… or any other art work for that matter.  In fact, until today, since I know I have some way with words, I had never considered ‘naming’ much of a problem really.  I realised too that I have always considered naming my art works an actual part of the whole process, from initial design idea to last stitch.  The naming process may be a pop-up , the-lightbulb’s-on kind of moment at anystage; I may make little memos to myself at various times to return later; or I may need to do some serious deliberation at the end, even if I have been vaguely thinking about it a while.   To do this, I write lists of words or pairs of words, get help from Roget’s Thesaurus of synonyms perhaps,  and develop a short list of 2-3 titles to try for size against the finished work.  It could take little bursts of activity over hours or several days- sleep on it, etc.  If I still can’t decide I might consult with DH, but by one of these means I do arrive at the final choice, name it by writing the title on the back of the work, and it’s done.

What brought these thoughts to mind is  that today a well known quilt artist, Nancy Cook, asked two or three thousand of her art quilting colleagues on two lists for their suggestions for a name for her most recent work, which she commented is an entry for Quilt National’11 (entries close in a week, she is running against the clock here!)    Occasionally people do this, giving us a blog link to check the piece out and give feedback.  I just had never seen someone openly looking for a title for a QN entry although probably it has been done often enough –  but usually who would know? 

I linked through to the image on her blog.  Nancy said this is not the exact one she was entering but (as many of us know she does work in beautiful series)  contains important elements of her actual entry.   Because of my strong view on this -my readers would expect no less ;-p   on principle I didn’t make any title suggestions, but sent her the possible naming approaches I outlined above – which were probably not new to her, and no doubt people have others.  That QN entry form can cause a bit of panic as we all know.  And, most likely, Nancy probably thought of a great name all by herself as soon as she put the call out.   

In my mind anyway, this raised the following issues:

1. If  she were to choose a title suggested by someone in the comment section of her blog, ie this is in a very public way, would it then mean she should include this person’s name on the entry form as a collaborator? 
2. Should the person who suggested the chosen title then expect some % of prize money the maker might be awarded ?

I emailed the kernels of this post to Nancy a few hours ago, before even thinking about blogging on this today – she thanked me for my coments in such a way that I feel sure she will not take this as any kind of personal attack.  So those of you getting up a head of steam to hit me with fiery riposts defending Nancy Cook and her work, please hold your fire, re-read my post and understand this post is not about Nancy and her work, it’s just an interesting entering issue I hadn’t considered before.

And good luck to fellow QN11 entrants!!! – mine’s  already there and processed, according to an acknowledgement email  yesterday.

Here in Perth Western Australia on the first visit for a year, I found this piece of my work had been hung on a wallof one of the bedrooms by the house sitters –  who are not here at present – they like to move things around, and must have found this one behind a door …. anyway I don’t think I have ever taken a photo of it, not recently anyway, and had pretty well forgotten it.   Now there are some design shortcomings, I am the first to acknowledge – it was a while ago!!!    hgowever, it represents a slice-through view of one of the many open cut gold mines in and around Kalgoorlie Western Australia.  It’s done in paint plus stitch – long stem stitches and some small very tiny stitches in thin thread right up on the horizon there representing trees and the odd mining headframe.   It was my (unsuccessful) entry in the City of Kalgoorlie Art Prize exhibition of that year, but I don’t recall exhibiting it after that. 

Apart from my pleasure at seeing it again, what I do think is interesting  is that it clearly and graphically shows my interest in and inspiration from man-altered landscape structures and textures.  Colourwise the Eastern Goldfields of Western Australia is generally clear strong blue skies over red-brown rocks and soil – all in all typical of Outback Australia.  My interpretive, creative embroideries of the time often included paint+stitch.  The lines though, also have since and for a long time appeared in my quilted textile art.  Pardon a pun here, but there’s a line of continuity  between my early works and recent work.  I just thought some might be interested!

And apart from the amazingly close national election from which almost 2 weeks later a clear winner has not yet emerged, and may not; it has been a joy to listen to Australian voices all around.   The other day I overheard a gaggle of women (my husband would say ‘old chooks’ )  chatting over coffee in the morning sun.  Referring to the offsprings of  who knows – grandkids perhaps – one of them said to the others “… they all managed to have one of each, so they got their bookends”    Good grief !!!!  A foreign visitor would probably not realise this puzzling expression means  parents who produced a boy and a girl – “bookends” – often also referred to as  ‘the pigeon pair’.   I nearly choked on my coffee and it kept me smiling all day. 

I know – it’s been  a couple of months since I posted – sorry dear reader, but I will only plead a heap of excuses which can be summed up by saying time, opportunity and inclination did not come together these past few weeks – but here I am, back and communicating again. 

This past week I have been working on a new piece which I hope I will feel OK about as a QN entry, closing date looming fast.  While I work I have been listening to Jane Austen’s “Emma” for the umpteenth time.  Now I know it almost by heart, and to hear it read by the late Prunella Scales makes it especially good listening.  On one level at least it’s really all about communication.  What a vital role communications play in human life, this case C18 England –  the coming and going of letters and notes, observations, personal comments, gossip, scheming, interpretation, being mistaken….  Letters were shared with family and close friends, and everyone knew who had received letters from whom, if not their actual contents – but no matter there – fuel for speculation and gossip anyway.  Everything was discussed endlessly in minute detail.  The deliciously slowly unfolding events in the lives of inhabitants of a small typical C18 English village were moulded daily by communication of all kinds, expecially ‘letters’.  From so far forward in time, looking back many of the communiques seem trivial to us, but it struck me how little has changed, really.  I realised this as we sat around the fire the other evening over a glass of wine, catching up with an old friend – no friend like an old friend, the comfortable experience of being with someone almost as familiar as a family member.  DH showed us something amazing on his laptop, and our friend was occasionally checking his FB messages, commenting on mutual friends’ recent posts, mostly trivial – and as my desktop was just an arm’s reach away, I too logged in to my email to quote something I received from a mutual acquaintance earlier in the week.  We shared family news face to face,  since I had seen several offsprings our visitor knows.  If our old friend had known the distant long-lost cousin I just heard from (much to my delight) then I’d also have brought that into the conversation too.   You’re right !!! that all sounds sooooo Jane Austenish – you can never have too much of her imho, but perhaps when “Emma” finishes I might move onto something more modern – a Jodi Picoult or Henning Mannkell maybe. 

Then this morning on the beach I noticed this bit of communication – 

Lost house keys on display

Hung on a stick wedged into the sand presumably where they were found, I thought this was a useful form of communcation, and I hope the person who lost them comes back to the beach for another look.  The tag on them looked nearly new so they haven’t been lost long.  As one was a gate and the other a door key, the owner may not have realised they were lost until he got home…. 

And finally, I think this cap has a story to tell – it’s been in the water quite a while !! 

Barnacle encrusted baseball cap

It may have initially been lost on a beach, or blown off a passenger’s head on a cruise boat coming down the river – or blown off a yachtsman’s head out in the bay – perhaps last summer or maybe longer ago – but the colour hasn’t dulled much, I looked in the seams – was it beloved or just something handy clapped on to shade a bald head? or a nose? or to go with an outfit? – worn by a guy or a gal?  Ah well, we’ll never know for that line of communication is broken. 

So now, back to the next masterpiece ….. spurred on a bit by someone buying two of my works a few days ago, and an invitation to exhibit along the coast in a few months’ time.

I am so glad I took my camera – in fact I’m rarely without it these days when I walk on the beach.  The past week has produced some unusual beach offerings – these have quite elaborate and individually styled, not just a mere plonking down of a dead something some flowers and food.  About 10 days ago there was a group of two small goat heads and one severed partial leg in the sand.  Gruesome, and I have no idea why. 

Two young goat's heads and one partial leg - no signs of any other parts.

A few days later this interesting arrangement was down near the incoming tide, right where I usually access the beach – there was no one in sight,  but it cannot have been there long. 

In the early morning light, the orientation, which always feels to me to be the same, is clearly to the south east more or less… towards the Atlantic a couple of hundred miles away from this Montevideo beach at Carrasco. Here it is technically the River Plate, but very wide even at this point and behaves like ocean.

This poignant one above speaks to me of babies, one male and the other female, and very young I’d judge by the feeding bottles and the dummies/comfortors/chupas in pink and blue. Among the flowers are pink and blue ribbons. Are these babies on the way, have they been born and this is a thakyou gesture? Have they been lost? Pulled at my heartstrings, anyway.

And then today, this one, again as in all the pics the heads of the sacrificed birds are all nearest the sea with the bodies arranged in a general SE direction. What was different was the 7 or 8 bags of food (corn in one, beans another, something unidentifiable that looked like stew, and so on) arranged in a circle around them, and a sandy hollow near every bag with the remains of a candle sitting in the sand.   Near the white hen’s head was a jar of something that looked like candied honey – but forgive me – I did not stoop to smell it even, let alone dip my finger in …..

Now that I have been paying serious attention for a while, you can imagine my photo files are expanding and include striking differences in among common themes.  Later this week I will be travelling for a while but will resume my coastal walks when I return – hope I don’t miss something amazing.  I feel like begging one of my friends to take a camera to the beach each day while I’m away ….