Pathways
2014, collected tree limbs, natural plant dyes, linen.
Spending time in the bush, walking through the environment quietens my mind and awakens my senses. Sounds of bird calls, smells of Eucalyptus, feeling the rich warm earth beneath my toes with each step, tasting the wild foods I encounter and seeing the reoccurring patterns and forms that make up my surroundings and allow me to immerse in them. I am always amazed by the new discoveries I make each visit, by just sitting, watching and creating with my hands. I collect pieces of the living landscape as a way to engage with and contemplate on the interconnectedness of things.
These liminal experiences are bound within fabric, and dyed using eco printing techniques. These large fabrics contain an image, reflection and my memories experience of the chosen place. This cloth holds my emotional weight, it holds the beauty of life, death and transformation.
These tree skeletons that once were living and now are dead, still hold a presence, a life spark, held within the memories of those around that can associate themselves and their relationships to trees in their environment and its interconnections within our bodies, our branching veins and neuron thought patterns.
The linen containing sacrificial plant life, are carefully bound around these limbs, providing a spell bound protective layer. These forms act as totems, a prayer and thanks to natures beauty and destruction, the complete all inspiring wonderment and tragedy of its cycles, times lost and the regeneration of a new.
The limbs are bound to one another, creating connections and physical manifestations of my path taken through the bush and the erratic nature of thought.
