Settlement and fragments

On Wednesday I was taken to a marvellous exhibition at the QUT gallery that is really worth a wander through should you work near there or be in the general vicinity. It is by a Phillipino husband and wife team, Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan and was made with many collaborators including their five children and various community groups.
This show,"Fragments- Another Country",  has it all, my people. There is crochet, vintage everything, handmade objects, recycling, clutter and culling and a great deal of thought provoking loveliness.
It is about the ordeal of relocation and  immigration and what we humans think is important enough that we would keep in our  lives should we have to choose.

One room was filled with walls of intricately made aeroplanes all made using recycled and found objects like the rest f the exhibition.

The boys I went with were most taken with this lairy modded bus/car.

 These cupboards are made from a rare kind of oak only found in Queensland but packed with every imaginable bit of ephemera from the owners' past lives in the Phillipines. One boy pointed out a Sarah Vaughan CD. I was impressed that a fourteen year old even new who Sarah Vaughan was!

Then there was a colossal sculpture reminiscent of a ship or the barricade from Les Mis.

It filled an entire room with struts and sails made of crocheted rugs and vintage knitting needles. Yes! Vintage knitting needles! I was in Heaven, I tell you.

Then there were wonderful assemblages made of old cardboard and twigs. Pull yer socks up there, boys!

At the end we got to make our own special objet that we would choose to keep should we have to give up everything and leave our homes. The boys labelled them with names and where they were from and reasons why that was their chosen item. The twinettes were, as usual, chalk and cheese. One wanted to take his bed so that he could always have a comfortable night's sleep. The other made an abstract lucky charm molecule thing to bring luck in his new home. I made a ring to symbolize my family, because like most of us, that's what I value most.

Then we mailed them on a huge pile of treasures made by all the other visitors.

It gave food for thought about people who have to abandon homes and come here with nothing hoping for new lives and those who are already here and lose everything in sudden catastrophic events like the awful bush fires in New South Wales. May they be safe with their families too.

Remember artistica?

She used to live symbiotically with Domestica in our old farm house on the hill. Seems there is less time than ever for attending to her needs lately, especially in household areas like stool painting and op shop trawling. However one of the perks of the job is that I do get to help making some resources and demonstrating techniques for the students.

A couple of things were finished off recently with some kiln firing, another skill that it was nice to dust off.

 These are the Hermansberg style pots. I'm particularly fond of the bottom on the pink lady. It is comfortingly generous.

I'm sure this has been done before a gazillion times but I found these mud wasp nests just as I was loading the kiln one day. There is still some thought going on what to do with them. I'm thinking pastel underglazes and mounting them in a box frame like tiny Baby Bjorns in a row- which they kind of are when you think about it. (Oh look. There's one of the marbles I lost.)

 Last week my esteemed colleague made these with the boys so I had to have a go too because how can you not? Mine is on the lower left with the unfortunate underbite.

There is a strange pleasure to be had in loading and unloading the kiln. It is the magic of the transformation when things are fired. It never gets old. I just can't wait to open it up and see they have become. It's a bit like the cocoon, wasp nest thing I suppose. Here they are all lined up expectantly facing the yawning maw of the open kiln before being fired.

Speaking of being fired,  the northern mountain was thoroughly roasted the other day. On another gloriously clear warm winter's day, the crispy grass went up like paper straight over the hill. We saw it start behind some houses on the way home from soccer when it was just leaping up a couple of trees. An hour later when we drove back over to Nanna's it had spread across the entire mountain.

 Nature is quite dramatic even in the suburbs in Queensland.