family networks

My ‘netwurking’ keeps coming back to family networks and paper and text and black and white. What to do with all the pieces of paper I’ve inherited and all the secrets and stories the text  hints at so loudly. The dramas of births and deaths and marriages suggested – the formal certificates revealing lots and hiding lots more. I’m using paper to explore and explain what I know about some of the women I’ve ‘caught’ in these family nets. So far it’s crepe paper and it’s knitting…………..

net bowls

Memory is personal and unique to each of us. It is our own interpretation and recollection, a sensation sometimes so fleeting that we cannot find words to name it - a vague feeling, a trace of something we know but cannot touch, hidden under semi-transparent layers, distorted. . . . . . . . . .

I like to believe that my net bowls are filters that can capture and preserve precious snippets of memory – not lots of detail, but more a warmth that links our past and present.

Here are a few images of my ceramic knitting bowls. I’ve been playing with ways of displaying them, but think I’ll go with elevated glass on a long low plinth to incorporate the shadows and reflections.

Hello Networkers

I am finally on the blog!
It has been great to follow the blog and to see all your inspiring and interesting readings/ideas/works. I have been researching and working on several ideas for Nets and shall post further information behind my ideas/concepts/materials soon. This image is a detail of 77 crocheted wire and thread boat/pod froms creating a net.

Root Network

Network of Roots

Looking back to  my grass-roots in North Carolina, I realised that the pine woods behind our home was the catalyst for an appreciation of  nature, which I have carried with me to this day.  I have enjoyed a life where I have lived in some beautiful locations.  Each landscape was inspiring in it’s uniqueness, from the rugged cliffs and waterfalls of the Blue Mountains and the tranquility of  the river in Tasmania’s  Derwent  Valley to  the small inlets and bays of the D’Entrecasteaux Channel.  Now I find myself in country New South Wales where an unfamiliar and at times harsh landscape requires me to put down roots once again.

When I arrived  three years ago the local landscape was struggling to survive and many plants had  succumbed to the effects of the drought.  Fallen branches and exposed roots collected from my own garden are combined with native grasses and waxed threads.  Nurturing, healing and caring for the environment are concepts symbolised by the intricate twining and knotting which protect the surfaces of the forms.   The root series not only comments on the need to care for the environment but also on my need to establish new networks and connections with others in a new landscape.