cliodhna’s wave

So i know I am very remiss in posting posts on this old blog of mine but I realized the last post but one is me getting started on the fish quilt then how perfect to post the ending of that project.

My mother just bought a quilting machine and we rolled it up and off I went… so cool and so fast!

The quilt hung in the knitting and stitching show in the RDS.

and the stall at the knitting and stitching show. I met some lovely people at the show.. some women from my facebook page stopped by and the ladies from Green Angel were across the way from me (I was right beside them last year in Marley park) and beside me was the owner/editor of the Irish Quilting Magazine who is from San Francisco so we had a barney about being homesick and living in a different country and the perils of driving in the states. I had a great time at the show and it was inspiring to be around so many textile artists of such high quality. I look forward to it next year!

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I started this about eight months ago, got caught up in other stuff and have been working on it steadily for the last month. I am making the patches and embroidering them and then will put them together. The picture here is the first third laid out so i can see how it looked.

This is my workshop, small I know, a table in the corner but the view out the window is wonderful. I left my oil paints in chihuahua and so I don’t need a big table right now.

I am liking Guatemala. It rained today and the thunder rumbled and there is always a breeze which is nice in comparison to Chihuahua, where it was either really cold or intensly hot. I went shopping in the central crafts market and bought some bags and textiles. Have to send them home now to the folks. I promised my sister a wall hanging for her new apartment.

I am getting ready to drive. A scary prospect because they are even worse drivers here than in Chihuahua. On a par with Mexico city I would say. I kinda know the layout now though and how to find my way to places. It looks simple, laid out in a grid system of Zones, avenues and streets, but in actuality the one way streets and the diagonals twist everything and an address that looks simple on paper becomes a maze of puzzles when confronted with reality. A house is numbered for its distance from the edge of the street or the avenue its on. I still don’t quite get it….

People here routinely work 24hr  shifts and the security guards at the hotel we were staying at work 48 hour shifts. I don’t understand this, how can you expect anyone to do a job properly if you work them 48 hours? and what is wrong with even a twelve hour shift, send them home for sleep and rest and get them back in the next day. Makes me appreciate coming from a country where the wealth is more balanced and even the minimum wage, small though it is, is actually enough to live on. Like in Mexico, you can survive on the minimum wage here, just about, but anything else to better yourself or buy books, electronics, cars, forget about it. Books here are twice the price of Ireland or the states. I suppose its a good technique to preserve the status quo, if you only make enough to survive and feed your family you won’t have enough time off to think about the injustice of it or do something stupid like form a union or demand better wages.

And the cock crowed at midnight, witching hour!

Space between yesterday and tomorrow

A tiny space of now.

I slept and did not hear its clarion call to the world that caused small animals to look up in wonder and large ones to feel the pull in their bellies

I felt it in my bones though and dreamt of earthquakes and tidal waves and great waves sweeping the earth.

In the chicken coop an egg was beginning to hatch, the chick following blind instinct to hit out at the darkness surrounding it, to crack, to break, to pull to pieces.

Imagine! All the world the chick has ever known is about to get as big as eternity.

But then, the world is the perfect size for each of us and we should not be afraid of the space between the stars.

c. Cliodhna quinlan 2007

I am getting ready for a craft fair coming up in Nov. Its in Marlay Park Dublin. I am busy busy making things for it and trying to balance the art part with the craft part.

Now, both are both, if you catch my drift, my art is a craft I am constantly honing and changing and tweaking and seeking new ways to get from the image/feeling in my head to the finished piece hanging in the wall. But in the context of this post let us say that ‘art’ is what I do purely because I love doing it and ‘craft’ are the cutesy small things I am doing to sell.

I find myself getting worried about the money end and plan heart patches and bird iron on patches and more hanging birds and although I do like making these, they are not my lifes dream. I get off balance into time based linear thinking sometimes of having to do more more more…. exhausting

Back to balance, heart based, eternity, we are here on earth to learn how to love and ahhhhhh, ok, I will make something special today, something from the doodles that are hanging on my wall stuck up with masking tape waiting for their time.

But first I will make a few bird patches, cause I haven’t made any yet and I want to see how they turn out. That is the other part of the balance, small versus large, silly versus profound…..

The pictures in this post are all part of a series of small embroideries I did. I wanted to make small jewel like squares of rich decoration. I layered cotton between gauzes and used metallic threads. They are all 4 inches by 4 inches and very cute! I changed the usual edging I do from lace to rough stiching round the edge of the fabric.

x cliodhna

Fishes swim in the pool of our minds. Wolf watches the pool and listens to the fish. The Bird takes the messages form Wolf and carries them to the sky.

I have written a lot about mermaids,  not sure what the fascination is except maybe they are women who live in the sea and maybe because of that are the connection to our subconscious. Here is an older post about them. Maybe it is laziness on my part, easier to draw a tail than legs

Mermaids can bring wishes to the sea and make them real. She can find what we really want in our deep minds and tell us and bring it up to the surface for us to see.

This is my latest embroidery, the mermaid swims around a magical island. If anyone except the mermaid tries to go onto the island to take the fruit then the birds sing them to sleep and they are transported back home again

This took me a while to do, I beaded it more than usual and layered netting over a gauze over blue to get a depth in the colour. I love the fabric I used for the tail. I am enjoying doing some more detailed pieces before I have to get into production for the Christmas fair (fingers crossed I get a place!). I also bought more fabric for the quilt today so no excuses, get out the cardboard shape and get scaling!

xclio

A girl stretches upwards to reach for the moon; through the red earth and the stones and the hardness of pushing through she stretches and feels for the silver coolness of the moons light pulling her into the night.

The night is cool and dark and welcoming. It is not scary in this night, it is full of life, full of the life that comes out in the darkness and out of the heat of the daytime sun. Animals watch her coming forth, they are witnessing and waiting and encouraging with their breath and giving her energy to complete the journey.

I was reading the other day about a dog who was helping a war veteran with his panic attacks and I have always thought that dogs were such unconditional love beings. We are lucky to have them in our lives. This is Pala who is a sweet loving snuggle monster. Her fur is soft (and sheds everywhere!) and she likes most of all to be curled up in a lap or an the bed beside me. I spoil her.

We are surrounded by animals giving us love and encouragement, even the small creepy ones or the ones that bite.. they are just trying to tell us something, its not our fault if we don’t understand them.

my work room is on the second floor of the house and directly outside a huge green tree grows. It provides shade from the sun and gives a wonderful green light into the room. The birds love it also, the tiny sparrows and the large black magpie type birds that shriek and squak and make liquid notes when they are courting.

I looked up from my machine and say these two sitting about three feet away. They stayed for a few hours, courting each other, staying close, grooming each others necks, fluffing up wings and feathers and then smoothing them down again. I got a few pictures of them. I hope they build their nest there, that would be too awesome!

The quilt provided me with a reality check the other night. I sat in front of some tv show drawing and cutting out the paper patterns that I would sew the fabric onto and at the end I figured ’sure, I’ve loads done’ but when I put them together to see my heart quailed at the very (very) small section of bed that they covered. If it takes that long to cut out the paper patterns how long is it to get the whole thing done!!!!

It is at this point the artist must toss all fears and considerations of time out the window and just do it. I mean, I once spent three months doing nothing put cut up paper stars for christmas decorations… (I was broke, out of work, bored and had a pair of scissors and a huge mound of paper that was already in squares.. what else is a girl to do?) The kitchen looked incredible after I was finished

and to the two dogs in the title? they are getting restless and need a walk.. better go.. x clio

Congrats to Rachel!

and thank you so much to all who took part! and for your wonderful comments! Very encouraging and inspiring. I will take into mind the suggestions about presentation also, it is hard to sell things with just pictures I think, especially a textured art like embroidery. People want to touch and feel and see things up close and art is such a personal emotional response.

I put the names of all who had entered from here and from my facebook into a basket woven by the Tarahumara. They weave the most beautiful baskets, and they smell like the grass and pine needles they wove them from. I have loads of them in the house now!

I closed my eyes and fished around, looking for paper and picked out Rachels name! so congratulations and which one do you want?

Cats don’t know how to fly but then birds don’t have two wide eyes and four feet of claws.

Bird says ‘I can can fly and I have feathers that are as light as the wind and that carry me where ever I want to go. I see the tops of trees and the caterpillars seeking the heat from above the leaves, I see the snow on top ofmountains and the start of streams that gush freezing water down the rocky slopes. The wind is friend and the rain is worm bringer. My eyes are black beads that shine and flit constantly, my body is small and my heart beats fast, when you hold me (if I let you) you can barely feel me except for a vibration and heat in the cup of your palms.

Cat says ‘I bask in the heat of the sun and my fur is warm and soft to the touch. Bury your fingers in my stomach and rest your ear on my chest to hear the thunder that is my voice. The wind shakes the branches and distracts the birds so I can change in an instant from sleepy warmth to huntress and mistress of all I see. Sudden death in a flurry of feathers and I jump and trap. I dream of grassy oceans and dark forests and stalking, ever stalking the light that shines from the sky, the quick rustle in the undergrowth and the presence of another heart that beats.’