Each stitch is a marker of time, place and experience.

Seeking Shelter

Seeking Shelter is a contemporary exploration of the traditional Ngarrindjeri mats of Australia. I first encountered these mats while working on large-scale fiber sculptures for WOMADelaide in Adelaide, South Australia. The mats mesmerized me with the simplicity of structure, materials and use. Traditionally the Ngarrindjeri mats are created by gathering sedge grasses and coiling them into an eight-foot diameter mat. Folded and stitched partially they were used to carry children, scoop fish, and hold sacred objects. Enclosed completely they were used to wrap the dead. This basket structure is symbolic of the sacred fertile state out of which things come.

By recreating this style of mat with materials ranging from seagrass, bamboo, and rawhide I will explore the potential forms available by simply folding an oval mat, contorting it’s shape and stitching sections of the woven cloth.

Eventually residing on a material and creating a series of large-scale folded pouches/wombs I will install these in the landscape with the hopes of photographing and journaling their habitation by wildlife and their deterioration by the elements.

I’ve been working on a couple of project proposals and I’ve come back to this old one from a few years ago. I’ll rewrite it and add to it…

I propose a new series of vessels that are an interpretation of an Aboriginal funerary basket made of seagrass, and other natural fibers, using a traditional “blanket” stitch. The basket is finished using coverings of concrete/cement, patined with wax and stains. These images illustrate the stitching and basic form, not the finished surface.

In the Aboriginal tradition the baskets are constructed of a woven mat with a minimum diameter of 8 feet wide. The mats are woven in the round, flat. A corpse is smoked, dried and folded into a prayer stance on top of the mat. The mat is then stitched closed around the loved one. Enclosing the spirit in preparation of an afterlife.

How we hold our loved one’s bodies as they come into and leave our lives is the focus of my explorations in Cradleboards to Coffins.

Nestings, wrappings and bindings encase the spirit and body in birth and death. Mothers swaddle their newborns to provide a womb outside the womb; use casings for transportation of their young, and to create a structured environment in which the parents may choose the their child’s first views of society. In death we send our loved ones away in coffins and caskets. The funerary bindings protect the living from disease, decay and the insurmountable fear of our own death.

Our customs for the newly born and recently departed are vibrantly similar though grossly separated. Through the methods of textile techniques I am exploring the forms of packaging society uses to contain our bodies and our spirits throughout our lives.

Raffia, seagrass, tar and waxes compose these new works. Aromatic, and textural I aspire to transport the viewer into a quiet, meditative space. Some forms are created using random weave basket techniques, intuitively winding individual strands of fiber throughout a mass of loose fiber to create a solid form. Then using random stitching I contort the vessel’s shape sewing the sides together and begin to create the feel of a human form pushing on the sides of the wrappings. As the casings develop I feel the conversation I hold with each one end and my respect for their existence blossoms.