A New World

Well, here I am and so much has changed since I last wrote a post here.......a lot of the world's population is in lockdown or semi-lockdown as countries try to stem the spread of this insidious COVID 19 virus. I've pretty much been just staying home, with brief forays to get essentials. I'm trying hard not to be a hoarder, because as we've seen in recent weeks, the hoarding causes problems for older and disabled people who cannot get to shops as easily as the rest of us. We've all witnessed terrible scenes of grown people fighting over toilet paper!

So what has changed for me? Not too much, actually, as I work from home and I like to cook rather than eat out........the biggest change is that both the band and the orchestra I play in have suspended activity for the forseeable future. So only solo playing for now, but plenty of practice time!

The other big change is that my resident grand-daughter is working from home for the time being. She's lucky that her job is one where that can be quite easily done (though it took a few days to get the tech glitches ironed out) At least she still has a job - it's just terrible to see tens of thousands thrown out of work on one day because suddenly restaurants, cafes, cinemas, theatres, hotels, any tourist venture etc etc have no patrons and have to lay off staff. I can't imagine where or when this is all going to end. Here in Australia, the inexorable trend of virus spread is still very much up and in the USA things are starting to look, frankly, quite frightening.

It's quite interesting to me to learn what people are impelled to do when confronted with an unknown and uncontrollable threat - it seems in some, the instinct is to hoard toilet paper or beer, but my first impulse was to dig more garden and plant what I could at this time of year. That's a bit limited as we creep towards winter, but there is always stuff that will grow. I don't usually bother too much with a winter garden, but this year I'm determined! So I've been digging, weeding fertilizing and mulching - hard yakka - but the exercise is good and productive. I'm making plans for how to enlarge the growing space even more, despite the fact that I only have a smallish suburban back yard.
Here's two days' work, with more to come when I pull out the remains of the spent summer vegetables. The wire cages are to prevent tha blackbirds from scratching out my silverbeet, Japanese spinach and bok choy seedlings. I've also planted broad beans, beetroot and coriander. I'm still getting tomatoes, cucumbers and zucchinis and digging over the patch yielded quite a few escapee spuds.

Anyway, all this digging time allows for plenty of thinking and the conclusion I've come to is that the whole of this Western capitalist system, where accumulation of wealth is god, is built upon a fragile, tottering pile of shards and it doesn't take very much to bring it all crashing down, As it has. As was bound to happen. An invisible virus - enough to bring the world to its very knees. I am reminded of how, fewer than twenty years ago, the country that is the supposed "leader of the free world" was similarly brought to its knees by the smuggling of a few box cutters onto a few planes.  It doesn't take much, does it?

I wonder whether we'll be more considerate and caring after we come out of the other side of this, whenever that might be, or whether we'll just slip back into our old ways of trying to accumulate ever more money and stuff and not give too much of a damn about how we are destroying the very planet that nurtures us. I hope the latter is not the case. 

I hope we emerge with a different mind-set, but I have my doubts.

In the meantime, here's a doll I've completed in recent days. No prize for guessing her identity!

Please look after yourselves, keep washing your hands and stay away from crowds. That's what I'll be doing.

It's been a long time!

It's been way too long since I last wrote here on my blog. The noise and shallow chatter of Facebook seems to get in the way of the writing of more considered posts here on my blog. I have therefore resolved to make sure I post at least weekly, as I used to, because I find I can express myself more clearly when I'm not dashing off a quick FB post or reacting to some political rubbish that I probably shouldn't even bother with. It's such a waste of time and effort! Even if nobody ever looks at my posts, I still enjoy blogging.

At the moment I am in a mad dash to the line to get the last pieces completed for the "IMAGES" exhibition in Hobart (Long Gallery in Salamanca Place) It opens at 8 am on December 19th for any of you based in the South of the state and inclined for an early morning art experience........and CHAMPAGNE!

Here's a sneak peek at some of my pieces for that show....

Assembling the Unassembled

When I start a mixed media assemblage piece, I usually start with a rough sketch with just enough information so that I don't lose the idea, because sometimes it takes me a while to get around to actually making it. Here is the sketch for my latest piece: "Artemisia's Chest #2"

 

I then start assembling all the pieces I need to make the piece - a combination of found objects and sculpted parts, usually. I play around with these bits and pieces before committing to the final arrangement.

 

It is then a process of permanently joining all the parts together into a cohesive whole. Usually, because there is a great disparity between the materials, I use layers of colour to harmonize everything and make it look like it all actually belongs together!

 

 In this piece, I sculpted one foot, two hands and a head. I made a stiffened felt conical hat and everything else was found: empty silkworm cocoons, fabrics, driftwood, rusted, flattened hose wrapping, a tiny jar, snake bones, a pulley, a box and some plywood.........a whole bunch of very discrete things pulled together into a cohesive whole. I have been fascinated by some of the interesting feedback I have had about this piece - some see it as a statement about lost childhood, which is something that had not entered my mind! Mostly, I work fairly intuitively when I'm making something like this.....I like meaning to be hinted at, but not spelled out. After all, those looking at it have to do SOME work!

The doors are hinged, so the cam be closed.

 

Little Garments

Before I sent off my Izannah Walker 200th birthday celebration doll to her new owner, I decided to give her a "second skin" body covering, similar to what the originals had. 
I think I've worked out why Izannah Walker gave her dolls this second skin - it was to cover up where she'd accidentally splashed paint on the doll's fabric body. Maybe. Or not.

Anyway, that meant I had to undress the doll in order to fit the second skin. That presented an opportunity to take a photo of all the garments the doll is wearing: drawers, petticoat, dress, jacket and bonnet. I'm not counting the boots, because they are sculpted directly onto her feet and are not removable...........she is destined to forever sleeping in her boots!

When I make a doll like this, the genesis of which is in the "play-doll" form, I make the clothes like miniature versions of full-sized garments, with proper fastenings and closures, so they are easy to remove. 

Here she is before her second skin was added, with all her garments laid out.

Recent Work and a Knitted Elephant Obssession

 

A jointed cloth doll dressed in peasant style with and embroidered waistcoat.

 

 A little boy with a hobby-horse

 

Experimenting with new design.......a-a-a-a-nd!

KNITTED ELEPHANTS! I needed to write down my original pattern, which was stored in my head, so I had to knit a few more of these and take pictures. I now have a downloadable pattern available in my Etsy store

 

 

 

 

Hester Mae

 This little girl was made in response to a number of requests I've had to make information available on the painting of darker skin tones. As a result I've created a downloadable tutorial that is an adjunct to my "Painting Faces For Doll-makers"  PDF. Both are available as an instant download in my Etsy store 
( http://www.susiemcmahon.etsy.com )
I photographed "Hester Mae" throughout the process of painting her:

She's a sweet child waiting patiently for her finishing touches.

A Foray Into Zebradom

It's amazing how a very small thing can trigger an entire body of work, or an artistic detour.......for me it was this birthday card ("Baby and Zebras" designed by Suzan Visser for Edition inkognito) given to me recently by one of my sisters:

 I love zebra patterning, but what triggered something and set the thinking-wheels in motion was the tiny child on the zebra's back. A series of anthropomorphic animals! The first would be a zebra: here is the planning drawing and the head I made for it:

 

I made a cloth body with hip knee and shoulder joints - it needed to be as well-made as I could make it, as the doll would be unclothed and the fabric body would be on show, albeit with a striped livery that might disguise a few flaws! Here is the doll assembled before painting:

 

Then I went to town painting the stripes - that was fun! I used lots of zebra pictures as references and made a bit of it up as I went along. I cut a slit in the top and the back of the head to insert alternate pieces of black and white fur fabric for the mane......I never realized before that a zebra's mane follows the stripes in colouration.

 

 

 

I'm planning a fox next.

 

 

 

Dark Twin........

A foil for........

"Smallwings" is "Dark Twin"

The overlapping writing on her lower body consists of a number of poems, becoming more illegible the more they overlap. The following pictures show "Dark Twin" as a work-in-progress.