Time to turn inwards

The wind has bought the cold and I am feeling the draw of the inside rather than the lure of the outdoors. Quick trips to do chores and hastily harvest planned dye bath materials have become the pattern, rushing back inside before the next sheets of rain drive across the garden and onto the decks. Always, inside the fire is constant and the pots are happily holding their magic ingredients. Such a lucky place to be. 

I will be leading botanical dying workshops next autumn that will focus on our particular native plants around Ōpunakē some of which I have never used before. So I rushed to harvest the seed pods from the Harekeke plants that line many parts of my daily dog walks. these pods ripen quite quickly and caste their enormous abundance of seeds far and wide from the long wind tossed shafts of the flower heads. They are magnificent as photographic studies and of course 100% iconic of NZ. The trick for this project was to capture the pods before they did this dispersal. 

close up of the flowers finishing and forming the seed pods

Two different types of Harekeke around my walk. 

I am totally obsessed and in love with these forms and colours. The pods are oily and reflective and the weather here distorts things into curious alignments. If the dogs would allow I would spend hours photographing them. 

Anyway with a back pack stuffed full of these pods before they spilled their seeds I was a happy walker. 

Then came the job of emptying the pods of their goodies. A couple of hours later I had this: 

A big roasting dish full of these luminescent magical seeds. 

Several hours of slow cooking on top of our trusty wood stove yielded a lovely dye colour once the seeds had been strained.

Into this deliciousness went some wool and of course some silk, back onto the wood-stove for an afternoon of gentle slow cooking. 

And was it worth it????

OH YES.

"Return I" 2016

Overview of "Return I"

Detail

Detail

I have a long term delight in the transfer of natural pigment onto papers, fabrics and yarns, by slow methods.  My fascination with the cycles of life and the richness of my geographical location are combined in this series "Return" which uses these dyed materials. I think of the layering of the pigmented filmy tissue papers  and various fabrics as evocative of the painterly method of building layers of colour washes, creating depths in the colour. For me this aligns with natural layering processes where sediments are geologically deposited and then overlaid with finer detritus and plant matter, creating our "earth" - our place in the cosmos. There are no two iterations that are the same, ingredients always subtly altering over space and time. Nothing is geometric or regular, there is a creative organic shape to the outcome of the process. This is what I strive to reference with this series of works. 

Personalitas

With this work fragments and scraps are used to create an icon to the beauty of a common life, lived.
It was created as part of a body of work investigating the paradoxes of society relating to the valuing of the mundane, especially mundane female labour. By using materials that are residues from previous human activity I sought to challenge the viewer's perceptions of 'value' and 'worth', elevating material 'waste' to a place of unquestionable value and worth.

"Personalitas" 2014. 42cm x 36cm. Cotton calico, assorted embroidery floss, padding. 

Personalitas is hand painted and hand embroidered calico. The painting is done with natural pigments and the embroidery done with various hand dyed silk threads. It is a small intimate piece requiring close inspection.  The mounting has the fabric surface proud of the matte board evoking Cameos that were once so popular with women of means. The base painting is a small portion of  handwriting done in natural pigment as part of my diaristic research practice.
(In private collection)






1. www.thefreedictionary.com/cameo

a. A gem or shell carved in relief, especially one in which the raised design and the background consist of layers of contrasting colors.