I haven’t sought out this year’s specially marked for Christmas household cleaning products, but I am sure there are plenty around that I should be buying and using at this special time of year, right?  However, I took this pic and put it up for my blog readers in 2005 – where does the time go? and thought it’s time for another posting.  Here in Latin America cleaning is big and a constant battle – not that people are dirtier than anywhere else, they just work harder at being clean is my take on it.  This year this whole thing has been complicated by regular doses of the volcanic ash cloud from Mt. Peyuhue in  Chile that, apart from peridocially causing flights to be cancelled, leaves a coating of abrasive powder on flat surfaces everywhere and tracks in onto the wooden floors.  More cleaning.  Or not, depending which cultural background you come from 🙂

So that makes me think I’d best get down to the supermarket and check this year’s special edition cleaning products…. nah – by the time you read this I won’t even be here,  and the house minder can feel free to use any of the products already in the cupboard.  So wherever you are and whatever mess you are dealing with or ignoring – muddy wet foot prints from the snow, ash cloud foot prints,  sand tracked inside the beach house, food rubbish left too long in the bin before taking it out, a sudden onslaught of teenage darlings home for the holidays eating you out of  house and home but not clearing up after themselves, and more –  happy Christmas and my best wishes for the coming year.

This woman is often on the beach early in the morning, generally very early, because I have come to recognise her fresh barefoot print walking ahead of me on the wet sand.   Sometimes she puts the end of the stick down near her left foot, but I couldn’t find a photo of that print, and the dayI took the above photo she was just carrying it.   The footprints she leaves are very distinctive – she might have hammer toes – and she always walks on firm damp sand.  One winter morning she was walking in thick socks … not sure of that rationale.   After finding her fresh tracks just as I start walking, I will  generally pass her coming westwards towards me on her return leg.   Some summer mornings she must be there very early indeed, as on the other day when I took a few photos of her without her realising, it was only  just past 7am. and she was on her return, nearly to the point where she enters and leaves the beach.

Apart from the distinctive tracks we all leave we also move and behave distinctively so that there are quite a few regulars I recognise from a distance – they walk or run in a certain way, have particular dogs, some wave, smile, nod,  some stare straight ahead clearly in a zone.   A couple of ladies talk loud and long as they briskly walk together, I hear them as the come up behind and pass me;  there are three guys with very hairy legs and trim firm buttocks often jogging together (must take a pic for you some time..), and if I’m running later than usual I stand a chance of meeting a neighbour with a little black poodle called ‘Brian’.  Interestingly dogs are different on the beach, the wide open space means there is room for all, and but even dogs who might snarl or fight elsewhere will meet, exchange some recognition the way dogs do, and either move on or play together a bit before moving on.

I also need to start thinking of her as the barefoot lady rather than the bag lady.  Glancing at her from a disance, at first I used to think she picked up beach offerings things – candles, beads and so on, perhaps a good piece of fruit or veg,  and carry them along in her bag.  Now I know that is not so, and that her bag prolly just holds her shoes and that she prefers to be barefoot on the firm sand.  In the past couple of years I have watched her as closely as you can get without appearing to be stickybeaking – she doesn’t disturb any of those things – she does use her stick to poke about a bit in the heaps of seaweed and other material on the beach, though.   She seemed absent for a few months and is now walking unevenly -hip? I wonder.  A couple of years ago, one day I made a motion to speak to her but she held up her hand as if to stay ‘stop’ and continued on her way – I have never approached her again – for whatever reason she prefers to be solitary at least on the beach.

Many of the titles for my quilts and mixed media works are blended words.  Making lists of possible words, and then trying out combinations, I don’t seem to have any trouble coming up with something I feel fits well – and then as they grow in number these form series.

So Landlines – this first photo is #6 in a series of very small works mounted on 20cm artist canvases I paint myself, some of which have gone along the coast to the Galeria Los Caracoles in Jose Ignacio.  It has been photographed against flat black, and if you look carefully you can get a sense of the dimensionality of it on it’s cream painted canvas stretcher mount.  The leather is backgrounded by grey sheer fabric, the edges of which have been burned.  Burning is very therapeutic ! and the textures and patterns are characteristic of a fait bit of my recent work, particularly the Timetracks series.

These next photos are ALL of the one work “Timetracks 17” that I had my wonderful photographer Eduardo shoot against three different backgrounds.  A client here has ordered a small work (this is about 30cm x 40cm) and I made two in different colourways, so that she can choose.  She may choose between them, or take something else that I have available.  Either way, I plan to offer this piece in print form, too, so having not done much about prints for a while, I am once again preparing to come up with a good quality printer here. 

I thought it would be interesting to see the effect of different backgrounds to the piece:

“Timetracks 17” against gold-dusted tan suede, some of which actually is in the piece itself.

This is “Timetracks 17” against a cream background – the exact same fabric is background to the actual work.

Finally “Timetracks 17” against white – but there is no white in the actual work. 

I like the idea of a coloured background wrapping around a canvas so that in one way it ‘frames’ the work set against it, without there actually being a physical frame.   Please feel free to comment on this as I’d value your feedback..

Mike was doing rock work up in NE Brasil last week and out on the project area he was visiting, he took these photos.  I don’t know what the rest of this tree looks like,  it was just the lines on two trunks he snapped for me, adding that the trees appeared to be very old and probably very hard wood.  If he goes back I’lll get him to add more detail … or maybe that doesn’t really matter.  They certainly are fabulous.  Treelines…trunklines…woodlines – all these words have other meanings but in this context each would be apt.  

 Afterthought – folds of  fabric …..