Louise Watson’s pennant is Mending the Sky

Louise Watson’s pennant  is Mending the Sky
for the pennant project
“I dream of a world where love is the answer”
Louise kindly gave permission to share these photos and words from her blog
“The blue sky behind gave me an idea. I have ironed and backed it with blue fabric and intend to make a feature of the holes. The sunshine brightened the fabric. I think it will be called Mending the Sky. I have an idea of birds in flight and darning stitches.”
photos and words courtesy of Louise Watson in England
these pennants are gathering our hopes and dreams
making strong threads to mend our beautiful broken world stitch by stitch
thank you Louise and everyone who has come onboard
Magic Days!

Marti Weisbrich’s pennant in process

back in July when I made the call out for people to stitch their hopes and dreams into a piece of the old wedding dress for the collaborative “I dream of a world where love is the answer” project Marti Weisbrich sent this photo of her eco dyed cloth for her pennant with these inspiring words
“my intention is to stitch random, small pieces of cloth to the pennant. Each time that I stitch one of my cloths, I speak to the cloth in my hand. Each piece that I stitch carries my thoughts about where and what gifts from the land I found to dye the cloth. Each piece carries my blessing and gratitude for what the land gives. Each piece making up the whole is a benediction and prayer for our planet. All of my cloth work has been about landscape and I feel deeply what the late philosopher, ex-priest and poet John O’ Donohue said, ” “When you bring your body out into the landscape, you bring your body home where it belongs. When you step outside, it matters if you see landscape as a location or if you see it as walking into a living place.”
a  few weeks later she sent this photo of her pennant getting a feel for the spirits of place & wrote
“Your pennant arrived this afternoon and the satin is such a lovely cloth. First thing I did was to take it outside and pin it to one of our pear trees. The pennant is next to a cloth (prayer flag) that I made when we first moved here to New Mexico. I name my cloths and this prayer flag is named, ” Call to the Wind” Everywhere we have lived, I have asked the elements to bless our endeavors with our gardens, and our daily lives; asking spirit/s for guidance and the ability to continue to seek the sacred daily ordinaries that make up my days.
So much of how I work with cloth has to do with the land, the elements and with that in mind, the first blessing for the pennant is to feel our fierce New Mexico wind. I’m leaving the pennant outside for a few days to pick up the communal spirit of Call to the Wind as well as be blessed with the earth spirits that roam this place; it will also be blessed with a little rain because we are in our monsoon season.”
and just a few days ago
“here is what I have done so far with my pennant: I had removed it from the pear tree because we have had some pretty fierce winds and rain. Yesterday, especially, the winds were clocking over 50 mph, our corn was bent half way, leaves and dust were flying and I knew it was time to delve into my world of dyed cloth. The spirits of place and elements were at their strongest so I ripped bits of cloth, sorted and pinned. I dream of a world where people take the time to recognize and receive the sacred ordinary gifts of the land…the pennant is in its pinned state, will hold for a time until the threads sing to me to stitch.”
Thank you Marti & everyone who has come onboard
the energy of this circle is moving so fast & strong, it feels like a quickening!
Magic Days

Old Man Crow “I dream of a world where love is the answer”

how to get in the pink

this crack showed a way into the pink
this week I was gifted a felted pink blanket
and a rusted iron mandala
detail
I really don’t have any affinity to the colour pink and have questioned the use of rust as it never sleeps, it just keeps eating away at whatever it comes into contact with
but there is something comforting about that old wool and the rust is beautiful
perhaps a rust mandala marking the centre of the blanket would get me going…
does anyone have any clues about how old wool will cope with rust?
should I use vinegar on wool?
is it better to wait to try this until summer? (it’s mid winter here in Sydney)
I have never used rust or pink in my work…
but it could make a medicine blanket/shroud for all the extinct species….

PS this didn’t work, the rust hardly made an impression and the colour is too pink for me to deal with, it’s a warm spare blanket for visitors & really doesn’t need to be anything else!

I dream of a world where love is the answer

“I dream of a world where love is the answer”
a line from a new song in process by Old Man Crow
remember that old wedding dress I was gifted a few weeks ago?
and how I was wondering what it could be?
I have invited Madeleine over to make the first cut, we will share a bottle of fine wine to fortify our spirits whilst listening to Rod Stewart singing The First Cut is the Deepest
and then cut the dress up into pennants along the creases
to be stitched with hopes & dreams
which will hang from a dreaming tree bound with the buttoned back for the trunk and the buttoned sleeves will make the branches
the tree will ride in a papier maché moon boat covered in egg shell with Honesty sprouting from the bow and stern on a sea of tulle floating on a rusted iron dress form that lives at Artsite Gallery
this is a call out for anyone interested in stitching their hopes and dreams into a pennant to fly in this dream?
once the first cut is made I will cut the skirt into long pennants and post them out
making crone magic for our beautiful broken world
PS the whole installation will be made up of many parts
as part of the piece I will make a list acknowledging all the participants and where each is from arond the world
for the Braille for the Soul show
at Artsite Gallery
scheduled for March 2019
so there’s plenty of time

PS all 44 pennants have flown out but if you want to join this circle make a small talisman and post it to me by July 2018

making and unmaking

I was given this old hand stitched wedding dress to do something with… and it’s very confronting! I have never believed in marriage and don’t like wedding dresses but there is wonderful details and the heaviness of the satin in contrast with the tulle does ignite a few ideas about building castles in the air with dreams or planting it in the garden and growing a meadow of wildflowers through it… and brings to mind my fabulous sculptor friend Bronwyn Berman’s great reply to a conversation we were having via e-mail about making it in the art world;
“And what is made it or almost made it? My experience is that we make it then we unmake it. I think I’ve made it more than once but thought I hadn’t made it so kept wanting to make it, then when it had been unmade again I realised that I had made and not appreciated it, then think that really what I have now is making it then think I’m a deluded ‘has been’ who is too old to ever make it, and in any case couldn’t be bothered with too much of making it. I think we’re probably always making it, as soon as we make it the unmaking begins and when we’re unmade then we start making again.”
button detail, love the loops & the stains on the satin
hand stitching on acres of tulle for the train
unmaking this dress and transforming it into the stuff of dreams, perhaps even art will be a challenge but this is a start !

Woven in Winter at Sturt Gallery

Woven in Winter at Sturt Gallery
woven forms in basketry, textiles and ceramics
June 11- July 23
Keiko Amenomori-Schmeisser/ Bronwyn Berman/ Patrice Cooke/ Karen Farrell/ Tracy Luff/ Tracey Mitchell/ Brooke Munro/ Catriona Pollard/ Shona Wilson
in the foreground is the amazing Pod forms of Tracy Luff made out of cardboard, hessian and wood
Woven in Winter gallery view
Bronwyn Berman with her woven wonders Reacher, Spindle & Seeker in the window
Spindle copper, casuarina root
Seeker copper, casuarina root, embedded river stone
Patrice Cooke
Fragile Fan and Silent Veins earthenware paperclay
Wall Piece I-IV porcelain
Patrice Cooke
Web Dreams earthenware paperclay
Keiko Amenomori-Schmeisser
Resting shibori & Japanese natural indigo dye on linen
Karen Farrell
Nesting Sites for Forlorn Species
stoneware, satin & crackle glazes, oxides
interwoven with palm fibre, pine needles, shell, silk fibres
Brooke Munro
Passing timber, wire
Shona Wilson
Diatom No.4 norfolk pine, seedpods, plastic
Diatom no.4 detail
Bronwyn Berman
Breathe in love through the heart
handmade paper, lyrebird feathers, echidna quills, beadslichen by mother nature