Category: Botanicals

are we ok ?

20/10/2020

down by the creek

Porokaiwhiri, pigeonwood, Hedycarya arborea flowers (male) heavenly scented

Mouku, hen & chickens fern, Asplenium bulbiferum

Pīwakawaka on her newly built nest

creating with materials that you grow or gather means you slow down
you work with the seasons
you wait, you watch & you listen

the more you wait the more patient you become
the more you watch the more you see
and the more you listen the more your world will tell you

it is profound

and on those days when the world seems so fucked up i want to scream
i walk in amongst our trees & know that our little world is doing ok
which means i’m ok too

Shades of Place - A Colour Meditation

16/6/2020

Shades of Place - A Colour Meditation
2019

Experimenting with dyes made from NZ native botanicals I discovered that dyebaths and inks made from individual plants will often have their own particular colour which we have come to regard as a portrait of that specific plant.

The fibre for each embroidery is muka which has been dyed with the colour obtained from a single plant.
I have chosen a different embroidery stitch pattern for each circle to showcase the colour.

Muka dyed with Harakeke seed pods, Tānekaha leaves & stems, Kawakawa leaves & Stems, Pūriri sawdust, cotton fabric

exploring the colours of a single plant

grown in a particular location

not to find the similarities

but to celebrate the differences

Pare Kawakawa : Navigating Grief

22/5/2020

It's 12 months since I finished Pare Kawakawa & as Puanga/Matariki draws near it seems appropriate to reflect & share.
I've never been able to write about this work here & yet I have shared it elsewhere.
It hung in our LTTL exhibition last year & it's in a book !
I dunno.
Sometimes these things are just too close.

Pare Kawakawa is in the studio with me.
It keeps me company.
It sits adjacent to the high south facing window & through the window I can see the sky.
A sky just like any other day.

this is what I wrote in May 2019 when I completed Pare Kawakawa & submitted it for consideration for publication.

‘Pare Kawawa: Navigating Grief’ is a kawakawa leaf monoprint which has been appliqued on to a fabric background & embellished with embroidery.
The materials used are cotton fabric, cotton thread & textile paints.
It is a new work which came about because I wanted to articulate the impact that the shootings & subsequent deaths of the 51 people in the mosques in Christchurch has had, & continues to have, on our nation &, of course, it has become a way for me to process my own grief.
New Zealand is a small nation & to lose 51 people in this way is incomprehensible.
When I realised I knew one of the 51 my already broken heart felt like it might explode.

I wanted this work to remember them, to represent the 51 people who have died.
I wanted the work to be quiet, to be gentle but not fragile.
I wanted it to be light; to suggest the time & the light that comes after the heavy darkness of death.
The moment when things shift, spirits lift, time expands, stretches to infinity & the mind can quieten so that the heart can remember.

And, above all else, I wanted it to be beautiful.

I have found it impossible to write about & very difficult to talk about it.
There seem to be too many words, too many stories & I find the words & the stories become chaotic when I try to write them down.
My thoughts become cluttered & disorderly.
The sheer volume of words becomes as unbearable as the grief.

When I sit & stitch I don’t question. My choices are clear & instinctive.
I simply make one stitch at a time.
I intuitively know what to do.
I trust the process & my heart guides me.
My mind is free to wander & when the tears come I pause to let them fall.
It will be nice when I am able to stop crying . . . but it seems that it won’t be today.

Pare Kawakawa has been included in an anthology 'Grief Become You - a narrative of loss' edited by Maya Stein & published in December 2019

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Shades of Place - A Colour Meditation

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