Jan's magpie totem quilt: part 2

Jan's magpie quilt: PART 2

I looked at the themes emerging from the memoirs of her journey that Jan has published with the title of “Coming home to myself”. While her memoirs indicated the processes she experienced over the years, the underlying theme was that of connection and involvement: from her youth to the many years spent in a Christian Church community; about commitment to her partner and children; taking action for peace at Pine Gap in the Whitlam years; flourishing as a feminist through activities with other women to establishing a local women’s health centre; and especially her return to the land, source of inspiration. There have been so many powerful expressions of her commitments to and in life… all leading to a deep realisation of herself as woman, as Her-Self as Goddess Woman – in spite of, and maybe ultimately because she embraced an ‘addiction to relationship’, named as co-dependency.  Reading Jan’s memoir, I saw her as a person who cares deeply about her personal world, as committed to the well-being of those with whom she is in personal relationship, with the wider community and humanity, and in particular, her deep commitment to women and the land.

Jan’s monologue is interwoven with poems, written at different stages of her journey, which have undoubtedly helped in bringing together the story as it was gradually revealed to her by the magpies. In forming the design for the quilt I constantly toyed with the idea of including some text from the poems, and some celebratory quotes from her monologue did eventually appear near the bottom of the quilt, sitting in close contact with the magpie that was gazing back at the various elements she had revealed, (reminiscent of Mexican and Latin American folkloric traditions of including text in nooks and shrines, as used by Frida Kahlo’s in her work, for example.) However, the poem titled “A mini journey” written in 1988 (my aim was to insert it here, but I have yet to find out how to transfer a scan from the book), a poem of deep gratitude that revels in her close association to her magpie friends, kept refusing pride of place on the front of the quilt, preferring to be attached the back, as though representing the foundation stone of a sacred site.

The back of the quilt was starting to build up in my imagination a ‘reverse quilt’, one made from patches printed of text – but I had to stop somewhere! However, another image called out to be included on the back of the quilt, one that I deem to be as equally as important as the symbols and images on the front. In fact, this single image seems to hold Jan’s story represented by the images of the different phases of her life story symbolised on the front. It is that of Monica Sjoo’s painting from 1978, entitled “God giving birth”, a painting that almost found her in a British court for blasphemy, so deeply entrenched is our image of divinity. (http://www.monicasjoo.com/exhibition/1_god_giving_birth.html)  The fabric chosen on which to situate these printouts seemed somewhat out of place with the sort of freedom suggested by the hand-dyes of the front. It is a printed navy blue cotton, full of small white daisies bursting forth. It came to represent the ‘flourishing natality’ that I felt in Jan’s courage to tell her story. (These terms are used by Grace Jantzen (1998: Becoming Divine: towards a Feminist philosophy of Religion).

This is how I have read Jan’s story, and tried to express it through the quilt she had asked me to make, naming it after her monologue, “Coming home to myself”. Though they are not included on the quilt, I’d like to include some excerpts from Jan’s text that resonate very strongly with its imagery. She wrote of her experience of the cycles of the seasons as one of connection, which ‘…has reconnected me to my inner processes… to live with the paradox of both beauty and terror in the power of the elements… I feel connected as I open myself to the darkness and the light… I need enter the place of the womb of transformation, of birth into light as part of the eternal cycle of life and death.  Of her spirituality, Jan wrote, ‘I am one with feminine divinity, the Goddess… she is expressed through me.’ And again, ‘…my sense of returning to the land is in fact my return to the Great Mother. I have discovered her within me, and surrounding me in the creation. I am flesh of her flesh and breath of her breath. She called my name and I followed.’ These sentiments are echoed when she writes: ‘the voice of the feminine is rising and I add my voice. Nowhere is that voice more powerful for me than in the land, the earth. The voice I was hearing and trying to communicate with was the voice of the archetypal Great Mother, from our collective unconscious. Our stories tell her story… She has been calling us from the beginning of time... She is calling us back to connection, back to our feelings, back to the womb, where we can be birthed again by the divine energy of earth.’

The creation of Jan’s magpie totem quilt has been a privilege and honour, and occurred on and off over perhaps a 12-month period, or longer. It has taken me through the cycle of creation as identified in the seasonal cycles of change many, many times over. As such, it has been quite a fascinating journey of the creative process, in which I have felt a coming home to myself, re-creating and deepened my connection to my own understandings and expressions of a personal spirituality as Goddess, as Woman, as a Creator. And, I now feel a personal and spiritual connection to magpies in a way I’ve never realised before and will never lose as my understanding of the interconnectedness of all life and non-life continues to grow and be blessed. Borrowing the words used by Jan to tell of reunion with her ‘beloved companions’, the magpie’s song now speaks to my spirit in ways that words can not.

The story of Jan’s magpie totem quilt

I’m not sure how long ago Jan asked me to make a quilt to represent her connection with magpies, starting from when she was a young girl and throughout her life as her journey unfolded through memory and in her writings. Her story, entitled ‘Coming Home to Myself’ and as described in the fly-leaf, is ‘the story of a woman’s journey to find herself through the maze of deep, unconscious feelings...  of depression, child abuse, addiction and recovery, confusion and hope… in a time of rebirthing of feminine consciousness… of women speaking out and reclaiming their lost tradition.’ A Jan took to writing her story in 1994 as ‘part of the healing process’, I have often thought that the healing was somehow continuing through my process of putting together the stages of her story in the various sections of the quilt; and hopefully will continue for us all through the now finished piece, with the voice of the feminine shining through to nourish and celebrate ‘the collective wisdom and voices of the women who have gone before us.’

The creative process begins:

One question I’m often asked is ‘how long did it take to make?’ The answer to that is not as easy as it may sound. My internal response is ‘How do you measure the time of preparation, collection, sorting ideas, and all the instances that the mind wanders back to the quilt in creation?’ I guess the time sitting behind a machine can be measure in hours, days, weeks – but I always forget to record the hours, because there are always interruptions, breaks in the process, some of which may last for years! And it’s impossible to record the other internal process in the sequence of minutes that we call time.

The creative process according to the Wheel of the Year was a focus of my PhD thesis, and as I create I am becoming more aware of the various stages in the process, stages that, as they are seen to resonate with the cycles of nature, are necessary for creation to occur.  Setting its own speed, or rate of progress, the creative process can be quite quick – all the seasons experienced in quick succession; or very slow. And of course, each stage is often repeated over and over, in repeating cycles during the creative process.

After Jan asked me to make a totem quilt for her deep connection to magpies, I started by reading the poem she had written early in her monologue under the chapter heading ‘The Story of the Magpies’. In a series of interconnected stories, the text is divided into quite distinct stages. Nevertheless there is an underlying thread of the magpie story present throughout, although not always directly referenced. It is as though her ability to hear the song of the magpies and the story they told through song, was the way deeper realisations about the stages in her life’s journey were revealed, bringing understanding and healing. Clearly  the magpie as a beautiful Australian bird was the central motif, but there was so much more that needed to be told.

Contrary to religious teachings, that all that is in Creation comes out of nothing, I experience creativity as beginning with a collection of all that may be something else in itself at the time, namely scraps of fabric and ideas, brought together much as a collection of ‘seeds’ from the ‘fruits’ of a previous harvest. What we fondly call our ‘stash’ is our collection of seeds. Long ago I started pulling out different fabrics from my collection, putting them into a plastic tub as ideas about what to ‘re-present’ in the quilt were gestating.  I knew they would not all be manifest in the 50 by 90 cms quilt. Jan had given me the size, which helped contain the profusion of ideas and forms that came flooding in as I read her story, thought about the physical landscape of her habitation and the invisible landscape of her soul.  The colours and textures of the former were aroused by my memories of the Australian bush, rocky, mostly drought-stricken; and the knowledge that she lives with the husband on a property outside Wagga Wagga, with a 360 degree view of her surrounding landscape, scattered with yellow-box eucalypts. The soul landscape I’d absorbed from her text aroused visions of travelling through the dark night into the fullness as experienced in watching moon cycles; our menstrual cycles as the ultimate creative expression for women; and of course, the seasons.  This resulted in including into the tub full of shades of earth browns, bush greens, black and whites for the magpies. Most of them were hand-dyes, since I like their natural feel, though I had no idea how they were to manifest for this ‘magpie totem quilt’.

Then there were the Goddess screen prints I treasure, left over from previous quilts. I had two goddesses in various colours: the Bird-headed Goddess form ancient Egypt and the little Goddess Mother from Willendorf. Then I started to think of other ways to increase my Goddess stash, with those I’ve loved for a long time. This idea, together with the need to ‘observe’ the shape of magpies, took me to the computer to search and scan. I decided to do some fabric printing onto fabric using the Bubble Jet Set stuff: some text from Jan’s book, the poem, some magpies and maybe some more goddesses.

Symbols arousing memory

When I think about this quilt, it could be presented as a portrait, because it is a portrait, in the same way that this year’s winner of the Archibald Tim Storrier conceives of portrait – through representing life events and symbols, rather than a personal likeness. The significant events of Jan’s life as she refers to them in her memoir form the basis of the design for her quilt. Four phases of the moon are another symbolic thread from which Jan’s story could unfold, starting with the full dark moon, moving through to a new moon, waxing moon, arriving at the fullness of a golden-pink harvest moon. The first ‘block’ to come forth was the fronds of the tree fern, gradually unfurling as memory unfurled. The river was an important symbol in the poem, of the joy and freedom of the magpies, and eventually the ancient bird-headed snake Goddess found her way to ride on the waters in her freedom and triumph – this time in the boat of a eucalyptus leaf! Another Goddess symbol is the Great Mother (of Villendorf) is encased also by eucalypt leaves as she gives birth of self and all-that-is from her connection to the life-giving energies of land and waters out of which the yellow-box eucalypts live, die and are reborn. A rainbow is mentioned in Jan’s story, a clear symbol of hope, new life, as are dragonflies. In the quilt a dragonfly hovers almost invisibly over the circle of leaves reminding us of the ever-rotating cycle between light and dark that is Earth’s Creation, shown in the creative cycle of the seasons.

After having ‘collected’ many different magpie images, and playing around with their positions on the quilt, finally a single magpie found her place at the bottom, looking up as witness and to celebrate Jan’s story, the Mother having given the magpies the ‘special task of calling forth her spirit into the light of exquisite, pure sound… in ways that words could not…  to bring messages of hope and comfort; meaning and connection; of pure delight and celebration; of healing.’

There is much more to say about the process of making the quilt, but this will suffice for now!

Trip outback - to 'the womb of the Mother'

Our trip out to Broken Hill and Menindi was over 10 years ago. Leo would remember which year he was in at school – year 8/9? My notes say September 2000. It was a fabulous trip, where we stayed in GlenYs' friend, Taffy’s on-site caravan just on the Menindi Lakes, a spectacular place, full of peace an quiet, 100K out of Broken Hill.

The original quilt was one piece and is now a diptych and has been re-quilted. It expresses the wonderful variety of flora and fauna, the colours of the land on our journey out to the West. These colours included the human intervention of crops and weeds (such as the introduction of a purple weed supposed to feed cattle, known as Patterson’s curse, or is it known as Salvation Jane, for its capacity to survive the harshest drought). There is the yellow of Canola crops – also the yellow in the many forms of acacia. The Sturt desert-pea is also present, and reminds me of a very near accident we had with another car just outside the town that shares the border with South Australia. It was driven by aboriginals, who obviously had the ‘outback’ another understanding of when the car ahead indicates a right turn, it means OK to pass – but I actually was intending to turn right into a siding to look at the brilliant red flowers of the Sturt Desert pea up close.

We had travelled around 1400 Ks from the Blue Mountains, and the distance from Broken Hill to Adelaide in SA was around 650 Ks! The sense of space and distance was quite palpable – both on the ground and from an overhead viewpoint – and the land being artificially divided up for farming. The design of the quilt has an aerial aspect, showing the colours, arriving from memories of spatial distance. I also wanted to try a new technique, of ‘embedding’ different pieces into another, rather than simply ‘piecing’, which means joining one piece of fabric into another by doing a type of “L” turn by making a 45 degree nick through both layers to do the turn. After the right-angle turn is made, a seamline is sewn and the bottom fabric is cut away to create a ¼” seam for the top edge where the fabrics are joined, (thus removing the excess fabric from the bottom piece). Another turn could be made to complete the inset of the top fabric on 3 sides. Quite difficult to keep corners really precise and neat, but not impossible with practice! I think the quilt started out with some of my ‘practice pieces’, which grew and took on shape.

On the drive out west the road pushed ahead like a ribbon; at each slight rise the expectation of something different on the other side was usually thwarted – by more road looming straight ahead for miles. But there were noticeable changes in vegetation types every so often, with trees becoming more stunted. 

The machine quilting emphasises this seemingly endless straightness, as though heading towards infinity. Wherever we went, the horizon seemed to move ahead of us – and was also behind, and around. The overwhelming sense of ‘presence’ obliterated the past and future, being literally ‘in’ the horizon, suspended in a sort of timelessness. At times we seemed to be taking a ‘road to nowhere’, with the only indicators were precarious manmade signs in which we trusted as we soaked in the circular horizon.

On reaching the Lakes, there was quite a lot of water in them, and dead trees were standing out of the water like silent sentinels to times of perhaps both drought and flood. The sun setting in the west over the lake’s horizon was a fierce golden ball, lighting up the clouds and showing a gentler mood as she slipped below the water. It’s all there in the quilt – now a diptych – called ‘Road to Menindi’.

Latest creative 'project'!

‘Earth is our Mother’ (7/7/11)

Small block (12 x 12”) with stencil of Goddess of Willendorf in centre.

This block  is hardly a 'major' effort in creativity, but I felt very strongly about doing a block to be part of this wonderful (I suspect) worldwide quilt project, which aims to "Gather the women" to 'bring together the visions that women the world over have for Mother Earth... into a beautiful quilt, shining the energy, love and vision... to help heal her - from my heart to your heart to the heart of Mother Earth.'  It was dreamed up by Enrica Mallard in Eltham, Victoria, Australia - and is still going, if you want to add a block! Enrica will even post you the calico backing if you want (see website below). I love the image of the Great Mother Goddess found originally at Willendorf in Germany 100 years ago; they put out a stamp to commemorate the finding, and many hundred (thousand?) replicas of Her have been found throughout areas named as Old Europe by Maria Gimbutas. I'm glad to again be able to use the silkscreen print made by friend and artist, Sue Swanson, many years ago now - I've almost finished them now! This is what I wrote to go with the image: 

I love having the opportunity to share my vision for Mother Earth, infused into cloth, with the combined visions and energies of other women. For me, the mini sculpture of the Great Mother (labelled in the world of archaeology as the ‘Venus of Willendorf’) at the centre of my block, represents a vision of powerful and embodied creativity (not just ‘fertility’ as physical re-production), but caring, of self and other, and respect derived from mutual respect. She is housed by the movement between light and dark, the movement experienced through the seasons and observation of Earth’s moon.

Women’s Visions United for Mother Earth

www.womensvisionsunited.com

Meantime the magpie quilt for Jan is still germinating in the dark of the imagination!

‘Cherchez la femme: remembering the mothers’

Another small quilt made quite quickly (in a day due to deadline) from ideas that had been gestating over quite a few months of thinking about the theme/requirements and the materials I had at hand. Made in response to an exhibition entitle “The Silk Road”, to be held at the Arts Society of Queenstown New Zealand, the basic requirement was that the quilt be at least $40% silk. Though I have used silk before, specifically raw Thai silk in my quilt for Litha (Summer Solstice), I usually work with cottons - but, like all quilters anticipating a challenge, I did have some silks in my stash! I wanted to keep the quilt small, and continue the idea given birth to in the previous quilt… to honour mothers and the acts of mothering. This has been a life theme of mine, since becoming mother almost 23 years ago – the experience gave me insights beyond understanding of what it means to ‘be’ and ‘become’ a mother.

The fabrics that inspired the quilt came from a ‘book’ of furnishing fabrics, salvaged and given to me by a colleague who knew of my quilting passion (thanks Cleona). Many of the samples for the curtains were from 100% silk – stitched and crimped - such luxury, but of course sizes were limited, being samples. The colours of the samples were so earthy, watery, elemental, reminding me of the earlier quilt and the influence of earth’s colours, in caves, of prehistoric images carved into and made from earth. Then I found other hand-dyed silks bought a long time ago - also in quite lovely earthy colours. These provided the 'background' to insert an image of Earth as Mother - ourselves as Mother of earth.

The image onto fabric from a screen print by Sue Swanson, produced when our children were quite young, was that of the Bird-headed Snake Goddess of early Egypt, symbol of re-turn to life re-newing itself (commonly referred to as 'fertility' from a male sexist point of view). Like all goddesses in prehistory, into the era of patriarchy, She too is hidden – as if behind a curtain, or veil, as many women still quite literally live out their lives and perform their life-sustaining and enhancing ‘duties’. 

For me this ancient image (deliberately hidden behind a 'curtain') inspires internal strength, courage in face of all odds, recognised in my own life experiences in be-coming woman, as a single parent for 22 years, and witnessed in the lives of other women - though the qualities exercised are most often overlooked, hidden and veiled.

‘Learning from the Mothers’: a quilt for IWD’s 100 years' anniversary

A few weeks ago, my friend Sheila, who is currently on retreat in Victoria, sent me a quilt she had made for the International Women’s Day exhibition to be held at Braemar Gallery with the theme: ‘Celebrating the past; educating the future’. I had not thought to make anything, but when I saw her celebratory ‘frieze’ of ‘wonderful women’ using African motifs full of movement, life and joy my creative juices started to feel the need to put fabric together and give expression to the creative energies of women, particularly as mothers.

I had been reading about Palaeolithic (Old Stone Age) cave paintings, and the latest finds at Chauvet in southern France. It is a period defined as extending from 37,000 to 11,000 years ago. Such caves provide the most extraordinary examples of visual language – a language of signs and symbols coming out of a ‘void’ according to art historians. From my perspective, though all form originates in the void of unknowing, the images that cover the cave walls came out of the experience of these early humans: experiences that formed beliefs, ideas that we now know as ‘metaphors’, which carry the experience beyond, out of ‘pre-history’ into ‘history’, and the continuity maintained through the motherline.

The focal image in this small quilt (85 x 30cms) is that of the Great Mother, found at Willendorf, Germany in the late 19^th century. She is most commonly known as a ‘Venus of Willendorf’ (- ideas mostly connected with ‘fertility’ rather than ‘sexuality’), and is dated at 30,000 years ‘old’. I clearly remember that when I first saw this image I was shocked that an overweight woman without revealing her face could represent the power of women; and be an image of beauty, one that was clearly admired and replicated, since the image has been found in archaeological digs spread across a wide range of Europe. But I soon came to love her deeply because of what she represents to me personally, which in some ways is too difficult to explain.

The simplest explanation is that I recognised myself in her, physically and spiritually. I know that I had ‘boasted’ of getting the stomach rolls (and they continue to roll in); but the strongest feeling was around her power to give birth, motherhood as a power that is accepting, loving, empowering of self and others; that having given birth and raised child/children did not diminish her meaning, her self perception or that of others, but that she felt humbled by experiencing the Mystery through her own physical body.

In calling this small quilt (880x300mms) ‘Learning from the mothers’ I thought of my dear son, Leo, of what he has learnt, as shown through many of his actions. It was significant that on the day this quilt went into the IWD 100^th anniversary exhibition at Braemar Gallery, I assisted Leo in transferring his life’s ‘goods and chattels’ to his new home in downtown Sydney – a move to further independence, and from a practical point of view, of being closer to his study (Hons year in Socio-legal) and workplace. His actions have been the greatest affirmation that we learn from the mothers: in his case, from his belief in working for equity and social justice to remembering his friends by ‘rewarding’ them with a T-shirt of the candidate he had worked for in our local electorate, which seems quite trivial in some way – but on another level, it’s not at all trivial, but an action that affirms a worldview.

Back to the quilt. The image of the Great Mother come from my stash of screen prints made by Sue Swanson, soooo... many years ago, when we were ‘new’ mothers together; other fabrics were saved from a period when I experimented with painting over commercial cottons; choice of fabrics was made to represent the greatest, most necessary of Mothers, Earth. Some pieces are of panne velvet, and have a lovely ‘soft’ feel to them.  It came together in quite a short space of time… and there it is!

Use of symbolism in Nickie's quilt

Below are some of the concepts that relate to the symbols incorporated into Nickie’s quilt. Each symbol tends to overlap and interweave with others – as all aspects of every story do.

The central focus of the quilt is the Celtic cross, sharing the two colours of the velvet capes, red and green. This is surrounded by four symbols that represent the foundational relationships in Nickie’s journey: the family relationships between father, mother, Nickie and her sister.

The Wheel symbol, at the top of the cross is also the Wheel of the Year and a Celtic symbol of the life cycle according to the eight seasons, as they were experienced. At the bottom of the cross there is the Cruciate form - a cross of equal lengths enclosed by a circle, a symbol of Creation, cosmic union, initially through the union of male and female; and of the four directions of the Earth meeting at the centre, being surrounded and embraced by the round of Earth’s horizon. I have also read that gypsies adopted the form as both a symbolic of sexual union. In practical ways, the two elements of the symbol were used to mark a horse’s right foreleg with a cross (male) and its left foreleg with a circle (female), on the understanding that the two symbols would attract each other, thereby keeping the horse ‘hobbled’ so as not to run away (Walker p.46).

Nickie’s sister has been involved in the Australian Scouts movement all her life – hence the Fleur-de-lys with the Southern Cross, made from the little stars sewn over the original capes. Another interesting aspect of the fleur-de-lys is that it has Goddess associations, and has been used in imagery of the Mary, Mother of Jesus, whose power as the Virgin aspect of the Triple Goddess (Virgin, Mother, and Crone) was to conceive and give life to the Godhead. By extension it also refers to the power to re-birth self –  both occurrences occurring parthenogenetically, that is, unassisted by male intervention (Walker p.426).

On the complementary right arm of the bigger Celtic cross is another creation symbol of regeneration and ‘the source of unborn souls’, as it gave shelter in the afterlife. It also contains the element of ‘sacrifice’, meaning being made sacred through undergoing/accepting ‘all that Life has to offer’ thereby maintaining the life-force embodied in the World Tree, which was always assigned female gender and regarded as the all-nourishing Mother. In India and Persia, the Tree was depicted with 5 branches, symbolising the 5 elements: earth, air, fire, water and ether (Walker p.472). It can be understood as representing the experiences we have had of healing and being healed: ass Nickie says, ‘learning to embrace all that Life has to offer’.

In each of the four corners there is a ‘sprite’, faerie or angel, providing protection and energy that flows to and from the four directions. These designs were formed by combining elements from the borders of Nickie’s mother’s cape, and celebrates Nickie’s healing powers. Below this there is a panel showing the phases of the moon, waxing from the left into fullness at the centre and waning to darkness on the right. The moon is sacred to Goddess symbolism and ritual. The three dancing Goddesses beneath celebrate their power as creativity and innocence (Virgin), the fertility to give and nurture (Mother), and to renew life (the Wise Old One).

Creating with the fabrics

The symbols on these nine blocks were appliquéd using fine machine satin stitch, using the fabrics alternatively from the green and pink dresses. The surround of the quilt is made from the beautiful, heavily embroidered borders of the two little capes belonging to the two sisters, again combining the green and the red, and the tassles are from each of the 3 capes. I tied them with a loose knot, because the knot is also sacred to the Goddess as weaver-creator; and gypsy women untied knots/braids to assist childbirth (Walker pp. 130, 142). Those on the quilt can be undone, of course – and can be re-made ritually according to need.

Reference: Walker, B, 1988, The woman’s dictionary of symbols & sacred objects, Harper & Row, NY