Once in a Blue Moon in process week 3 & 1/2 Mo17
stitching is helping me find some sort of sense of sanity in amongst all the lunacy…
this is a very strange year for our beautiful broken world
Once in a Blue Moon – week 3 & 1/2
Posted: June 15, 2017 by Mo Crow in Braille for the Soul, It's Crow TimeTags: magic, moon ladder, Once in a Blue Moon, thread
Comments
It's Crow Time 
Well, seeing it is helping me.Thank you, Mo
(((Di))) the big question this week is why oh why is our government trying to go ahead with this Great Barrier Reef destroying Adani coal mine!
Sharing your disbelief re Adani, and longing for some ethical sensible sane leadership… in the meantime your work is STUNNING, heartwarming ,and a tangible reminder of the beauty that is still there at the heart of everything.
thanks for visiting & the kind words Glen! Senator Scott Ludlum is a voice of sanity in this strange year
in the moments i look, it is soothing.
(((Grace))) Braille for the Soul
Mo, it is one of those works that would capture me across a room and then in stepping closer, delight and enchant me with the details. Well done!
(((Beth))) it’s a love letter to The Moon, looking forward to making it’s little retractable ladder!
so beautiful and calming- i find the same comfort in stitching
(((Sue))) using a thimble has made this one a lot easier to work, whenever the needle meets any resistance I grab the thimble and save my fingertips!
Mo!!!
Oh…
MO.
(((Hazel))) it’s really getting there, reckon there’s about another week of stitching then need to work out how to make a papier mache mold in my big iron wok, sturdy enough to stretch the leather over, the back will be a black spiral of 1.5mm black leather cord blanket stitched into a shallow basket formed over the wok. It will be a lens shaped vessel with a retractable moon ladder attached to the rim. It’s for “Braille for the Soul” my next solo show at Artsite Gallery, have set the date for March 2019 when I’m 64!
(… when he will still need you, he will still feed you ….) 😉
I sure hope so!
The amount of focus you invested! AND more to come. Well, if that sort of focus can produce such a thing of beauty maybe every stitch is a prayer and maybe your government and our government and ALL the bullying, bling fools will suddenly waken and declare “WHAT THE HELL WERE WE THINKING!” Maybe.
(((Michelle))) that’s how it will go, we may not see it in our lifetimes but we can feed the dream, Imagine… John Lennon sang it all those years ago and still gives us hope
Beautiful work and you are making such good progress. I can’t stitch without my thimble.
(((Leonie))) Old Man Crow is very relieved to see I have learned to use the thimble, the eye of that fine needle went through my fingertips too many times in that first week!
Ughhhh!
too amazing Mo….
(((Jude))) this one is living up to the dream!
Mo~ This is truly a most amazing work! To actually capture the moon this way…blows me a way! I can’t wait to see the progression you’ve described to Hazel above.
(((Nancy))) me too! looking forward to making that little retractable ladder, Old Man Crow is going to help with the logistics, he studied engineering back in the late 60’s early 70’s which comes in very handy for things involving tension, knots and moving parts.
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! BEAUTY !
(((Els))) this is the time for bringing the dreams into reality as Helen Garner wrote in “Notes from a Brief Friendship” p46 “Everywhere I Look” 2016
“Sometimes it seems to me that, in the end, the only thing people have got going for them is imagination. At times of great darkness, everything around us becomes symbolic, poetic, archetypal.
Perhaps this is what dreaming, and art, are for.”
Hmmmm yes : imagination …
it is soothing
and as always
sososo beautiful
(((Yvette))) I am reading this translation of an interview with Jorge Luis Borges from back in 1976 when he was 77 years old and blind;
“That’s the task of Art. It is to transform whatever happens to us into symbols, to transform it into music, to transform it into something that may last in the memory of men. As artists, that is our duty. We must comply with it. Or else we’d feel very unhappy.”
Oh Mo, so much beauty………………….
(((Martine)))
I love this moon project and I also loved the sea urchin idea (one of my favourite things for inspiration)
I keep meaning to try thimbles! Maybe I will now.
Hi Gillian, thanks for having a look, my fingertips are so much happier since I took up using the thimble!
I love seeing your progress on the Blue Moon… it looks wonderful! What kind of thread are you using?
(((Sharmon))) it’s vintage “Cintax” mercerized cotton sewing thread with a very fine needle
Glorious Mo….ox
(((Marg))) thanks again for all the beautiful vintage threads and needles!
I’m very happy to share my stuff with you Mo. ox ThankYOU for all the things you have gifted me over the years! oxox
can’t wait to see the vessel! and yes, to archetype and dream abounding in dark times — there is a heightening and while the cause of it disturbs moment by moment, the attention wrought by it is to be appreciated.
While reading the comments here, I remembered a book that was imp. to me once upon a time — (thinking of you as the archetype Sorcerer or Witch and this process of stitching the Moon) —
(((Dee))) I am very excited about this becoming a vessel too! ’twill take another two months to make and it is a very witchy piece! I read that book a long time ago, would be good to have another look at it after all these years of following the Moon! here’s an interesting paragraph from “Pieces of White Shell- A Journey to Navajo Land” by Terry Tempest Williams (p69-70)
“Rituals are the formulas by which harmony is restored. They are symbolic actions born of the Navajo mythic reality. Donald Sanders elaborates:
By means of origin myths and cosmogonic myths, a picture is built up of what the world is, how it came to be, and how it may be expected to function in the future. It makes no difference whether the facts on which the world view are founded are true or not. The myth makes do with what “facts” it has, and goes on about its business of creating an intuitive emotional interpretation of them. The rituals embody sacred action appropriate to the structure of the world built up by the myths. They go hand in hand, completing and complimenting each other- the mythic reality and the ritual response.”
and this is also good food for thought for dealing with these strange days-
‘The resurgence of magical religion can be seen, then, as an attempt to enrich the ‘psychic ecology’ of contemporary culture by re-mythicising and re-storying our world and the living beings that make it up.’ Ivakhiv, 1996
exquisite!
it’s getting there, the embroidery will be finished tonight for the winter solstice here in the Land Down Under!