A Good Week

Posted on by Sandy Webster

Lee picked these for me this morning….Mountain Laurel that surround the house. They are fading a bit now. The deer have eaten the tops off of the sunflowers. Irresistible green leaves sprouting up. But there are plenty left in the beds. It is just the cost of feeding deer in the yard. Everything we have out there is considered part of their food source.

And here is the Australian Scroll at the framers. If I was two inches taller I could have gotten both ends in the picture. The matte will be sort of like this counter top….Mississippi mud color. Then it will have a dark frame with hints of rust on the edges. In three weeks I should have it in place over the small couch where I sit and hand sew while watching TV with Lee.

I might just do more of these with the scraps of fabrics and threads I have left. Maybe even incorporate prints from my two small presses.

But first I need to get the art works wrapped and shellacked. Now I am onto the Expedition to Elsewhere: the Evidence.

I am filling up the long boat with bugs and other specimens. Behind are some of the cabinets of curiosities, etc. Here is one of my favorites all bundled up.

But some big bugs will be wrapped today.

Some of the stands these specimens are on will just be tossed in the hole with them….too hard to wrap with the thin wires being the only attachments.

I do not think I will wrap the large dioramas with stripped cloth as I have several large drop cloths from India that I colored with earth pigments to use as backdrops to the exhibition.  Might as well use them up as well. Empty cartons are everywhere to be broken down to take to the dump for recycling.

Once all of the pieces are wrapped from this exhibit and a few more personal bits I found, then I can call for the hole digger. Not sure I want this immense and growing pile outside my studio when the window washers come later this month. Too hard to explain.

I am finding it easier to breathe in my studio as I take out a bag a week to the trash.

Til later.

Clearing Out Books and Finishing Australia Panel

Posted on by Sandy Webster

Last week this many books went to a Friends of the Library in Georgia. Today these four boxes went to Friends of the Library in Hayesville, NC.

And these three boxes will be dropped off to the Basketry and Weaving Studios at the Folk School. Two more cartons are waiting in the guest room for a friend to peruse and then pass on. The amount of dust on these books was testament to how much I really do not need them. Many more books that all related to book making, basket making and other crafts went to a school in Tennessee a year or so ago. Should have packed up more back then. But now I am down to just what our kids may want and then another call goes to those Friends of Libraries.

And this week I am in search of a framer for the finished Australian panel. It is 48 inches long and 6 inches high.

The beginning is going to Australia and landing in the bush.

Then it is all the bouncing of ideas in workshops and being with the basket makers in Tasmania.

And out to the Northern Territory and Uluru and the Kata Tjuta.

Next is the flight out to where Burke and Wills perished.

And finally flying home.

As you can see I always want to make the plane turn around but end up back home regardless.

Little emu tracks follow me across the panel. Maybe I can take a picture of the whole thing in its frame. I think I will hang it right over the small couch that I sit on while stitching and watching television with Lee.

The following is something I wrote after flying to Hawaii just to visit Australians many years ago. And it is still so true today as I remember that  it was just a couple of months ago I started this stitched piece in the company of dear Australian friends using cloth and thread I bought with another.

What is it about the Australians

What is it about the Australians that seems to

bring out the best in those of us who are not?

In their company I am not a stranger

but pulled into their raucous interior.

Inhibitions and hesitations fall away.

They seem to hone in on the interior of a person

and do not see or hear how we are seeing and hearing.

To them we are all an equally appreciated

part of their whole.

We feel we belong

and belonging to an Aussie group

of fun-loving friends is definitely a good feeling.

Even when parted you will smile at the memory

of being together.

And you will hear them laugh

and feel their arms around you.

 

I will bring them out later in secret

when my own kind neglect to see inside me

and think I am someone else.

 

S. Webster

 

I am smiling now.

Til later.

Clearing Out

Posted on by Sandy Webster

About two weeks ago I took this picture of the pollen on the lake during our morning walk. The next day it was gone.

My mind has been like that….a bit clogged.

Bundling and tying and shellacking whole bodies of art work and giving them a place to wait out of sight for the ending has helped.

Sorting through books has helped. Many boxes went out this morning. More are boxed in the studio and ready for pick up.

With the books I am coming face to face with the earlier thinking that, “I will need that one day”. And really how untrue that is. Others who could have used what I kept were ignored because I was so sure that these things would be just what I needed….some day.

And what I needed all along was the space that they cluttered up with false promises. I think after all of them are removed from the studio, the best thing to do would be to remove the shelves as well.

I need clear blank spaces.

I need to find a way to get back to my yoga and tai chi practice in that cleared space.

The studio had become a place of reminders of all the things I can either no longer do or am no longer interested in doing.

Today when a friend from the art group came by to collect the books, we parted thinking that we will get together in the studio and just make prints together when I am ready. I look forward to that, sharing what little I will have left in a large open space…..just playing, no thinking, no worrying about what will become of the results, no thinking beyond making marks and printing….and learning.

When I take my blood pressure at the gym three times a week, I mentally go to a place I used to do tai chi. It was very early morning in Geelong, Victoria Australia. And I would sneak off to just inside the tree line of a Eucalyptus forest, carefully take my bow and begin to move my feet over the shed bark of the trees and listen to the whispering of that. It was so peaceful and so invigorating…all that slow breathing with the whisper of Eucalyptus.

My blood pressure is well within the  “good” range under those glaring florescent lights with the distant sound of feet pounding on treadmills and groans of physical exertion. Because I am not even there. I am in that forest.

My studio is going to be that forest for me when I get everything that is not necessary to that feeling taken away.

Much more to go, but getting there.

Til later.

War Bundles

Posted on by Sandy Webster

Two works pertaining to war are all there is left. Both are by artists touched by the situation in the Balkans. The artist proof above is titled Bosnia….now broken into three pieces so as not to be heard the way it was. And the one below about what I remembered as the profanity of war. One of the worst Serbian leader’s name was on it, so I bought it.

One hangs in the bedroom, the other in the office.

And now all of the war pieces are bundled and shellacked.

The pile is getting quite large. The detail below is how I feel at times….just trying to keep everything together and covering it up.

There are days when I just do not want to talk and that is probably a good thing as there really is no one I want to talk to right now. Sometimes talking will lead to things said that later are regretted…..so best to stay silent.

And honestly I don’t want to listen either. Hearing of someone else’s fun and free-ness is usually a good distraction but other times a reminder of another life…..one I had just a few years ago. So I am concentrating of clearing out artwork, getting rid of loads of books that may just end up in the trash as so few people want books anymore.

We do not live in a good area for a garage sale and I am completely out of touch with anyone looking for books. I might just take them to a recycle place. Many of them I was going to pass on to the Art Group. Too late for that. I should have been paying better attention to the drifting off of the members of the group. I missed how much they were ready to lean away from the one thing that made me look forward to having them here….talking about art based on feelings strongly held.

My plan is to strip my studio of everything not related to printmaking. All those bits and pieces stuffed on shelves and in drawers needs to just go. All walls empty except for the tai chi figures that have been there to remind me to breathe. I need to do more of that and stop panting with worry about what I am supposed to do next.

We had a good walk at the dam this morning in the fog. Here is Lee wandering off into that fog. He knows where he is, where I am….he just can’t find words. No wonder I do not want to talk so much right now. I am doing it for both of us and listening to figure out what it is he wants to say.

That is enough for now…..but I love this picture.

Til later.