Reverting To Words...

,,,because sometimes, only words will do.  This week is ME awareness week; read more about it here.  There are a lot of events happening across the country, across the world, in fact, including Millions Missing, where shoes are set out, labelled with their owners' stories, to indicate the way in which they are missing from the event, and indeed, to some extent, from their own lives.  I can't go to the Edinburgh event (at the Mound, if you want to go along), so I thought I'd mark it with a poem.

Wasting My Energy : A Poem For ME Awareness

You. Yes, you. You who can dance

Whenever you want.  Stroll

Unconcerned wherever you

Wish, run for a mile, or a

Bus without thinking.  Work, laugh or play

Without consequence.  

You really don’t get it, now do you?

Here sit I, wheels for feet,

Buses a distant memory.  Oh yes,

My legs work, and the rest of me: I can

Stand up, point a toe, take a few

Careful steps, then sit down hard

Gasping for breath.

And that will make me

A fraud in your eyes;  that is,

If you see me at all.  Invisible,

That’s me.  (It’s got something to do

With the chair).

Humour me, just for a moment.

Imagine a world filled with pain,

Every action carefully planned, consequences

Weighed up and measured, that is

If just rising from bed can be managed..

Imagine your life without action,

Interaction, meaning: you’re imagining

Mine.  Nobody asks for ME; it just

Happens one day, irreversible,

Misunderstood.  No testing,

Diagnosis or cure.  No treatment.

No sympathy.  Just judgement,

And the shaking of heads. It’s no

Way to live. It’s all there is.

You still don’t get it, do you?

I really tried.

Workshop Fun

...and transfer dyeing is great fun, especially when there's a group. This was last week's workshop in full swing, working with transfer dyes and lutradur. A good deal of hilarity masked the fact that everyone was actually working pretty hard. We discovered lots about transfer dyes, and about lutradur, too, which, considering I was squashing elements of two different one day workshops into one two hour session, was possibly not surprising. As you can see, the dog was the only one who was completely disinterested in the whole affair; Lucky is a sweetie, but she doesn't do art....she does, however, enjoy the biscuits at coffee time.

It's interesting to run workshops in a gallery space; when you are looking for examples of good design, or a particular approach to work, there is always something to refer to on the walls. Or you can use them as inspiration, as you can see from one of the images here, which is a drawing of one of my totem dolls on a piece of lutradur. I thought, myself, it looked like Tina Turner in full flow... And if you want to refresh your memory about transfer dyeing, there's a post about it here

We're focussing on words this month... last night, we worked with found text, next week, we're making little translucent paper bowls with individual words trapped within them. It'll be interesting to see how that turns out!