Where You Live

I finished this challenge piece today, though it turned out to be more of a technical challenge than I expected! It's called It Takes a Village, a reference to the allegedly African proverb, "It takes a village to raise a child," on which Hillary Clinton has based the title of her book. This village in the middle of the city has helped me raise my two kids and provided a safe and loving environment for them to grow up in. (That's not the case for so many of the world's children.)

The background is a painted representation of this village-in-the-city, with a stitched overlay of the front of my house. I painted the surrounding bush with dimensional additive in the paint, but the additive may have been a little elderly. It certainly didn't behave the way it did last time. The result this time was rather spotty, like a bad case of acne! I also didn't have any soluble paper to use as the basis for the house image, so I printed onto ordinary paper, something I've done before many times. It worked fine to transfer the stitch, but that dimensional paint just grabbed hold of it and wouldn't let go! I thought I might have to toss the whole thing, but persistence with the tweezers and unpicking and redoing some of the stitching in the worst affected areas did the trick. It's not quite what I imagined but it's finished and I don't actually hate it.

Where You Live

I also painted my mud map in today's painting session. The shape of the mud map was based on aerial photos from sites like FlashEarth and street directories, as I wanted to give an impression of my little suburb-within-a suburb, surrounded by the bush. I painted the ovals and some elements with flat paint, but I painted the bush and some of the urban areas with Setacolor expandable paint mixed into the paint. I plan to puff the paint once I have finished stitching, so hopefully it will look as three-dimensional and lush as it does in aerial photographs. I think I may need to paint it a little more yet, to create a denser cover in my village. I also haven't decided yet whether to stitch or paint the silver line of the motorway.

Where You Live

What's this? It's a mud map! Mud maps are traditionally what you draw in the dirt with a stick, when you're explaining to someone how to get somewhere. I'm not sure if this is a uniquely Australian phenomenon! By extension, they are also all those maps scrawled on the back of an envelope, a visual representation of "turn left at the blue house, go past the wiggly bend..." kind of instructions.

I love mud maps and I've used them before in artwork. They are a way of owning the scenery, the way to significant places, the way home. I made this mud map today, based on aerial photos and more traditional maps, as part of Where You Live. It shows the promontory of the area where I live, thrusting out into the surrounding bush.

Usually, I overlay mud maps over other images, but this time, the mud map is going to be the starting place. I've drawn it onto fabric with masking medium, using a fine pen, and when I get a moment, I'll start to paint.

Where You live

Today I had a little time to work on a play piece. I belong to a net list called Like Minded Threads*, which runs monthly challenges. The textile theme this month is
"Where I live". I've worked with this theme before, and I know that, when you live in the suburbs of Australia's largest city, it's hard to make it sound interesting or express what it is that makes your place special!

There are quite a few things I love about where I live. One is Sydney's mild climate, which most of the year is just perfect for all the things I love to do. But, of course, that applies to most of the Sydney basin. Where I live is close enough to the city for easy access, but far enough away that the blocks are still mostly 1/4 acre (0.1 hectare) with gardens and lots of trees. But most of all, where I live is surrounded on three sides by national park and on the fourth by a deep set and part-tunnel motorway. There's just one access road in. So we have this village community, about 5000 people at the last census, isolated in the middle of the city. There's one school, a set of shops (including Italian and Indian restaurants and two coffee shops), a church, playing fields, tennis courts, several playgrounds, a little retirement village, a bowling club where you can get a quiet drink in the evening and, until recently, a cottage hospital just over the drawbridge. (OK, I'm joking about the drawbridge!) Just about everything you'd need in life, assuming someone will deliver the art supplies. Hmm, perhaps we need a fabric shop?

You'd have to admit that's a lot to fit into a little textile work that I need to make in just under two weeks! But I have a cunning plan....
* Like Minded Threads has changed its name to Like Minded Artist