looking for the logic in an emu feather
seeing how the barbs are modified to the barest bones in the feathers of this flightless bird
emu feathers are lively and resist being stitched down
even the damaged feathers have a distinct grace and character
and looking at the way a grape vine tendril spirals
this is an ongoing exploration of looking at patterns of lace in nature you can see more of the Key Book going widdershins here, here, here & here
“You fight with dreams as with formless and meaningless life, seeking a pattern, a route that must surely be there, as when you begin to read a book and you don’t yet know in which direction it will carry you. What you would like is the opening of an abstract and absolute space and time in which you could move, following an exact, taut trajectory; but when you seem to be succeeding, you realize you are motionless, blocked, forced to repeat everything from the beginning.”
– Italo Calvino
If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler
via Whiskey River
this was one of the most difficult books I have ever read, after years of starting and then throwing it against the wall in total frustration I finally got to the last page last year, it’s a brilliant search for meaning in what can often seem to be a confusing and meaningless world
It's Crow Time 
Lovely Mo. I had forgotten how poetic Calvino is in this book. Leant my copy out years ago and never got it back, which seemed appropriate somehow that the story went wandering.
(((Charlotte))) that your copy of the book moved on is totally in keeping with the story, have you seen this beautiful animation of Italo Calvino’s The Distance from the Moon ?
No, I have a small collection of his fairy tales. I will go and follow the link.
That is enchanting, also like that I got a lovely Italian reading le Cittli Invisiblo in the next video. Don’t understand a word but could listen to it spoken all day.
such a delightful writer full of whimsy and yet his thoughts go way deep and linger long into our lives
I feel I’ve come to a dreamland in this & your last post…where the date is tomorrow, the season is months away, and feathers of creatures I’ve only read about seem to breath and dance on their own.
(((Cindy))) you have such a poetic way with words !
Such a lovely sense of exploring and movement in your drawings of the feathers and the vine. Also they give me a feeling for what is underneath and beyond the form of things.
looking through the veil of maya… am looking forward to seeing what the reverse of the stitching in this accordion book will hold, finding the patterns in the stitching is like asemic writing…
I like emu feathers.Years ago, I did have a couple (from Currumbin), but, as happens to most feathers, they were eaten by moth larvae! Incidentally, if you want to keep silverfish, moths from your wardrobe you could try putting some feathers in a cardboard box.
y’know in my 40 odd years of collecting feathers, fur, skin and bone I never had anything eaten til 2009 when the mortuary beetles first appeared & then they revisited in 2014… this old house is home for many things…
I love your explorations of lace in nature, Mo. The intricacy and delicacy of these forms is amazing, and your drawings are beautiful.
drawing always helps me understand the world…
How whimsical and delightful Mo – the feathers seem to wriggle and wiggle and dance away – and the stitches to hold them are so delicate and are all that is needed…
they do, I love how emu feathers are so wayward and wild reflecting the nature of the bird
Looking closer … seeing more … making small things larger than life and in so doing, honoring their purpose.
looking forward to working on the back and seeing where the abstraction of the asemic stitching leads but first I want to look at some patterns in coral and sponge
Key Book becomes more and more intricate and beautiful. Emu feathers are so primitive and mysterious. Your drawings of the tendrils are lovely, I was inspired to go out and rescue some so I can admire them close up but I don’t think I could ever draw them with your skill. A beautiful post, Mo!
Carol, I feel like this exploration is on the brink of a breakthrough but am not there yet… needs to be looked at a bit aslant, out of the corner of the eye… here’s another great quote via Whiskey River
“Have you noticed how often it happens that a really good idea – the kind of idea that looks, as it approaches, like the explanation for everything about everything – tends to hover near at hand when you are thinking hard about something quite different? There you are, halfway into a taxi, thinking about the condition of the cartilage in the right knee joint, and suddenly, with a whirring sound, in flies a new notion looking for a place to light. You’d better be sure you have a few bare spots, denuded of anything like thought, ready for its perching, or it will fly away into the dark.”
– Lewis Thomas
The Youngest Science