Empress Wu Designs with Wilma

For all of us, being close to home is not an option currently. There are many positive ways to think of being close to home -  one, of course, is to find inspiration and make art . Recently, probably in the last few years, the sights and sounds in my neighbourhood have provided me with enough material for a lifetime of art making.... and I don't live in a magical place, just a simple ordinary  residential suburb in a regional city in NSW,  near some dedicated bushland, walking tracks, a village shopping centre and a hospital.  On daily walks in the neighbourhood, I have picked up sticks from the ground to make hundreds of "stick" dolls,  fallen leaves to dye and print cloth and paper, flowers and other plant bits  for  various artworks.  I am very grateful to have so much to work from so close to home and as I complete my second #the100day project - 100 small wearable art pins, I have tried to find a new way each day of express...

During the last week,  I think my #100pinpoems have taken a definite turn towards the more abstract. There have been a couple of days when I was prompted to convey a more direct representation of a moment in the day , but generally, I have moved towards stitching and collaging in a more impressionistic way. For example, on day 22, I tried to convey the feeling of waking up early for a Zoom meeting.... and ended up with what looks like sound waves representing electronic communication ( not the sound of me snoring through the meeting!)  "Alarm too early Sleepy nods in agreement  Meeting via Zoom."   stitched wearable art pin   stitched wearable art pin  Some of the tags although abstract, describe actual occurrences ....  Day 23 : I watched rainbow lorikeets flying into our garden to land on some tall grevilleas... I reproduced only their colour and a stitches a sense of the quick movement.  When they open ...

Today , Day 11 of #The100Day Project is International Haiku Poetry Day... What is haiku?  Haiku is a type of short poetry that is usually three sentences long. First popularized in Japan in the 17th century, Haiku as a poetry genre has been adopted by many languages around the world. In English, the genre first became mainstream in the early 20th century. In its Japanese avatar, haikus traditionally have three lines with 17 syllables. The first and last sentences have 5 syllables and the second line has 7 syllables. Haiku tend to give an interesting insight about something trivial, usually some aspect of nature or the seasons. from  https://www.timeanddate.com/ 11/#100pinpoems Materials : paper, fabric, thread, safety pin  Techniques: Collage, stitching, painting   Having decided to complete my 100 day Project by each day writing a haiku (or at least a pseudo haiku) and create an accompanying wearable pin , today  should be  a...

Each day for 100 days, I will try to create a small wearable pin, with a coloured safety pin, and add a haiku to reflect the day's feelings, observations or experiences. This project began with the idea of using supplies I already had at home and in the quantity to create something for 100 days... so I found 100 coloured safety pins and I have an even larger supply of the luggage tags as I could only purchase them years ago in lots of 500.  I wanted to make something that perhaps could be gifted to friends and family , so as "brooches" have also been on my mind, I thought of "wearable pins." The addition of  the little three lined poem, a haiku, was just an idea to fill the space on the tag! I decided on haiku because of the simplicity of its  three lines and 5-7-5 syllables formation and the recording of a "moment". Well, I did think it was simple until I tried the first, and found myself counting the syllables over and over again for each ...