Sunday 29 April 2007

And now for something a little different...


I have been thinking a lot about my Dad over the last few days - the combination of having some days off work and therefore time to think, as well as the fact that it was his birthday on Friday. He was a potter for a big chunk of the second half of his life and made beautiful functional pieces. It was actually the word "functional" that stopped me in my tracks this morning while I was reflecting on his life. I find it really interesting that something that "just" provides beauty is not seen as "functional" even though it fulfils a very important function for the beholder (now there's a funny word!).

So I thought I would take a photo of one of my favourite little pieces of his pottery to honour my memories of a wonderful father and his art. I love rounded and closed form shapes and this little "vase" is just beautiful.

It is filled with dried spinifex grass and I have photographed it sitting on some painted lutrador (I was trying to get a rusty look with paint) and some sheets of spinifex paper made by the Papulankutja Artists - a group of very talented women of the remote Papulankutja Aboriginal Community (which is located at the foot of the striking Blackstone Ranges between the Gibson and Great Victoria Deserts). The collection of spinifex grass is hard, hot, prickly work and I admire the work that goes into making this delicate but strong fibrous handmade paper. The artists do fantastic little paintings on the paper as well but I stocked up on the unadorned sheets (as shown in the bottom photo, scattered on my cork floor) for my collages when I was out there last October.

It is a bit of a blurry photo but to the left of the photo is a piece of stamped art on spinifex paper that I did for a Stamping & Papercraft "With One Stamp" challenge. The stamp is a great one from Tin Can Mail - a very versatile tag image. My pieces for the challenge have just come back to me so the issue must be due out soon. The paper was great to work on and handled the walnut ink and Tintz dabbers really well.


And now I had better get back to my onion skin dye experiments which have proved to be a fun diversion from my original plans for today! As Joseph would say "Now there's a surprise".

1 comment:

Barbara said...

Dear Debbi,
an AMC (artist-mailing-card) is a postcard ,which you can send .
If you want to trade let me know.
Warm regards Barbara