The Boho Dress and the Handmade Pledge

By the time I’d searched for the dress pattern, bought it, as well as the fabric, sewed it and then dyed it, I realized that the ‘handmade’ cotton dress listing on Etsy was not so outrageously priced after all. When you hand make, it is slow, involved and takes time, and sometimes as you work, the idea, as well as the work changes. So of course for the truly handmade product, the price is justified even if at first it seems a little high. This experience with the handmade dress brings me to handmade felt and something which has been playing on my mind for some time.

As you can see my Boho dress still requires finishing and adding buttons

Dyed with eucalyptus leaves, onion skins and rust. This dress is made of cotton with silk used for the mandarin collar, front opening, sleeves and hem edges.

I make slow felt, which is what makes my partner say that I’ll never make money, because I can’t produce it fast enough. He has come up with all sorts of ingenious ideas (on paper) to speed up my felt making – including an agitating table; and has been perplexed and frustrated when I haven't enthused over his ideas.  Now if you speed up your felt in the dryer or washing machine don’t call it handmade, because I am the one who makes the handmade felt, and who needs to put in the hours on 50,000 rolls or whatever it takes to get a well-made felt cloth and garment. I recall throwing a beautiful worsted wool jumper into the washer on a non-wool wash cycle to save water and ending up with a matted shrunken ‘thing’ that wouldn’t even fit a doll. I wouldn’t pay for this machine matted process, and yet this is what some felt makers are doing and calling it ‘handmade’. What this accelerated process does is enable the producer to produce lots and at a lower price.  Now given ‘handmade’ felt, which has not been hand made at all (but machine assisted felted) has a lower price, the consumer won’t know what makes my sort of slow felt priced twice or three times as much. I’m not suggesting that the maker stop throwing it in the dryer or washer – just don’t call it handmade.

In the 19^th century when the Jacquard loom was introduced to weaving it made the hand woven cottage industry for ‘paisley’ obsolete.  These weavers from the town called Paisley who worked the hand looms earned quite a good wage for their skill but most of them ended up in the poor house because of the automation introduced by the machine.  The market was flooded by the cheap paisley shawl (never mind that the Paisley was an ‘imitation’ of the Asian kind) and the cottage industry went bust.  I wouldn’t like to see handmade felt go the same way because some producers are flooding the handmade market with their fast and cheap products…

What is it about our society that promotes the fast – the fast food, the fast clothes, the fast buck, the fast car, the fast girl or boy, the fast path going to nowhere? Few of us appreciate the slow, the arduous, the deep and complex.  Or could it be that I’m a person who likes to make it harder on herself? I cried when I ruined that jumper and I would cry to have to throw my felt into the washing machine. And I'm not going to.

Dawn Edwards and me modelling my genuinely handmade jackets

In search of lost time in dress patterns

It occurred not as elegantly as Proust’s experience with the madeleine and a cup of tea and, because of an overpriced dress on Etsy.  It was gorgeous and desirable but so costly – and for vintage cotton!  I couldn’t pay that price or allow anyone else to pay it for me, so I would make something similar. While searching for a 70s pattern on the internet, I shockingly came across various patterns that I’d made as a young girl – and was plunged into nostalgia for the lost time and a few of those wonderful creations.  It seemed that one minute I had been in my teens and eager to 'grow up' and experience the perks that came with adulthood, such as driving and voting, and the next - well middle aged...  

During my teens, there were a lot of parties – and always another dress to make…my couturier attempts began with two years of mandatory sewing at secondary school, which I dropped as soon as I was able. I was the one usually having to unpick because my stitching was crooked and I found neither the projects nor the teacher inspiring.  There was an oven mitt that we had to quilt and embroider; a nightdress that included pin-tucks, lace and French seams – the materials all stored in a cardboard valise and kept in the class storeroom until the following week’s lesson. It was with delight, and without a second thought that I gave up the classes.

Jill, a school friend got me started on my own efforts through her intrepid adventures with the sewing machine.  I suppose one would call it ‘copying’ while another ‘inspiration’.  There was a full circle skirt in seersucker cotton and a lesson to choose one’s fabric carefully or at least read the pattern pocket instructions, as it was striped and thus the stripes were horizontal on the front but diagonal on the back of the skirt and not matching when made. A flared gored skirt in blue paisley followed, that was lovely but I hadn’t learned about interfacing and so the waistband was too bulky rather than stiff, as I had used the fabric as interfacing. I was learning and sewing on my father’s Singer treadle.  He was the one who sewed in the family, having been trained as a tailor.  I used pinking shears instead of over-locking.  Of course, swept in the current of my creations and the fun, I never stopped to consider that my dressing style and making my own clothes may have been considered uncool.

1975 -  Marlo Thomas was That Girl whom I'm sure I was trying not to be - her litheness and long flowing hair were definitely not me...Made in stretch jersey with an all over small floral motif and without the proper interfacing the seams around the décolletage kept unfurling to the right side of the fabric rather than sitting flat, which I found annoying. Perhaps it also had something to do with not having breasts to fill out the bodice. I was late to the school friend’s party, having arrived with Jill, whose dad had driven us. Unfortunately, Jill taught me about something else: ‘self-consciousness’ – an annoying habit of watching one’s self through another’s/ the other’s eyes. Self-consciousness almost killed me, as much as the petticoat, which kept sneaking past my dress length and made me feel dowdy.  I had never been kissed.   A year later although not yet seventeen, I would learn 'the truth' from boring Janis Ian that 'love was made for beauty queens' and girls like me would probably never be kissed.  However, my days were still innocently tempered by Sherbet's hit 'Summer Love', which promised that when the sun shone 'life was easy' and we could 'bye bye troubles goodbye'...  

1976 –  Kissing and finding love, was furthest from my mind, when one had ABBA and could dance the night and one’s teenage troubles away…There was, however, one form party for which Jill’s parents kindly loaned their garage, where the game of spinning the bottle found me left with Greg in the dark and his suggestion to noisily and simultaneously blow an air kiss at each other and pretend rather than do the actual dirty deed.  Much too much direction from the form teacher Mr Campbell to play silly games, and who also got us to write out those prying class assignments that made us think too much about ourselves rather than our grammar. Obviously what was missing was the marvelous disco ball…I threw caution to the wind and made myself a black uncut corduroy pant suit, with my initials embroidered in gold thread (kindly by my mother) on the front of the tunic in Laverne style, although it was Agnetha's style that I envied and tried to copy. ABBA's Arrival album cover also prompted many projects searching for the ideal jumpsuit.   

Tout les garcons et des filles de mon age was Francoise Hardy’s 1962 hit… Same theme of loner/when will I find me someone to love, in another langue sung with a group of French students, mostly whom were Mauritian like me, at the school’s Speech night.  My red gingham dress with its lace trimmings lent a French ‘accent’ though probably more appropriate for a table top dressing than a stage performance.  Our group's contribution rather summed up our French lessons – for the most part spent singing out of date pop songs rather than learning our conjugations. What could one expect from a Pommy teacher trying to teach French? 'Here's to you Mrs Robinson your students loved you more than you will know hey hey hey'... 

1977 – The school skirt/uniform rebellion.  Dumping the scratchy wool skirt I made a pinafore in heavy grey cotton broadcloth.  Wearing it underneath my jumper and blazer I didn't ruffle the principal's authoritarian feathers even though it was obvious it was not the pleated pin-striped school skirt. The school uniform rules were somewhat relaxed by then.  We’d even experimented with ‘free dress’ code one or two years prior.  But the following year, while donned in beige flares, and with the boy’s white shirt hanging out of my trousers and past my blazer, the royal blue and yellow striped tie knotted loosely around my neck peeking out underneath the boy's V-neck jumper (the shirt, tie and jumper I'd happily appropriated from my brother as he had left school), I was bailed up in the corridor by a teacher and accused of wearing ‘Annie Hall version of the school uniform’, and as prefect setting a bad example for the younger students. I shrugged and pleaded not guilty Mam as...I hadn't even seen the whiny albeit critically acclaimed Woody Allen film...but when I did, I had to admit the teacher had been right. Rejecting Diane Keaton's long flowing fair hair for a medium fro, I was setting the trend or at the very least on par with a trend setter...

1978 – The pant-suit in stretch jersey for my 18th birthday party.   Dubbed the party of the year by Jill, it was multi-generational, including parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, great aunts and uncles, school friends and teachers.  Under the disco lights in my pink pant-suit with hand sewn sequins and a band-aid on my arm (hiding a TB vaccine) for the first time I was centre stage (though not, as I shared the birthday with my uncle).  While I didn’t leave the dance floor, rumour had it that my brother spent the whole time making out with my friends outside. Though John Paul Young sang of love being in the air – I didn’t get to breathe any of it  (while my brother must have been greedily sucking it all in). Unperturbed, I fantasied of skipping barefoot and making cartwheels on the moors along with Kate Bush, as her alter ego Cathy deliriously sang her way towards Wuthering Heights and the arms of Heathcliffe. Love, as Emily Bronte would have us believe was only possible for the passionate protagonists in the realm of the supernatural.  My possible fate suggested by others in the school's year book: 'pavement artist'. I must say - that though I don't make use of the pastels or the pavements for drawing - one can describe my contemporary dress style as bohemian bag-lady.  


In search of lost time, I've realised what a marvelous friend I had in Jill - that girl who had the gall to tell me once that she became friends with me on that first day of secondary school only because I could read the time table.  Although we had our ups and downs during school (and after we left school) she was there to discuss music videos from Countdown and swap albums, and I gladly followed her home on those hot and restless afternoons that we wagged Economics classes. Along with her dad and later her boyfriend, she enabled me to be chauffeured to parties. More significantly, she inspired my girlish and seminal efforts in dress making, as well as, my self-expression through clothes. Wherever you are Jill - my heartfelt gratitude...

Taking to the bed, and with Chocolate

Laid up with flu, I read Chocolat by Joanne Harris.  Years ago I saw the film and enjoyed it, so I was reluctant to pick up the book – and as expected the book and film are quite different entities.

The book opens with Vianne Rocher and her young daughter arriving in a small French village called Lansquenet-sous-Tannes on Shrove Tuesday, just as the carnival packs up and Lent begins.  Vianne decides to move into an old bakery facing the church and convert it into the chocolate shop, La Celeste Praline, much to the disapproval of the curé Francis Reynaud.  Harris has said that she wanted to write a book about the conflict between indulgence and guilt (during Easter), with chocolate as the central metaphor. Narrated in two voices (Vianne and Reynaud) we get the sense of the opposing forces (and they are conveniently located opposite each other in town), of good and evil, light and dark, Christian and Pagan, and sometimes these two can flow into one another, just as we can momentarily forget who is narrating.  Reynaud addresses himself to his mentor-priest Père (who could also be God the father - a non intervening, non interacting presence) who lies as a vegetable after a stroke; whereas Vianne often reflects on life on the road with her Pagan magician, tarot reading mother, who seemed towards her end travelling to escape the cancer ridding her body before death caught up with her, and as if chased. It would be too simple a reading to say one was good and the other bad - as both characters have their faults and their redeeming qualities. They are but different sides of our own nature.  I know the ascetic priest within me that tries to curb the wicked excesses and hedonism of the Pagan witch. He will make sure I feel guilty for even thinking of having that piece of chocolate, or leaving home gaudily dressed from head to toe in orange, when I could have chosen sombre chic black.

The book is filled with references to people drinking chocolate laced with liqueurs or chocolate ‘espressos’ accompanied by chocolate goodies, such as Florentines, or pain au chocolat.

My mouth watered, as much as the mouth of Reynaud, who is fasting for Lent and who increasingly feels himself faint and euphoric, simply on the pungent scent of chocolate emanating from the chocolate shop. Reynaud preaches to members of his flock to abstain from chocolate and views Vianne, as close to the devil – certainly his adversary.  He is the Black Man – a symbol of the grim reaper to Vianne, who teases him with her carefree mores and hedonistic attitude towards life. Certainly chocolate can be a sinful pleasure – aphrodisiac, it can lead us towards social and sexual abandon and wantonness.  Vianne has sex with Roux a gypsy, even though she knows he has feelings for another, and that it is a one night stand. From this one night stand, she’ll beget a child; her first child was also begot in a similar way.  But she’ll know the second child’s seed came from a good man – whereas the first, she couldn’t say who the father was. The climax is the Easter Sunday chocolate festival for which Vianne has prepared a sumptuously decorative ‘window’ which Reynaud decides to sabotage, with startling and wickedly funny consequences.  

The linking of chocolate with sin or with self-abandonment and excess is intriguing.  Do we let ourselves go – indulging in chocolate, or anything else to delight the senses?  We have as a society made it OK to indulge in chocolate by associating it with good health (a little dark chocolate because of its high level of antioxidants, just as a glass of wine is good for our health and helps with lowering blood pressure and cholesterol – note a little).  The villagers of Lasquenet indulge in more than a little. With a gourmet artisan chocolate shop in their vicinity they become gourmands.  Armande, who is losing her sight because of a complication with diabetes – decides rather than languish in the nursing home, she will go out in style with a party and an excess of good food, wine and chocolate.  'After a five-course banquet you'd want coffee and liquers, wouldn't you? You wouldn't suddenly decide to round it all off with a bowl of pap, would you? Just so you could have an extra course? (p.241)'. Reynaud who has put his body and soul through austerities for Lent, begins by tasting one chocolate and finds he can’t stop without tasting all. He ends up to his shame, stuffing himself with chocolate.  It is perhaps a lesson to those of us who do try and deny our bodily desires, when a little indulgence would have made the pangs of lust go away.

Does chocolate bring us happiness? Science/ medicine/ Harris' novel would tell us – indeed it does.  As well as tasting good in our mouths, chocolate stimulates endorphin production which gives us a feeling of pleasure; it contains serotonin, which acts as an anti-depressant; and, as well, it contains theobromine, caffeine and other substances, which are stimulants.  Chocolate can certainly make us feel more alive.  

Despite the dulling of my taste buds with flu, I drank several cups of hot chocolate; made a self-saucing chocolate pudding to appease my growing lust for chocolate, and I can also say that it made me more wanton – in taking to the bed.  Taking to the bed used to be a remedy for all sorts of ailments for the Irish, and according to Brian Doyle it is even a ‘refuge’ from the Black Dog and heartache. I used to take to the bed to write, to draw, make collage, and of course to read, without any sort of ailment prompting me, except of course, laziness.   Having been laid up for the odd day here or there recently, it’s certainly reminded me of the benefits to be had from taking to the bed – to read about chocolate, to eat it and to allow myself to be wanton. I may take to the bed more often regardless of being ill or no. And just to make sure that I do – I bought myself a new pair of pyjamas – while in lying in bed with my laptop. Oh such wantonness...

For those feeling the mouth watering reading about chocolate, here is my favourite and less rich (for those treading carefully rather than wantonly) recipe for Chocolate Self Saucing Pudding adapted from Cookery the Australian Way (2nd ed., 1974, MacMillan, South Melbourne). It is easy and you can whip it up in no time at all.

Ingredients
1/2 cup of caster sugar
60g of unsalted butter
1 cup of self raising flour, 1 tablespoon of dark cocoa powder, sifted together
1 egg
1/2 cup of milk
For the sauce - 1 cup loosely packed brown sugar, 2 tablespoons of dark cocoa powder and 2 & 1/2 cups of boiling water
Method
Cream butter and sugar, add egg and beat well.  Add the flour and milk alternately with a metal spoon until well blended. Pour into a large well greased casserole dish (use a large dish to allow for the cake to rise, otherwise the sauce will overflow and make a mess in the oven).  Mix sugar and cocoa powder - sprinkle over cake batter.  Carefully pour boiling water over the top.  Bake in a moderately hot (around 190 degrees Celsius) for approximately 45 minutes, or until skewer comes out clean.  Serve with custard sauce or ice-cream or both. Bon appetit. 

Notes
Joanne Harris,  2000, Chocolat, (Black Swan, London).
Joanne Harris talks about her book in the following article
http://joanne-harris.co.uk/v3site/books/chocolat/index.html
Brian Doyle on 'Taking to the Bed',
http://www.eurekastreet.com.au/article.aspx?aeid=727
For the benefits of dark chocolate
http://www.webmd.com/diet/news/20030827/dark-chocolate-is-healthy-chocolate,
http://longevity.about.com/od/lifelongnutrition/p/chocolate.html

30 Centimetres of Water…accustoming to bathing…

Wednesday

...Bored...the water weighs or the heat; ennui suffocates.  The stagnant water, as Bachelard noted leads to reveries of death. Water Opheliarized – but my hair is swept up in a bun and the water I soak in is not a river.  The Pre-Raphelite painter John Everatt Millais posed his model Lizzie Siddall in the bath while he painted the subject of the drowned Ophelia floating downstream.  Siddall became ill with pneumonia after the lamps used to heat the water went out and yet she did not complain of the icy water.  The painter was engrossed in painting and didn't notice. The narrow passage in which Ophelia's body lies still evokes a bath despite the nature setting. 

Perhaps because of thoughts of dead Ophelia and passive Lizzie, I don't like this island on its back trying to float in 30 centimetres of water.  An aversion to water has stopped me from learning to swim.  Can't float, as though I have ballast in my buttocks.  Also, in/during a bath, one encounters one's Self – or at the very least, one’s body in all its imperfections.  There are no suds as the water seeps with Epsom salts, and I added another kind of salts, which tinges it green.  I can barely keep awake.

Running water in the shower invigorates, makes the right brain,  the creative brain tick over.  Poems appear, or that elusive word that I may have been trying to think of earlier in the day.  I know exactly how to cut a pattern or sew a seam...but this still bath water weighs.  I understand how one can drown in 30 centimetres of water, or even less; and how it occured to a painter to use a bath for the setting of a drowning.

                                                                                                                      

Thursday

I try to read so that I can extend my time in the bath - perhaps also to forget about the body soaking in the green liquid.  The sound of the TV pulses from the other room.  A fan circulates air.  I could be in a bubble.  I'm reminded of the tisane baths that Garcia Marquez's characters take. This is my tisane bath to remedy leg cramps and improve my circulation.

There is also Jacques Louis David's painting of the Death of Marat (1793) which pops into my head.  Jean-Paul Marat, who ailed from some skin disorder that made it more comfortable to be in water, improvised a desk and did most of his writing there.  It was his office. He was murdered in his tub while writing, by a member of the aristocracy during the reign of terror in France. The painting by David became one of the greatest political icons of the revolution.  It was subsequently simulated on the album cover of rock band Cold Chisel’s East released in 1980, with Jimmy Barnes in the role of dead Marat (replete with makeshift desk and writing materials).  The cover turned me onto Cold Chisel’s music when I accidentally found it in my brother's collection of LPs. Of course, Barnes doesn't look murdered at all - rather passed out drunk from cheap wine and has a three day growth.

Things not all together pleasant can happen in the bath. A toe may get stuck in the plughole, or a finger in a tap. Whitney Houston recently died in the tub. After my first night in the tub, I felt so sleepy, I could barely make it upstairs to the bedroom. I find a bath, an unpleasant experience...

Friday

Tonight as I was filling the tub, Maudie puppy dog walked into the bathroom.  I ushered her out quickly before she had time to pull the toilet paper to shreds.  Outside I told her - 'go do pee'...A few minutes later she came in wet and dragged her wet body through the house.  The water running into the tub may have suggested to her that she take a quick soak in the pond.   A labrador, she has none of my aversion for water.  My bath was several degrees cooler by the time I'd dried Maudie and fiddled with the incense burner.  I eliminated the green salts.  I would be naked with myself tonight. I'm more at ease with the island on its back.  Steam rises from the water but it feels cool around my body.  The ylang ylang essential oil I have burning fills my nostrils with its sensuousness.  It's supposed to have aphrodisiac properties but I don't feel sexy in the bath.  I'm not sure what I'm supposed to 'do' in a bath. As a person, I’m wired to 'do' rather than 'be'.  A bath is an invitation to be. 'Being' gives me a headache - rather like the times I've attempted mindfulness meditation and ended up with headaches. I grow impatient with this ‘soaking’ indulgence and find I’m eager to get out. 

…

Three days without a bath…I’d rather watch a film and there have been visitors to entertain. No time for soaking and ‘being’ in the bath.  My toes begin to cramp.

Tuesday

I take a book which I read sitting on the edge of the tub as the bath fills.  A sense of anticipation grows.  But I need to soak slowly, gently accustoming my body to the sensation of water.  Feet first.  Then, I squat and introduce my buttocks, before I’m able to submerge my legs and lie back. My body causes the water to sway and tip over – I have overfilled the bath. I groan at the size of the tub as I’m rarely ever able to find a tub that allows me to submerge my whole body.  But perhaps that’s a good thing…

There’s a leak from the shower rose above my feet and I watch the plops which are not uninteresting.  Well what else is there to find interesting in a bath unless I'm dreaming?  Steam rises and fogs the mirrors.

I go into free association, the thoughts tumbling in and out.  The book, which I can’t bear to open now because I have inserted pages of emails from a friend. There are also a couple of cards that I've used as page markers.  All make the book more precious. I don’t want my emails and cards falling into the bath water.  The ducted heating kicks in and reminds me of the felt scarf I have hanging in the drying closet, and the other projects mentally queued for playing or execution. I can’t seem to get to felting lately…

The plops of water at my feet draw my attention again.  I wonder whether I can reach the tap handle with my toe and turn it off.  I’m surprised when I reach up and manage it…It causes a group splurge of droplets.  They sputter from the rose and delight.  Suddenly I feel like a child and the heavy body no longer drags.  I’m flooded with a memory of sharing baths with my brother as a 6 year old.  (Perhaps a bath can be more pleasant when one shares it and has rubber toys with which to play though I can't remember that we had toys.) The heating shuts down and the blast of the football commentary on the TV in the lounge assaults my senses. 

The water feels heavy around my chest again and the hypochondriac in me thinks of heart disease.  Finally when I can no longer stand the weight of water, I lift myself out and pull the plug – and watch the little twister in the plug hole as I dry myself.  There’s a Simpson’s episode where Bart rings someone in Australia to see which way the water flushes in the toilet bowl. It’s supposed to be counter-clockwise in the southern hemisphere but I can’t really make out which way the water spins.  I stare for the longest time at this vortex of water spinning in the plughole. 

Taking a bath makes my body ‘flush’ hot and this may be what actually combats the cramping.  I perspire so profusely for the next hour that I’m unable to slip into my PJs.  Bathing has me going to bed naked.

Sunday

Lunch, with a woman whose husband has renovated her bathroom and installed a spa bath – customized to her body.  She describes how she’s able to spend hours in the bath.  She takes in ‘nourishment’ such as ‘bubbles’ (champagne) and dumplings.  She indulges in books.  But bad things can happen in the bath, I say limply. 

I’m encouraged to change my attitude towards bathing.  I’ll challenge myself to enjoy taking a bath. I may even start to take in writing materials...

Happy in my own backyard

Heinrich Zimmer uncovered a story from the Khassidischen Bucher of Martin Buber, which seems to represent the "archetypal" reason for travelling. The story is about a rabbi called Eisik who resides in Cracow, and who has a recurring dream of a voice telling him to travel to Prague to look for a treasure under the bridge of a castle.  After the dream is repeated three times, the rabbi decides to listen to the inner voice and make the journey.  When Eisik arrives in Prague, he finds the castle guarded and dares not approach.  Instead he loiters until he attracts the attention of the captain of the guards, who asks him, and not unkindly, what he is doing there.  The rabbi tells him of the dream and of the voice that prompted his adventure.  The guard laughs and tells him about his own inner voice in a dream, which had told him to travel to Cracow to find the house of a rabbi called Eisik, where he would subsequently find a treasure buried behind a stove in a forgotten corner of his house.  The rabbi thanks the guard; then travels back to his own house and looks behind the stove to discover the treasure.

            

Zimmer comments that the real treasure is not very far away; certainly we need not travel and search for it in a distant country.  'It lies buried in the most intimate part of our house; that is of our own being.  It is behind the stove, the centre of life and warmth that rules our existence, the heart of our heart, if only we knew how to unearth it.'

            

Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz learns much the same thing, to not go looking for her dreams or her heart in any one else’s back yard but her own.  And if she can't find it there, well she never lost it to begin with.

As a young girl, unlike Dorothy I was happy in my own suburban backyard, on the outskirts of Melbourne. I would lay in the banana lounge chair, skin oiled, book or imagination wide open, and travel in my book or reveries, while my dog lay beside. While my friends made their grand European journeys and sent back their postcards (many of which I appreciated and still have), I never felt the compulsion to leave my own backyard.  Once the summer passed and I resumed studies at university, friends would assume by my tan that I’d traveled far and had many adventures. I’d smile and keep my inner journeys to myself…

It was only as a woman in my early thirties that I felt restless, as though my heart lay elsewhere, beckoning.  A house under the beautiful Mountain Ash Gothic in the Dandenongs wasn’t enough.  I would often climb onto the roof when my husband Ed cleaned the gutters, and sit to stare up at the sky and wonder about what was beyond. Tall trees pushed the sky further away, much as I felt further away from my heart.  One of our favourite pastimes was for Ed to put on a carousel of his slides, for unlike me he had traveled widely, mainly through Australia and had amassed a huge collection; and along to the music of Copland, I would travel with him in my armchair. However, I left my backyard and went in search of my heart, which I thought was ‘over there’ on the island where I was born. It took many journeys back and forth to realize that my heart had never been lost. Perhaps confused but never lost.  Of course, in the process I lost my backyard and Ed.  I felt like a fool. Yet, I needed the reflection of the self found by encountering ‘the stranger’.  

The archetypal or spiritual journey is usually for self discovery, or remembering our own treasure, not to tick another item on your ‘to do or to see’ list.  More recently, on a train coming back from Giverny in France, I overheard some tourists discussing their list – the next stop for them was Montmartre which they needed to see to tick off – and it was not unlike our own list I thought wryly to myself. I couldn’t be bothered traipsing the many steps to get to Montmartre that afternoon and fortunately, we got lost. 

Travelling with a list of sights to see or experiencing the trip behind the lens of your camera, because you want the ‘proof’ that you were there and it’s not even to collect into an album anymore, but to post on Facebook. It is rather like experiencing the new or strange as an automaton. Where is your Self in all of it?  When you feel the need to get away, what is it you want to get away from?  I knew when I suggested that particular getaway that I wanted to get away from myself, but also to find a connection to that self, as I approached one of those 'big' birthdays. I hadn’t anticipated that we would get away as far as Europe.

I’ve been pondering what travel ‘means’ to me because this year the Melbourne Scarf Festival has this question as its theme for the scarf makers, and I usually contribute a couple of entries.  It may not be terribly exciting but what it ‘means’ is remembering and savouring the treasures from my own backyard because now I know where that backyard is.  Like the duke Des Esseintes in Huysman’s  A Rebours I understand how wearing it is to actually make the journey to not only discover that I’ve brought myself along as baggage, but that I could just have easily made the journey in my armchair. One need never leave home.  For instance, in my armchair in front of the computer I can get much closer to the many treasures in the Louvre without queuing for hours, without feeling dehydrated because I've been forced to dump my water bottle, without getting lost, without being pushed, without someone blocking my view, without another saying that I’m ruining her photo by being in front of the painting when I actually get an opportunity to get up close.  In my armchair, I can get a closer view of the Mona Lisa than I did being in the same room.

A play on the postcards we send back home or keep for our own memories

Making use of the eucalyptus leaves collected from my backyard

First experiment, Nuno felt on China silk 

We often dismiss children and adolescents as not being very ‘worldly’ but sometimes we don’t need to have seen or been in the world to know what it is we want, or are.  As we get older, it is then that we lose our spiritual connection to things, including what’s in our own hearts.  It is usually then that we think, or someone has led us to believe that the grass is greener or more exotic on the other side.  Of course, what we discover when we get there is the mud, or the dust, the heat, the mosquitoes, the sand flies, the one thousand steps we need to climb…  It is never as we anticipated…That girl on the banana lounge with her dog beside, was much wiser than I ever gave her credit. 

The story of Eisik is recounted by Mircea Eliade in Myths, Dreams, and Mysteries, Translation Philip Maires (1975, pp244-5: N.Y.: Harper Torchbooks).

Gawd (s)he copied ME. In Part 2 The Provenance of the eucalyptus leaf print

Once upon a time we had the guild system where your parent would secure you an apprenticeship with a master if you showed an aptitude for art.  If apprenticed to a painter you’d learn the skills of grinding pigments, mixing grounds, as well, drawing, painting, design, were part of your training.  Once you were proficient you could be found working on the master’s commissions and he (invariably he) would sign his name to it.  If you had any spunk and ambition, you’d break out on your own and attempt to build your reputation.  Sometimes during your apprenticeship, you might even outstrip the master, as did Leonardo with Verrocchio; and sometimes you might find yourself like Govert Flinck, stuck with the master's style and signature long after he has moved on with other explorations.  Those days are long gone and may as well have been legend or fairy tale.

These days, artists and artisans offer workshops; they write books or publish blogs and thus make a living – and their ‘customers’ pay for the privilege of attending workshops but the attitude towards apprentices has changed.  Recently I travelled almost 10,000 miles to the Creative Felt Gathering in Michigan for a workshop with Elis Vermeulen to be told ‘go figure it out for your self' (after I'd forked out several hundred dollars and the airfare).  I found myself calling on several other participants to help me through figuring it out for myself. I also listened rather nonchalantly as Elis recounted the story of a woman who had written to her expressing a desire to learn everything she (the master) knew.  The master laughed – no way was she going to show everything she knew.  What makes that so? What makes us so petty, so bitchy, so guarded, with our knowledge and expertise? Could it be that - we are women?

And then – there’s India Flint eco-dyer extraordinaire, who with scientific precision has opened up the secret world of plants and natural dyes. She will teach you how to extract dye from the eucalyptus leaf but you’re not allowed to reproduce what she teaches because it’s a signature of her ‘Prophet of Bloom’ label.  She has assumed the provenance of the eucalyptus leaf or at least, its print upon fabric.

A couple of days ago I saw on Facebook, a stunning felt coat printed with eucalyptus leaves and I instantly knew whose work it was – Irit Dulman, who achieves bold vivid colours and uses an all over individual leaf motif to stunning effect.  I’d forgotten about India Flint, until Irit reminded me of her when I asked her when she was coming ‘down under’ to teach.  Irit said, ‘India Flint would kill me’.  Why is that? Why should it matter to India Flint if Irit Dulman came this way?

It seems a lot of fibre artists interested in printing with eucalyptus leaves are afraid of India Flint.

India has written: ‘People often ask me why I teach and publish my dye techniques when clearly (if I had any business sense at all) I could make much more money by ecoprinting a snazzy range of silk pyjamas.  The answer is that by publishing I have established the provenance of the ecoprint (discovered during research for my MA) and that by teaching ecologically sustainable dye practices I’m doing what I can to make the world a better place’ ((in Felt Issue 4, p5).

Well, you don’t make the world a better place when you publicly vilify others for using the ecoprint. It's not good Buddhist practice (towards which India is inclined because of its principle of doing least harm) because you are harming that person.  More a grumpy prophet of doom and gloom than bloom, India would have been better off launching that snazzy range of silk PJs – or perhaps not teaching and publishing at all.  She could have saved herself the heartburn. Once you release the work it's out there and in this digital age it reaches people like wildfire.  The ecoprint has caught on as its methods yield fantastically beautiful prints, as well as, being ecologically friendly because you can use it on wool and silk without the addition of toxic mordants. 

Provenance (from the French provenir meaning ‘to come from’) used to refer to the chronology of ‘ownership’ for art objects to authenticate the work, though these days it’s used in a variety of disciplines, including science.  In most fields, the primary purpose of provenance is to establish or gather evidence of the object’s passage in time and space, and the person responsible for its creation or discovery.

Australian Aborigines have over 40,000 years of experience with plants, including their use as medicine and of extracting dyes for their fibre art of weaving and basketry. They don’t seem however, to have made use of the eucalyptus leaf to make a print or to extract dye, perhaps because traditionally they wore possum skins with their individual stories burned into the skin, rather than cotton or wool. (We could note that contemporary Aboriginal artists are undertaking apprenticeships with elders to learn traditional methods before these pass along with them in death.)  India Flint may indeed have discovered the ‘ecoprint’ and documented it in her thesis.  We can thus applaud her for showing us in her publications and workshops how to extract colour from the eucalyptus leaf but what we do with our extractions of colour is up to us – whether we print on paper, fabric or felt, our own artistry and aesthetic sensibilities are also at play.  India Flint doesn’t own what others make with the eucalyptus leaf print.  When we look at the history of art we see that other artists and other art have tended to inspire artists – some like Velasquez went so far as to ‘document’ his sources in his great self-portrait at court Las Meninas. He was paying outright homage to those that had inspired.  Likewise, each person who makes a eucalyptus leaf print is also paying homage to India Flint, because without her research and teaching it wouldn't be possible.  She has passed on the knowledge and you'd think she'd be pleased that there are those who can shine, as well as outshine her, with the practice. I heard an architect express those sentiments in relation to an environmentally sustainable building he'd designed.  'I hope that this building becomes outdated and that others go on to do more with some of these principles...'  An endorsement to extend on what has been given through what's been created or discovered - his 'provenance'.  Such an attitude underpins all strivings to be creative.  

We can also consider the Romantic concept of art filtered through a temperament.  Artists such as Gauguin and Van Gogh may sit side-by-side painting the same scene with very different results. There could be thousands of us working with eucalyptus leaves and producing very different ‘products’ because we are all different personalities, with different inclinations.  It's a lost cause to huff and puff on about being copied.  I find those who whine boring.  Is your own practice so stymied that you have to hang on to the provenance of a eucalyptus print or the shape of a hat or scarf? Imagine Polly Stirling claiming the provenance of Nuno felt (and there's no dispute that along with Sachiko Kotaka they discovered the properties of Nuno) and grumbling every time another fibre artist produced a piece of Nuno.  There'd be no end to Polly's grumblings. Incidentally last time I ran into Polly at a workshop, she'd been extracting colour from plants... 

My experimental piece that I keep overdyeing

I have also extracted colour from the eucalyptus leaf because it is all around me. I live under the eucalypts – what came to be called Mountain Ash Gothick in 19^th century Antipodes.  These are our cathedrals, as we don’t have the great stone masterpieces of Europe.  Our cathedrals are not only fragrant, but leave me with lots of debris, which I either sweep up for the mulcher or dump in the rubbish.  I swept up a heap of leaves and bark strippings last week, which left outside the front porch has become my puppy’s toilet area when I take her out at 2 or 3 in the morning (Maudie’s urine is possibly adding a wonderful mordant to the heap but I don’t know and don't care to explore).  When I went to the Creative Felt Gathering last year I wanted to take as gifts, pieces of my backyard, so I wrapped up several Nuno felt shawls that I’d made with eucalyptus leaves, bark and some rusty bits and pieces that I’d also found in the garden. I don’t use a dye bath but usually steam my bundles and my backyard leaves are not the Argyle Apple (eucalyptus cinerea) which give that wonderful orange tone that I love.  Oh how I envy Irit her deeply coloured leaf prints.  I don’t claim to be a master or any sort of expert.  The leaves and bark strips are around and I make use of them; but I admire those who like Irit Dulman and Fabienne Dorsman-Rey are real masters at extracting the colour from the plant - and who have made the technique uniquely their own through their individual 'expression'. That does not mean to say that the provenance of the ecoprint belongs any less to India Flint. But what stops her from saying 'I hope others go on to do more with what I've discovered'?

   

'Gawd he copied ME!' In part 1 Rembrandt speaks out about his copyists

(Joni) I’m not sure where to start – so let’s try a phenomenological interview.  What was it like Rembrandt to watch your canvas drink up black – an image given by Joseph Heller in his book Picture This?

(Rembrandt) Well – to build up form you need the dance of dark and light – Caravaggio…

Allow the canvas to drink more black and the light emanates from a different spot?

It is in the juxtaposition of light and dark. I aimed in my work to give the greatest and most natural movement of it.  Can you not see it more clearly in my etchings?

Yes – it’s stark for instance in the portrait etching of Jan Six…those velvet blacks heavily etched beside the non worked and non inked areas – left as light.  These areas of negation and of silence I have always found to be metaphysical.

Heller wrongly calls the picture he writes about as ‘Socrates contemplating the bust of Homer’ – as it is actually the painter ‘Apelles contemplating the bust of Homer’ – well according to Schama.

The subject matters not – what is important is that the viewer can go into reverie in front of the painting and he imagines it as whatever he wants. I’m not at all miffed.

It was suggested by the historian Simon Schama in his book Rembrandt's Eyes that you identified with Apelles, worked as he did – projecting from the surface and keeping your palette close to what he used – the four colours of black, white, ochre and earth red?

Could be another reverie…

Yes I find that he goes into free association in front of your pictures.  Your Dutch contemporaries had little time for reverie or imaginatively finishing off your pictures – other than Huygens and he was one of your best viewers. 

Idealism and smooth surfaces were ‘de rigeur’ just when I wanted to paint in a freer rougher style. Jan Six too was unhappy with his painted portrait and did not commission me for the painting of his wife’s portrait when he married.  I made the passages closest to the viewer the freest in handling.  But there was also the finest of details in other passages.  More and more I wanted the brushwork to convey the essence of the sitter. 

Can you tell me about what it was like for you when your students became more popular for painting more like Rembrandt?

What do you think it was like!  What a question! 

That’s the phenomenological approach – that I know nothing.  I need you to describe what your experience is.

My experience?  Can you not imagine?  Famous and assuming that I would be rich – set up for life – and then reduced to poverty because of what is popular and that is what I had made popular at one point.  Had I painted what was popular I would have made the sales – I was driven to paint other than what was popular.

Tell me about what drove you?

It was not money!  If I had been driven by money matters, I would have painted what was popular and what would sell – what they thought was ‘Rembrandt’.  I was not allowed to develop as an artist …

I realize that so many of your biographers portray you as the prodigal.  You depicted yourself as the prodigal with your wife Saskia as your whore.

I beg your pardon…immersing ourselves in the roles we were playing. We had fun with that one. I also took on the roles of beggar, king, executioner, immersing myself in the ‘experience’.  A painter can do that!  Painting a history or someone’s portrait, you begin to live with the image as you apply the pigment and glaze – a part of you goes into that as well and not just through the gesture of painting.  You put on you take off – much like clothing.  And you form your favorite way of putting on taking off – what some call ‘style’.  And really it’s what you feel comfortable with.  What your soul wants to live with – as a painter I tried on different clothes or different roles.

Can you tell me more about what was comfortable for you to live with both in role and as style?

I retract the word ‘comfortable’.  Sometimes I was neither comfortable with the roles put on nor painting.  The portrait as prodigal for instance – seemed as a dark omen now.  But painting - playing with it this way and that – getting it right – you put on you take off – then there comes a time when it seems to be working and you like it and you think you’ve done that passage here well.  But the beauty of it is that you can change it – unlike the mistakes of life which you find you can’t take back.

Did you want to elaborate about that?

Certainly not! – We’ll stick to painting… because the surface is so manipulative – and there are the possibilities to rework and change – your confidence grows.  You feel you can do anything…for instance the way I drastically cut down and reworked the Claudius Civilis from a 6 metre painting to something measuring 196 by 309-cm.  It was torture but I did it because I had to make a quick sale after the Town Hall patrons refused to hang it in the place for which it had been commissioned. It was too unconventional!  Cut down it became a better painting, more confrontational with the figures pushed up to the frontal plane; and Claudius cuts a truly dynamic figure with his third eye gleaming from the jewel in the headdress. Claudius only has one eye staring into space and the other is a gashed cicatrice… ‘But if thy eye be single…’

Yes?

‘If thy eye be single, thy whole body shall be filled with light.’

That drove you most of your painting life!

Yes – the message is so overt in one painting. But there were others where the eyes were hidden, or the eyes were shut and still I managed to convey that the body was filled with light.

You take my breath away.

Thank you – dear… but I wanted to do the opposite.  Put the breath into the figures – bring the subject to life. Today they live.  No one remembers Govert Flinck.

Indeed no one remembers. With the Claudius Civilus, Flinck had won the commission for the work on the Town Hall - 8 huge paintings depicting scenes from Tacitus’ ‘History of Batavian Revolt against the Romans’.  But Flinck unexpectedly died with only the preliminary drawings executed –

What fabulous luck and I was among three artists taken on to finish the commission!

(Extracted from a phenomenological interview with the painter in 2005)