The myth and fodder amonst other things

What does it take to sew a myth (fictitious narrative) into being using not just fodder but any materials?
How does an artist decide what may be a potential myth, can an artist make such decision ?
I am reminded of looking into a kaleidascope,(beautiful form) when ones sees a particular configuration and it fleetingly impresses and then disappears, ever elusive and yet somehow convincing.
Its shade or memory has left something behind. Then slowly the mind pads up that shade, it changes shape, changes even its meaning but it carries a constant cord which turns itself into a spiral. A transformation has taken place.
Here becomes the spiral of journey. there are endless wayside stops, any of them can yield up a myth if that is the intent.
No matter what the form of the outcome if it touches a dreamer then it potentiallly is a myth.
If the large grass figures the Western desert women are making represent mythological characters then there is a clear example of making a myth visual.
I mean even though everyone knows Wati and Minyma Patjata exist in the ranges around Blackstone (Papalunkutja) until now they had never been seen in human form. Now they have.That is amazing. A ancient myth has made a visual contemporary entrance into the world. (And grass at that)
Sometimes I think the pieces of clothing I make have the potential to contain myth. For instance the xanthorrheoa dress made 1996. It has never lost its visual strength and as it moves further away from my making it takes on it own presence which that dreamer may interpret as myth.
I recall some years ago displaying the dress laying gently on a table which was covered with a length of plant dyed gold silk. An anglican priest came by and stood looking at it for a long time. He was seeing a myth in it, he was a dreamer.

Conservation or compost

The combination of clay (earth ) and grass (plant) in artworks is ancient, perhaps even basketry predated the firing proess of clay.
From time to time one sees examples of makers combining the two materials. To do so and create a harmony and balance without being contrived is elusive.
To marry the mediums so that the clay gives birth to the grass and the grass therefore grows out of the clay sensitively is important. The outcome should speak of growth not construction.This bird alighting from a waterhole combines clay, fodder coiled with silk and cotton and a found wood fragment.
The women from Jigalong made a series of baskets combing meat pie tins and fodder stitched with coloured wools.The distinct form of the pie tins easily linked with the bold coiled stitches.They were clearly construction but suceeded because of their visual strength.
The nature of fibre construction using fodder is so adaptable to form that the women making nanduti would find it easy to make their flower forms.
Perhaps they may read Fodder and be encouraged to experiment.
The type of stitching more or less controls the form and surface. The more informal the process the more ability to shape quite faithfully to form.
The idea of grass flowers is quite intrigueing.
Being able to handle clay and fibre more or less in the same breath is very liberating.
For the most part they are kept quite separate as mediums, which would not have always been the case of course and in many cultures still is not. The most obvious is dwellings combining straw and mud.
This is where conservation or compost arrives. Fired clay can be washed but grass cannot.
However most fibre providing it is kept dry and not stressed will last for many years. If it functions as a container then definitely it has a life span.
It is the stitching threads which give way rather than the fibre breaking down. For example Seven sisters grass figures have an array of fibres holding all that grass together and will need to be checked from time to time.
Probably 99.9% of fibre construction simply becomes compost, its that .1% that we must care for.

Fine rubbish

 What a wonderful post Nalda. It's very exciting to hear about the introduction of clay to the grass work.

What does it feel like? I imagine there's quite a contrast between the hard ceramics and the pliable fibre.

The story about the precious 'rubbish' hay is wonderful. If anything, the work that you are doing is a way for others to have a better material understanding of how the land operates, and so how the lamb chop appears on our plate every evening!

I've  just posted a short notice about women who make ñanduti in Paraguay. There will be a longer piece in Craft Revival Trust soon. They are quite expert in the needle and it would be very interesting to see how they could adapt to the kind of materials that you are using.

One issue that must always dog your work is conservation. Fibre must have different qualities of durability. But I imagine that fodder is particularly ephemeral. Do you find this to be the case? Are there ways of making it last longer? Or alternatively, are there ways of making something out of its fragility?

grass as fodder as grass

It seems that the use of fodder is dependant of supply from stockfeed outlets at present so I am endevouring to encourage its use at least where it can be sourced.
For instance a week in Blackstone for the 4th Blackstone Festival and the women collected grass from land to use for their basketmaking. Raffia was dyed using plant materials, barks and leaves boiled in half 44 gallon drums cut lengthways with a fire underneath, also an electric copper appeared so very successful sessions.
There was a fabulous collection of grass dogs made, all shapes and sizes, bound up with colourful wools and raffia.
Once again we introduced raku clay with the idea of using fired clay bases for basketry. A kiln was built using materials sourced from the tip and as houses are being constructed in the community there are pine pallets to burn literally. It took 40 sawn pallets to fire 32 kgs of clay for 11 hours. Here is a photo of small piece combining the two mediums made by Ivy.

However here in the city 12 women gathered last weekend for a workshop and made short work of a bundle of fodder.
When I went to the stockfeeders for a bale there was no meadow fodder just oaten hay in a huge haystack. The man pulled out a bale to give me but I went looking very closely at the stack and found one which had fine fibres in it, I asked the fellow for that one, 'Thats a rubbish one" he said disdainfully. Meaning there was less hay and more grass in it.
For the women sewing it was manna.

As an overview it is the combination of recycled materials mixed with domestic grasses ie. fodder, which can be considered a succesful and sustainable practice. However what choice can there be in a location where even fodder is at a premium, Where recycling for art and craft is already so efficient.And yet the combination gives so much scope for individuality.
That collection of dogs at Blackstone was so full of variations yet each maker more or less used the same materials.
that is what intruduces humour and the great pleasure of making.

Other grass artists....
After a break wherein I visited Jigalong, a remote community and we took several bales of fodder with us to workshop the women in the use of sculptural forms, Kuka baskets using discarded meat pie tins and grass stitched with coloured wools, goannas, snakes, and a small figure to mention some were made. The picture here is of Kumpaya making a kuka basket.
To answer you’re previous posting.
The fodder is actually a mown grass, a mixture of rye, an introduced species, sometimes clover and often capeweed. The lengths vary from several centimetres up to perhaps 30 cms and it is scraggy. Impossible to pluck out a collection of smooth materials as both Joyce and Katie use.
Fodder is more like a stuffing of sorts.
When Joyce started to work with grass in 1988 she became very excited. It was several years before she planned on her meat safe, and this I think, which was followed by her arthritic arm and frilled neck lizard etc is how she arrived at the Mamurie man. He was her first figure using Guildford grass sort of rolled and crushed and built up slowly. Beyond Mamurie man her family of figures just kept on coming. Joyce would think about what she wanted to do for quite a while, planning how to construct, perhaps this happened whilst she was still working on a previous one. Stitching grass certainly gives plenty of thinking time once the form is right.
The spirit of life was in every piece of her work, because each came to life from her memory of that person as she recalled them. From our many conversations her making was cathartic and there would have been many more coming after the Didgeridoo player, her final piece, I have no doubt.
Kate Campbell Pope, the most sensitive of all fibre artists has made few baskets as such. Her use of many plant materials, grass, bark, twigs, and leaves are most often stitched into intricate sculptural forms associated with both the body and emotions. .
The hand/ mandala pieces she made for ‘recovering’ in 1997 were beautifully crafted.
A layer of grass as a base with a negative hand shape worked into it and then a positive grass hand protruding from the base. Around the edges of the complete tiny grass flames/ leaves gave a wonderful sense of life. Kate has kept making these exquisite fibre forms of the inner and outer human. She stretches grass across delicately made structures often wrapped and stitched with silk.
I have certainly learnt much from both Joyce and Kate, perhaps more conceptual rather than material wise. Kate and Cecile Williams, both close friends inspire me continuously.
My passion for mixing plant materials to give texture and the effect of land seemed so important for so many years. The use of grass alone was not appealing as such though I did do numerous pieces in the early and mid 80s.
I put my work into an Australiana context rather than a contemporary one perhaps.
Now of course, in the past 10 years grass has become the lingua franca for fibre art. In its neutrality it can be so well manipulated.

I think you are correct in saying it seems to be an Australian pursuit at present, but I doubt it will stay that way for long. I know Sandy Elverd from Adelaide taught a fibre workshop in America last year so Sisters will have found its way there. Perhaps in India there would be similar grass artworks being made, that would come closest to these here.
However here it is cheeky, surprising, sensitive and running like wildfire. The bottom line is of course when it will even out, we are all having so much fun inventing that we also need to consolidate, You may have heard that Kantjupayi has made a kids Toyota recently, its amazing, all colours and grass. After the big one, that is consolidation!

Yesterday I was shown a swan/duck? Made from grass and old chair upholstery materials, so much character and life in it as if there are swans like it just flying around everywhere, The fact that the maker could visualise that bird, have the materials at hand, and then do such a fine energetic job on making it with so much charm stuns me. What’s more it is probably the only one in the whole world, which will ever be made like it and it came from a remote desert community just to top it off.
I am trying to put my finger on it Kevin, what I think we have here is a re-enactement of the way which the western half of the country retains the inventiveness stimulated by isolation. Having visited so many areas where these circles of creative energy exist and yet each is in itself an entity but becomes part of a whole through a common islolation.
It may not be as unique as we think but it feels like it.. we behave as if it is. Each piece of grass basket or sculpture that is completed joins this pool of produce, even though one may never sit beside another it never the less belongs there through a kind of energy which most of the women seem to be aware of.
Im wondering what you think about that.
The kangaroo women picture here is of a recent piece I made for an exhibition titled Grrrr- freeing the beast. The dress is xanthorrheoa bracts and of course the head is fodder.

For those who may like to try making something with grass it requires a needle and strong thread along with a supply of grass. Slightly dampen the grass if it is brittle with a quick dunking in and out of water. Start the form in a small way, stitch it firmly and then keep adding carefully and steadily to develop your idea. Any other materials can be incorporated into the structure through the stitching process. There is no limit to the size.

Bamoko

The Malian director Abderrahmane Sissako talks about his new film Bamoko and its impact in the west:

There is a perception in the west that African people are not aware of international politics. When the west talks of Africa, it talks of poverty, sickness, wars, but never talks of the people themselves having a view on what is happening. I wanted to show that African society may not be organised, but it is conscious.

Vanessa Walters 'African dreams' New Statesman www.newstatesman.com/20070226003 (26/02/2007)

Other grass artists

Interesting what you say Nalda about the greaer freedom of form that you've developed with the fodder stitching, as in the skull. I wonder how you'd compare it with two other fibre artists that you are close to.

First, there's Kaye Campbell-Pope, who has that wonderful 'body' of work that renders internal body organs into grass. Here method seems quite delicate and exact, evoking medical technology. That makes the contrast with the raw material all the more striking.

And then there's the charming figures by Joyce Winsley, who worked closely with both you and Kate. Her grass stitching seemed to make possible quite lively figures, that emerge quite golem like from the earth.

I'm sure they have both learned much from you, but have you studied the techniques from these artists and learnt from them. As far as I know, there aren't artists in any other countries making this kind of work. That's quite remarkable, don't you think? We are so often in the position of having to catch up with the technical knowledge forged elsewhere.