A SHORT STORY

It seems that I've been busy
Not really...
A lot on my mind 
while I carve and tweak 
small carvings for a special order

I've been keeping a secret ....

but now I can share it with you....

It is a cold dark night 
The heavens open 
and much to my daughter's consternation
we follow the children onto the veranda 
Why are we outside in a blizzard?
J has found a bird nest with babies in it
Come and look
My daughter puts on her happy face 
and goes out into the rain
The nest is in a ticky creeper at eye level 
She peers into the nest
Her face registers shock
My future son in law
drops to his knee 
She says yes

YOUR OWN WAY OF LOOKING AT THINGS

Inner Journey by Robyn Gordon

"In order to accomplish an experience, you have to have a chance to dance with it. You have to have a chance to play, to explore. Then each style of exploration that takes place is a different manifestation, we could say. Nevertheless, it is all part of one big game." -- Chogyam Trungpa

It's a good feeling to be surrounded by my totems again. 
Just before the big clean-up, 
I was sitting quietly
trying to trace back to a time when I didn't feel
that something was missing from my art practice
and it dawned on me 
that I was no longer surrounded by my own art. 
I've been setting my totems free too soon 
and feeling empty without them.

Stillness by Robyn Gordon

There are now three completed pieces watching over me, 
a work in progress nestles on the workbench

and the missing spark has returned.

"Stop thinking about art works as objects, and start thinking about them as triggers for experiences."  -- Brian Eno

Party Girl by Robyn Gordon

When I met my muse  by William Stafford

I glanced at her and took my glasses
off -- they were still singing. They buzzed
like a locust on the coffee table and then
ceased. Her voice belled forth, and the
sunlight bent. I felt the ceiling arch, and
knew that nails up there took a new grip
on whatever they touched. "I am your own
way of looking at things", she said. "When 
you allow me to live with you, every
glance at the world around you will be
a sort of salvation." And I took her hand.

Inner Journey by Robyn Gordon


" .... and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own." 
-- Mary Oliver (from The Journey, here)

"Do you keep your creative work close enough? Is it always available? Keep it so close that when you turn around you run right into it!"  -  Eric Maisel

THE STORY BEHIND MY CARVED TOTEMS

I don't think I've blogged about why I began carving totems but when Kim Schoenberger bravely shared her story a few weeks ago I realized that hearing her story added another dimension to her art.

For years I have been intrigued by the Kenyan vigango or funerary posts which are carved by the Mijikenda to house the spirits of the deceased.

Vigango Commemorative Sculpture of the Mijikenda of Kenya by Ernie Wolfe

When we lost our 16 year old daughter to cancer I looked at these vigango with new interest and thought it would be therapeutic for me to carve one in my own style .... one day. They say that to lose a child or any loved one can have all sorts of repercussions besides the obvious and when my husband also contracted cancer I had a strong feeling that the shock of our daughter's death had been the catalyst. To cut a long story short it took another two years of illness, diagnosis and treatment as well as the death of my mother before some semblance of normalcy began to return to our lives and that was when I decided to fall apart. Subsequently there came a time when I knew I would have to pull myself together or it would be a long climb back.

It was the right time to begin carving my totems.... my vigango. I tentatively began and before even completing the first one I could feel a cloud lifting and I raced on to the next and the next, carving day after day, working through the sadness within me until my "studio" walls were lined with totems. They loomed over my work space like guardians.... messengers .... beacons of hope.


I'm sure that carving these totems kept me sane and I'm still carving them because they symbolize so much for me. I am reminded often that creating art heals and though sometimes it is difficult to actually start something midst the trials of life, when one finally gets moving the joy of the creative process takes over and begins working it's magic.

I found this poem by Lucian Blaga on Tumblr last week ....

In my chest,
a strange voice awakens
and a song plays inside me
a longing that is not mine.

They say that ancestors, dead before their time,

with young blood still in their veins,

with great passion in their blood,

with the sun still burning in their blood

come,

come to continue to live

within us

their unfinished lives.

Such a deep silence surrounds me, that I think I hear

moonbeams striking on the windows......

—Lucian Blaga, translated by MariGoes

INSPIRED BY TRIBAL ART

Kuba skirt at The Hamill Gallery

It all started when Maurice de Vlaminck was given a Fang Mask and he was so awestruck by its "primitive grandeur" that he wanted to show everyone in his art circle. When fellow painter Andre Derain saw it he had to have it, so he bought it from Vlaminck and rushed off to show Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse: Ambroise Vollard then borrowed it and cast it in bronze. Soon everyone was trying to obtain their own pieces of tribal art which began to influence the way they expressed themselves both in painting and sculpture. Thus a new spirit of freedom swept through 20th century art in the Western world.

Shell Cachet-sex from Papua New Guinea

Many artists are inspired by tribal art and I've gathered a few images that intrigue me.

George Peterson designs, carves, burns and paints old skate boards.

Hannes Harrs' mixed media collage made from old African textiles.

The Ngurrara Canvas. 10 Metres x 8 metres. One of the largest and most spectacular Aboriginal paintings of the Great Sandy Desert Region. read story, here.

Spade Sculpture by Roger Lee. See Flickr photostream, here.

Macrame from IRONIC's Flickr photostream.

Wave after wave has brought to our shores beautiful and mysterious treasures from unknown worlds: figurines, animals, fetishes, masks, ceremonial or useful objects. They are called Primitive for want of a better name...What could never have been written is there, all the dreams and anguishes of man. The hunger for food and sex and security, the terrors of night and death, the thirst for life and the hope for survival."- Dominique deMenil, Tribal Arts Spring 1998

Tribal by Rosalie Gascoigne at The Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery

Group of my earliest totems.

THE JUNK COLLECTOR

I love sorting through all the junk I collect to use in my art, though it's not quite as exciting as foraging at flea markets and second hand stores to find it in the first place.

.

"Whether we call it collecting, scavenging, accumulating, scrounging, gathering, or junking, its all about the urge to surround ourselves with our stuff, our loot, our stash, our hoard, our mother lode of treasures, and to reap the inspiration that these sometimes inexplicably iresistible objects provide."

" Whether the collected objects are actually used in works of art or merely provide inspiration, the synchronicity between Artist and Object is undeniable."

Quotes by Lynne Perrella from her wonderful book Art Making, Collections and Obsessions.

THE COLLECTOR II

There is the slightest nip in the air at dawn and after sundown. As the day progresses and the heat starts steaming off the earth I actually wonder if I imagined it ......but at least Autumn is trying to make an appearance and I can anticipate beautiful mellow days carving in the courtyard again.



The last few days have been about gastric flu and major plumbing excavations in our back yard. How the two happened upon us at the same time is a cruel trick of fate.....but we've survived it. Amazing how this virus operates. We all gathered at one house to welcome family visiting from Australia. A day later the virus hit everyone who attended the gathering at exactly the same time.....leaving us all flapping like beached fish, completely devoid of the will to live.


Today I started planning my next carving so I must be feeling better! I promised Heather that I would post photos of my latest totem. The first Collector totem sold within days of completion so I have created The Collector II.

What with the heat wave interrupted by downpours, it has taken me longer than usual to carve this piece but when the weather was kind I enjoyed an hour or two carving outside under the tree.

"NATURE'S CHILD"

"And what is it to work with love?"

"It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit". - Kahlil Gibran

It's been a strange journey creating these totems over the last 2 years. I've learned so much about myself and remembered things from my childhood that I had forgotten. Aspects of myself that I need to celebrate. Aspects that make me who I am.

In a way I am also paying homage to those friends and bloggers who feel the same way about nature as I do. Lynne Hoppe , Kate Strickland and Gwen Buchanan immediately come to mind....and there are many others.

Carving the Nature series has been a turning point. I'm not sure how or why except for a feeling of having found myself again. Now more than ever I am convinced that creating art heals. It is one of life's little miracles.

"Creativity exists more in the searching than in the finding". - Stephen Nachmanovitch

BEACHCOMBER

"I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown for going out, I found, was really going in." - John Muir.



From the moment my toes sink into wet shingle I feel cleansed of the city buzz. There's something so calming about being at the sea. Breathing in the salty air, gazing out as far as the eye can see and generally just slowing down from the rushing about that we all do.

......And then there is the searching, the unearthing and the gathering of sea treasures.

Our family has been collecting cowrie shells for as long as I can remember. If a cowrie washes up on the sand we see it as a message from our loved ones who have passed on. A message of love. We see you, we hear you, we are here.

My eldest daughter favoured the spotless white cowries and my youngest, the little brown speckled ones. I love the sand buffed, worn cowries....though I have to admit that the first siting of a perfect new cowrie makes my heart sing.

I have been working on my "Beachcomber" totem for the past week and reliving those long languid days, wandering along the sea shore.

HELLO OWL!

A new day is dawning and I'm eager to continue work on my owl totem.

I decided that an owl with outstretched wings might be more interesting than my original plan. I try to be open to new ideas as I go along...unlike the early days when I followed my sketch to the nth degree. Something else I've learned along the way is that looking at photographs of one's work is a helpful technique to help one find any faults that need adjusting.

I have had the most fun creating the owl. As a teenager I hand reared two Spotted Eagle Owlets (see below) so I have quite a soft spot for them.