i started making this piece this morning after i found a lots of fake pearls and organza bags at the $2 shop. my first thought sequence was pearls-tears-the tempest- these are the pearls that were his eyes - an idea i've had for a long time....
and then i started to assemble it. i found a great diagram of "the lachrymal apparatus" or the tear gland etc in grey's anatomy (the book not the show). and i printed it onto silk and fine vellum.
as i assembled, 
pinned 
and started to stitch
i thought about international women's day and my experience that women's policy in australia tend to be focused on very middle class issues such as work/family balance etc important in a very first world way, especially when you think about the oppression of omwen and girls in most parts of the world.and then i thought about a report by debbie kirkwood i read earlier in the week about people who kill their children as part of a relationship breakdown. and mostly it's revenge by men against their former female partners: it's another aspect of domestic or family violence. and it can happen to anyone - nice middle class people as well as people caught in the despair in poverty or marginalisation.
so i thought about my own experience of having an abusive father and how that has left me with a deep, pervasive, mostly irrational fear of men - all men, with the notable exception of Kind Dog. and i wished that as part of international women's day we could talk about such things more openly and that women and girls might not have to live in fear. because they stay caught, trapped in that fear by the usual formula of silence, denial, minimalisation that is characteristic of abuse.
that's all.
and this piece is not there - it's still too pretty.
3 comments:
most beautiful - your art and your words xx
It's difficult to put emotion into textiles - well more difficult than say, a painting, but these issues are ones I'm thinking about myself at the moment. The world can be so terrifyingly horrible at times.
I was especially horrified recently to hear about acid attacks on women who for some reason (thought to look at another man in the wrong way, not doing the household chores properly etc) are attacked by paid men or aggrieved family. Acid is thrown in the face to permanently disfigure them and make them unattractive or to punish. There is a local group near to me that is trying to work to overcome such horrors, but that human beings can do such things makes me so angry.
My art (if I can call it that) increasingly demands emotional response of some form, but there are a lot of quilters out there who regard inclusion of unpleasant things as wrong in some way. A difficult one that demands more discussion I think!
A beautiful piece and a worthy topic of discussion.
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