Graffitti Granny

It’s former green is blue and thin,

And its once firm legs sink in and in:

Soon is will break down unaware,

Soo it will break down unaware.

At night when reddest flowers are balck

Those who once sat thereon come back;

Quite a row of them sitting there,

Quite a row sitting there.

With them the seat does not break down,

Nor winter freeze them, nor floods drown,

For they are as light as upper air,

They are as light as upper air.

Dreamer is melancholic yet peaceful as he ponders Thomas Hardy’s poem The Garden Seat, on his own seat. So many wonderful moments with friends and creatures in his life. All pas on and yet molecules still floating in the universe.

Artist Statement.

2D and 3D works of mixed media including clay, found objects and ink on old calender.

We each are so unique, and yet at the same time a part of a rich diverse tapestry of life. 

Yet we often struggle to accept ourselves as unique beings and instead we imagine the “other” is living the kind of life we want.

In this work I am playing with the different aspects of life that each creature yearns to be…. believing that if they were these creatures they’d have the strengths and attributes required to live life fully.

I hope the work, though actually reveals that in the process of identifying with their creature, they see that they already have aspects of that creature within themselves.

After all, we are all ultimately from the same beginnings though we know not how or where!

The sculptures names are Swahili for each of the characteristics they yearn for. As an Irish white child growing up in Kenya, I yearned to be a black African. Failing to see that black or white Irish or African I had the aspects of life I admired in others in myself. Perhaps too all the different aspects of ourselves and others are connected by love (upendo).

LIBRARY EXHIBITION 

One day Bhan was a young woman and now she returns to her frolicking 40 years on. She reflects “Where does time go?” She carries her poem Invictus. Not even sure what it means. She is weary and then she remembers her grand child and she lifts her weary body up and leaps into the sea, glad she is alive. She is young again in her soul, dancing with the fish in Frecynet in Tasmania, as she remembers she did all those years ago.

The child must leave the mother to live life. The mother is both glad the child has strength to leave and sad that her child is leaving home. They no longer have words to communicate their love and appreciation for each other. However the poem by Ada Doyle express’ their love. And so the child goes to Sydney and sings for peace. The mother listens on the radio and hopes her child will be able to live in the world. Life goes on.

https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/special-features/chorusoz-the-armed-man-a-mass-for-peace/103900010?utm_content=whatsapp&utm_medium=content_shared

Living is no laughing matter:

you must live with great seriousness

like a squirrel, for example-

I mean without looking for something beyond and above living,

I mean living must be your whole occupation

Poem by Nazim Hikmet

White Feather has always thought he was a coward, however he has just had an epiphany that his mere existence and living is indeed an act of bravery and strength. So with this new insight he looks out over the cliffs and gazes in wonder at the sea and the clouds.

Mouse was worried he would not be welcome at his brother’s funeral so he snuck in days earlier and hid. Despite all the family chaos and conflict he still loved his brother and and family and didn’t want him to die.

A poem was by his side aching his heart

The most beautiful sea

the one not been sailed yet.

The most beautiful child:

the one not grown up yet.

The most beautiful days of ours:

those we did not live yet.

And the most beautiful word I want to tell:

the word I did not tell you yet.

by Nazim Hikmet

Diamond eyes weeps for the Ukraine. And then a song bird comes all the way from Kyiv. He begins to sing Roman, a Ukrainian Lullaby with the Shchedryk Children’s Choir.

Diamond eyes wipes her tears and thinks, Music will survive.

Tortoise took off her banana mask and breathed with relief. She had returned to the top of Mount Mc Kay. She couldn’t believe she had made it through the 260 + days of lockdown. She had returned here after 40 years with her poem Friends by Anne Orams. She sat and reminisced about all the wonderful friends she has over her life and how they still shine strong in her heart today.

They come and go

They stay forever……..

A code between you

A knowing look or nod. Able to love

Untechnologically baffling!!!

Rejoindre made it to Cradle Mountain Tasmania out of LockDown Town Melbourne. He can’t believe he is here. He carries Lewis Carroll’s poem A Strange Wild Song

……. He thought he saw a Argument

That proved he was the pope:

He looked again, around it was a bar of mottled soap.

Here in Platypus Bay in Lake St Claire National Park, Tasmania Worried hides. He fears for the planet as the country burns and the leaders continue to tell Worried “Not to worry about Climate Change. It simply doesn’t exist!!!” Worried feels he must act like the  snail, slowly. And so he is going to live like the first Australians in this land, slowly.