YELLOW/NAVY/MUSIC/ART

Greetings!

It's no secret that I love to sew, and love a challenge:

When Style Arc produced a dress pattern bearing a close resemblance to this famous dress:

who was I to resist?

A piece of navy linen from the stash, add a small white leftover, and Voila!

I know, it is almost Winter, and this is a Summer dress...

but nature is helping out here, as we are having another mini heat wave -

expected to break all known records for May this week, with forecast maximums of 27/28 deg C.  

As Mr C. and I like to say 'It's the end of Civilisation as we know it!!'

Climate variations have become strange indeed.

Undeterred by this climactic turn of events, I gave the old navy lace dress another outing to a symphony concert, in company with my new screamingly bright yellow pom pom pashmina.  

They enjoyed 'Poet of the Guitar' almost as much as the Cardinals.

The 'poet' was the extraordinary German-born Australian classical guitarist Karin Schaupp [b.1972].  Based in Brisbane, Schaupp and her family migrated to Australia when she was aged eight.  Taught by her mother Isolde Schaupp, she was winning international competitions in her teens, and, at 18,  performed Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez with the Queensland Philharmonic Orchestra.  To our delight, she performed it this week with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra.  Wonderful!

Karin Schaupp tours extensively in many countries, has made many recordings, and had several guitar concertos written especially for her.

Coles have Granny Smith apples on special.

Apple crumble, anyone?

The brown shaded area, in the north-west desert of South Australia, known as the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjajara (A.P.Y.) lands, is the traditional tribal homeland of the Pitjantjatjara people of the Central Australian desert.

About 4,000 people live in scattered settlements, including the Amata Community (above), the location of Tjala Arts, a leader in the contemporary Western Desert painting movement.

The artists, mostly women, produce the most vibrant, joyous, exuberant abstract imagery, adapted from their traditional symbols and concepts:

PUNU, 2011, Ruby Tjangawa Williamson and Wawiriya Burton 

In Punu, Williamson and Burton depict two trees - ultukumpu and kalingkalingpa - from the country where they were born near Irrunytju community in Western Australia.  This is their first collaboration.

Seven sisters and Tjala Tjukurpa (Honey Ant Dreaming) 2012, Paniny Mick and her daughters.

 Much of the painting is trans-generational collaboration, with grandmothers, their daughters and grandchildren, working together as traditional knowledge is passed on to the younger generation.

In Honey Ant Dreaming, Paniny Mick and her daughters depict two important stories.  Tjala Tjukurpa tells of the ancestral honey ant whose tracks wind through the Amata valley, and the Seven Sisters Dreaming refers to the constellations Pleiades and Orion.  The sisters are Pleiades and Orion is Nyiru, a man who lusts after the sisters and is forever chasing them. 

   

Mingkiri Tjukurpa (Mice Dreaming) 2011; Wawiriya Burton, Angela Burton, Maureen Douglas.

Wawiriya Burton (b.1925), a traditional healer and senior woman of Anangu law and culture, has painted a story about small female mice found in the desert.  The mice are pregnant, and after giving birth to many babies they must search for food and water to feed the young.  The dotted lines are mouse tracks in the sand.

Ngayuku ngura (My country) Puli murpu (Mountain range) 2012;  Ruby Tjangawa Williamson, her daughter Nita, and grandaughter Suzanne Armstrong.

Williamson, her daughter and granddaughter, have painted their mountain country near Amata where women engage in ceremonial business.  Different colours and designs represent variations in the landscape.

This large and brilliantly coloured painting is my favourite of the series of seven works commissioned by GOMA from the Tjala women artists.  

The paintings are currently on display as part of an exhibition entitled 

Terrain: Indigenous Australian objects and representations.  

 Go see it!

 In other artistic news, our grandson in Canada made this colourful collage as a Mother's Day gift for our dear daughter... 

To our eyes, it is perfection :-)

Have a great week

XXXX