Remembering Lake Mungo

Posted on by Sandy Webster

This is a double page from my sketch book made from an altered old library book on traveling Australia. It now resides in the Queensland State Library Artists Book Collection. Every once in a while I hear from someone who asked to peruse it. It is nice to remember that visit to Lake Mungo and how so many of us were there to make some sort of recording of our reactions to such an extraordinary place.

So today while looking through the images of artwork, I selected a few of the pages to show here.

I used the soils of Australia that had been turned into watercolors to mark pages as well as my trusty travel watercolor set.

I tied the last few pages closed and labeled them “private”. I remember that in those pages I wrote about the “Imposed Sacredness” that people assign to places that really are just places that developed through time and circumstances of Nature.  I do not know why there is such a need for people to name something in order for it to exist and have meaning. Silly really.

I put this next image in from the book just because of the wrapped wire drawing on the left.

It became the “handle” for opening a portfolio that I titled “Imposed Sacredness” that was exhibited in 2009 with other artists’ works on Lake Mungo.

I made six collographs with graphite drawings in an attempt to capture the essence of that place. Here they are in the order they appeared in the case.

The piece sold during the exhibition and then sold from that buyer to another person who was a student, friend and inspiration. I hope she passes it on to someone else.

I impressed a sheet of masonite, still wet from layers of gesso, with bits of cloth, sticks, whatever would make a permanent mark. Then the large piece was cut with a band saw into several strips with wavy sides.

They went through the etching press with dampened Rives BFK paper and heavy felts.

Once the impressions were deep into the paper and dried thoroughly, I did my graphite drawings and used colored pencils to shade in the embossed landlines. I even sanded the graphite to bury it deep into the papers fibers.

I liked how the embossed sheets gave a sense of buried land and the life that lives above it. Apostle birds are something I could watch all day, the way they busy themselves minding one another’s business. Not one can get away from the others for more than a minute without the others following and badgering him to stay in the group.

I still have those collograph strips. Maybe I should use them again and capture the depths of where I live. And then what?

That is the question that keeps coming up each time I think I should do something over there across the hall in the studio. A studio all cleaned up from the holidays for the art group meeting last Sunday that is now postponed for two weeks.

Here is an idea. Maybe I should get a very long but narrow strip of paper and every day draw something from here. Just a flow of images. Then maybe roll it up tight and put it in a bottle, a wine bottle. And then do it again, and again…..

I will start by cutting a long strip of thin kozo and then see where that leads.

I can do this. It will be easy. Almost as easy as getting an empty wine bottle.

By next week I should have something to show you.

Now I am off to check on Lee and see what he would like to do next.

 

Small Tools in the Studio

Posted on by Sandy Webster

I was sorting out this tools case I made a couple of months ago. Some new things needed to be added. Then I remembered how this store bought awl always rolls off my work table. A quick trip to the belt sander in the studio fixed it right up.

And after sanding and waxing the awl I decided to polish up this needle case. I found it in a bunch of boxes related to loom weaving. The top unscrews….a very handy little thing.

And bamboo awl and bone folder made by Matthew English, a wonderful paper maker from Tennessee.

Here are some of my other needle cases with a hammer and brass and wood tool for making starter holes. I keep a couple of darning needles inside the handle just in case I don’t have enough awls. The one with the branch handle I made myself. It is good for pushing with the palm of my hand. Several of these were confiscated in Australia customs when I sent them over to sell at a vendors table. They saw more bark on them than I did.

Little cedar toothpick holders from the town I was a little girl in. I like that this was a popular souvenir of that north woods town stuck in the middle of state and federal land.  And I have no idea what the flat brass needle was for but I used it for weaving shifu threads for a long time before I found these beauties.

I bought them from a Tasmanian bone needle maker and could only part with one of them. They are very kind to the rough paper shifu threads that I make and weave. The big black bone folder is just in the collection because it was different and looked like it could take a good pressing. The small indispensable stainless rulers came from the online store, MicroMark. The six inch one is filled with holes at all the measurements so as to fit your mechanical pencil through and get an accurate mark.

More bone folders. The top one is the first one I ever bought. It fits the hand just right. The next two were made by Jim Croft. Jane Nicholas from Australia gave me her fabric folder which works wonderfully on papers. That little finger indent gives extra pressure right where it is needed. And finally my latest bone folder made by Kent Stewart of a material called delrin. It is very thin at the wide end so tucks things in quite nicely. It is considered better than the teflon ones and I was happy to find one in the craft shop after Kent let me use his in my final class at the folk school

And finally my little needle case made from contact printed wool bought in Tasmania with pages made from chemically rusted cloth. The little scissors I bought from a vendor while teaching in Australia. They are just the right size for snipping threads and pop into their little case that just covers the blades.

I have lots more tools….the Japanese hole punch for example. But the ones here are the ones I love holding and every once in a while will take the time to clean them up, give a bit of wax where needed and put them back where I can find them again.

We went to a friend’s house in Weaverville, NC for Thanksgiving dinner. Now our son is on the road home, back to Michigan. Lee is working on something in his shop that our son set up for him to do. And I am thinking it is time for lunch.

Til later.

Finishing Up The Stitched Australia Book

Posted on by Sandy Webster

Here is the finished book with its wrap tie. I got to use the last two small pieces of wood patterned by Toni Rogers in Queensland.  All threads used in the book came from Australia.

And besides using Australian tea to color the pages and shellac that I bought in Australia, I used my little geometry set bought in Brisbane many years ago to make circles, etc. Even my needles came from Richmond, Tasmania.

The images were harvested from this book.

There is something magic and charming and educational about all the pictures used in this book to tell a bit about the settling of Australia.

I used a coptic binding for the folios and spacers in the book.

And after I got all the folios shellacked, tea dyed and stitched I put them into some sort of order of settling the land.

I realized that I wanted it a bit thicker and had this picture of four surveyors/telegraph workers sitting there. The reason it sat there was because it is my romantic idea of what a true Australian male looks like. In fact several years ago while teaching in the Northern Territory the assistant to the Craft Alliance there introduced me to her husband. She knew I would like him because he had this look of pure Australian bloke. When she finished work that week he was going to take her on trip around the perimeter of the continent on his motorcycle. He had that truly capable look about him and had me grinning in his company. Any one of the men below could have been related.

Anyway aside from all that, these men in the picture and two more random images became the in between two-folio signatures to make the book larger and eliminate seeing the empty space between those folios.

 

I liked how they inserted themselves into the other images and the country. It might matter that I listened to Lyle Lovett music while I put these boys into the book.

There are other images, lots of other ones of people settling into the country, displacing the aboriginal culture.  And kangaroos.

And the convicts….all accused of one of the nineteen crimes that got them deported to the other side of the world.

I will stop here and maybe figure that I have enough samples and books that involve the stitch. There are only four in the class so far and I have no idea until I start teaching where each of their interests lie.

It will be my last class taught for John C Campbell Folk School here in Brasstown, NC. Thirty years and six months is quite enough. I look forward to really enjoying this last one and hope the students do as well.

Til next week when I can show pretty outside pictures again.

Changing Out Sketchbook Signatures

Posted on by Sandy Webster

This is a quick cover to hold three signatures from my travel sketchbook below and a pocket to hold collectibles from my trip in March to Australia.

I simply snip out the used signatures and then restitch them into the spine of a new cover.

Then replace them.

Now I can use this book for my next trip down under. Which by the way is now all sorted with a first stop in Hobart to be with friends a few days before coming to Melbourne to stay a day or so at my favorite hotel and then off to Grampians Textures with exciting students. One of them is taking me up to Baldessin Press for several days before I head off to Geelong area to teach before returning to Melbourne and flying home. If it goes as my travel agent has planned, I will be flying Virgin Airlines Australia. Never used them before but always up for new adventures.

Anyway, back to the sketchbook. I designed this travel box/book to hold just the right amount of paints, hand made and purchased watercolors, pencil, sharpener, eraser, brush etc. The leather cover part has a pocket attached inside to hold a small palette and is a good place to tuck things.

Here is some of the insides of the transferred signatures.

First stop and most favorite stop is Jude’s in Hobart for a cuppa.

Space between signatures.

How three hole signature is sewn….going in through center hole in signature and rigid spine, in one of the other two holes, across the center hole and out the third hole to come back in on the other side of the inside long stitch to do a square knot over that long stitch. Easy and secures it just fine.

Here is the spine.

And there was enough space left at the back of the book to glue in a sandwich bag to hold all the bits and pieces collected on that trip.

I always glue these “pockets” with the opening toward the signatures so as not to lose things but still have access.

So now to just stitch those new signatures into the old sketch portfolio and I am all ready to go.

The past few days I did get twenty sets of cards packaged up. Tonight is another small dinner party for just four of us. The shrimp pasta dish the other day was quite successful and tonight it is a new recipe for balsamic chicken over rice.

And here is the dam this morning….beautiful as they lower the level for winter. I used to take my students out here to gather pigments for making local watercolors. Pretty isn’t it?

Til later when I find something else that looks interesting.