Despite the sign “Troya” this suggests a cockroach or some other large, very large, insect.  On a sign advertising a show feb 2009 which I sadly missed, it names two sculptors Roberto Cadenas and Octavio Podesta.  There were some workmen nearby who did not know who made it, and the artists’ studios were closed, so I’ll just have to hope at least one of these people or both produced this, and call in sometime later in the year to confirm this when we return to Punta and points beyond.  In the meantime, if you’re travelling along route 1 and just after the airport, you might notice this in a corner near the highway.  I love it.

Tracks – I never tire of them, and sand is perfect for recording them, ephemerally of course.  Sticking to the nyr#2, I have been taking my camera each time I go onto the beach, and in the past few days recorded these sets of tracks.  Some were man made, and tend to feature shoe and tyre or machinery prints (scroll down to “Seasonal Diggings”  Jan 28th for a great pic)  and others made by a variety of other living creatures – such as birds and dogs and even very delicate fine ones left by tiny shell fish in wet sand down near the water’s edge.  I love how some sets of tracks are overlain by others.   The second picture down is intriguing: surely this is not just a circumstantial placement of objects ? for there are always holes dug on the beach – my own DH digs almost constantly when actually sitting down on a beach; or is there some story behind this one? …whatever …. and then the tide comes in and it starts all over again.   These marks show a brief part of the recent history of this part of the earth’s surface, a beach.  These are all Timetracks.

My regular readers know I think the most appropriate statement is a nifty, brief, thought provoking title.  Very occasionally though, one of mine (Wedding Quilt, from  Colour Memories gallery, or the Ebb&Flow gallery’s   “Maelstrom”)  will have a particular statement/story alongside the full image; but I prefer not to say too much so viewers individually perceive and interpret my work.   Anyway, that’s one kind of statement, the  brief, minimalist one.    

The other kind of statement is a general one, part relevant biographical information and part insight into inspiration behind designs and use of particular materials and techniques. What can be tricky, however, is how much to say, what to include and leave out, whether to write in the first person (my preference) or the third person which feels formal and starchy to me since I am pretty casual – you can tell by the way I write!   And, then too, the purpose of the statement is highly relevant: will it go on a didactic panel in an exhibition, and is that group or solo?  Will it go in some catalogue? Will this statement be part of a submission of some kind, and if so, who will read it?  Is it to be an intro to my website or blog for example?  Or is it one people can find up online if they google me – and there’s a bag of worms for sure. 

Right now I am tweaking a version of my general artist statement to include in an online exhibition of my work as a featured PAM (professional artist member) of Studio Art Quilt Associates     I’ll post when my month comes up as I don’t know which it is, yet.  Every day it seems, I have to do something of this nature related to exhibiting , teaching or publishing quilt-related activity and frequently marvel at how relatively easy all this is with computers.   

Just the other day some event organisers in Brasil wanted photos of works my students would be making at the   Patchwork and Quilting Festival, Buenos Aires March 2010    for their promotional material.    

Students in the beginner freehand rotary cut patchwork class will learn the basic techniques to enable them to make designs like this, or others such as “Green Island” or “Wedding quilt” in the Colour Memories gallery on my website.

The advanced class will learn techniques enabling quilters to make this kind of quilt pattern by freehand patchwork, or others such as ‘Afterglow’ and ‘Western Desert’ in the Colour Memories gallery on my website.

When I went down to the beach at 7am this morning, armed with my camera, there was a trail of offerings to far out of sight all along the beach – chooks, flowers, fruit especially watermelon, broken up shrines, candles and some intact offerings punctuated with carnations and dahlias and other flowers, indicating I should have been there several hours earlier.  Surely I didn’t miss the whole thing?   “Feb 2” is the date for the ceremonies honoring Imanja, but perhaps it is the first tide after midnight or something -or maybe it’s all day, and so we we will wander down tonight around midnight to see if it is, or whether I have missed it yet again, sigh – I might need to become a follower to know what’s going on when!

I wasn’t even on to the beach when I came across this one – certainly in a traffic area along a path/highway – which is meant to increase the strength/value of the offering, I’m told.  Refer to my previous post on this. 

As I mentioned, some devotees even launch their offerings into the sea:

but maybe the waves were a bit robust this year – these were some of the wrecked craft along the beach this morning.  (dimensions between 1m and 1.75m) 

Imanja likes blue the colour of the sea, and pretty, shiny things.  There were two of these, 250m apart, with identical contents and arrangement.

This little shrine, standing about 30cm high, may have been launched but ran aground without tipping over.  I photographed each side, and then its location – note the dead chicken closer to the water, and the carnations strewn on the sand.

So clearly there had been a lot of activity several hours before I and others turned up.  I noticed lots of blue things along the tideline- blue tinted starfishes, real and styrofoam shape; lots of blue giftwrap  twirls and loopy decorations that in some cases were still attached to offerings or boats(wrecks).  There were little blue combs, blue candles, blue cellophane incorporated into plates of fruit, and even a soggy sponge cake with icing that had been sprayed blue with some graphic iced onto it in brown/chocolate?

I have no idea why a severed goat/kid’s head, but the pic next to it includes what looked like a pair of lacy black knickers in amongst the grain and fruit, and what looks like names on paper; The Virgin Mary in a small blue shrine was interesting, and in among the grain resting on intense blue tissue was the name and date “Jimena Vecanday, 18.06.1988”  Twenty two years is a long time since whatever happened to that person on that day.  And I was a bit underwhelmed by the group of young people who walked along collecting up mostly blue things – perhaps they were preparing their offerings for tonight but I thought it was a bit off to use something that has already been presented to Imanja, Queen of The Sea on her day.

Good beach weather means I am down there many days – the sky/sea mood is always changing and the textures on the beach vary a lot, too.   The depositional and erosional forces (wind and water) constantly work to change the texture patterns in the sand, as well as shaping the overall and micro profiles of the beach.  And there are masses of different tracks too – marks left by bicycles, motorbikes, trucks and the beach cleaner machine

The tracks left by the machinery used to clean the beach - now did someone perversely place a bag of rubbish right where the machine swerved a bit, or did the driver swerve to avoid a bag of trash left on the beach ;-p

 plus footprints of people, dogs, and a variety of birds.  I’m a creature of habit and so park at the same spot each time to enter the beach.  The other day this little texture caught my eye for the first time -the diggings of a little creature that is very busy just now, ie perhaps at a particular time in its life cycle, as I’ve not noticed it before.  There were lots of them along damper part of the beach, appearing after the water had receded but clearly they’d be covered again with the incoming tide.  When I got home I had to search my files to find this photo :

– on the cover of a catalogue of a wonderful exhibition we saw in Paris a couple of years ago.  The sand ridge reminded me of this ridge of leather stitches over strips of leather laid along a crack on the surface of a gourd.  I posted previously, “A Totally Memorable Exhibition” oct 21st, 2007 on the impact this exhibition had on me, principally the concept that people mend something only if it is important to them, but that mending therefore confers a higher level of value to the object.  The catalogue is full of well-used objects that have been damaged and interestingly repaired – hence the title of the show – Objets Blesses.