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.
