You can visit the Amending works at Harry & George’s Fruit and Vegetable Store 170 Barker Street, Castlemaine
Anna, my daughter Hetty – (who wangled a day off school) and myself, began the install of Amending in a very squeezy window space.
The show is looking great – despite a variety of comical mishaps and adventures!
Although simple – it was really hard for me to finish off this project!
I also really wanted to get a spoon in there somewhere – so many items in my life that I use and use and use and I want to use again!
I have fallen in love with Jitterbug Perfume – for all my hating and ranting and “don’t wants” it got me.
ooh… that’s a bit of a close up eh? yep… a holey bra!
And so… amending (accidentally) spills into week 13… our final week before craft cubed opens…’for true life’ as my son says sincerely… when things are genuinely going to happen… instead of just pretend!
Aforementioned son… also returned yesterday from rubbish bin duties, with a threadbare bra (I think after approximately 10 years I finally resolved myself to the fact that bras… indeed… do eventually come to the end of their natural life… gritting my teeth, I tossed it… only to have it dragged back inside by child… what is that saying… ‘children are your mirror?’… yep!
So began the final work… was so impressed with Tam’s costume jewellery of last week… but wracking my brain over ‘dishwashing’ apparatus (ie, I don’t own any rubber gloves)… left me ‘frothing’ at the mouth (hahaha) but still bereft of ideas (funny how tax time can suck you dry of that sort of inspiration!)…
thankyou to my small child for your forethought… and challenge for the week… da naaaaah… here it is… see you in the window of Harry and George next week for the opening of Craft Cubed!
over to you tam!
I’ve been running on school holiday schedule… as I know i’ve mentioned… but the last week of the holidays has been super special for me.. kids packed off to their baba’s for the week, I hopped a plane to sydney… and a train down the south coast line to ‘sunny’ port kembla!!! Doesn’t really sound like a holiday destination for most… but what followed was 5 days of sunshine, 1950’s macedonian architecture sprawling under ancient cliff faces… walks along stunning beaches… next to effluent pipes from the hardworking BHP steel works… somehow that all seemed ok… next to my oldest dear buddy and her beautiful first newborn!!
So, following on with the soft circular theme from Tam’s week ten work… I looked for circles in the landscape… this picture, taken from my temporary bedroom, is of the BHP ‘mordor’ on the left, belching steam and burning off methane gases sporadically… and to the east… the soft curve of the Kembla Port… container ships shuffling in and out.
Manufacturing… our reliance on it, how we prefer not to see the process… and the affect on our sensibility and sensitive ecology… talk of the whale migration travelling up that coastline over winter… I imagined the spike of toxicity in this bay as floating mines in wartime… led me to attempt to make a sea mine… in a ROUND about way!!!
Still working my way through that old pair of denim jeans!!
In response to your mushroom/paper bag work I wanted to find a similar “ballooney” form to work with – I came up with rubber gloves and somehow got it into my mind they would work really well on a chain!
My daughter insisted that I had made the necklace for her – so I deem this project to be a success.
Loving your soft shapes Anna and also your writing about Broken Hill – this landscape really had a big impact on you. I hope I get the opportunity to take my family there.
I used cotton pads – the ones that I take off my n8 health make off with! And also a brown paper bag – abandoned from pop corn making! Brown paper bags are the best.
Lovely colour and surface to draw on and also promising something fantastic inside!
I’m trying to make up for lost time… also on the school holiday trail… mushrooms… and the never ending ‘fungi’ jokes that my family has been throwing at each other during our car travels up north… a lot of them to do with ‘fungi’ for some reasons… but having the kids (and ultimately me) in stitches… no matter how bad (that’s when you realise you need to stop the car, get some fresh air and stretch your legs a bit!!).
Heading off to Wollongong/Pt. Kembla tomorrow to stay with my oldest buddy and her new bub for the week… lots of walking planned… but perhaps next weeks’ them might be a little industrial!!!
Happy last week of the holidays Tam…
a. xxx
we are on school holiday dreaming time here… and mid winter holidays… I took us all to get some ‘big sky’. It’s a funny thing this, hunting for space to breathe in. It’s not that Castlemaine isn’t the perfect place for pounding the earth in the mornings, seeking some solace in the macro of the immediate environment, or breathing deep into the fiercely icy pinpricked sky at night… it’s just, no matter where I live… I always seek out some desert big sky to really expand my lungs and breathe deep.
BUT… as someone who is always trapped by my own environmental consciousness… (and because I”m becoming quite comfortable in this land of blog… perhaps because I feel that tam, you and I are the only ones reading this week after week!)… I think this quote from aldo leopold summed up my emotions upon return:
“One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise.”
― Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac
So.. instead… I spent my birthday in Broken Hill (mad max II museum in silverton to be exact)… a jot in a road that cuts through some of the most abused country I can remember viewing… I could have focused on spinifex or brahminy kites… the abundance of pelican on menindee lake (above the sad old darling river beyond the wall damming it)… instead… Broken hill at night and my denim, linen and thread interpretation of that.
Can’t say I remember ever looking forward to arriving back to my clipped, landscaped (yet somehow nurtured) part of the world back in central victoria before, as much as I did last week! Although… I did breathe wonderfully deep for a few days at Lake Mungo… and the sun shone on us like it wasn’t here! ooroo…
It is tissue paper, embroidery floss and beads
amending 