Tag Archives: painted

embroidery and textiles

spontaneous pinboard

the changing weather
There was some spare work for me at the vegetarian takeaway in the mall, so I’ve been busy rousting up a few dollars, and too tired to blog. But I got to stay home today, and what a lovely day it has been! Windy, exhilarating, and everything around me sporting some vivid shade of Beyond Blue.

The household has been a bit neglected for a couple of days, so I started the day by tidying up. When everything on deck had been scrubbed and spiffied, the old kitchen pinboard caught my eye—grotty, grey, riddled with pinholes and spattered with old paint. I figured it’d only take a minute to clean it up, so I spackled the pinholes, sanded it lightly, and rolled three coats of matte ivory house paint on.

Now it resembled a new canvas so strongly that I couldn’t resist pulling out a few pots of paint and daubing big fat flowers, in simple shapes and bright colors, up one side of the pinboard. Shortly after lunch I finished (i.e. restrained myself and left some white space), and the board is back in use.

kitchen pinboard

I dunno…it just makes me happy. The boat needs a splash of color, really…no reason why it should look like a fishing trawler, just because it used to be a fishing trawler. We have done very little nothing to decorate or display art on our boat…it’s ridiculous, when I think of how much we make, and of the many pieces we own that are by other artists. I have only two small square paintings (by Lisa Wolfgramm and Jenni Hall) hanging on the side of a bookshelf (and now Marita’s stuffed Kitty, sharing shelf space with my books,) while Kris has a single framed photograph atop his filing cabinet. And that’s it. Of our paintings, alone, there must be at least fifty, wrapped and stored in the unused engine room. Ridiculous.

Display space is hard to come by on the boat, admittedly…but I’m sure that if I really looked for dead spaces where art could be hung, or our beautiful things put to good use, I would find a fair bit. I started by pulling this large wooden salad bowl—carved from a single block of ebony by a tribal craftsman in Northern Luzon—out of the bilges, and putting my fruits in it. It’s so nice just to be able to rest my eyes on the old thing, again.
kitchen pinboard-2

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embroidery and textiles

all pinked out…

…February, month of despair,
with a skewered heart in the centre.
I think dire thoughts, and lust for French fries
with a splash of vinegar.
Cat, enough of your greedy whining
and your small pink bumhole.
Off my face! You’re the life principle,
more or less, so get going
on a little optimism around here.
Get rid of death. Celebrate increase. Make it be spring…
—excerpt from February by Margaret Atwood

It’s actually been gray and sunless long enough to starve our solar panels, which in turn has left our bank of 12-volt batteries flat. I’m under strict orders not to use my laptop for more than an hour…and only during the ‘day,’ when there is presumably more light in the sky than during the ‘night,’ though some days I can’t tell which way is up, and neither can the sulphur-crested cockatoos, who snooze in the mangroves until something like half-past-eight in the morning. I think hunger probably wakes them up, more than the sun.

I’m happy that my time on the macbook has been curtailed, though I miss the music more than anything—I just got Keith Jarrett‘s spontaneous jazz piano piece Köln, January 24, 1975, Pt. II C before all the weather started, and I haven’t been able to listen to it properly yet! Still, it’s not going anywhere; nice to have something to anticipate hungrily.

I had a brief Valentine’s Day rash, a week back, where I painted up some cases in pink and went wild with the hearts and doilies and lace and poetry and whatnot. Owls, did I really do owls?! I think I’m over it now, thank you, (I AM doing just one more, for my friend Miss Hurro Kitty, because she said pretty please) feeling much more like myself again…don’t know what came over me.

But it was a good rash, because I sold the first two of these journals right away, there’s just the last one left…it started with the needle in the upper left corner of the back cover, and before I knew what was happening, I’d added in a whole bunch of needleworking accessories. So it has become A Valentine for an Embroiderer (or Needlewoman, at any rate)

Day? Night? Dude (aka Pink Bumhole) doesn’t care…it’s all just “weather for sleeping” to him. He’s found a new spot this week, too…next to the flat 12-volt batteries.

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bookbinding, paints and pens, stuff i've made

book 891

…her granddaughter gigs with Fire ’n
Ice, a skinhead punk-grunge group that performs in sheer
black nighties and clown wigs—she plays mean electric hygrometer
in the first set and then, for a twofer,

(very American, that) plays paper-and-comb. Far
out. She’s so fluent in various World Wide Webbery that nitrogen
in a thousand different inflections is her birthright, and almost any translation,
mind to mind, gender to gender, is second nature. “I earn
my keep, I party, I sleep” is her motto….

excerpt from “Sestina: As There Are Support Groups, There Are Support Words” by Albert Goldbarth

A new journal, finished today.

Covers are hand-painted in acrylics. Flat-back, case-bound, with headband. Closure is a neodymium magnet in the hand-stitched tab, and a thin piece of steel (mosquito coil holder ;) ) recess-mounted in the front cover board.

Dimensions are W 12cm. x H 17 cm. x D 4cm. Textblock is 200 leaves (400 pages) of Edición 110 gsm in avorio (ivory), endpapers are in aubergine.

Hey, this is the very first item to appear in my shop! Quite nervous about this whole selling online thing…there’s so much to learn and read up on, I’m feeling overwhelmed. How the hell do others do it?

Nothing else to say for the moment…I’m in my making zone and nothing else matters right now. What are you hanging around for?

Go! Make something beautiful…it is later than you think.

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