sustainability?=corn husks

Thanks for those thoughts on hair. In New Giunea certain men make a whole head of hair from their plucked and saved hair and then it is worn on special occasions. It indicates a certain level of maturity and access to mens rituals. It fits on the head like a bycycle helmet and it probably just as protective.
It is often hightly decorated with colourful flowers, feathers, fruit, anything at all.
Live hair carries the power of the wearer but once it has become detached from the owners body then it takes on meanings of extremes. This image is a hair vessel using 18 years of saved hair and stitched with fine linen thread.
However corn husks which should be abundant in South Africa given that corn is the staple are a very sustainable fibre.
The husk is peeled and dried then it can be dyed or left natural, then shredded into working strands 2 or 3 centimetres broad.
Dampening it for use makes it easy to manipulate.It is equal to any other fibre and cost would be zero.
Perhaps it is already in use but I did not see it as such. I have suggested to Hlwenge Dube to encourage some of the women to experiment with it. Women crafters in Soweto would have access to corn husks and mealie bags for stitching.
Native American women have used corn husks for baskets, masks and other paraphanalia for generations.
So perhaps we will see more corn and less husks in the near future.
Meanwhile it has been a bumper year for Fodder after the drastic shortage of it last season and I am about to collect some high quality bales from a farmer in the south.

Hair and there

Sorry, Nalda, for not responding in recent times. Now that I'm out of Craft Victoria, I have a little more freedom to follow this interesting train of thought.

It seems that one of the marvels of fodder in South Africa was to be able to make art from a material so easy to access. This is a strong feature of art and craft in southern Africa.

What other materials might nature provide? I was talking with Hlengiwe Dube about the Zulu attitudes to hair. She told me about the remarkable practice of Zulu women on marriage to have their hair woven into a headdress (inhoko), which is kept for life.

I was talking about this to my hairdresser today. She was saying that all hair, regardless of race, must grow. So I wonder how this is maintained over time?

The inhoko has now evolved into an artificial headdress. The particular weaving structure has developed from the way hair was braided.

This evolution makes you think how various hair crafts might translate into other artificial materials.

Just around the corner from me is one of the many African hair braiding shops that have opened in recent times. Perhaps I should ask them?

Fodder aound the South.

Melbourne Victoria Australia, Moora Western Australia and Johannesburg South Africa, have all been sites for grass fibre (specifically bales of fodder) weaving workshops in the past few months.
The images show the workshops along with a fibre piece from each..
As common as fodder is never the less it allows great freedom in the making.
In Melbourne it was sourced from a stockfeeder supplier, in Moora directly from a farmer and in Johannesburg the Zoo kindly dontated a bale and we hope the elephants didnt go hungry on our behalf.
At each workshop without exception there is an energy and excitement as people venture into a form and it slowly evolves.
In Johannesburg Ivy Hopkins from Central Australia was present and she collaborated with others in making a large figure using raffia, wool and fodder. I think the particpants were intrigued as the child sized figure took shape with such spontaneous action.
I asked a young man what he wanted to make. "A lion" he rplied and set into it. Later I saw him back making a basket.
May the shared materials and company contribute to the important linking of Southern Hemisphere crafts.
Nalda Searles

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.