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In the early 90s I had collected quite a few pieces from Africa. Mostly they were textiles and baskets that I would buy from my favorite importers who I would see at conferences. It was also at the time that apartheid was coming to a close in South Africa and the Turnley brothers had published a book of their amazing photographs of the transition of living conditions for those steeped in those political conditions. I bought the book simply because once picked up, it was impossible to put down. I used the faces of two couples from the book. It gave me an opportunity to really study the faces, the expressions that reflected the harshness of their situations. And especially their closeness in hard times. These two works were never exhibited as I remember, but I could never quite part with them either. I still love looking into their faces and the bits and pieces from my studio that I chose to represent their individual surroundings. I have always felt the use of the images and African culture was an appropriation of something not my own. Although I can be amazed that I actually got the likenesses so well with painting on tapa cloth, they still were not photos that I took and the photo imagery is what makes them work.

Later during the war of the former Yugoslavia I would cross this line again, and for four years of that war collect the newspaper images that I simply could not throw away. And after a year of collecting them and the letters I wrote to a journalist and the president, I covered coats made from old blankets with them. Four years of coats that showed in images how the war changed not only its victims but how it was reported. I still have those coats and the child’s casket that holds all those photos and letters and the remains of flowers that I picked for those women who endured so much. I have no idea how to get rid of them all, but I will, some day.

But back to the influences of the tribal. I made this small tapestry of a young woman in a doorway wearing what she sees in her landscape. At the time I was weaving baskets on the loom using a warp of threads and filling in every shed change with fibers only used to make baskets. This small tapestry had a lovely time out this past year on exhibit called “The Art of the Cloth.” The image below it is a chair I made in 1994 with Don Brundrick. It is mountain laurel and all the coverings are African mud cloth.

 

And one more image of gourd baskets made with knotting techniques and a collection of beads from Africa. One long gourd was cut in two pieces. the knotted cap with beads and bronze pieces closes the top and is filled with clay beads from there. The long neck of the gourd has brass coins and beads that give a muffled jingle sound when it is tipped back and forth. The cut end of it is also knotted closed. These along with the fertile female figure with a clay head and coiled head dress for a closure still sit together on a chest in the foyer with African baskets and the two couples portraits close by.

 

I don’t do work like this anymore. But I still love the feel, the smell, the look and the sound of these pieces. They share space with other gourd pieces, a Masai yogurt pouch with a hide cover and unbelievably strong odor inside and an incised gourd from the Smithsonian Museum. So much of this work has the mark and identity of the hands that made them.

I used to weld old rusty things together with a wire welder – there is a name for it, but I can’t remember what it is, maybe a MIG welder, maybe not. One of several things I welded was two fencers for our children who are still active in the world of fencing. Our daughter runs a fencing club and our son directs fencing bouts all over the country. I am not sure that these have even held together this many years later. But finding pieces, cleaning the rust off enough to get them to stick to another and build fencers was really fun. So here they are.

 

 

 

Here is a detail of the second one’s front.

 

I even put some of the blacksmith’s discards of vines to lean this fencer up against. Most of the parts came from the local farmers who let me scrounge through their barns for interesting parts. Here is my first ever one of a bear that likely resides in pieces in a garden. They were loads of fun to do until the offers of old satellite dishes and the like starting coming in. I could see where it was going and finished up the last of the pieces in the forms of people and dogs and now my welder has been given away. Smart move, I think.

 

I am starting a new white line print today based on a photograph I took of a beautiful Eucalyptus tree that I saw near the Grampians  and Bacchus Marsh this past March. It really is stunning and I wanted to see if I could capture the essence of it in white line. First I cropped the photograph to about where I wanted what would appear on the carved image. Then I drew just the parts that I thought were enough and traced that drawing. I had already determined the size board I would use and made sure my drawing was a size to fit in the right place on the board.

 

Next I transferred the image to the board using a red colored pencil over the pencil marks that are face down on the board.

 

I made corrections to the drawing on the board as well as the tracing paper and original drawing. It is very necessary to keep in mind the size line that the carving tool is going to make, which is always bigger than the pencil line!

 

Once the initial carving is finished, I fill the grooves with white powder to get an idea of how it might look. Again I made changes where necessary but am very careful….you can’t add the wood back in!

Because this is an Australian image and I have over two hundred water colors I have made from the soils from there, I am going to use them to color this image in. There are only three colors I plan on using, for the leaves a Launceston Hwy Tasmania Light Grey, for the stems an Emily Gap Northern Territory Red and Mildura New South Wales Mud Brown for the gum nuts. For now I plan on leaving the background white with just the embossed edge keeping the shape of the overall image grounded.

Here is the first pulled print. Now I am wondering if I need to use a background color or not. And if I want to enlarge the carved lines….most definitely on the outside edge of the print. But since this took most of the day to get this far, I need to take a break and return to the studio to do some tai chi and yoga stretches…..then a stint on the treadmill and migun bed with another novel being read to me. And finish the day with a nice Australian red wine.

I think I used this image before but not sure exactly when. My website has been down for the past month and some of my blogs were misplaced. It has been a busy month, cleaning the studio, finishing up some work, preparing for another workshop, jurying an exhibition, organizing what needs to come next. It simply continues. The days go by, then the weeks and months with new moons flow one into the other and I assess how the time was spent.

I used to wonder if I was doing enough and if I was doing it right. How silly that was, especially when a friend and I asked those questions on an online ouija board. It seemed to take forever to spell out the word, “maybe”. How nuts was that! But I persisted with the question and continued to only ask women artist who were older than myself if they ever wondered about doing enough and doing it right. I stopped asking the questions when a printmaker who I admired told me without a second thought that it didn’t really matter. And she was right. It doesn’t. So I stopped thinking about it until just now. Now I am simply too busy with the doing and don’t really worry about whether it is right or enough.