The Latest Trip to Australia

Posted on by Sandy Webster

Come and Gone in Twenty-Nine Hours

I continue to come back

eight times in thirteen years.

I am more tired

and this tiredness is beginning

to feel familiar.

It is harder to be here alone

and I sense this may be the last time.

 

I have opened myself to this country

in a deep private and personal way.

But this time I feel the loneliness

of solitude

quietly seeping in.

I am more a foreigner

than I had hoped for.

                                                                                                                    

Australia has not lost its magic.

I am older

and the vision for that magic

is somewhat diminished

due to a combination of age

and awareness of time

that have more or less

besieged me on this trip.

 

And I am here

on this precious soil

just twenty-eight hours.

I think I am feeling the loss

of this country before I have left it.

 

Australia feels like an old dear friend

that I am seeing slowly turn away.

Or am I shifting my gaze

toward the comforts and familiarity of home.

 

Is it becoming time

to give up the adventure

and content myself with memories

of what we used to be to each other?

 

I am feeling the loss

with each Eucalypt I see

as if for the last time.

I miss it already.       

S. Webster

 

I wrote that in the year 2011. I was alone staying in an unfamiliar Bed & Breakfast near Fitzroy Gardens. There were blisters on my feet from walking to Gertrude Street. I was having a cold beer in the gardens and thinking I was old. Eight years later and six more trips down under I am even more aware of my age…within a few months of seventy-five.

I am not saying good-bye to this country. This is not the last time to be stopped in my tracks by the sheer beauty of a Eucalyptus tree. I will be back, if not next year then the year after.

It is not just the beckoning call of the landscape, the outrageous birds who can’t be quiet and inconspicuous, nor the endless distances that lure you into their horizons.  It is more likely the generosity of the Australian people and the way they make you feel like you could belong here.

About that landscape, outrageous birds, and endless landscape.

These are the some, very few, of those who make the trip worthwhile. They are students who were with me again this year in a master class titled, Seeking the Visual. Each of them received the gift of a glass hour glass with brass compass on each end. My words to them, “Pick a direction and be aware that you might be running out of time.”

Their work was outstanding as usual…..

This was each of them finding the visual of something that mattered to them. So wonderful to be part of. So thank you very much to Judith, Jane, Jenny, Andie, Mem, Anne, Kaye, Margaret, Lorraine, Patsy,  Madeleine and Alex.

I mostly worked on my sketchbook with the abundance of flora laying around.

 

I started a piece of work using scraps of old Japanese fabrics and sashiko threads on paper. I was challenged to make curves with my stitching and to use a proper needle. The gift of a beautiful silk hand sewn Eucalypt leaf with the perfect needles attached and a finger pin cushion was a perfect way to start.

Thank you Jan.

Later, after traveling from the Grampians to Baldessin Press to work on lino and contact prints, this became my favorite image of the entire trip to Australia.

I can finish the panel of stitching while sitting with Lee…then I think I will have it framed…all four plus feet of it.

Here are additional images of my trip starting with Tasmania.

 

Early flight to Melbourne.

Then off to the Grampians and Halls Gap.

And the dispersing of the Waterhouse Exhibit leaves from Fatal Shore.

And then off to leave some at Baldessin Press.

Quality time with other internationals.

Influenced by the work and book of Dianne Fogwell. We went back to the city for the opening of her show.

From the magic of Baldessin to Ocean Grove and a two day workshop on white line print making.

A final trip back to Melbourne before heading home to see a Bea Maddock piece at NGV and have a final flat white on Degraves St.

Thank you all for the inspiration, the gifts and most of all your hospitality.

Til later.

 

Getting Ready

Posted on by Sandy Webster

This is a simple carry on bag that will be checked so that I don’t even have to think of lifting it up. All I have to do is get it zipped and wheel it into the airport…..and then wheel it out and into the back of a car in Hobart. And I will be in Hobart one week from today. A friend there will relieve me of some of the contents and get them to where we meet up later. This time I have packed more presents, more small books for the marketing stall at Halls Gap, more things that older women need to look and feel better, and less clothes to make room for it all.

I think of this little fellow as a companion who is waiting for me to come join him. Really cute photo.

The sun has come out for a bit today. The crow has moved to smearing up another window so more rags need to be draped in front. The studio needs a bit of a pick up before I leave. Lots of post-a-notes need to be added around the house for the temporary care givers. I need to be mindful of all the small things I do automatically and remember that no one else is aware of how and when they need to be done.

I have bought extra cat litter, extra laundry detergent, extra cat food, extra corn for the deer, extra bird seed, extra favorite foods of Lees, and extra wine.

Now I need to go over all the phone numbers the care givers will need to have access to, legal papers, cash for small expenses, envelopes of cash for the cleaning lady, and whatever else I can think of before Thursday.

And another thing I just thought of…..last night I photographed each step of putting a DVD into the player and how to turn it on. Now just to put them all in order with words on a print out near the TV.  Lee and I might just be the last people around who do not stream and actually get DVDs in the mail!

I will miss the cats.

I have been stitching up a storm while sitting with Lee. So far I have six completed folios with patched bits on each of the four sides.

I am even taking a worn thin shirt that a friend in Australia gave to me and hope to find patches from friends to sew onto it while down under. Another way to bring them home with me.

That is it for now I think. I need to go collect my thoughts and get out those bright colored pads of post-a-notes.

Til later.

Still Stitching

Posted on by Sandy Webster

I am compulsively stitching away on those small folios of cloth. Each half of the folio is viewed as a page. So I compose some scraps of cloth on one side and then stitch them all into place. Then add more stitching before moving over to the other side. Next I do the same on the slightly larger cloth so I can stitch them back to back.

This photo was taken just before I stitched it to the other one below.

And then after I stitched on a new folio I went back to the patchwork on the left above and stitched some more. It is so thick with layers of cloth that hardly any stitches went through to the other side.

Here is the starting point of the next one.

There is a group that calls itself “Slow Stitching”. I do not know how they do this slowly. Granted my work might (maybe) look better if I was slower but I just keep going to get a section finished as soon as possible and have no idea why. And sometimes the quickness results in having to put another piece of cloth over the really ugly bits and stitching that into place.

Yesterday to slow myself down I undid lengths of the embroidery threads in the pouch and then split them into thinner strand sections…..some with two and some with three. Then I wrapped these into butterflies and placed them dark to light in the pouch. And all that does is let me go faster because I just have to grab one, shake it out, thread it through the needle and keep going.

What I do like is how these small bits feel in the hand. If I made a blanket out of all these scraps and covered myself up, I may not get out of bed.

I haven’t started writing in the journal. I can’t do that while watching crime shows with Lee in the den….but I can sew these folios. And maybe that is why they go so fast…because of the pace of the same stories told with different bad guys running from the same cops.

To write I need dreary days and quiet. Dreary is no problem as we are in a continual state of cloudiness and rain. But quiet? I can only get that in the studio. The studio with holes in the ceiling, books that are crying out to be given away, empty surfaces with nothing exciting started, a suitcase too small to hold all the bits I want to pack for Australia, a space that calls me to return to the tai chi and yoga poses I gave up a year ago because they take concentration and clear headedness.

My computer does not even like that word “headedness”. So since I am not getting much cooperation down here in the studio OR office, I am going back upstairs to watch more bad guys and stitch.

And maybe, just maybe, if I look over and Lee is napping, I will take out the journal and jot something down after I mute the bad guys.

Til later.

 

 

My Meditation Journaling Satchel

Posted on by Sandy Webster

Well instead of thinking I had to make a special container, I found these. They are a set of small travel bags that I bought at a Kathmandu store in Salamanca in Hobart Tasmania. They fitted inside one another and were easy to purchase and pack in my suitcase. The only other thing I bought at that store was a shirt. The clothes at a Kathmandu store are for hikers and trekkers. The sizes range from a weak Asian woman size to one who might have seen the inside of gym. The useless shirt is still in the bottom of a drawer.

Anyway.

These travel bags were used for many years to hold the bits I needed to process soils into pigments for watercolors. They were filled with the evidence of that. But when I saw them I wondered if when cleaned up and filled with the varying parts needed for sewing small meditations, they would become one single carry bag that could go anywhere with me around the house.

So what you see above is the smallest one on the left with the needle pin case, pen, pencil, scissors and threads. It sits on top of the open lid to the middle bag with different fabrics rolled up. Some are scraps of old clothes, some of silks, some botanically dyed, some rough scrim that has been rusted and plain linens. Each bundle is rolled tightly and nestles in the pouch. That bag is sitting on top of the open lid of the largest one that holds a journal to write in and pieces of cloth folded in half.

The linen covered journal I bought in Japan in 1998 and over the years only made marks on the pages so I wasn’t facing a blank journal when I wanted to use it. The beige cloth is some woven silk I bought about twenty-five years ago because I loved it. Other cloth is from not so successful dyeing techniques. (The repairman might have right when he suggested I need to look up the meaning of “hoarding”.)

So rather than make up another object to do the job of something I already have, I am using this little bundle. Here it is closed.

It is less than 9″ by 6″ and only 2.5″ when zipped closed. How handy is that!

So I sat and stitched while sitting with Lee in the den. All I had to do was cut some bits of cloth, thread a needle, make that pesky knot on one end and hold all the pieces together where I pinned them.

After two days I have this folio completed.

They are meant to be folded in half like a book folio and the slightly larger beige silk will also be stitched on to then become the back side of the folio. Then if I make a book some day with all the pieces I won’t have to look at the backs.

So these are the scraps saved for someday. These are the threads that I collected in every town in Australia that had a thread store for the sole purpose of keeping a record of all the colors I saw on the way there. These are the tiny scraps of silks dug out of bins at Beautiful Silks in Warnabool, VIC. These are the markings of my day in cloth and threads. And I will use the book to write a bit of a feeling, observation. I may not do this every day but it is so nice to know I have this small place to go and still be here.

The only thing I added just this morning was a small container of beads that my threaded needle will pass through. Sometimes you just need a bead or two.

As soon as the cleaning lady finishes cleaning around Lee in the den, I will head up there and pick up the little satchel, put on my glasses to thread the needle and maybe start the page that will back this one. Or maybe I will sit in the studio and look at all the things that I should be doing in there….all the books that need sorted….all the things I want to give away….packing my suitcase for Australia….

I did promise Robyn Gordon that I would send her a picture of my satchel, so I will put that on her page before I do anything else.

Til later.