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Stories make the heart bigger blog post 9 May 2014:" I am thinking of Victorian gothic chokers and clockwork hearts, of headless silouhettes and cameos, of neck and wrist wraps and using pages of the stories that Brooke read again and again to make 400 paper hand-stitched hearts....  16 down 394 to go ...LOL!  Something starting to come together here for the centrepiece of Brooke's "gothic love held together with elastic bands "memory, inspired choker...
"Telling stories and encouraging others to tell theirs is a sort of interpersonal gardening"~Jane Pauley, journalist.~ Artistic inspiration comes from a lot of different sources. For me, it always starts with memory and stories. I heard someone up here in North East Victoria refer to some tourists who were wandering through town taking photos of the autumn colours as a "busload of tree changers". Nigel and I are fairly recent settlers up here and people often say "oh you are tree changers" to us, referring to our move from city to country. Sometimes I can't help but feel that this label is also a subtle, maybe unconscious reminder to us, by others, of our place in this new setting...of being from the outside, of transitioning into something but not yet being a part of it. But hearing the phrase used in a slightly different context to refer to people who come to see the trees changing colour got me thinking... This is our first autumn in North East Victoria. Soon there will be less and less "firsts" for us, as we mark occasions up here. Soon we will say..."remember our first summer up here?" ..."remember how gorgeous the garden looked that first spring?" Like the "busload of tree changers", Nigel and I find ourselves mesmerised by the wonderful colours of autumn up here...not because we are seeing it for the first time, but because for the first time, we are able to appreciate it every day. And we do we love being here...that is why we came. And I can't help but think about the significance of changing colours and Nigel and I as tree changers ( city to country) making our own transition into a different way of life and allowing ourselves to be inspired by this. Soon we will have come one full cycle of the seasons living up here. As our second Winter approaches I realise that this place has always been a part of our backyard and part of our story, it just wasn't the main setting for the plot...until now.  The thing I miss about not having a studio at home is not having Frodo up on the couch, in the studio, with me while
I work...:( |