Wise Words on Wednesday 5 - Sshh! Secrets!

Today, 28 January is Data Privacy Day, an international effort to promote awareness about respecting privacy, safeguarding data and enabling trust. While I am surprised to hear that such a day is celebrated, I am not surprised that it exists given the breaches of online security and data theft which one hears about daily. I only need to look in my Junk email folder each morning to see the number of scams overnight that have invaded my privacy. There seems to be a lot of bogus emails at the moment which offer 'unbelievable' prizes in exchange for your email address and other personal details! Beware! There are many sites which give good advice about protecting your personal data. You can search yourself and you will find a myriad of links to follow. Today I read a few and all it did was scare me witless. It is obvious that hackers and cyber criminals are far more cunning, more intelligent and more daring than I could ever be!

The last thing I want to be is paranoid , mistrustful and suspicious, but on the other hand, I also do not want to be vulnerable, defenceless and taken advantage of. What Data Privacy Day has alerted me to do is to remember always that I decide what information I reveal about myself, when, why and to whom. ....And protect oneself but not live in fear....

Our world is utterly saturated with fear. We fear being attacked by religious extremists, both foreign and domestic. We fear the loss of political rights, a loss of privacy, or a loss of freedom. We fear being injured, robbed or attacked, being judged by others, or neglected, or left unloved. Brendan Myers (Philosopher)

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Fish and Sticks : Art Dolls

This week I've been working on fish and sticks .... The sticks are the message stick art dolls which were very popular, attracting some attention and a few orders at the Wise Women exhibition. Each of the message stick dolls are from the Wise Women series, each with her own personality and message of wisdom, handwritten on a handmade timber tag. I gather the sticks during my walks around my neighbourhood and the tags are made from special bits of timber, some collected by me or my husband or from off cuts gifted to us from another doll making friend whose husband makes bagpipes. These dolls start off very simply with a wrap around a stick, in the general shape of a body. 'Naked" message stick dolls - strips of wadding wrapped around found sticks. Then I usually wrap other layers of fabric, wool, and/or fibres, over which I do some simple embroidery. I sculpt or mould small face masks for these dolls. I really like using "sari ribbon" as w...

29 Faces

"29 Faces " is an online art challenge - blog and Facebook . The challenge is to create a face each day of September ( with one day for catch up) .... I decided to take up the challenge to practise drawing faces for my dolls and to practise techniques with coloured pencils. I received a set of 60 pencils from my daughter last Christmas so I wanted to be sure I used them before next Christmas! I love making tags so I combined tag making with "29 Faces", so I will also have some unique Christmas gift tags for gift giving this year. Here are the first 9 faces for the first 9 days of September

Covid Man and Book Print

This is my tag for the current theme at Tag Tuesday - Book Print. I like using text as a background for tags and today, I reduced one of my recent line drawings and printed it on a small book page .... as you can see, the book's chapter is entitled "Of Holy Living and Dying ( from The Book of Books) . I thought this was appropriate as this 'Covid man' drawing depicts Nature happily thriving while man appears to be "unravelling " at the edges of body and mind... Original drawing - Wilma Simmons Silk screen print on fabric : Wilma Simmons Silk screen print on paper : Wilma Simmons And here are some other tags on book print backgrounds - these are free motion stitched "Nature" portraits done earlier in the year.

Empress Wu Designs with Wilma

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