On 1 May Simon told me he’d entered a piece for the Waverley Art Prize, he’d just been unsuccessful getting hung with the Sulman finalists. I took items to the framers in Alexandria on 10 May, I’d just done another series for the show and we needed some things to photograph to send to the gallery for promotional purposes. The framer said they’d have them done by 31 May.
Ming and Omer came over on 11 May to eat dinner with materials they brought with them, so I had a treat. They also picked up a doona because the weather had turned very cold and I dropped them back in Wolli Creek after we watched ‘Clash of the Titans’.
I didn’t do any painting at this point in time but instead found a creative outlet writing poems. I also started to go through the drawers-full of photos mum had left when she died, there were thousands of them. I got out the albums I’d bought online in 2019 when I had been tidying up the library in the old apartment in Pyrmont, I still had the sticky corners for photos in a box on a shelf in the cupboard. Going through old photos was traumatic and after I did it for about two hours I was completely exhausted and stopped for several days.
On 26 May one of these off-days Amanda Edds the framer came to drop off some things she’d finished, including an old family heirloom, an embroidery made sometime in the 19th century probably, it’s a shame that mum never mentioned it because now it’s complete and preserved in acrylic and with its own lovely gold frame but it has little context apart from its unique Biblical elements. Well, unique in a way particular to my generation because I’m sure lots of women in the 19th century spent time making Biblical quotes as embroidery. I also got back a flag, a blue Peter, which great-uncle Elmer’s workmates had given him when he retired, he was a tugboat skipper I think, in Auckland Harbour. I put it in the first-floor hallway at this time but later in the year it’d move to a better place upstairs in the studio where it is further away from viewers. It needs space to be seen properly.
I bought more hooks because Ming was still putting things up on her walls and needed some. Amanda put in some D-rings for Ming under my guidance, two lovely watercolours Ming’d made in 2021 and that she wanted to have on her walls now. I gave Ming two photo frames that Amanda also put D-rings in so my friend could hang a photo of her grandmother on her wall, as well as a landscape showing where her grandfather’s house had been in Hunan.
On 27 May I was unable to fit into the trousers I wanted to wear for the day because I’d put on too much weight, so told myself it was finally time to get more pants. I was due to pick up the exhibition watercolours from Frame Today in Alexandria also, so promised myself to go later into town to buy clothes but in the end I did not go.
This is the embroidery a quote from the Bible Deuteronomy 33.27, it’s very warlike a section about a boy called Asher, the pictured verse goes like this:
The eternal God is your refuge,
and underneath are the everlasting arms.
He will drive out your enemies before you,
saying, ‘Destroy them!’
Wow, back in the old days the Dean women were tough (if it was a Dean it might’ve been a Kewish Macarthur Mcguigan etc). This is part of the Old Testament, it’s part of the Torah. I’m amazed and wonder who this woman was who left such an object. The chapter goes on to say:
So Israel will live in safety;
Jacob will dwell secure
in a land of grain and new wine,
where the heavens drop dew.
Blessed are you, Israel!
Who is like you,
a people saved by the Lord?
He is your shield and helper
and your glorious sword.
Your enemies will cower before you,
and you will tread on their heights.”
Who was Asher? “Asher was the eighth son of Jacob, and his name means ‘Blessed’ or ‘Happy’” eventually Asher and his brothers, angered by Jacob’s preferential treatment of Joseph, sold Joseph into slavery in Egypt where he went on to reach a high station. It’s sort of like ‘The Bold and the Beautiful’ except no photo or video record in those days not even the very ancient technology of newspapers.
What interests me is the idea of prophesy, the fact that before Moses died it was decided by God that the Israelites should live in Judea, like who on earth could know that long ago? When I visited Israel in 2019 with Ming I became at least somewhat informed where before I’d had no parameters upon which to base my understanding of the region, we also went to Amman and then on to Istanbul. Back in Sydney having moved house I stuck the explanation I made on my desktop computer to the back of the embroidery using stickytape, a thoroughly modern technology, newer than newspapers. This was on 28 May and wasn’t done in a vacuum as I also attended to providing context for other things that had arrived from the framers, typing up labels and sticking them to the backs of other items also.
Some of them had been made a (long) time before, including a drawing made in June 2014 on paper with crayons. In the ensuing years it got destroyed with all the moving of houses so when I turned back with the intention of having it on my wall I had to use a JPG that I’d providentially put onto my computer and that I could use to make prints out of.
There were other prints that were from an even moment, in fact 2007/08 when I was settling back into a rhythm in Sydney after my catastrophically disastrous Japan sojourn. Now, in 2023, I typed up labels to go on the back of the works that had originally been made in Photoshop then had luckily been saved to JPGs.
Also on the Sunday I went to have lunch with Omer and Ming, Omer cooked zucchini and tuna pasta. Then I shot back home to meet with other friends, Yianni and Christine, the latter of whom had left her husband’s motor scooter to store in my garage.
Christine had wanted to come over to start it up to keep the battery viable. Initially we couldn’t start the thing but then Yianni said why not look up on the internet to see if there might be instructions and we found a video which told her to hold down the brake while operating the ignition switch, and it worked so we wheeled the thing out to the street and Christine ran it for about 20 minutes. Christine and I talked about my new items as well as old ones including Pixie’s abstract in the middle bedroom on the first floor which Basia hates.
On 30 May I went to pick up the hooks from my post office box and got the car cleaned, then drove out to Bexley to drop off some things. I promptly went home and ate food then Ming called and asked me to pick up printer ink from the shop, so I drove out to do that and dropped off in addition some spare hooks when Omer met me on the street so that I didn’t have to park. Unfortunately in the evening my regular Tues shows weren’t on due to the French Open taking up bandwidth so I instead watched ‘Bull’ and ‘The Inspector Lynley Mysteries’ on one of the Ten Network digital channels.
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