Home on the Main Range

Families are a bit like yeast. Living things that grow in the right conditions and die off in prolonged heat. Sometimes the starter lives for years, and other times it goes off without regular care and attention.  It combines with other ingredients to be greater than the original form. It drives change and transformation. Gentle. Percolating. Needs to be put in its place every now and then.  Generally, it lives peacefully and doesn't cause problems.  And then there's the unexpected outburst requiring treatment from stage left.  It's a magical substance when used according to the manufacturer's instructions. .

I printed this fabric in Washington DC during a week in Foggy Bottom walking the District of Columbia. Actually, I wanted to visit a particular Smithsonian Museum and we shall leave it that there was only one museum shut  for 6 months of renovations during my visit. Yep. No textiles for me.  So I walked, and walked and walked. Bought new shoes. Walked some more and found a piece of the Berlin Wall off the beaten track at the University. Sat on a bench in a garden with a sundial just opposite the entrance to the train/subway.  I watched the world go by and marvelled at the fresh flower market, the 200 different salads sold by weight in nearby store.  I took a rubbing from both the bench and the sundial. Events of recent days led to the addition of the hands - hands of protest, offers of help, uprising, BLM, discomfort and an axis shifting. 

  Working on design ideas and sketches  from (quite a few) journals. One from 2010 covers a month or so in the US chasing steam trains in Colorado and a museum in Kentucky dedicated to the women who served on the front line of the Civil War. A final train journey aboard the South West Chief from Chicago to LA - a wonderful 3 days and 2 nights tracking for the most part along Route 66.  I spent a lot of time in the glass topped tourist carriage sketching, drawing and observing.  Some of those sketches became fabric and at last I've made the samples into a quilt top. Lovely to see them come to life and the fabulous memories of quilts and trains. 

A short video of the process of making a quilted sketchbook cover - loads of fun using some of the fabrics I printed last weekend. I love the "no-fuss-no-pattern-no-problem" method of construction, quilting and then adding some iridescent gold paint at the end. A wonderful morning getting lost in processes in the studio.

It has been a wonderful few weeks at home reflecting on 2020 and all the opportunities and experiences it brought. Last year started in Aarhus with a fortnight of Danish immersion, some of which was spent with my delightful daughter and some studying governance structures of the European Union. While the pneumonia wasn't fun, finding out I needed a little medical intervention with my heart would not happened if I hadn't become so ill in Aarhus. Life just works out.  COVID meant I got to spend a lot of time with my Dad in 2020 - heading to Brisbane most weeks for a few nights and sharing the good, the bad and the downright unattractive with him and, along with a range of supports, enabling to live at home independently until a day or two before he died. Didn't quite make his 85th birthday on Christmas Day but we had a lot of time together that would not have happened that way in a non-COVID world. For me, I got the bonus of shedding much that was obligation and unnecessary o...