Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Rolling beads


A while back I weathered and rusted a dictionary over a year as part of the erosion bundle project. I did not know what to do with the pages until I read about Rachel Chiesley aka 'Lady Grange' while on residency at the Caselberg House (I can't believe it, she has a Facebook page,http://www.facebook.com/pages/Lady-Grange/135930719772460?sk=info ).  During her seven years of imprisonment on St Kilda Island, Scotland she tried to get messages to the mainland - a common way of the Islanders was to tie a note around a cork and throw it off to sea. Rachel successfully smuggled a note out hidden in a spool of wool, unfortunately it did not reach the intended recipient for two years, a little too late. By rolling the words of the dictionary into beads I am changing there meaning and loosing many words, effectively making the dictionary useless. However it is poignant when words like SAIL and WISH are revealed. The rusting makes the beads appear a little like corks (or cigarette filters unfortunately). To mimic her idea I have wound them onto a bobbin sourced from the Alliance Textiles Woolen Mill - maybe this will be a way to display them, I am undecided yet. 365 beads are wound already, my ideal is to roll a bead for every day of her exile...only 6 years to go - better get busy!

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

St Kilda resources

Well, I'm looking forward to hearing Kat's stories of her youth in the St Kilda/St Clair area! 

In the meantime I have sourced some books and found in one of them a fantastic photo of tweed which was produced in St Kilda, Scotland. I am collecting old blankets from the St Kilda Dunedin second hand shops for the project, as they speak of the suburban history of the area, here they are - rolled up in the same manner as the tweed was in the photo.