Have brush will travel

Invisible Cities in there too - some points

her travel photographic journal - not like your regular holiday snaps, but you get a keen feeling for the things she selects through the camera lens
including her own works placed in situ and reinterpreted ( like the Herculaneum palimpsests - inspired by ancient Roman baths, stitched deconstructed, felted, lace, silk cotton, reconstructed embellished then photographed back in the Italian env. this time in the Baccioni Fountain in Prato. referencing Calvino - Kubler Kahn and Marco Polo -
also referencing Thailand artist Montein Boonma(dec) whose meditative drawings were hung like prayer flags

Hi susan,
I’ve noted these comments for the next article for the magazine, and also put some in this blog.
Were the Heculaneum Palimpsests in . . . the journey?
Sorry my memory fails me on these finer details.
. . . Have Brush, have Thread, will Travel
Journeys from the heroic or mythic to the geographically exploratory, imagined or virtual, usually have a purpose, a resolution, or a destination. Then there are journeys that are more elusive — better thought of as an approach to life or taking up a challenge; more a matter of discovery along the way rather than arriving - the kind of journey Bruce Chatwin wrote about in the final part of his controversial book Songlines for example. In spite of the criticism he attracted about the first section, describing his journey through Central Australia, the second part, consisting of his notes on nomadology make interesting reading on the elusive many-faceted art of journeying; sitting at my desk, or wherever I happen to find a space to write, brings to mind writer and teacher Natalie Goldberg, a follower of Zen Buddhism, who describes the writing process as the long quiet highway.
Ever since Odysseus/Ulysses set sail for home after the Battle of Troy, the concept of the journey has operated as a metaphor for artistic endeavours and Susan Fell McLean’s art practice is central to her journey through life.

Her camera and her journal are essential parts of her travelling kit. Thus, ancient Roman baths become the inspiration for the Herculaneum Palimpsests, stitched deconstructed, felted, lace, silk cotton, reconstructed embellished then photographed in the Baccioni Fountain in Prato, are just one example of how the visual inspiration of a particular place is translated into her practice. Her Italian works also reference the travellers Kubler Kahn and Marco Polo, referred to in Italo Calvino’s book, Invisible Cities.

Equally, back in her studio, painting, putting a piece of cloth into a dye bath or any stage of the process of making one of her artworks are part of her journey. In . . . the journey at Mitchelton Winery Gallery during April and May of this year, she exhibited as documents of her experiences of places as different as Ernabella, a remote village in Sarawak and the lanes of the Italian cities Herculaneum and Prato. The exhibition, works on paper, canvas and textiles was also an implicit questioning and interpretation of the concept of the journey as well as the connected issues of place and identity.

“For me” she says, “travel is a way of seeing as well as learning, every journey brings new opportunities to learn and each place yields something new or unexpected to bring home.”
“ Contemporary textile arts are built on ancient traditions, so the artist remains connected to their culture while finding ways to express their individuality and response to their own times.”
“ For inspiration” Susan continues “ the artist must go beyond the studio, to understand how people respond to their landscape and how they incorporate their customs and history into their daily lives. All arts to some extent and textiles in particular engaging as they do tactile and visual senses rather than words, are part of a universal language.”
Gondwanan Dendrites two silk pieces 30 x30 cms each, and the installation Gondwanan Palimpsests, three wooden boxes each containing a piece of wool shibori, exhibited in the International Shibori Symposium in Paris last year, as well as at Mitchelton are another example of how Susan combines her experiences and art into her own vision. Dyed with Yellow Box (Eucalyptus Melliadora)and mudguts from Red Gum (see them at Susan’s website http://visibilityedge.blogspot.com/ ), these pieces could be pelts of some ancient life form from some other world, from some as yet unknown place.
The intallation The Amphora, five containers in felted wool around one metre high combines aspects of function and enchantment. The vessels, similar to ones which might have once carried precious spices and oils contain the spirit of a journey. From their corner in the gallery they look as though they may have been retrieved from an archaeological site, Pompeii for instance. They suggested to me that they might also be stored at the entrance to a yurt, or some other timeless and temporary shelter, ready to be taken through a desert when the next camel train departs.
I think of my own life as a journey between two places ⎯ my present retreat in the Black Range and the place where I was born, which still hovers at the edge of my dreams. The tensions and connections between these places, separated as they are by time and space have brought me to exploring how life and landscape intersect and this journey is the subject I hope to address in a later stage of the Black Range Project.
An article by Luke Slattery in the Weekend Australian Review, May 3-2 ’09 in which he quotes Daniel Mendelsohn’s translation of Cavafy’s poem based on Homer’s advice to Ulysses on finally reaching his homeland after ten years of wandering brings us neatly, too neatly perhaps back to where this journey began:
Always in your mind keep Ithaca
To arrive there is your destiny.
Better not to hurry your trip in any way
Better that it lasts for many years;
That you drop anchor at the island an old man,
Rich with all you’ve gotten along the way,
Expecting Ithaca to make you rich.
Back at The Edge, with no end in sight, we’re continuing our travels into concepts and images of our landscape.
Post Script
Some of the detours mentioned on this journey, here are some of my references:
Songlines by Bruce Chatwin
Colour. Travels through a Paintbox by Victoria Finlay Sceptre paperback 2002
This book is not directly referred to, but will be of particular interest to visual artists.
The Long Quiet Highway, (and other titles on writing) by Natalie Goldberg Bantam books 1997
Sixty Poems for the Journey, by Ruth Padel Vintage paperback, 2007
See Susan’s Blogspot http://visibilityedge.blogspot.com/ - for more images of her art, and excerpts from her visual journals.