Yesterday we wandered into one of our favourite browsing stores here, and right now it is probably the same in many places around the world – easter eggs and other chocolate fancies and novelties piled high to meet the annual choc buying and eating splurge that so often presents as ‘Easter’ , blinding many to the real point of this particular Christian festival. We thought we had seen everything until we came across this chocolate fountain playing as a focal point of the easter egg display. The notice on the front of the fountain warns that the contents of this fountain are for display purposes only, and the stuff is not edible. I did a hand/heat test, touching the outside of the fountain from the other side before I read the sign, and it was quite cold. I am left with the appalling thought that by the time they pull the display down on monday, probably many little fingers belonging to people of below-reading-age will have taken a dip into the ‘choccy fountain’ while their parents’ attention is diverted. Easter greetings from Montevideo. 

I have been tossing up whether or not to put this one up; it has been haunting me a bit. Our guide explained how it is a memorial to all those who were imprisoned, tortured, died in custody or just disappeared as political prisoners in the long and brutal Stroessner dictatorship that controlled the country of Paraguay for 35 years up to 1989. Unfortunately it is an experience that most south american countries have had in their most recent history.

The sheer oppressiveness expressed in this sculpture reminds me that I and Australians of my age and younger, and our children, barely comprehend what it can mean to live through and survive such a period. I have talked with several Uruguayans over the past few years – they do not talk easily about their troubled recent past, and their faces still show fear and sadness while and indeed, if, they do talk.

Walking along the street here I am able to observe and compare the carefree young faces with some of the older ones – every now and then I see a remarkable face in front of me – I hesitate to try to capture on film the suspicion, fear or anxiety that seems to have marked that face. In Australia recently, I noticed how older people in airports, food halls, coffee terrraces and pedestrian malls showed more relaxed, open, and fewer worried faces. And no wonder – apart from a brief attempt by the Japanese up around Darwin during the WWII, we have never experienced foreign invasion, civil war, nor military dictatorship. Despite our pollies’ raucous haranging that passes for debate in our houses of parliament, and the heated commentary on the state of our nation in our media, the ups and downs of Life for most people in our country are due to fire, flood, drought, tempest or changed economic conditions producing changes in the work place. Undeniably traumatic to those involved, but fortunately only a portion of the nation is ever thus traumatised at one time. Australia IS a very Lucky Country.

It’s not exactly the dreaded white page syndrome – it’s more the half written page, or the half blank – or is that black and white? Whatever, it is that well known point at which a creative person sometimes gets stuck, wondering which path to take now. I am facing this with the current quilt top, which I think is now ‘done’ in the applied leather department, in a style similar to earlier pics on this blog – now for the quilting. Deciding what type – the options are (1) fine free machine quilting in a subdued gold thread to tone with the subdued gold leather angular appliques (2) lots of hand quilting in both black and the perle thread which looks like gold matching the leather…. Instinct tells me to just start – but I am not sufficiently committed to going ahead with any one kind of approach so I am tempted to put it aside for a while and get on with the next design calling me – but the thing is I did this with the previous one….. and still haven’t picked it up again. I am so rarely in this position – normally I have either some piecing or some quilting going on at the same time as some finishing off – not this kind of clog up which might be construed as a heap of (2) UFO’s. So, some procrastination of some kind is looming today perhaps.

Oner thing I will do is spend some time with a new (to me) book on Tim Storrier a prominent Australian artist. I can do an on line search for stuff on another fav. I have always been meaning to look into more, about his life inspirations etc because I adore his work – Jules Sher. Yes, that should give me some thinking time. And if that fails, there is the Robert Drewe book I am well into, “Grace”.

One of the clearest and sobering examples we saw of the huge gap between the haves and have nots in Paraguay was this view from the Palacio Legislativo. Very humble homes without basic services perch precariously along the rivers edge etween the lovely plazas and avenues of the edge of the city and the banks of the Paraguay R.

About 1/2 km further along is the President’s Palace, beautiful colonial era building which is now where the president of the country conducts businesss; it is not lived in. Alongside the large manicured grounds between building and river are also similar buildings and homes to these. All highly susceptible to flooding. We heeded the guide’s warning this might not be the best place for two foreign ladies to wander sight seeing, at night especially. 

Another lovely example – clearly this is sculptural, painterly and references lace through the hand painted carving in each part of the gown of this saint. Lacemaking is a craft medium though – so is this art or craft?

This biggie question was behind the private comments of another fellow quilter and lacemaker regarding the work of some accepted makers in the art world whose work references the lacemaking medium and yet is taken as ‘art’. We were musing over where the line goes in such cases; she was puzzled because a reply from a grant organisation clearly put (down, she felt) her own beautiful modern lacework into the craft realm.

Our guide on our trip to this museum and the Jesuit mission commented that the Indians in these missions were in effect slaves on the plantation – does that diminish or add to what they achieved here?