I start teaching again next week. A class called Marking Places and Making Pages. It is actually a time of experimentation with materials. It is a way of showing students everything I know how to do that may be useful to their art practice. Then at the end of the week it is all assembled into a big book of ideas, notes and samples. Bound in such a way that hopefully they find it irresistible and pick it up over and over again looking for just the right way to say what they have to say.
I am home from Australia and well into planning another trip next February. My New Zealand flax basket is now hung with the others and in time like them will turn a pale straw color. When I am with the basket makers of Australia I sit and quietly weave these pieces. It only takes two long flax leaves and a needle to strip them into course hair-like strands. Then cross several at right angles over several more near their centers. And with one folded strand begin the twining action that will hold them all in place. Flair and separate the bundles until there is only one to twine around each time. Add more if you want the basket bigger, Keep the open spacing as even as possible and enjoy the rhythm of the weave.
I a
m cherishing the time alone at a friends home in Medlow Bath, a town west of Sydney and perched in the Blue Mountains. The yard is full of gum trees, vegetable gardens, black cockatoos, sunshine and a bower bird with the most amazing collection of bright blue plastic clothes pins. My laundry is finishing up in the washer and ready to be dried. The watercolors made of Australian soils are laying next to the sketchbooks, carved wood blocks and torn sheets of printmaking papers. It is time to record more of Australia, try to get down on paper what makes this country so magic for me.
Tomorrow I am moved closer to the location of my last two workshops here in the Blue Mountains and just like last time, I miss the country before I have even left it.
I am making watercolors from these beautiful colors of Australia. After this trip there will likely be close to two hundred recorded memories via color. These are near Bacchus Marsh in Victoria and when I use them later in my studio I will think of the basketmakers who shared this area with me.