New Post: That Inbetween Space

Posted: Tuesday, August 10, 2010, in Lost in space

Glossy Black Cockatoo

The 'Lost birds series' incorporates (if that is the correct term for images which are 'missing') an image of the Glossy Black Cockatoo, Calyptorhynchus lathami from a watercolour by the colonial artist, George Raper. The original is in the British Museum.
My bird book (A Field Guide to the Birds of Australia by Graham Pizzey) suggests that 'glossy' is a misnomer, it is 'a dull-black cockatoo with a massive bulbous bill and red panel in tail'(author's italics).
Pamela tells of seeing the Glossy Black Cockatoo in the Wattagans, close to where she lives. We may also have them around here but they are easily mistaken for their more raucous cousins, the Red-Tailed Black Cockatoos which makes identification difficult.
They have a specific diet--the seeds of the casuarina trees and a specific feeding ritual--picking up each seed pod with one claw and passing it to the next before breaking it apart with its bill (PF pers.comm.).
Their numbers are declining, possibly due to the clearing of woodlands.
So so we contend with the possibility of real 'loss'.

The 'Lost Birds Series' (2006/7)

For the moment, it is this--the 'Lost birds series' (2006/7) that I will use as a basis of my presentation in October. Pamela has lent me seven of the series of eight (the eighth is in a private collection).
These are relatively small quilts, each approximately 19.5 cm x 19.5 cm and of plant-dyed and commercial silk, hand and machine stitched and backed with silk.
These are unusual works for Pamela for a number of reasons I intend to explore, yet they are instantly recognisable as her work. I find them extraordinarily beautiful, yet need time to understand why.
For now, I identify a sense of 'wonder' while acknowledging the process of analysis ('wondering') which will necessarily follow.
The repeating image, a silhouette of a cockatoo (the 'lost' bird in question) references a water colour by the early colonial artist, George Raper. The original painting is of a black cockatoo but I need to confirm which species of black cockatoo and also details of the original painting.

By Chance

I opened a text I have next to me on my writing desk--'Women Making Art' (Marsha Meskimmon, 2003)--I was planning to read more on performativity, as aspect of this project which nags at my mind and resists offering up even a thread to start the process of engagement. Instead I opened it at the start of a chapter entitled, 'The Place of Time' (p168) and before me I have another thread for which I had been searching...I am all too aware that I need to 'spend time' developing this blog which has sat dormant after the first heady sensation of setting it up!

My excuse is that I need to sit and talk to Pamela as I think I have a series of hers which I hope to explore for this project but without her permission and with only a glimpse of the series to work on, I need to ask her first.
But 'time' sits at the centre of her work, it is, and of, the essence. And 'place' as well. Mersha M uses a quote at the start of her chapter by Moira Gatens which I will shorten slightly: ...by questioning past practices and by revaluing past practices, one causes a shift or a tremor in the web. A comment I feel appropriate to an exploration of quiltmaking as well.

It also says much about Pamela's work, its subtlety and lingering beauty.

The chapter looks a hopeful place to start. It starts out to explore both linear and circular concepts of time.

Pamela's work touches on geologic time, beyond human thought, while her life is surrounded by time in the natural world, a circular time.

There is also time lost and passed. There is also 'doing time' and 'making time'.

Image: taken while walking and talking with Pamela.

Reference: Marsha Meskimmon, Women Making Art (2003)

There is a place and a time

This blog has been set up to explore the works of Pamela Fitzsimons.
It is part of my project: 'From the block to the blog and back again'--I am attempting to explore the experience of blogging (which is new to me!) and the process of making a quilt with a focus on work by Pamela, Judy McDermott and Emma Rowden.
I had originally set up just one blog, quilted-out-of-space.blogspot.com but after two months of working with it the process feels to be too linear.