Bridget Jones skirt

I've just been reading through the section in Bridget Jones diary where her skirt is given a personality of its own and becomes a character in its own right.
fascinated by this and watch again the growing of the skirt on the form as i add strands and consider how best to make the chatelaine.

I have new items for this piece now. An old watch that may or may not work and a small fork made from a hair-clip.

I think again of what would be important - that curious instant between need and desire; more photos tomorrow and things to think on.

the backbone is in the garden now home to life to clean and polish it ready for its next stage.
a quote about skirt:

If skirt is indeed sick,please look into how many days sick leave skirt has taken...

twerking

the whole tweaking, young woman sexuality thing has me gnawing my elbows! Reading whats been written it seems the subtext is a young woman is allowed no sexual vocabulary other than 'yes' and that can be implied rather than spoken.

what this means is young men also have no sexual vocab other than the one that exists in the company of other young men. Which means we have lost the concept of sexual flirting.

Its become too dangerous. If women even suggest they are sexually active or interested they immediately risk becoming victim to a form of male sexuality that cannot discern even the tiniest hint of nuance.

reality is a very different possibility. How often do we flirt sexually with  a partner? Accidentally brush or touch inappropriately, breathe on an ear we know to be sensitive or suggest in the quietest tone the possibility of licentiousness.

 sexual vocabulary requires a dialogue and what is suggested is not an inevitability; its a conversation.

I think to my skirt and my reading of the function of skirt. They were ritual garments that acknowledged the place of such a sexual vocabulary in a group's sociality. This place was firmly bound and known. i think it is that we have lost.

Would I twerk? In a heart beat. Would I twerk in public wearing a ritual skirt? In a heartbeat. But I am assuming a structure that allows such a physical conversation and accepts that nothing is finalised until the 'yes' has been given.

I watch a friend of mine put on and wear my unfinished skirt. it was a delight to see him play with the strands and experiment with moving his body through the form of the skirt. Would he have twerked? I'm thinking he would have in a heart beat!

beads and haiku

I've been working with beads - I'm thinking strands of hand painted, restrung and damaged beads.

I keep thinking back to this whole post apocalyptal thing and it seems to me we emphasise the damage, the danger, the psychopathic in these renderings but this forgets the human need to find and create beauty.

I wonder if in these landscapes we create and dream we forget that.

What becomes precious?

What would be treasured?

What fragments from a disappearing past?

and I wonder how I would wander that landscape. I think this often as I wander the city lane ways looking for fragments for my collages.

I have begun painting fragments and will hang them in fabric almost destroyed by time and weather.

chatalaine

I found this item at camberwell market on Sunday and thought to make a chatelaine  I love the inside of it - the text that tells of its origins as gift and the perpetual calendar missing the piece that makes it work.

what will make it a chatelaine?
what does the person who wears this skirt keep with her as important and needful?

*paper and a little pen
*an image
* a device of some obscure function

The skirt takes on its own life and becomes more than the sum of its parts.
I begin thinking as I'm plaiting and my mind considers the origin of skirt, the first cord tied around the small girl's middle.
The construction of such a strand. Perhaps a thread from her mother's skirt, something she reached for, something her mother dreamed for her.
And then one day her first strand. Plaited with her own hands and placed where her own desire places it.
I think also to my own skirt. This one is a fiction and I'm enjoying very much the construction and the  perhaps of it but my own skirt with my own history and I think to make that garment after this one.

Now that thought weaves with this one and skirt becomes memory.
I begin to consider my history, my memory and what it would feel like to wear that sweeping my ankles.

I've been thinking about plaiting

It's such a simple process and one that is enjoyable to undertake. It's also one of the original ways to join two or more strands into a stronger entity.
The ropes around the necks of the bog bodies are plaited which suggests possibly a ritual function to the simple plait.

It takes me back to my childhood and the long plaits I wore most days and in that remembering I find my father pulling back and smoothing my hair to make plaits. He pulled hard, making my eyes water but I would not have revealed a softer soul than the warrior I wanted to be.

After my sister's death I ripped one of her tee shirts and plaited it into a scarf to keep her close to me.

Now with this skirt I create plaits and find again their ability to draw out memory and allow  it to be entwined with the present and dreams of the future and I begin to dream of the contents of all three and what this skirt will carry. This leads me back to the origin of the skirt and its ritual function and for an instant I sit beside ancient sisters dreaming dreams of their dreams.

The honesty of knots

Ive started work on the skirt and find the process to be enthralling.

I sat on the grass  outside one of the classroom blocks at my sister's school and began the process of knotting together ripped lengths of silk.These need to be threaded through the main band and then plaited.

plaiting is relaxing; its the repetition and the calmness of working with your hands that allow the mind to wander.

On this day, with this task, listening to the conversations of the students as they sat on the lawn I was interested to find myself invisible and in that unseen state allowed access to their conversations.

I remembered my school days and loved how in these moments I could move with such ease between the now of the moment and the past of my memory whilst at the same time constructing in my mind the skirt I am plaiting. past, present and future move in the fluidity of the plait.

How to attach the individual strands to the main band?

I wondered how to make these joins invisible and flush with the band until realising that was not the point. 

Knots are honest. They state quite clearly what they are about and can be trusted in that function

The aim then not to hide the knots but to make them perfect.

And perhaps I was not invisible.

 

The joy of creativity,the joy of my creativity is that serendipitous moment when an array of disparate moment coalesce into something you weren't expecting.
This is how I got to the skirt.

factoid one
I love corrugated cardboard. its a magic substance and the more I play with it the more I discover it can do. water changes it in profound ways and makes it gentle and in an odd way more solid. I have cardboard discovered in many of the places  I have traveled; a fragment discovered on Aphrodite's Beach in Cyprus, a large heaps retrieved from a open room in Pompeii and  have used much of this to make covers for  journals.

factoid two
In Shinto shrines there are often trees that hold on their branches the prayers and desires of pilgrims and supplicants. These are knotted simply around a branch and left to fate.

factoid three
The skirt may well be the first constructed garment and is possibly a marker for the transition to sexually active fecund female.

factoid four
the knot may well be the original method of fastening two disparate fabrics.

We're almost there!

I love elephant matriarchal culture, post apocalyptal fiction, corrugated cardboard and haiku;

and I am to make a garment.
I was excited to be asked to submit a wearable art piece and even more excited when this object arrived at my inner eye complete. My task was to unpack this object and work out how best to move it from inner vision to external wearable object and this process is proving to be a delight.

The garment is named:
                         dreams and desires of young girls
and comprises a skirt and a head piece.
If skirt signifies the ritual transition from individual to sexually active and child bearing woman then this is no longer a garment I can wear and the making of it allows me to remember that aspect of my life.
This is an unexpected and powerful gift and I am delighting in its power.
I am making this skirt from the materials I love best: corrugated cardboard, silk fabrics, pearls and rusted bottle tops.
one of the thoughts occurring to me during this process is the possibility such a ritual garment may have been passed from mother to daughter. I suggested this thought to my daughter who refuted its possible delight quickly and emphatically - such are the dreams of mothers and old women and not the dreams of young girls and so i went back in my memory to my youth and the dawning of myself as a young sexually active female and dreamed again what life might dish up for me.

That was another delight, to remember.

so right now I am ripping cardboard, ripping fabric, collecting more rusted bottle tops and considering the possibility and promise of the reef knot.