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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.

 

Another Week Gone By

Posted on by Sandy Webster

We are all tired of the rain here in western North Carolina. Too much grey skies. Too much wet.

So inside in the the studio I finished to large collage piece, The Roads. Here it is hanging ready to show art group on Sunday.

Too much reflection to shoot from the front. And some details.

The color here is more accurate. And speaking of the color, mostly the rust color, got me to thinking of these large panels that were part of the Expedition to Elsewhere: the Evidence exhibit a few years ago. I will dig them out and try stitching into them.

I notice that I already have a patch of fabric sewn on and each is sewn to a rusted heavy cotton sleeve to hang on the tobacco stakes….so why not just keep going. Each one is about three feet across and four feet long. It would give me something to do without thinking.

It is hard for me to do thinking any more.

The small prints below I made last week using blocks made from the negative spaces that fell to the floor as an old friend cut out his animals (mostly possums) on a scroll saw. He used a cheap 1/8″ plywood, drilled a hole near the top, slapped some varnish on them and sold them as Christmas tree decorations. I would pick up the bits and pieces and move them around on a piece of pine board to make a design. Then glue them in place, ink them up and make prints. If I turned them upside down, each butterfly and fish became two different critters.

I think I was born trying to make something from nothing. I do know we were raised that way. We were children of the survivors of the Great Depression of the 30s. Every scrap gets a good examination before going into the trash.

And when going through all my relief blocks I found these. Fun to print them again and remember the old fellow.

Also I just finished (almost) all of the work books for my master’s class in Australia. I only need to add beads to the strings and they are finished. They are a revival of an idea I had over ten years ago to jump start thinking….thinking of what matters to the maker. I called it Visual Definitions and since my class is titled, “Seeking the Visual”, I thought it would be fun to revive the idea.

I think I will have to mail a box down under as there is getting to be too much to be schlepping in the airports.

On another somewhat unrelated thought…..

While working in the studio I turn on Pandora to the Lyle Lovett channel. And there is also music from similar artists. So far I am thinking that as much as I like Lyle Lovett’s music, I could run off with Keb Mo or Willie Nelson. Lyle Lovett just has too much of other musicians to make his music….too much brass….too much piano….to much…..

Even though that “Pony on a Boat” has always conjured up some of the best images. Actually I even tried making a pony in a boat because of that song. Suffice it to say that the boat was salvageable but the pony died in the trash.

But Keb Mo is just plain good to listen to. I could move next door to him just to hear him hum if I did not have other things to do right now. I don’t have one lick of musical talent in my bones, but that fellow makes me feel good, makes me smile, makes me want to fix him a nice supper for all the relatable lyrics and smooth delivery.

Same with Willie Nelson. He just drags you slowly off to a better place with his “maybe I should have”……

It might all sound a bit silly but honestly on a dreary day, trying to thread a needle, wondering why bother, making a mess for no good reason that you can think of…..and then turning on your iphone to Pandora and the lyle Lovett channel just so you can hear Keb Mo and Willie Nelson take you somewhere else, it is not a bad thing.

Now I am going to go put the beads on those books and call it a day.

Til later.

 

Loose Ends

Posted on by Sandy Webster

It was a lovely sunrise two days after Christmas. Our company still here, still helping out where needed. Even the western sky was beautiful that morning.

They have all gone home now. Amy and Marla helped me exchange beds between the apartment and downstairs guest room. Now the twin beds are in the apartment and all the better to house private students. And honestly no one wanted to share the bedroom down stairs with anyone else so now just the double bed is there. I need to rearrange the pictures and add some decent lighting but other than that, a big improvement.

Patrick stayed with his dad in the workshop and the two of them made things.

I had the gift of time in the studio to work on the piece I started earlier and here it is so far on a panel measuring 25.5″ x 28.5″. Lots more stitching to go and those beautiful little stones I covered with cane toad and kangaroo hide were so very helpful in holding the sticks in place while the glue dried. Moving things around on the “canvas” is the best part. And then suddenly it says, “Enough. Leave me here.”

I will show a picture when it is finished and behind the frame. Here are some details of sections that might just be finished.

 

I will finish it this week and then look for other frames that have not been used and do a few more of these. It is relief printing on cloth, various papers that have their own history that seems to fit the narrative. This one is called “The Roads” simply because those words appear somewhere in all that is happening and the image makes me feel like I am or have traveled somewhere into this space.

Collecting loose threads and holding things together is where I imagine myself to be right now. And no wonder. Just this past week when this thought occurred to me I went around the house and photographed things with loose threads. I have always been collecting them it seems.

In baskets.

In textiles from other places.

In my favorite gauzy, thready scarves bought in Australia from Mahdi.

 

In my hand stitched pieces.

And as illustration in my books. Even Proust is reminding me again that “we have to try afresh to settle down to work which has ceased to have any meaning.” So easy to say and so hard to do, that picking up and starting over to get it right, make it matter.

It is hard to just give up on something that demanded all your passion at one time and then without even noticing, it has become something less, something asking to be left behind…or just left alone for now.

But I think I had success this morning with the ginger marmalade! Last week it refused to set up, so with new lids and more pectin and a bit more boiling I think I have it. Six jars of chunky ginger bits and eight jars of ginger jelly.

My suggestion on this marmalade is just buy it if you can. An awful lot of work for something that needs starting over half way through the process. But the flavor and the aroma might just be worth it.

And one more thing….earlier this month I saw how easily it is to thread a needle by rubbing the eye of the needle across the thread. It is supposed to just loop up into the eye. Well, it doesn’t! And even the you tube video showed the fellow demonstrating it with a rather raw palm where he had rubbed it silly trying to make the video.

Don’t bother trying it. Just get your glasses on, lick the thread and spend the next minute or so trying to find the hole…..make sure you have a good length of thread to avoid doing it all over again a minute to two later.

That’s enough advice for now.

Til later.

New Starts in the Studio and Kitchen

Posted on by Sandy Webster

I did a bit of printing on cloth and tea bags today while a friend is in the studio working on small dry point etchings. As soon as there were a few prints hanging up to dry my daughter asked what I was planning to do with them. I told her I was just collecting materials to start something new.

Here is the beginning. Lots of bits arranged on a sheet of rusted paper to be looked at and rearranged….and then later glued and stitched and tied down. It felt good to just “play” with the papers, cloth and sticks and prints.

Here is a very special gift my friend, Marla made for me.

It only stands about five inches high and on the glass she etched a story about how much like a rock I am in keeping it together here as Lee slowly slips further away. Note the small book of my hands and the kantha stitched cloth like my dementia shawl. There is a tiny wooden wine glass to represent Lee’s bowl turning that he used to do and the need to relax and have a drink. This is just such a little treasure.

Our daughter, Amy, helped me make ginger marmalade yesterday. What a process! The fumes watered our eyes and made us cough. The exhaust fan on the range got an extra workout during the almost two hours it took to cook the chunks of ginger to the soft stage.

Here is the process in pictures.

About four cups of chopped ginger cooking up in water.

Two hours later being turned into marmalade.

The ugly greenish water poured off needed food coloring to look edible because this slime green just was not what would make an attractive jelly with the gingery water.

I forgot how much sugar it takes to make jelly!

And here is the color adjusted jelly cooking down.

And here it is in jars. One small problem is that it is slow to set up. We know we used the right amount of pectin but the ginger seems a bit stubborn. The jelly is setting up better and I may not redo it, but that marmalade needs to go back in and get cooked with additional pectin.

And the taste of it might just take the top of your head off. Maybe longer cooking on the front end with more water changes would be the answer.

All I know is that if you make a nice seedy french toast, butter it, add a large dollop of plain yogurt and top off with this gingery marmalade, you have one lovely breakfast.

We are waiting until after Christmas to decide how much needs to be cooked again.

Have a lovely Christmas.

Til later.