Zines From The Heart

 For the last two months I've been facilitating Zine making workshops with two groups of adults from Prahran Mission and Sacred Heart rooming house as part of a workshop series for Where The Heart Is 2012 festival. The festival happens once a year at the Edinburgh Gardens, and is for people experiencing homelessness and social isolation. Last Friday we celebrated the beautiful artwork created by participants which you can see below.

The festival is one of my favorite days in the year and is a true coming together of community hearts, minds and souls. It was an honour to be present to the unfolding of creation that happened in the art room each week. The participants shared thoughts and experiences from their lives full of wisdom and humour, and as one festival goer said, 'these books should be given to our polititians to read!'

There was something special in the making of art that is both personal and small. The big picture contained within something you can hold in your hand. Zine making allowed each participant to self publish what is important within their own lives and to have their voices heard.  Here are some pictures of the Zines in progress.

A fold out coffee table book that the reader can arrange freshly each day. The images and drawings trace the artist's path to the art room from her home.

 Poetry and drawing, offered as a notebook. Each flower has its own personality and sensitivity.

Unbound....

And bound... A tiny book of words that offer wisdom and strength.

For me, the best part of showing the works at the festival was being able to sit inside the space we created with the artists involved in the program. As festival goers entered the installation, they had the opportunity to meet the artists. The artists delighted in seeing people moved by their art, and together we told the story of creating the show.

The installation structure was made from flags hand painted by participants from previous programs, and this inspired an invitation to catch up again with the beautiful souls who made them. I feel immense gratitude to all the participants of this year's program, for their commitment, openess to possibility (and to me entering their space!), the honesty and integrity that they have imbued their works with. Yay for art to bring us all together! 

Exquistely Coming Home

A family...



I recently returned from a trip to spend time with my family in Hawaii and California, where I was born and spent the first years of my childhood.... It takes some time to land after travelling. I'm going to post a more personal blog here, as I'm sure this experience is something I share with many others.

After two weeks it still felt my soul was trailing strings that longed to reconnect with the land, people, experiences and my own childhood left behind.

We arrived in Fryerstown to stormy weather and given that the road to town was washed away in the last rain, it seemed like the perfect time to stay in and try to make something of this experience - to help process, digest, remember, say thank you to, hold close and then let go of.

Any good creative process in my home begins with a big pot of tea. And then a hunt amongst the boxes of materials in the studio.



Using a cut up bicycle inner tube as a base, I began to weave these travel stories together, wrappng coloured wool, shells and beach glass collected on the trip. It began to remind me of layers of earth or the rings on an old tree.



This technique is really easy. You just literally wrap coloured string around anything you can coil into a rope (like bike inner tubes, old rags and cloth, grasses etc). And then you coil the rope you've made by turning it into a spiral and sewing it into place. The stiches you can use are all easy and can be googled. This piece uses a combination of techniques learned from my dear friend and fellow inspirer Trace, a group of lovely women I worked with from Uganda, and sitting with some Pitjantjatjara elders under a tree....as well as my own experimentation. I love learning things from special people in my life! It makes it fun to continue to practice on my own.



making the 'rope'



the finished piece

So I just sat and added coils and drank pots of tea all day until I felt enough was in the work. It feels comforting to have it inside my home. And it now feels good to be home, to feel this earth beneath my feet, to smell the wet forest, and for my ears to be entranced by the calls of the animals here. Like the mole cricket, for example, which is reknowned for creating a chamber inside the earth that resonates its call exquisitely.

Here are some images of the places that inspired me in making the piece, and which I can still hear calling from inside it. I like to think I have made them a nice chamber :)

Art Adventures

On a sunny day, I walked with six friends into a forest near our house. My ever inspiring friend, Ilan Abrahams, and I provided movement, writing and art making facilitation. But this group did not require much encouragement to support itself through the creating.

Here are some of the works we made, using just the materials gathered from the forest and our own bodies.






Everyone created something different. Some works delved deeply into significant life issues, some expressed a personal spiritual connection, and others were inspired playfully by the environment.

I left the forest with a profound sense of connection to the land close to our house (now further imbued with sacred stories and personal histories,) and I carried in my heart the joyful experience of sharing and co-creating something magic between friends. Gratitude.

Hopefully, this is the first of many art adventures!



A week later my partner and I travelled to the Otways to spend some time with wonderful friends, the vast ocean and an ancient rainforest. We made a lot of art on the shore here too.







My favorite aspect of making on the beach is the immediacy, as it is never long before the tide returns to reclaim it all again...and create space for new inspirations!

I'm going to share a text which I received on New Year's Day which I thought fits this ramble just perfectly "...we begin again through the middle..." (Deleuze)



Happy New Year everyone!

Creative Picnics and Pots of Tea

This day really began the eve before. My partner and I took ourselves on a river picnic to get the creative juices flowing. We were blessed by a visit from a little friend along the way.

This morning I woke up with a good idea. There is a pile of sketches in the corner of my studio that seems to multiply day by day. I can't find a place for them and yet can't bring my self to throw them away. I decided it was time for transformative action!

Anyone who knows me also knows that I like to drink a lot of tea. It keeps the creative juices flowing. A pot of tea, like creativity, is best shared with another and so I invited a dear friend to join me in making. Several pots later, we had made many paper beads out of the sketches. These beads are fun and very relaxing to make by tearing the paper in strips, wrapping them round the end of a paint brush or knitting needle and sealing it with glue.

I added words on some of them to tell a story. Now I can wear my drawings and carry with me the intentions, conversations and fun experiences I had in making them.

An afternoon's muse

Being in flux....feeling those parts in life that are constantly changing, and those that are always moving but shifting so slowly the movement is barely perceivable. Feeling the way in which these aspects of life move together, like in a dance.

This is a piece I am working on as I muse, made from leaves, seeds, rocks, flowers, earth and cut up images from around my home.



This morning I listened to a beautiful talk by Jaya Ashmore. It begins with this poem by Chinese poet Zi yi.

All night I could not sleep
because of the moonlight on my bed.
I kept hearing a voice calling.
Out of nowhere
Nothing answered,
Yes.

I really resonated with this poem and with Jaya's thoughts about this poem. Among many points in her talk she suggests Zi yi is speaking about tuning into what the most subtle voice inside of you has been saying all along. Lying sleepless in that still moonlight is about listening to that Something beyond comprehension that pulls you quietly away from habitual life. Allowing oneself to be carried by what can't be easily grasped. Resting in this support we can feel such a vivid sense of our potential for transformation. I'll be enjoying musing over this today...

Inter-generational arts in the lounge room

Part of bringing creativity more into my daily life is about what grows in the front garden. This is how it started....

...And 6 months later we are growing tomatoes, melon, corn, beans, capsicum, pumpkin, cucumber, carrots, silverbeet, strawberries and herbs! We wanted to make some home made baskets to grow hanging plants so we enlisted the help of my partner's mum, who is a guru of traditional craft skills. This has turned out to be a beautiful project to share together, and is rapidly leading to a regular arts day in her lounge room every Sunday.

Here is the first basket I have started with her...

Basket beginnings...

Growing...

Experimenting...


And still experimenting with finishing off...Think it needs another trip to the guru!

What is special about this story, is that this project has a certain therapeutic benefit for all of us involved. My partner's mum had stopped making a lot of these things for a long time, and our enthusiasm to learn has ignited her fire again too. It is wonderful to learn from her and to spend time chatting about life and art together. Art making, I find, has an intrinsic quality of being able to bring people together. Yay. I'm inspired!

Becoming a craftess

I've been enjoying getting crafty with recycled materials since moving to the country. This was my first go at making a soft toy. I'd been feeling an urge to learn some more traditional skills (including sewing!) to incorporate into my art practice for some time....So I took myself to a Soul Doll making class, facilitated by the wonderful Trace Balla....and now I am hooked!

These dolls are ones I have been making for a while from sticks on the property, wire, yarn and loved garments. When I want to invite a quality or aspect of something great into my life, I often make a doll around it....The intention works! I like to place a special object inside the doll's body that can't be seen from the outside, which is symbolic of the quality I am thinking about at the time.


My first sculptural basket making experiment using willow gathered from the local creek and recycled string and wire made in Trace's workshop.... The fun of collecting materials on a long walk through nature is half the fun.