Captivity Collage

I love the online courses that Fibre Arts Take Two produce with a variety of different tutors.  They are well worth the money.

Especially if you actually get on and do them!!!!  At the beginning of the year I had one new one unstarted, two part way through - so unfinished, and one that I thought I had finished but it seems not.  Although upon further investigation it turned out that 10 new videos have been added.

The new course was The Art of Abstract Collage: Mastering Composition.  Bearing in mind that my word for the year is [focus], I applied myself to the course.  I focussed on watching all the videos and did some but not all of the suggested activities.

The bonus module was about using your own memories in a collage.  As regular readers know I have been working for the last several months on the theme of Captivity, Freedom and Identity.  So this seemed a good theme for a set of collages.

I prepped four 20cm square canvases and printed black and white photographs from Hyde Park Barracks, Sydney; Port Arthur, Tasmania and Fremantle Prison onto Rice Paper.  These are all convict sites we have visited in Australia over the years.

Using my stash of painted papers I worked on all four canvases at the same time.  I am really pleased with the results.  I am hoping they will part of the 'Expressions' Exhibition at the Redditch Needle Museum - Forge Mill - from 19th March to 27th April.

Now to focus on one of the other FATT courses either Visual Narratives with Sally Tyrie or Embrace the Journey with Wen Redmond.  Choices! Choices!

Whichever I choose, I probably need to go back to the beginning and rewatch the videos.

Thanks for being here today
Bernice

Old Year New Year

Amazingly we are almost at the end of the first month of 2025. I'm not at all sure where the month has gone to.

Last week Sara-Jane led the first poetry zoom session of the year.  The warm up exercise was to choose from one of five titles and write a poem or piece of prose.  I chose Between Silences.

Between Silences

Words were stilled.
Muted before the sounds
could reach the air.
Subdued, suppressed,
censored by petty debate.
Free speech gagged by order
of the righteous minority.

Outraged, a fearless few
stand to be counted.
Unwilling to be silenced
they speak the words
that some want forgotten.

It is said
that all that evil requires
to prevail
is that good men do
nothing.

The silenced rose up,
clawed back the words,
the thoughts, the rights
that the inconsequential hoped
to cast into oblivion.

Now no longer silent
the muted sounds reach the air.
No longer subdued, suppressed or
censored between the silences.

The theme for this Theme Poetry Session was New Year Traditions.  There are some really interesting traditions around the world.  Have a look on the internet for yourself.  I chose to write about the change from the old year to the new.

Old Year, New Year

Janus, the two-faced god
of Roman myth
looks back at the old year
and forward to the new.

The god of new beginnings,
of gates and doorways,
of choices and transitions
but also the god of endings.

His month of January
can only start
with the ending
of December.

The new year can only begin
with the finish of the old.
He stands in the opening
heralding the new.

Janus, the two-faced god
of Roman myth, looks back
at the past and ahead
to the days to come.

Thanks for being here today
Bernice

Commonplacing

I first learned about Commonplace books from Mary Brack in 2013.  It came to my attention again when reading Valerie Sjodin's blog post.  Keep scrolling through Valerie's post until you get to it!

I've long wanted to have a commonplace book but I always seem to manage to put it off.  There's always something else to do.  Plus the biggest stumbling block for me is starting - making the first mark on the page.  And I know I don't have to start on the first page.

Of course, the book is for me and not for anyone else but I still don't get going.  But 12 years on from first hearing about it, I've decided 2025 is the year to focus on one.  (See what I did there - focus!)

 I chose a Yop & Tom A5 dotted notebook.

As I've already said, I struggle with new notebooks - the white page that dares you to make a perfect mark - when you know that there will always be imperfection.  So I got some stickers and put them on random pages.

On this page I added Washi tape.

While I was tidying up I found a couple of things that I'd found a long time ago and had put in a pile wondering what to do with them!  They're now in the book.

I wrote out the chorus of a song I particularly like and decorated the page with two types of Washi tape.

Hopefully now that I've started, I can keep it going.

Thanks for being here today
Bernice