windthread

Solstice 2016

 

 

 

 

 

things

yesterday, on way home,  checked the walnut tree in town.  These two windfall.  Many on the tree.  Soon.

 

With kids coming....serious mending of the seams of the denim futon cover...all the places that fingers would,  by nature,  poke through.  

 

How Life has a life of its Own

I drove up to Magdalena,  Bear Mountain Gallery, early this morning to pick up the Mantis Cloth.  Having gotten word from Michigan that it was still wanted there.   Spent some time talking to Danielle, the owner about the people who bought the Crow Dreaming cloth....i'd thought they were from Santa Fe, but not.  From L.A.  How amazing to think of this,  that somewhere in L.A.  that Cloth hangs.   

and i wanted to go home right away,  i needed to stop at the lumberyard and bug them about finding me a window,  but then

thought i should call my friend and see if she wanted to go to lunch.  She didn't,  was tired,  but we thought i could get carry out.  I did.   So we sat and ate in her most beauty full home on the planet,  i've put pics of it here somewhere before and then we sat out back,  watching the birds come to her bubbling fountain bird bath.  In the course of those couple hours,  somehow an Amazement happened.   She talked about how she is working through letting things go...material things....figuring out what to keep and what to let go and how to let go,  mostly keeping things that are ....flat....can be packed in boxes.  Her adult children live in Spain.    Paintings, for instance.  she has a lot of them.  And she said...."OH! yes!....that piece you have at the gallery,  the hand and the butterfly,  would you trade it for the Crone you gave me? "   I'd given it to her maybe 13 years ago?  Could it BE that long???  The "doll" is cumbersome and fragile.   

 

the bodies were made of natural fiber,  always,  even back then and before...because it felt right to the touch.  and even back then,  much of the fabric was recycled clothing.  but a lot was also scraps of drapery or upholstery cloth, as this one.    The faces,  the masks,  and hands were made from forming casting tape...cut into thin strips.  The faces,  the casting tape formed over a balloon to create the convex shape with the "fronds" draped over my fingers to create the sense of hair.  I would sit and hold them until they dried enough to be set down.  When completely dry,  I would "paint" them with Acrylic modeling paste,  diluted,  to keep the fronds in their shape and then after that dried,  would glob on thick paste to the face.  Just globbed.  This would dry in the Sun or in winter on the wood stove.  Once it was completely hardened,  i would begin carving them.  There was always some crack that would call the first cut.  I used my father's jack knife.  I would slowly carve away the excess material as the face began to appear.  I never knew what that face might look like until it appeared.  Some were male.  Some coyotes.  Some birds.  Most were women,  some young, some old.  I would never know.  The faces, once carved were painted with very dilute oil paints.  The eyes were seed beads.  I made hundreds of them.   Some like this,  some seated figures and toward the end,  figures with armatures.  One was life size.  Some were made from Alyssia's face,  my granddaughter...when she was maybe 3 or 4.  I would make the casting tape "mask" ON her face.  

I'm going to "publish this" right now...need to go feed Goats and it might disappear.  But i'll be back in a few minutes and continue.

i'm back.

I look at this one  and wonder how different they would be with all i have learned about cloth...their bodies...,  they would be so great now.

I quit making them in the last times with that person i was married to.  So much became impossible.  After his death,  i went back to them but things were different.  I no longer was ok with the isolated figure,  i wanted Place.  For a while i thought about making them "dioramas"...which would have been complex and really,  impossible to ship.  Had i lived in some other area,  with the ability to transport them myself to galleries,  maybe,  but i didn't i lived always in the middle of some Nowhere.   So i just quit.  I didn't make anything for a while, but money....working more jobs.  Cleaning more houses.  No Making.  I was adrift.  

and then i saw Spirit Cloth.  I FOUND Spirit Cloth.  Cloth could be Everything.  Cloth could be Anything.

 

 

her Sail

 

 

 

so here She is.  In this same house as the Winter Bitch.  There will be a lot of conversation.  Quiet mutterings in the night.  What  will happen??????

 

that mark of Wind

 

as i mentioned the other day...the "dolls" were accompanied with words....like this...and maybe the Cloths should be too?????

 

 

 

and how these Marks that the Plants give are never ominous to me,  but rather depictions of the

BODY

of the Earth,  of this planet,  this Being.  Depictions of her BODY,  a universe unto its own self....not rock and dirt,  but a Universe of Being.

 

and at the end of the day...my own Stonehenge

 

 

 

 

What if?

just moving it off the table this morning,  that big cloth was already there, 

 

 

so

What if i DID do this?

but the next question would be.....Why would i............?

it could have been a butterfly

i debated.  Both were "true" to the Cloth but...

 

it's the seven beads.  Seven black and white and then the one blood bead.  Here, thread beads from Jude.  In the past,  for so many years,  seed beads and the African blood bead.  

And so.  What does it MEAN to me,  the 7 black and white and one red?  

An Unknowable Order that just is.

a symbol of the source of all things out of which everything arises and into which everything resolves.

Un knowable.  Just is.  Some kind of natural order of the Universe and maybe more.

just

How Things Are.

it could have been a butterfly....this is as butterflies  are

how it is

 

Fire.   Fires here are Beings.   Right now there are active Fires to the South West of me,  the East and the South,  where Sonny Ray went home to tonight.  That fire,  to the South,  is mostly contained.  Electricity is back up and running and Jan the dog trainer is returning home.  But Fire.  Fire is Real.

Jude commented the other day and i don't know which day, that she was surprised at how hot it was...those were the few days in the 100's.  They are unusual,  so far,  always a few, now and then but usually not so hot.  Low 90's feel just very much ok and like summer because of the lack of humidity.  You learn to work OutSide in the mornings and then later in the day,  when Sun goes to the Rim.  Mid day you stay In.  It's a nice and gentle routine, really.  Some for Everything.  a Routine.   And because it's dry,  there are no mosquitos or really,  any biting insects.  As i've said before,  it's Such a Benevolent world.  and it is.

 

this is better.  It's how it is.  No need to make it into something it is not.  So it's back.  to how it is.

i was born in 1945

 

 

thoughts

it was Work Away and when i got back i took a nap.  On the futon couch.  Woke and just sat there,  looking across the room.  Looking to the West Window on the right with Winter Bitch and the Best Cloth.  Looking back, across the room to the altar and then...to it's right or my left,  the squares of wood that had been lying flat under the tray with the tomato seedlings.  Still there....and i stood them up and just stared at them.  They seemed to depict how it is in my mind now,  where i can't find a Thought that seems to offer any kind of sense to what seems to be happening with  Humanity right now.  I became very interested in them because when the mind cannot make any kind of meaning,  it looks for anything that might give meaning.

 

 

 

 

 

i wish i could believe there is a god,  i wish i could believe in God,  i wish.  but i don't.   and so i am left here,  in this day today unable to find a single Thought that eases any of this,  that sees hope of any Intervention,  human or divine that will steer us through these dark days.  We are on our own.  How do we Go?

part 2

Swamp cooler.  Evaporative cooler.

Outside the Room.   When daughter Jenny and i hacked through the wall of this trailer and turned the screened in porch into the ROOM,  that summer,  we put in this cooler.   I had very little money then,  none of us did.  So they found the smallest most reasonable one.  Today,  i would have researched for one that is

quiet

the most quiet.  I so so love quiet.  But...it Whirrs cheerfully along.

maybe you can see how it works.  There is a line to a water source that the yellow pump pulls in and sends up and out through the spokes that drip down into the aspen pads that are on the walls.  As the water that soaks the pads evaporates,  because of the whirring fan,   cool air is generated and blown in to the house.

shredded aspen pad

 

 

the pump sits in a little dumb plastic basket that is supposed to filter out debris,  and i guess it sort of does?  hmmmm....and the square thing on the right is the "float",  which monitors the need or not for more water.  Water from the Source is left constant.  The float turns it on or off.  Asks for more or not.  it's ingenious.

 

this is the configuration for Source.  A kind of wing nut thing...i don't know the proper names,  but a valve.   The water is left in the ON position so that water is free to enter the cooler.  There is the

knob,  or whatever it might be called that can be turned on and off to a hose when afixed...the hose, when afixed here means water to the Goat tub.

this is inside the house.  in cold times,  it's stuffed with two pillows to keep the cold out

 

the cover and you can see where moisture...ie" Rain marked the wall...

 

 

 

 

a Beauty Full Sunday....part 1

if you look at Her from different angles,  it's it whole other story.  This morning, with the flash.

 

 

i've been wanting to get back to where ever it was when i made this Cloth.  It's a kind of aching.  But i haven't been able to.

 

She will help me.

 

Everything i've learned about cloth making,   Jude taught me.  Everything i will learn about my own visions, now, will come from the Winter Bitch.

Living with Art.  Living with SomeThing that is truly one of a kind,  something that could not possibly be re produced,  even if Great Effort was made....it wouldn't work.  It would not be

alive

She is alive.  She is so totally from Jude's hand.  There can be no mistake. and it wasn't because she, Jude, looked anywhere for inspiration.  There is no where to look.  She went InSide.  Found Winter Bitch.  or,  was found?

I love her teeth.  She loosens my mind.

These words are stilted but i have to begin somewhere.