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.