Luckily for me I’ve been to Lord Howe Island. To say that it is a most pristine and extraordinary place doesn’t do it justice at all. It is an experience way beyond that, at least for me. The island gave me a completely restorative and hopeful, alive feeling. A feeling that I can be connected to the earth in a very deep way. Just walking on it’s ground was sort of like a drug! It probably helps that there were no snakes and I didn’t encounter any mozzies, flies or leeches.
I just felt that if I died and was buried there I’d be alright in that ground. Something I don’t usually feel here. I felt completely connected even though I barely spoke to anyone local, but everyone was friendly because its such a small and isolated place.
It’s a place with no mobile network so I was forced to be without that constancy of contact. It is a place of thinking and discovery. It’s a place where the heart can relax. I know that just being on holidays invites this surreal situation, away from other everyday demands and it does re-enforce the importance of having a complete break at times…to get perspective back into sync. After a week of thinking and walking it came to me – philosophers winds from Lord Howe – too much introspection is unhealthy. The weather worked to help me out as we were marooned on the island for an extra three days when the planes were cancelled. How lucky is that!
Before I went away I was working with a painted warp in the colours I was expecting on the island. I was thinking of seaweed and South Pacific blues. On the same warp now, after returning, I’m blending colours more, stranding the bobbins and making more sensitive transitions in the colours. Rather than planning the weaving as I go, I’m learning that imagery and feelings just soak into me and I have to be a bit more accepting of what happens – less critical and less introspective. This cloth will then be a mix of both expectance and experience of Lord Howe. This way of working is quite different to traditional weaves in that I would have returned to a pre-set pattern and just continued until the end without really influencing the weave in a changed way.
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