Work in progress...
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| This is a drawing from memory of a twisted tree, which I like to call the tree that is perfectly positioned for use by kids with abandonment issues. |
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| Dom the intern |
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| This was random but I love the composition |
My beautiful shed studio in the Well-beeing Garden at Free Space. How lucky am I. The garden the other day was like a yellowy orange snow land. I was working in the shed on thursday evening and Steven the gardener was sweeping leaves with a few kids, and it sounded so nice, all the crunchy leaves. The kids were definitely having a fun time running around pushing leaves about.
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| Mistress Axolotl's emblem |
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| the blue sparkly frontier has a new home in the shed |
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| The leaf pile |
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| it looks like a processionary pyre or something |
Below is a mobile i've hung in the lobby of the health centre. I made the letters over a year ago but didn't know how to use them. My notes above, about the power of individual words and small combinations of random words to evoke a scene or feeling, explain the words 'blue', 'snow' and 'delta'.
I decided to make a mobile from the letters as they are calming, hypnotic object anyway, and because they are slightly cryptic and glittery, people in the waiting room might hopefully be a bit distracted in some way from the nerves they might be experiencing while waiting.
Also, a mobile is a slightly sculptural element, especially with the beach pebble that hangs from the bottom of it.... and sculpture in it's primal state as a ritual or cult object was a functional item meant to ensure it's maker's survival or protection. This is fitting for a health centre.
Then I thought, what are the base things humans need for survival? food, shelter, warmth, and beauty/peace of mind/serenity/soundness of spirit.
Although I started selecting materials based on how their names sounded when spoken, and whether they evoked a poetic image, I realised I was automatically picking things that each resembled one of these needs:
food - hinted at by the use of the world 'delta' - river/sea which contains fish and water for cooking and drinking.
shelter - the pebble relates to this: it's from the beach... stone was the original material for building shelter.
warmth - clothing, animal hides originally. this is represent with the white suede string that the letters hang on
beauty - glitter! just pure, light hearted fun, like a galaxy of stars. cute!
I initially wanted to use a smooth beach pebble for two reasons:
1. I have a smooth stone that I carry in my pocket as something to hold for comfort
2. My mum collects pebbles from beaches, and it's something I associated with home and with her. It's like a mother element to the sculpture/mobile that oversees the goings on in the waiting room and might keep people calm and safe. I also collected pebbles from the same beach trip and put the rest of them on Grandma's grave.
The fact that this mobile is made of text and is slightly totemic and poetic, makes it, I think, slightly tattoo-esque.
On Thursday Dom and I went to the Truman Brewery the opening of a group painting show that my Grandma's friend and neighbour Judith had quite a few pieces in. It was so nice to see artists having serious fun. None of them were recent London art school graduates, so there was no pretension or trying to be heavily theoretical or ground breaking or trendy, it was just joyous and colourful, and there was free prosecco! One of my favourite painters in the show besides Judith, although every one of them was great, was Avis Lane Willan.
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| one of Avis's paintings |
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| Dom looking at three of Judith's paintings |
And I shall leave you with some sketching i'm doing for printing my red dress.
I'm doing a little talk next week to the Moodlab group at the health centre, who are doing a month long course on making their own personal and important clothing.
I'll talk a bit about my red dress and how it places in the lands and characters in the songs I listen to.
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