TUFT (Temporary Utopian Fibre Temple) presents Metamorphostick

People have been calling me an artist for years, but it was only last year that I actually felt like one.  I'm definitely a craftsperson, and have certainly passed through my initiation and apprenticeship in my self taught guild, and moved through practitioner to Mistress of my chosen craft.  

But deep down I always kinda thought of myself as a talented crafts person, who created techniques and creations that were certainly artistic, but easily replicatable, thereby more fitting with the crafts person persona.  

Even so, I rarely made the same thing twice, and found orders and commissions odious, so I could see the two - craftsperson and artist - coexisting in a harmonious way.

But the year after Merlin got sick,  I got caught up in an art rash, that could only be itched by creating the ideas coming through me, and following the simple path before me, of a crystaline concept that was the outcome, with convoluted stepping stones along the way. Inspiration just grabbed me and made me follow without asking questions.  The visiting muse or genie was strong felt around me, working through my fingers and dancing as visions.  I used all the skills I'd learnt to craft me a palette, from crochet hooks to wooden weaving needles, 

 

 

to the hand dyed fleeces created by my man, 

 

 

to the spinning and translating of what the yarn wanted to become. 

 

Paradoxically, this was also a year of great and deep sadness and constant worry, as my Merlin was in the process of losing his hair and undergoing treatment for Leukaemia.   

I was coming to terms with my upturned beliefs about western medicine, and searching out an integrated path with alternative medicine, and it was a stark and bright lit new world that felt like I'd never get used to it.  

There were so many rivers of tears and fears washing over me regularly.  What were the rules in this new world?  What would be left of my old one?  

The floor had dropped out from beneath me, and I'd had to stare death in the face.  Death as powerful and significant as Birth.  One of our collectives greatest fears and taboos.  

It very much felt like the art rash upon me, was very definitely the equal and opposite of the great sadness that almost swallowed me. 

And the making and following the genie process, was definitely the meditation and self therapy I needed at the time to calm and center myself, and keep being strong and enabling the biggest cure for my Merlin, alongside his integrated medicines, which was simply being as happy as we could all help him to be, and to laugh lots.  

So the first 'artwork' to emerge, where I stayed up late at night, and crept down first thing in the morning, in an almost urgent desire to see the idea that had visited my mind, was the Metamorphostick.  A large and magnificent stick that had fallen in our suburban back yard beckoned to me from over by the fence, until I finally brought it out the front of my studio on the grass, and whittled back the bark and the knots to see the skeleton underneath.  

Then the sanding and oiling, and it was brought inside and hung from the rafters where I started off applying wire prosthetic branches and twigs.  

It got a curled possum tail and wool pods and flowers, and has raw alpaca peeking from the wrapping at either side, suggesting a fibre metamorphosis of the wood, the fibre changing the branch with its touch.  

I made a big ceremonial wrap out of a few different dye pots of green processed tops, that were gifted from the beautiful Faith, who with her daughter Amber brought us earth magic in the first weeks of our hospital stay.  It seemed the perfect energy to hang from my transforming stick.

 

It was the first time I truly felt like I was using my handspun yarns as a palette, shading the twigs and branches, and like I was applying the skills I'd taught myself in a Mistress like manner.  Mistressing my craft.  
 

And I liked it so much I kept going, and my fibre muse very kindly kept visiting, and the next creation to birth was the Labyrinth.  An idea that had been tempting me for a while, but which finally actuated in a glorious way.  



TO BE CONTINUED.........