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.........

Urban Paradise

One of the very best equal and opposite parts, of the trauma of finding out that one of our children has Leukaemia,  has been the fibre arting that's come out of me, through my personal process of making as meditation and therapy.  Along with so many other things and people of course, but this bit has been my favourite part of the physical and metaphysical ramifications of Newtons Third Law.  I've made a hand spun, three dimensional, three circuit Labyrinth hung from two juxtaposed 7 pointed stars.......

The Metamorphostick......

 
The Spiderweb Spiral Shower......

And the Willy Pilly.  Inspired while watching a documentary about the Bespoke movement in Australia, where a woman at a market was making 'cunt cushions', and had just sold them all to a busload of lesbians.   When asked about why she made them, she mentioned something like "Well you couldn't make cushions out of PENISES!" with a look of disdain and distaste on her face.  And in my head I was like, 'Game ON!', and a few months later the idea came together while talking to a beloved friend at West End Markets.  It's my love letter to the cock, most especially the one belonging to the love and lust of my life, Currawong.  This is it in the process of becoming.....

 Now in all my 16 years of self taught fibre crafting and traveling and arting, I've had some rather negative experiences (interspersed with great ones) with other artists and galleries and the art scene in general.  Which have led to extraordinary epiphanies as the equal and opposite to them, but have left me tending to create my own scene, rather than jump into any established one, and hang out at markets instead.  

Until the other month, when we were parking near our hospital, and noticed that the building I'd driven past multiple times dreaming about what a groovy art gallery it would make, had indeed become an art gallery.   Called Urban Paradise.

 We decided to go and have a look, and were welcomed and given cups of tea by the delightful Fred Berjot, director of the 'not for profit, artists run initiative serving the "outsider artists"'.  A warmer welcome I'd not had into any gallery.  And a better description of this Friesian anarchist I couldn't even hope for.

I got the paperwork to join the community, and on driving past at a later date, I realised what a perfect place the gallery inhabited, as it's just around the corner from Lady Cilento Children's Hospital, where we spend so much time, and where most of the people we know in Brisbane hang out.  So we went back the other day and I joined.

I'd been thinking I was joining to set a date for my first solo exhibition, to give me a deadline to work towards, which happens to be the best way for me to work.  Up to and around a deadline or theme, and off I go.  But I hadn't expected that part of the commitment was going to be sitting the gallery a day a week, and bringing in some art to hang as well.  

I had more ideas in my head than I'd actually created, so I went into a bit of a flurry of arting.  Incidentally, every time I say the word 'arting', I think of it as with a silent (Fffff)arting, as inspired by Matthew Silver and his love farts, and if you don't know who Matthew Silver is, he's definitely worth investigating.....

After fits and starts of work happening in my studio, I took myself down and started whittling a stick, and then sanding it and making another wearable and wallable artwork.   This time with crochet tubes over twigs and then wrapped, and a hanging fringe like a lash to an eye in the middle with beads.  

I'd also been making jellyfish as a move towards an exhibition too, and finished the Willy Pilly, so I brought them along, with a suitcase full of pusses and creatures as well for show and tell, and a spinning wheel and some fleece just in case.

And was totally caught by surprise by the amazing buzz, intriguing artists, and community feel of the whole place.  Folk dropping in and out all the time, attracted for the vibe, and artists who are renting studios painting in the sun.  

Dived in almost instantly to deep metaphysical conversations about the nature of the universe, and met a whole bunch of delightfully quirky and unique folk, ready to talk about everything.  The Little Big Mob boy pack led by dad came to visit a few times, and all were absorbed into deep talk and laughing. 

And then before I knew it this happened.....

 I was taken a bit by surprise and on the hop, as my show and tell creations that are part of the family, and a bit worn by travel, were embraced as art!  A few things went up that aren't for sale, and I'm fired and inspired to replace those with 'real' artworks, that I've been dreaming of lately, and am prepared to let go of.

Can't wait to go back. Urban Paradise is at 52 - 64 Annerley Road. I'll be there every Thursday for the forseeable future if you want to come and tell yarns, or learn to make rope.....