A New Year...

Well...now we are in March, so this new year is travelling very fast.  It has been a little while and more since I last wrote, but I have been busy.

When I last wrote, the 'Wolf Bride' was still fresh in my mind, after the performances at the Butter Factory Studios, a wonderful Artists' Collective of fantastic women.  And now, I'm one of them!  It's a very new and exciting adventure for me, I now have somewhere not only to show my work, but also a place, that's a little bigger than the tiny corner of our shed, to make that work.  I'm looking forward to all the possibilities this year presents.

But more on what I've been making and doing.  I had some fun a few weeks ago with scraps of fabric and onion skins.  I also decided it was high time I finished the Talesingr puppet.  I've had my small books of the Talesingr stories for sale in the gallery shop for a while, and it seemed the perfect time to bring the stories, the Talesingr's Children, and the Talesingr herself all together in one place.  So, I spent a few days sewing and stitching small scraps of naturally dyed silk and cotton, digging among my beads and bits and bobs collections, and bringing her to life.  I'm pleased with how she turned out, I think she is ready to tell stories now.  I hope I'm up to the challenge of collaborating with her.

The Talesingr sitting regally at the Butter Factory Gallery

I felt that it was time to give the Talesingr's Children a new lease of life.  I still have three of the five that I made, so I created new settings for them.  Here are two, together with the Talesingr at last.

The 'Tale of the Foolish Bird'

'The Tale of the Wolfbride'.  My first 'incarnation' of the story that became the songs, that became the poems, became the performance.

A couple of small, new pieces, currently in the gallery.  I'm working on a collaborative project with a friend that will become a performance for this year's Festival of Voice in June.  We are working with ideas of birds, flightpaths, flight, survival, migrations, refugees...and how to find home, a place of belonging...so feathers have been much in my mind.

And...I bought a new guitar!  A lovely Tanglewood steel string acoustic electric dreadnought.  I am loving it.

I'm busy, busy, busy with creative things.  The first project is taking up much of my mind and time, we only have 3 months.  The Butter Factory has a major exhibition opening in the middle of April, and I'm working on ideas for that right now.  Then there is a big, storytelling project happening in town over the next few months, culminating in several performances at this year's 'Brave New Works' festival in November.  And there is another story knocking on my door and refusing to leave me alone, so I am researching and thinking and scribbling and making mad and strange connections between things.  It might be something and it might be nothing, but I won't know until I've taken the journey.  

Strange how these projects overlap and meld, I look up something, follow a thread of thought for one, and find myself side-tracked, hijacked and led by the nose into another.  The fundamental interconnectedness of all things.  And I love a quest.