tail and Alice White. Most of us laughed out loud because we keep Yellow Tail on hand for whenever someone stops by.

She reminded me of the bottle shop owner in Australia who told me years ago that we Americans have no taste and will buy anything with an Aussie critter on the label. He called those “Critter Wines” and waved me off to the section they could be found in. I happily bought them to take back to my hotel room, but never missed an opportunity to accept a ride to one of the many wineries in Australia’s countryside.

We no longer get Alice White here. Lee and I loved it probably more for the soap opera that continued on the back label. The hero was Nick (I think that was his name). He was always barely surviving something dangerous while meeting up with Alice who suffered from amnesia. You had to buy the next bottle to see if he recovered from whatever or if Alice got her memory back. The last we read of the two of them was that Nick suffered a croc attack and Alice had a flash of memory that she might have been a nurse in her former life. A not so good wine with a not so good continuing saga, but certainly good marketing…and yes there was a kangaroo on the label.

I have not done another anti-trump book with his sycophantic cabinet because I am just so sick of the bunch of them. Have you ever seen such incompetence! Please, please let us borrow Canada’s prime minister until we rid ourselves of this craziness.

In the meantime I am thinking how my book will start with a mailman hauling his bag down the sidewalk. I know how he looks and have named him, Paul. He is only there to start the the first of the letters but I have to know him before I trust him to open the book of correspondences. I was also wondering if mailmen/women feel more of an urge to write letters than those of us not seeing handwritten names and addresses. Do they understand how much more important written letters are than emails and texts. Emails and texts seem so impersonal, hurried, unimportant…and yet, that is what communication has become.

Enough! The wine is calling!

Til later…..

 

 

Frustrations with how low our country has fallen with Trump at the helm has caused me to continue on with artist books started back in his first term. Here are some from those years of thinking it was a temporary condition of pure idiocy.

So now another finished. Spin the dial and see where he ends up….straight jacket or prison. This was very satisfying.

Next are ten of his favored sycophants going from red ties to orange prison garb and sliding behind bars. Seven men and three women is just the tip of the iceberg. But this week seems some of his clinging originals are jumping ship. Not sure any of us with a brain are wanting their company.

Reminds me of the poem from last year that I wrote…actually two come to mind.

Here and There

 I will stay over here

 on the side of knowing

  that those over there

  have made the wrong choice.

and this one…

Retribution        

I tried to search for some relief

to ease my growing, bruising grief,

brought on by how you choose to see

a world that once was shared with me.

When we tally up the total cost

of all we hoped for … now lost,

don’t come to me when you understand

and think I will extend a hand.

This past week the fabric dyed at the basket conference in Tasmania arrived. Thank you so much Aukje. It is lovely and I will definitely add some to my Gathering Book.

It is so exciting to get an envelope with an Australian stamp in my mailbox. This bit of silk was resist dyed using gum nuts tied tightly before going into the bath.

It is almost three o’clock and I think a wine is warranted. Spending the day taking trump to justice and snipping around the heads of his pathetic cabinet members is exhausting. Each one of them appears to be hopelessly stupid or horifyingly cruel. One thing for sure, each is decidedly richer for licking his boots.

I will post the book when I finish it next week.

Wine is calling…maybe something stronger!

Oh yes. A small follow up on my search for new audio books from Libby. The Peter Robinson English mysteries are read mostly by James Langton. I had to look this narrator up to see his background. Evidently he is quite the acclaimed reader. But that seems only to be true when he takes on the voices of characters in conversations. All, and I do mean all, the lines in between are read to the tune of…”you   are    getting    sleepy”.  So imagine…” he   bent   down   and   slowly   slit   her   throat.” The good thing is Robinson wrote several whodunits. The bad thing is Langton is going to read to me as I knock out 8,000 steps per day.

And one more bit of good news. Jane Harper, favorite Australian thriller writer, has a new book, but not in audio just yet. More suggestions will be most welcome as different Libby sources have different books available.

Okay, the bar is waiting with offerings…must pick just one! Then a frozen pizza for dinner.

Til later…