A Road Less Travelled............

I haven't written a post here for a while..........making big adjustments in my life and getting used to a new way of being. And licking my wounds a bit.
But I have been working in my studio and making plans for the future (more about that in a future post, but it IS exciting!) And I have been clocking up a lot of miles on my bike. The weather has been so settled and beautiful for the time of year that it is a pity not to be out in it when the sun is shining and the air is clear and exhilarating.
Here's a new piece I'm working on - still plenty to do, but I'm pretty sure about where this is going.

And here are a few pictures of my beautiful part of the world in the middle of winter, as seen from the saddle of a bicycle.

Fungal Musings

It's the time of year when these glorious red-topped fly agaric (amanita muscaria) toadstools pop up under the pine trees.

They make rather wonderful props for a bit of creative photography:

This one was so perfect in form it almost didn't look real! To give an idea of scale, the little needle-felted hedgehog is around three inches (7 cms) tall.

he liked the view from the top.

......and had some fun with a little elfin friend!

Tansey insisted on giving it a try as well.........it made a fine little stool for her!

A Day At A Time

When something truly  momentous happens in your life, it takes time, lots of time, to regain your footing, to right the boat, to find the path again (or whatever metaphor you'd like to use).
Just taking each day as it comes seems to help.
Music - that most existential of activities - is also helpful. No matter how bad you are feeling, a few minutes of making music will invariably make you feel a whole lot better. As will doing something quite physical every day - I've been cycling a whole lot.
My friends with the olive grove gave me a bucket of olives to pickle......here are three of nine jars. they are "maturing" in their pickle baths and I can't wait to test them in a month's time! Hope they taste as good as they look.

After the flurry of activity making the recycled/trash sculpture I blogged about in my last post, studio time has been a little sporadic. But I'm feeling more like getting back into a normal work routine every day. Here's a little doll I finished a few days ago......her name is "Tansey Meadowsweet".

In the early morning after my Bob's funeral, I took a photo of the full moon......here's one of the "month after" full moon. It looks an odd shape.....I think I may have moved the camera a little........it is what it is!

Ordinary Things.........

Ordinary things..........like cleaning out the poly-tunnel greenhouse ready for some winter plantings and finding jalapenos, which I pickled:

.........and some bushes of ripe chilies, which I threaded onto string to dry.

.......and being given some freshly-picked olives to pickle:

Ordinary things like a trick of the light which limns an ordinary object into a thing of beauty:

Ordinary things are a balm to a wounded soul.

Into The Mystic

For Bob.

We were born before the wind
Also younger than the sun
Ere the bonnie boat was won, as we sailed into the mystic.
Hark now hear the sailor's cry
Smell the sea and feel the sky
Let your soul and spirit fly into the mystic.

And when that fog horn blows I will be coming home.
And when that fog horn blows I want to hear it,
I don't have to fear it.
I want to rock your gypsy soul
Just like way back in the days of old,
Then magnificently we will float into the mystic.
And when that fog horn blows you know I will be coming home.
And when that fog horn whistle blows, I gotta hear it,
I don't have to fear it.
I want to rock your gypsy soul
Just like way back in the days of old,
And together we will float  into the mystic
Come on girl..........

Van Morrison

"Demeter" - about 60 cms high. Made entirely from recycled/trash materials, except for a bit of paint and glue. The sculpted parts are made from a matrix of sawdust and glue with some shredded paper pulp added to prevent cracking. They were formed over a core of crushed newspaper, which was later removed. The column is made from some scrap timber pieces laminated together, with a patina created from used tea-bag papers embedded in gel medium. the pieces of limb wood were picked up in the garden and they are glued and then lashed onto the sides of the column  with recycled string.

Moving on...........

Life will be very different from now on........so many plans cut short - the things we were going to do together - travelling, growing stuff, talking about things - just the everyday companionable things are now simply gone from my life.
But I need to move on, pick up what pieces I can and carry on doing the things that I love to do. In time, I hope I can delight in them again. Let me share with you a poem by Bob's favourite poet W.B. Yeats. He first read this to me when I was a starry-eyed sixteen-year-old and smitten with this enigmatic, beautiful man, who was all of eighteen.

                                He Wishes For the Cloths Of Heaven

                                Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
                                Enwrought with golden and silver light,
                                The blue and the dim and the dark cloths 
                                Of night and light and the half-light,
                                I would spread the cloths under your feet:
                                But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
                                I have spread my dreams under your feet;
                               Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

I'm starting to spend a little time in my studio as I feel able and as dealing with the practicalities of winding up an estate allow - it is good to be able to start creating again. 

This little one is finished now and I'm working on a larger piece for an exhibition in June.....will post a wip pictures when I have something to show. It is a piece of sculpture, not a doll.

Bob

This is the most difficult thing I will ever write on this blog, but I feel a very strong need to do it.

Last week, my best friend, my soul-mate, my constant companion for 44 years, my husband Bob died suddenly and unexpectedly in his sleep. We first met when I was sixteen and he was eighteen in 1969. I had just started study at the Tasmanian School of Art and he was that quixotic, passionate, articulate second year student who had me immediately transfixed. Someone said of him a day or two ago that "the air around him was electric". So true. People were drawn to him. We were married in 1971; still kids really. We went on to have two children and now five grand-children, to whom he was beloved "Papa". Being married to Bob was a mad, wonderful, glorious wild ride......never a dull moment!

He taught me so many things - without him I would be nothing like the person I am today. He gave me a deep and abiding love for literature, art, wine and people, but most of all he shared with me his love of wild, unspoiled places. He was always supportive of all the things I did - my art and music and I know he was proud of me.

With Lyle Closs at Big Gun Pass, 1976

Bob  was a writer, a photographer, an artist, an avid reader and lover of ideas. His intellect was incisive and he could argue under wet concrete (much to the chagrin of a few of the politicians etc that he clashed horns with in later years). As a rock-climber he seems to have achieved the status of "legend".

Below the cliffs on Ben Lomond

He was a Art teacher, much beloved by so many of his former students, quite a few of whom went on to become successful. It is a measure of this man that some of the very many people, he touched in some way are coming from, England, from Shanghai, from all parts of Australia to farewell him on Friday. Among them are climbers, ex-students, artists, politicians and some very dear friends.

2006 saw him reluctantly drawn into a political bunfight over a proposal to build a pulp mill in our beautiful valley. Bob was so struck by the injustice of allowing such a chemical monster to blight our valley without properly assessing the consequences, that he fought doggedly to make sure it didn't happen. Because he was so articulate, he became the media "go-to" person. When the phone would ring at 6 am for an early interview, he would open his eyes and start to make sense before he was even properly awake, such was his grasp on the issues. Sometimes the phone would still be ringing at 10 pm. And when others around him were dithering and vacillating and turning wishy-washy, he remained steadfast and unwavering. He was a true inspiration. To date, there is no pulp mill and the possibility of there ever being one in our valley seems remote.

Bob loved good food, excellent wine and  intelligent conversation with dear friends around the dinner table. He was immensely proud of the fact that we could provide an excellent meal most of which came straight out of our garden.

In the summer, I will be scattering Bob's ashes from the top of the cliffs he loved so much, so he can blow around there for eternity and be at one with his mountain.

So, my best friend, my love.......go well. Your mountains are calling you home.