tis done!Thanks to Victoria's fantastic hints and a punch card thingy that I couldn't do without, I finished my first x-stitch! I have a new-found admiration for x-stitchers contemporary and ancient - it's quite a mind-boggling feat getting all those x's in the right spot, and this is only tiny!

Woolly bits

Hmm I was planning to turn these

into lots of tiny balls of yarn to send out more wax packages to people, but I ended up putting more bits on this thingy. Goodness knows what it is, but it is a welcome relief from the intensity of x-stitching!Looks like it's time to bring the washing in too!

Waxing and waning

I have been doing a visual arts research project for the past year, looking at story; community; memory and imagination. It compares participants’ responses, looking for similarities, differences and/or patterns. I'm interested in how objects, and our bodies are repositories for cultural and personal memory, and in how these "stories" are passed on inter-generationally in a non-verbal way. Anyway, it all started when I discovered some relatives from way back who were 18thC & 19thC female Cornish tin miners-Bal maidens, then went via a history of poppets, studies of holding environment and play theory , memes, women's work (and many other divergences) and I'm now sending out lots of these cast wax objects,




which I hand-make..........



at home,


to female friends, relatives and acquaintances.



I have about 25 of them out there at the moment, and many more to make. I have been absolutely blown away by the response I am getting from the participants in the project. It's been fantastic, and such a lot of fun to "deliver" the objects to people and await their return. People are so generous with their time it has really touched me. I was over the moon to find out that one of the participants was even blogging about her experiences and it has inspired me to do this blog. I would love to post a photo of all the returned objects, -they look great- but I shall have to contain myself and wait till they are all back.

Fridays

Fridays I facilitate an art workshop at Pioneer Clubhouse in Balgowlah, which is not far from where I live. We hang out, make art and sometimes play some music too. Today I took my artist friend Rebecca along to check it out. She has a show on in Sydney at the moment. It was really lovely to have another artist along, I hope we can do it again.

We ended up doing sketches of a couple of nice green pears, and also of some of these guys:

who normally live on my desk in my studio. We also decided to work towards an exhibition at the new Insideout Gallery at North Ryde. Oh and I did some more X-stitch. My eyes are sore!