My creative journey on my sabbatical in India and beyond
When my friend Tracey went to visit family in South Africa she asked me if I would like anything. I just love anything beaded from SA and so asked for 5 small dolls. I have called them my Voodoo Barbies – not that look anything AT ALL like any Barbie I or anyone else has ever seen!
I took them to Mexico and mostly photographed them in the old and wonderful city of Taxco, home to silver, VW Beetles, a huge Christo up a hill and a city build on a very steep hill.
I thought it was time to attend to the three monotheistic religions. I looked up on YouTube how to tie the various head-coverings and made outfits for all three of my Barbies. I made the stockings for Muslim and Jewish Barbie out of hair ties I split and sewed back up. I even made slippers, and handbag and book of Psalms for Frummer (Orthodox Jewish) Barbie. For Palestinian Muslim Barbie I knitted her a cardigan and used some left out Palestinian embroidery for her neck covering and coat. She also had a bag. Nun Barbie had some black flowers and a cross on a chain. For the most part I photographed them separately but also as a threesome. Now I have attached them to a padded bag that Yasmeen gave me.
Witch Barbie
Devil Barbie
Dick Whittington Barbie
Fairy Barbie
I love wandering around with Talulah and asking her to sit and pose in front of purple graffiti/street art and occasionally flowers!
So Neeta and I go away for a few days every few years. We have been to Porto, Portugal, Tel Aviv, Israel and Limnisa in Greece so far. This time it was for my 60th and we had to choose somewhere that we could both fly directly. So I chose Podgorica, Montenegro. Except I did have direct flights and poor old Neeta didn’t. The capital of Montenegro had clearly been wiped out in WW2 and was a feast of Slavic architecture. It made Milton Keynes look like it would win the most beautiful holiday destination. To boot, it was rainy most of the time and cloudy at best. But we had a serious laugh with good meals, wine and cocktails. Neeta seemed happy to play along with my total Barbie obsession and I suggested we get some knock-off Barbie dolls and whilst in Kotor we bought 2 cheap ‘Lucy’ dolls. Neeta wanted them to look very poor and communist eastern block so proceeded to chop all her Barbie’s hair off and we dressed them in the grey equivalent of sackcloth and ashes. It was a chopped up pair of grey tights. And then the photography and videoing began!
Most of taxis are VW Beetles. All white. But lots of others drive them. It reminded me of the lovely cars in Havana. How these beetles managed the hills in Taxco I just don’t know…
I had a totally lovely time in Mexico. Hoping to return in a year.
With Debby and Luna
We saw work that I really liked by the following artists; Ziva Amir, Neora Washavasky, Yehudit Katz, Nora Frenkel, Shula Litan, Mirjam Bruck-Cohen, Sima Konson, Kathie Halfin, Ovadia Alkara, Yosl Bergner, Anna Tikko, Marcel Janco, Fatima Abu Roomi. A big thanks to Evi for arranging.
Mirit Weinstock is an Israeli artist and designer currently based in Japan. Her upcoming exhibition at MUZA, “MY Life in Flowers,” is her first museum exhibition in Israel, and will feature recent works created over the past five years.
Weinstock’s work is concerned with a quest for metaphors capturing humanity’s existential state, which changes as frequently as the surrounding natural world. She forges connections between the worlds of craft and contemporary art, while combining a range of mediums and materials – ceramics, paper, metal and natural vegetation.
The series of works featured in the exhibition will includes moments from her life, as sculpted with seasonal plants and flowers. Her works express the artist’s emotional and personal mood as it resonates in nature, and are concerned with the themes of time and duration. In this manner, Weinstock explores the dialogue between nature, time, space, the cyclical character of life, sculptural actions and drawing. The exhibition space serves as a vessel into which she introduces changing natural life cycles. Her works, which combine living plants that change and perish over time, present viewers to the exhibition with aesthetic realms in the process of withering.
Carly is super worried that this short story will turn into a rant. Not just any old rant. But an overwhelming, oversized, crushing, devastating tirade. That is how she feels about the term and the pandemic, with which it is synonymous. She has made it very clear, although there may have been some short term and unexpected benefits, Carly, as an extrovert who needs other people around to keep her mojo up, has told everyone, that come the next pandemic, she is checking out. Enough is enough, she assures anyone who will listen. She understands that all humans are different, and she may be on the extrovert extreme, but really. People actually enjoyed being kept indoors and told what to do? 24/7. For months. The messaging wasn’t even subliminal. It was out there. YOU WILL DO THIS. AND THAT. AND NOT THIS OR THAT. Carly is very much against capitals as they are shouty and reduce reading rate by up to 50%. But she needs to get her exasperatedness off her chest. Yes. There is now a wiggly red line under that last made-up word. But Carly sometimes needs license to invent things that can summarise how she feels.
So back to the term Social Distancing. Who decided to call it that name? It has to be the worst. It isn’t about distancing socially at all. It is clearly about physical distancing. How could the person who coined the phrase get it so totally wrong? Carly is flummoxed. She presumes it has to be a man. She has absolutely no evidence whatsoever for this, but it feels correct. Would a woman really not understand the huge error? The last thing we need in this pandemic is to be even more distanced from each other. Carly knows it is easy with hindsight to be clear about this. At the beginning we didn’t know if the virus spread on fomites or on other surfaces. But looking at the way most viruses spread, particularly coronaviruses, then we could predict that this wasn’t the case. Common things are common. Viruses spread from one person to another. So yes, in the beginning physical distancing did have a part. And then masks. More on that later. Carly, unsurprisingly, has a view on masks too! Carly is also clear that nomenclature is hugely important. It is absolutely tied to feelings and emotions. Like social distancing. Carly is pretty sure the reader/listener can feel this very obviously. It isn’t just a term with no resonance. Carly feels she has so far made her case very loud and clear.
And it was pretty bad at the beginning. All this not knowing and loads of people dying. But do pandemics come along for a reason? To reduce the population? We all know there are probably too many people in the world. But as always, the rich countries have the resources to keep their populations alive. We saw this with the uneven distribution of the vaccine. Carly shakes her head in dismay.
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Carly remains upset, even angry. That is no great revelation. Carly does spend a lot of time bouncing between these two primal emotions. Carly was also very relieved that her sabbatical finished only a few weeks before lockdown in the UK was announced. Carly remembers a dream she had on her sabbatical. She had it interpreted by a holy man in India who explained that all her colleagues didn’t really value her, and she should stay in India for longer. She realised that for every five completed years in the NHS you were allowed a three-month career break. And although she told everyone she was on a sabbatical that wasn’t technically true. Sabbaticals are paid for. And this one wasn’t! Anyway. Career break or sabbatical. It is only semantics. Carly had a most marvellous time. It was only for four months. She did the mathematics. 15 years of no break of slaving away for the NHS. She was entitled to a total of nine months. Another five to take. So, she wrote in all seriousness, to her colleagues about her dream, the guru and informed them she was staying for another five months. She did apologise that she was indeed mucking up the Easter rota. But c’est la vie. However, it was all a complete fib. Interestingly, they all believed her apart from her colleague Neeta. She knew it was all a load of tosh! And in the end, they were all around for Easter as the world had shut down. Everyone was off to destination nowhere. So much for sadhus and gurus and dreams. But it did make everyone giggle. Could they really believe she would play a stunt like that? And anyway, there was the slight issue of the money. India is cheap but not free. And Carly likes to live at a certain level. Not sleeping in a hostel and eating once a day. No Carly has standards and her money had actually almost run out!
Back to social distancing and the pandemic. By nature, Carly is sceptical. At the very beginning of lockdown, she really couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. Then she met with one of her geriatrician colleagues who was miserable and overwhelmed. Finally, the penny dropped, and she did understand. This was way back at the beginning. Hospitals didn’t really know what they were doing, how to triage patients, manage them or their relatives, as well as running out of oxygen. They had so many deaths it felt surreal to Carly. She is a paediatrician and wasn’t really sure how to help. Not at the beginning. She just stood there dumbfounded. And this, for Carly, is a very unusual state of being. Carly almost invariably has a plan. And if that plan doesn’t work out, she is flexible enough to think outside of the box and moderate or completely change her strategy. In the meantime, Carly thinks about the noise. Or rather lack of noise. Perhaps that could help with a new direction for her.
A lot has been said about the birds. That at the beginning there was so little traffic you could hear them. For Carly, having few cars on the road meant she could zoom out on her bike almost without looking for any other vehicles to run her over. This felt very good indeed. Her brother once said that if we banned all private cars, that would go some way towards people getting fitter and losing weight. Surely this was a good thing? And Carly loved the fact that she owned the roads. It was her and her trusty bike. Oh, and the birds. Carly isn’t really a maven about birds. She can recognise the hammering of the woodpecker, the cooing of pigeons and then the rest just falls into the general tweeting category. But she is off. To go to work. To do what? Well, be at work. It gave her a purpose when the rest of the world seemed to have fallen off its perch. It was rather tricky though as very few independent coffee establishments were open. And when she got to work, there wasn’t much to do. She couldn’t make oxygen. Maybe once upon a time she could theoretically work out how to make oxygen. But this wasn’t a real starter for the moment. She did go to the adult wards to help patients contact their families. And she was able to break bad news. One of the serious advantages of having grey hair. People took you seriously on the one hand. But being grey meant it could take up dye much more readily. So, would you take a grey-haired paediatrician with smatterings purple/pink/red seriously? They seemed to, thought Carly, who was glad to be of service. Most of the general public think she works with feet and not children anyway.
Back to the title though. Of course, Carly has an opinion on the term social distancing. The wrong term and so what is not at all needed in a pandemic. Then she thinks of those totally annoying stickers blaring it out all the time. And go this way. Not that way. Pick you right nostril only. Sneeze into a red handkerchief only. It almost made 1984 (the book by George Orwell, not the actual year when Carly was 19 – oh yes second favourite prime number – yippee!) seem gentle and forgiving. This pandemic really played into the hands of those with control issues. The rule makers and followers. One-way systems. Grrrrrrr. The worst was in a restaurant trying to find a toilet. You might have to go around several times before getting the right turn off. In the meantime, accidents could have happened.
She is so very much over this. We need to hug everyone, as much as possible. And no masks. Really. How can we be ourselves if we cannot see what people are saying? You only smile a bit with your eyes. It is mostly with your face! Carly smiles to herself. It is an inward smile. No eye involvement and no face contortions. Maybe they will give you all over cloth visors for the next pandemic?
I have been making beaded jewellery for many years. Here are pieces I have made.
I ran a workshop for Abby (19) and her mother Natalie (mid 50s) who had inspired me to get a second piercing for my ears. I thought it would be fun to make chains that connected the 2 earrings. Abby used hoops and Natalie studs. Mine didn’t work as looped chains as one of the chains (the braided one) didn’t hang correctly. No matter – I just made a simple hanging stud earrings (spot the difference!)
Actually I really don’t like fiddling around with studs so I changed them to hoops!
I wanted to make some rainbow earrings for the most accepting of LGBT cities – Tel Aviv. I measured 7 equal lengths of small pink, red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple chains and had the fiddly task of popping them into the ends – a type of ball crimp. Then I had to thread them onto a single ring and onto the earrings. At one end the purple was long and the pink short and vice versa for the other earring. Hey presto!
Tracey was keen to make a necklace and she came over and chose beads from my collection. She used a strong black polyester thread that I tied into 6 alternating direction half-hitch knots at the end. It was large enough to fit over her head and wonderful hair. She chose only pearls and turquoise beads.
I have to say. This is now my favourite pastime. I do very much enjoy creating denovo. But mending gives me immense pleasure. As well as repurposing and altering garments.
Sarabeth has a number of holes in this dress. I needed to put fabric behind some of them before carefully hand stitching them.
Lucy asked me to make a dress from some of the Tshirts her parrot Paolo sat on and pecked at the neckline. I used her favourite one in the front. This one and the red one with Barack Obama had so many holes that I used a double layer of the same T-shirt to provide stability. I also used lots of the bottoms of T-shirts to make a frill all the way around.
Helen asked me to repair a very worn out armpit using embroidery thread. Bobbin is very happy here!
And then she found a jumper with a hole in it. Perfect colour match already in stash!
This is a very old bag from Accessorize and there were a number of holes and worn out handles. I repaired the holes with multicoloured thread and replaced the handles completely.
This coat from Winnie Magee is so very old and keeps getting holes. I have mended it several times. There are a mixture of patches, coarse embroidery and blanket stitch.
Sarabeth had made this cardigan when younger but the neckline had gone so I crochet repaired it.
Sarabeth gave me some old fabric which she had inadvertently washed in the machine. I tried to repair it and turned it into some cushions for her.
Debby had an enormous T-shirt which she no longer wanted so I turned it into a cushion for her.
Am I the only one to get holes here in my trainers? I really do cut my toenails often! I used a wooden darning mushroom and made a feature using fuschia pink embroidery thread.
Nita had a new dress and she asked me to apply this large fabric image. Firstly I kept it in place using self-adhesive fabric tape and then sewed around the perimeter in purple.