Tent (September 2020). Hazel twigs, drum kit, cotton, wood.
What did I actually do in September work wise…I moved out of my workspace which became a building site while we renovated and restored our old windows, the dust sheets became my two boys’ den for a while (and mine while they were out!). A safe but fun space, a small warm spot to sit and play, enclosed and enveloped by cotton, a return to the womb, a sense of grounding, an semi permanent paradise where daydreams can be dreamed, ideas can be conceived, and chocolate can be scoffed in secret!
Sheet (October 2020). linen sheet, embroidery, hand.
Ode to the humble sheet, to cover, shroud, veil, contain, shield, gather, worn, reveal, to grip and hide emotion while still indicating from the external what is contained underneath, medical, domestic, comfort, clean, dirty, wet, dry, forensic proof, industrial,100% Egyptian, nylon, silk, linen, poly-cotton, repair, repaired again, lived under, played under, lived on top of, horizontal, vertical, hung up, laid down, stained, bleached, Halloween, ironed flat, scrunched up, thrown, ordered, folded (beware of the coffin crease), dried in the sun, dried in the drier, sentimental, nostalgic and melancholy.
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I sat down a lot during September, drank buckets of tea, embroidered, and planned, in the comfort and safety of my brain’s own parameters, how I was going to show my work for our exhibition in Wellington on Friday the 30th October at Te Auaha Gallery! Thoughts of spacial and visual impact along with logistics of sending aspects of my work through courier post started to prickle my skin with stress. When I get stressed I can’t think or write, let alone work. How much information do I blog about my work without giving away the whole narrative and visual impact? How do I put into words (visually it looks the same but just more of it!) practice, persistence and patience which has dominated my work lately…head down and do the hard yards…
While I was pondering the above, I found my application to the HS6 in my files, I sat and read it and my mind started to see how far I have climbed up the mountain of the past 10 months. As I sat reading through the document, cradling its dry paper gently in my hands, it dawned on me how little I stop and look back at the landscape of my work since January, the ebb and flow of ideas, the gentle undulations of understanding, followed by torrents of self-doubt and lack of confidence in my making during lockdown. How the methodology of my process has grown in the simple acceptance of how I walk the unmapped path (along with Iris’s sublime guidance and delicious discussions during our Zoom meetings) which leads to the Hansel and Gretal house of lollies and gingerbread I discussed in an earlier bolg……..I did go into her dark hut with no windows or doors, and sat by the fire with Baba Yaga, surrounded by her pestle and mortars, brooms, drinking her Shadow tea laced with some strange lead weighted potion of self-doubt with an after taste of self flagellation and fear. The weight which sat in my gut became too exhausting to carry; I was given a flask to take away with me to drink when I came up with any ideas, or to dispel creative actions I felt bubbling up in my stomach. On the way out (she had fallen asleep so I wiggled out through the hole in the floor) I tipped it’s fluid into her vegetable patch full of flourishing green leaves and nourishing life giving plants, but circled like a grim necklace by herbs; herbs to kill and cause sickness, Atropa Belladonna and Hog weed reached their egos higher than the green vibrancy they encompassed. As I turned back at the gate to check that the old crone hadn’t woken and seen me tip away her brew, I saw the vegetables grow rotten and black and shrivel up; the leaves became crispy and dry and the air was scented with a sour and vinegary smell which caught in the back of my throat…
I had made it out the other side of this decaying acrid environment into a woodland of coppiced hazel, catkins hanging rich and ripe, the spring green shoots of spring rose around me with the scent of promise, interlaced with jasmine and honeysuckle their sweet intoxicating gesture of care free relaxation and bare feet on soft grass pulled me into a glade where the kind old warmth from the sun shone though the leaves of the trees, the soft green light catching pollen and bugs lazily floating with no care where they landed…….this is where I stand now, looking at my work as I move the linen threaded needle through the fine linen material, a controlled movement which is now a spinal memory, enjoying the moment of satisfaction, and reading the tension of the stitches which portray emotional and physical ups and downs of the past few months…it’s like cradling a rainbow; you can’t hold it as the more you reach your fingers towards it, the more it will flitter away, just be and it will tell its narrative with its own voice…it will live its own life!