Glory Christmas

Better late than never!  This was from our Glory Box Christmas Party - way back on the 15th of December.  Perhaps it has taken me so long to blog about our day because I ate far too much yummy food.  It was a special feast as the Coptic Community fast in the lead up to Christmas, which for them is the 7th of January.  Fasting means eating no meat or dairy. Although decadent chocolate cake was still on the menu cleverly made with soy!

Juliette kept our ambitions sewn together throughout the project and on this day she laid out the table cloth for which we had sewn a square each.

It was exciting and also sad, as our time sewing together has come to an end.

All our work will be soon be opening at an exhibition at The Hunt Club Community Arts Centre Deer Park.  Along side this project has been a writing of a book, launched that night too, details to come soon.

The sewing girl

As part of my residency at the Hunt Club for the Glory Box project I am to make art works that respond to the community who I am facilitating workshops.

Below is my first body of work - it has taken sometime for me to get a grasp on what the Glory Box means for the women I am working with and how it has featured in their lives and then work this into visual images or objects. 

It is the romance and the wistfulness are the emotions that I most respond to from the group of women.  I get swept up  in power that is placed into the value of making of hand made and the messages the stitch can convey.  I am also very romantic about the image of a young woman sewing and it is an image I have employed for previous projects.

 What I have chosen to do is reproduce designs of works the women have brought in to share over the life of the project with water colours, with a drawing of a young woman stitching - framed in a oval frame, which I hope represents a frame for a ornate mirror. 

Glory Box workshop week 6

Last week I posted about my preparation work for Workshop 6 for Glory Box.  This project has been challenging for me to facilitate for a number of reasons - cultural, distance (the project is over 200km away from where I live) and also understanding what is shared between the women who want to make items about Glory Boxes.  

At first I had assumed that the women participating had all made items for their own Glory Box or had access to items from their Mother's or Grandmother's Glory box - but this isn't the case at all - for a number of reasons - including the most tragic; war, and most excitingly; feminism.  It is almost like this project is an opportunity for the women - who are mostly entering the autumn time in their lives to have time, space and support to make beautiful items of hope and joy for a glory box.

As mentioned previously we are working towards making a collaborative table cloth that is exploring the meaning of the table; the items that go on a table and also what the act of sitting around a table can mean. Above is the linen squares cut up and ready to be transformed.

The first hour or so of the session was spent researching imagery  - sourced from books, and google images.  Researching also the stitching and techniques to use to develop up a design.

 Other women are also creating individual works - this work here is a traditional needle work method that I had never come across before called Milon - searching this term in wikipedia I wasn't able to find any more information - so hope to learn more.

 

I apologise for the quality of the photo - but had to include as this image is documenting a very special event - the cutting of the nightie - a very important item for all Glory Boxes!

We meet again next Thursday at the Hunt Club in Deer Park.  The focus of our next session will be working further on our table cloth and individual projects that have started.  As the artist in residence I am to respond to the activities and processes that the project is unravelling.  I have started to do this by making a quilt from baking paper - no images yet - it is still very much in experimentation phase, but I will post about it when the right time comes to share.