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I was thinking about all the workshops and artwork I see on the internet. How it is so much about instant finished work (almost framed and priced as the last bit of tissue or whatever is pasted on). The main thing I notice is how there is no way to tell one person’s work from another. There is no mark of the hand of the maker.

As I was giving a couple a tour of the house last night, they stopped at every artwork and asked about its story. It was nice to have that kind of interest. They noticed that everything had the mark of a particular hand in the finished work. It is what I collect and what I have always strived for in my own pieces. Why would I want to spend time on emulating some other artist’s work when my own mind and hand itch to create my own.

It made me think about what goes into my pieces…the need to bring my own ideas into a visual form that only I can see. Sometimes to get started it only takes getting out the tools we love to work with.

Or combining the spare parts of collected works with other materials.

And putting images together consecutively to form a narrative.

Or the gathering and processing of a medium necessary to finish an artwork.

Like drawing in travel sketchbooks using pigments from the soils of places that matter and mark the page with memory. And then coloring in a woodblock of a favorite tree that you had the good fortune to visit over and over again before knowing you would not see it again….but had this reminder.

And the simply being captivated by something picked up from the ground, brought home to draw over and over until you get it just right.

When you really want to create an imaginary world of Nature, you take more spare parts to make something new.

Then take the time to document with watercolor on gessoed boards as if they were ever so important to some scientific study.

And always there is stitching. Creating an image with thread and layered cloth.

This fox went on to be finished and framed with six other companions of “Night Critters”. They hang behind me as I write this blog. And this particular one reminds me of an offer I had to purchase it but only at half the asking price at the time. Very few of my works were offered for sale, and knowing that this offer was coming from a fellow maker, I decided not only to turn down the offer but to no longer tell anyone something was for sale. Better to simply give the work away to someone who appreciates your efforts or keep it on your wall.

And finally here is a gift from an 86 year old student I taught at Arrowmont many years ago. She worked on it privately away from class time and gave it to me at the end of the week. It hangs in my bathroom so I see it every morning as a reminder to just keep working. Keep putting things together…and then give it away.

I think it is time for a drink. Perhaps a Turmeric Old Fashion.

Til later….

Lovely morning over my subdivision. On my way to coffee with the corner crowd.  One of them simply cannot resist being one of those annoying evangelicals wanting everyone to believe all the things he reads in “his” bible. I asked, no told, him to just put a sock in it! Is there anything more annoying than being told how and what to believe!

As my basket friends were going home after their conference in Tasmania, the blank parts of the page got to me so I filled in more drawing. It is so peaceful.

Then a bit more baking…..pear in puff pastry.

And a delicious pumpkin cream sauce over pasta and spinach.

I took a more recent picture of myself the other day after seeing on FaceTime an old friend from graduate school. We tend to look a little rough after a certain age so I will put a picture out there now, so we can ease our way into how it will be.

Yesterday I worked on getting 35 poems all in the same font for a new book I am putting together. It will also have several short stories written since my last series of books and a few essays. Something about a good check in the mirror makes me want to “hop” to it. Trouble is the “hopper” has slowed a bit.

I do love my new routine of exercises and punching the bag to get out aggressions. Isn’t it odd how one leg is stronger than the other when it comes to balancing? I am quite sure I used them both the same for the last 81 years…so why is one weaker than the other? I am determined to get it up to speed and perform as expected.

Not sure if I posted this one before. But with Australia on my mind, here is one of the poems coming in the new book. There were six more trips down under after this was written.

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.

 

Seems a bit of a sad poem about loss and age. But there is not a time I read these words and not smile. I wrote it in my sketchbook after a long walk to get to a park to just sit down among the Eucalyptus trees. My feet were sore and I was just beginning to feel some of the aches of aging. I love the drama of a woman with sore feet trying to put her feelings into words to look back on.

Anyway, back to the sorting and font sizing needed for the book layout.

Til later…..

 

The National Basket Gathering was going on in Tasmania this week. I try to join them by working in my Gathering Book just to pretend I am with them. So many good memories that pull me back to all those with materials and such desire to share information. Anyway, I got my sketchbook out and started drawing some odd beads that I hung onto….just in case. Then on the next page a very old Mary Hetts basket of ash and oak caught my eye because of the attachment of handles. It felt good to just sit and draw.

Next I drew in one of the combination pottery/basketry pieces that Ted Cooley and I decided to turn into a workshop. The negative spaces were filled in with random strands of weaving materials.

Turn the page and a bit of sewing and patchwork that so many at the gathering do while together. A rock because it was handy to the page. The scraps of cloth came from Wafu Works in the Hobart area and my first stop when arriving in Tasmania. My most favorite hostess, Jude Walker, would fetch me at the airport and we’d head over there before stopping for a savoury muffin and a flat white.

The opposite page and latest drawing is another clay fish with woven fins and tail. And a scrap of cloth with bits of grasses peeking out. The conference has ended and they have all headed home. It was wonderful seeing the posted photos of so many familiar faces beavering away over bits and pieces of unruly natural materials, contact printed cloth, and dressing up stones.

It brings such calm to just sit and draw…and remember. Thank you.

And another bit of relaxation is a good gin and tonic drunk from the first glasses Lee and I made from wine bottles. This was a dreadful Corbet Canyon wine that had the best shape for fitting in the hand. We did very simple bamboo leaf resist shapes near the top. They fit the hand perfectly and are just right for a gin and tonic.

I was catching up on the latest alcohol book of labels. The new ones in the book are mostly from wine tasting events where I think a bit more of something good should be in the cooler or on the shelf at home.

Now that the latest and perhaps last political installation is in place, I will return to writing and drawing/stitching. A couple of lunches/dinners out with the friends I miss seeing, coffee with the fellows in the morning, and I have exhausted my social skills. I have accepted that ignorance has brought this country to new lows and it is likely to continue in a society of fear from retribution. I see a soulless-ness when I look into the eyes of those now in control as well as in the eyes of  more and more of their supporters. Thank you to those who still protest to regain the rights we all fought so hard for years ago and now see eroding.

Sadie keeps me company when Dilly is busy napping. A cat’s purr is so comforting…

Til later…

There are thirty-nine pincushions. When I first started in 2016, it was fun to make them. Try to capture their essence and what made them so despicable. Stick pins in them. Then stuff them tightly in a plastic bag with little to no air for them.

Back then it was their new leader, Trump, Mitch McConnell, Kelly Anne with her “alternate facts”, and Bill Barr shoving their words toward a possible legal truth. Combine it all with the endless lies of Fox “News” to an angry, bigoted population, and it festered to the surface for a second chance to expose our weaknesses.

All of them have a red dot…the mark of “being sold”. And sold is what each of them have been. Sold souls to the highest and most corrupt bidders.

Even Stephen Miller with his fascist tendencies could resurrect himself in this new administration to direct an expulsion of necessary population willing to carry the heavy load for all of us. More and more sycophants pushed their way into view to be willing to pick up the fight for fellow bigots. They came armed and ready.

They fight for the positions of most obnoxious, most “Christian”, most willing to tell lies, most willing to be bought, etc.

 

Each and everyone of them are headed to the garbage of American history…and so well-deserved for ruining what our country used to be.

So many wanted to see the justice system come to the rescue. But that seems beyond their ability with the stacked and paid for courts we find ourselves stuck with for the foreseeable future. Long after I have left this world.

Before he goes, he will hang his red tie medals around the necks of most deserving of pincushion personas, but frankly, my stomach can take no more.

I am not sure if where we are is what the MAGAs of our time wanted us to be. But here we are. There are over three more years left to take this country further down and then it will be more of their uncontrolled anger continuing or a very slow healing process. Some other country will have to take over for the leadership we so willingly gave up. Obviously we are incapable.

But the sun will still come up.

I will pour myself a nice stiff drink for my solo exhibition later today and wish I lived in better times or a better country.

Til later….but first a poem of comfort….

 

The Shirt        S. Webster

 

It hangs there, just waiting

for me to reach out, and remember

the times it held me close.

When no one else was giving

needed comfort

and wanted touch.

I pause long enough

to run my hand down the arm

and hold its hand,

before moving on to one that

has no history.