Where I am

I had quite some trouble interpreting this theme- as I took the theme quite literally. As the place where I am presently living, is not my preferred place and simply a place for treading water whilst my youngest daughter finishes high school, it is not a place I embrace with my heart though there are pleasant aspects of the city and I am learning to live here and enjoy it's good qualities. But it is not like the bush where I used to live with occasional forays to other places in the world. I made a mind map to map, to map out where I am but that proved and unsatisfactory list of  positives and negatives with no clear idea of imagery.

Then we got a week of extremely hot weather- and there is nothing to do but hole up inside and move little- and wait for the heat to burst into rain and bring cool relief. Machine stitching is entirely too frenetic an activity in the heat- and we do have an aircon but it is so noisy that  i have  come to associate heat with a droning  noise of ghastly proportions- so I don't use it.

So ultimately my piece  "where I am" grew out of what I am making at present- a series of sentinelles to express my concerns about the environment and the state of our world. They are influenced by byzantine madonnas and other mythical figures and they are decorated by hand in rich colour.I printed the face with a Print Gocco-  actually the print is a bit of a failed print but with stitching it comes out a bit more, and because of size limitation of the Gocco screens and because I also wanted to  create a medallion portrait- as medallions were carried by travellers in medieval times to protect and suggest they were part of a certain pilgrimage they  are the size they are. I did a trial run of printing on lime green fabric not thinking I would use them, but lately I have been using everything that is at hand without  making new dyed fabrics- so here they are in al their lime green brilliance! I still have to put on thebinding but at least they are all stitched.