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.........

Washing Post

As you can probably imagine, how and where to do our laundry with 7 children, is a topic we have a fair amount of knowledge and conversations about.  We've done our washing predominantly in laundromats for our 13 years and 7 children together, and I've been very proud of how we've managed our dirty laundry.  For 6 of those years with our babies, we only used cloth nappies, and when we were travelling we'd string them out like prayer flags near our camp.  

We've visited a lot of laundromats in the country.....

And we've come up with many and various ways to hang up and dry washing as we go.  My personal favourite was hanging the washing in our van as we were travelling up here, and with the windows open it worked a treat.

We've also become dab hands at making washing lines wherever we go, and using whatever is at hand in true Womble style.

And up here in the tropics.....where it rains very often......and randomly........it makes sense to hang your clothes under cover.  Our last house had a rather gorgeous verandah that lent itself to being a washing line, as well as an outdoor one.  And as ever,  Currawong being gorgeous makes all household chores fun.  Not to say that it always is, but it is more often than not.

And years ago in our old community we hung our clothes inside for the same reason....and also because laundry left outside had a tendancy to go wandering.  

But here......here at Hippy, Womble, Big Bamboo City Central.....I feel like I've come to my penultimate clothes hanging mecca.  We've got a range of experiences to call on, and we've learnt a huge amount of respect for water over our years of living in the driest state in the country.  And now that we're living off the grid, we're learning a huge amount of respect for solar power.  So we've found the Nirvana of laundromats in Lismore......with a beautiful helpful couple who are always around to give you coins, and the best cleaning machines that we've ever used, that uses at least partial rainwater collected in tanks and solar power to wash our washing.  And we've got into the habit of storing up our washing, till we run out of clothes, and then doing a huge load of it all in big cycles.

Now you may think this is a mundane subject, and why the hell am I talking about washing, but as always, there's a point.  Ever since I read that anarchist piece that I posted in inspiration, and then went on to read more from that mob, I've been really sitting with how when I make something beautiful, I think about how I can sell it, and how other peoples lives, and images, and movies always seemed better than mine, and about how much of my creative energy I gave to the world and not myself and my family.....

So Currawong and I have been consciously trying to occupy our lives, and make our lives our artwork, and turning our mundane tasks into magic and sacred ritual.  Doing jobs that would be boring in four known walls can be an adventure when you're doing them somewhere else.  And rethinking ways of doing things that have to be done every day, so that you can own them, and make them fun, and turn them into something beyond the ordinary......isn't that what we've tried to collectively do since we decided to walk on two legs?  To find ways and means to transcend our mortal and earthly binds and find something else?  Something exciting?  New?  Walking parallel to the dreary existence?

But perhaps it doesn't have to be taking mushrooms and trance trips and all the other indigenous intoxicants, or gods or deities or big universal cycles.  Maybe it can just be through unweaving and reweaving the ways that we do things, and finding those magics and metaphors in even the simplest tasks.  Realising that every single chore, and odorous task, and misfortune, and simple detail can be unravelled and twisted and turned into just about any kind of creation that you could think of.  With metaphors and multi meanings and layers to explore.

Take washing dishes for example.  Nobody really loves doing dishes, except for my mother who's a masochist.  And even though she says she does, she doesn't deep down.  Some people have made a resigned deal with dishes, and they know they have to be done and take pride in the fact they can do it without hassle, but most of us find something about the chore onerous.   I have had moments in my life when I've made a connection with dishes before, like in this piece ( It's in the excerpt from 'Balthazar and Nimue - A Love Story' at the end) I wrote years ago, but I have to say there's been no major love lost between me and the doing of dishes.

And I never would have thought that I'd be telling you I love doing them now.  But I do.  We've built a washing station that is cute and bamboo and made by us, and in true Womble fashion.  We've picked up a lot of good ideas in our travels around the traps, and we finally got a chance to explore them.  There's bamboo holders for the cutlery.  And enough racks and storage around where the dishes are done, that nobody ever has to dry or put away a dish ever again.  Unless they want to of course.  

We're still draining the sink into buckets that we empty, and we're working on the fridge (you're gonna love that one), but we're well on the way.  But beyond that, I love doing the dishes now.  I've never liked drying and putting away, or finding places to stack clean dishes, and now with my little washing station it's actually a joy.  Everything has it's place.  And it's like doing a great big puzzle with groovy places to put the pieces.  Dirty dishes enter the sink and bubbling water, and exit onto wrapped wire around a bamboo pole, and dishracks, and handmade wire hooks for the frypans and saucepans, and places where everything can go, to dry in its own time, and be easily reached by short arms.  I even got myself a range of plastic gloves, from orange scented to sustainable rubber, and a dish mop (always wanted one for some reason), and special scourers and cloths and brushes.  That are all placed in the hollow ends of bamboo poles or strung about in some kind of creative way.  I've got 'plans' (I always think of Lister talking about his 'plans' for Fiji on Red Dwarf when I say that) for the kitchen, that largely rely on it drying first, and then wrapping it, but I want to add some more little shelves, and turn the twisted wire for the cups into really solid cup dryers, where the cups can sit upside down, and then wrap the wire with green wool and maybe even add some leaves to turn it into the cup vine.  

Our life is the canvas, and we choose to paint and dream and play and turn everything into learning and a game like the kids do.  They have far more to teach us than we could ever teach them.  And they're very impressed with me for solving the dish dilemma that we've all been having for years.  Some of you will have a good idea about how many ways washing, drying and putting away can be turned into a million different degrees and arguments and discussions and bargains and aversions. 

But back to my washing, which is the point of this post afterall.  Yesterday I dealt with the mother lode.  With my Ectopic experience, and the ramifications of my last post about our market in SA resulting in an offer to help out with the Nimbin Market, and starting the religion that we've been talking about for years, as a means to empower ourselves as home learners, and create a movement for social change, equality between belief systems, and Humanimal sovereignty, using the vehicle of religion so as to protect it in it's birth..............we've kind of let the washing get on top of us.  There were not one, or two, or even four or five, but SEVEN LARGE LOADS OF WASHING that needed to be hung up.  And I nailed them.

And like many other hunters of one kind or another, I got a photo taken with my trophy.  Cause I've got to tell you now, that this amount of washing would have really overwhelmed me until recently.  And I would have been really grumpy while I was doing it.  I had to really use my combined skills and experiences to let it be a journey.  To hunt for the deeper experience. To face overwhelm with love.

But this whole thing I'm talking about.  This taking of the jobs and tasks that make up family life, and observing them, and streamlining them, and playing with them, and seeing them for the sacred tasks they are to clothe us in love, and feed us and our souls, and make our life interesting and full of potential lessons to learn.  It doesn't always work that way, and I still have a yell at times and growl and frown and wish I wasn't doing it, but sometimes it's actually a joy.  A yarn.  A story.  A metaphor.  And I can't help but think that these are the things that we are here to do.  These are the tasks and journeys and routines and requirements for our lives to run smoothly and comfortably.  We've been doing them for millenia in all sorts of different ways, using different materials and procedures......but they're still the things that run along in our lives, alongside the huge stories and life events and cataclysmic fates, they're the cogs that keep our wheels running.

So I spent the day in gentle washing contemplation, with the mother lode of full baskets, and I used all the little ways I've worked out since building our verandah, to dry out all our clothes.  I even had to rig up some other lines, to fit it all and still leave room for some view.

Nicely hidden behind the drums so as not to obscure the view......

And I even got Currawong to take some photos in a 'hail the conquering heroine' kinda way.  With my washing.  That I enjoyed sorting out into pants and tops and the rest of it, and setting out in ways that we could walk around and still get views, and using all my tools at hand to get a nice and family friendly spread.

If there was ever an award for hanging masses of washing happily and creatively....I reckon I should get it.  Or maybe I just made it by creating this post?