The Gift

Today is my birthday. Lucky for me I have lived to this age and seen a lot of things…. Yet I know so little. 10 years ago for my 50th birthday I raised funds to go to Dharamsala and to Lhasa. I planned to come back and make a Public Artwork based on Prayer Wheels and a global ethic…links to things we all hold close regardless of our political, religious or cultural background.

‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you’ is whats known as the Golden Rule and has common threads across most of the major religions and is core to our system of social order.

I researched, I met with craftsmen and women, I explored other religions, held community meetings and made plans. Then life got in the way as it does. Thoughts of the prayer wheel project have never left my mind.

Today 10 years later news drifts in about wars, crimes to humanity to the planet. I ask myself what can I do? This is my one precious life as the Dalai Lama said.

As an artist my greatest achievement is if people engaging with my work have an aha moment or shifts perspective in any way. As a cultural worker that is also the goal.

Today as the wheel of life turns, as I prepare for my exhibition In Consideration of Trees I am mindful of that opportunity 10 years ago to go to Tibet and India to meet the Dalai Lama and his words to me then and his reminder of appreciation of this one precious life.

“Every day, think as you wake up: Today I am fortunate to be alive, I have a precious human life, I am not going to waste it.” Dalai Lama

The Importance of Nature

I get it; we want what we want….we’ve worked hard and we deserve a new house, a new car, a holiday, a new distraction. I get that. I get that we want to live in beautiful places or places we feel connected to. We want to be near our family, friends, culture, the things we like to do.

We want……and we want more.

I also get that the way we are going people are experiencing nature deficit, living removed from the natural world.

“For children and adults alike, daily contact with nature is linked to better health, less stress, better mood, reduced obesity – an amazing list of features no other product can ever match.”

— Friends of the Earth UK

Increasingly there are alternative ways of doing things rather than cosseting our children from nature, making use of Long Day Care and helicopter parenting. Ways to make our children more self reliant and closer to nature such as Daisy Turnbull’s book 52 Risks To Take With Your Kids.. or the Nature Play movement such as The Little Pocket at Beechmont.

So we go about our daily life with its concerns and pressures, and when we can we take a trip or a walk in nature and are reminded of how our best memories and feelings are connected with times in the natural world.

I am so grateful to the natural environment….

And I see it is struggling, under the pressures of population, development, climate change, pandemics and our involved humanity.

It seems we see ourselves seperate from the natural world, as an infinite resource to plunder. We can fly to Mars, we can send nano robotics into the human body in an effort to prolong life, we can create artificial intelligence to work for us but are we more evolved as a species? Have we learnt to co-habit with other humans in harmony, with the other creatures that share the planet and with the planet and nature itself? It seems we are slow to evolve to work for the greater good - must be something to do with the selfish gene ( a theory by Richard Dawkins)

“I ask myself not what nature can do for me, rather what can I do for nature?”

I am reminded of a talk by the author Kate Grenville at the Festival of Big Ideas. She was asked to talk about Climate Change… daunted and wondering what a novelist could contribute to the discussion she came to realise she could imbue her work with her own viewpoints on the matter and that in itself is significant as the arts works to shift perspective at a visceral level. (see my blog Seeing things Differently)

One way I can contribute is through my artwork, events and writing. Currently I am working on an Exhibition called ‘In Consideration of Trees’ which will be held in November at the Centre for Regenerative Arts in partnership with the Making Good Alliance.

It will be a three day event and will feature exhibition launch, panel discussions, walks, talks and much more. If you have any questions or would like to attend the opening contact me here.

In the mean time I must get back to my easel and the work that inspires me daily.

I would love to hear your thoughts too!

Bron

Later living on Tamborine Mountain my children enjoyed life playing outside under the Jacaranda tree

my now 34 year old daughter Leilani started life in a shed in the middle of a rainforest at Tomewin

Crows Ash from the Rainforest Mandala Series

Diamond Head: Summer 2019 from the Bushfire Series

Knoll markers from the Ring Tree series

What happened to time?

Since I last posted the world seems stuck on fast forward. Global pandemics, fires, floods, #metoo, #blacklivesmatter, the rise and fall of Trumpism, climate catastrophe and still it seems we are no closer to our more evolved better selves. There are moments and movements towards a brighter future and then the rockets fall over Palestine and another mining Licence is granted.
(shakes head and wonders)

I sit here overlooking National Park with the sun shining in the distance on the Pacific Ocean.
Musing….
So many stories to share. ….. I’m going to start with some interviews with creatives I know…. belatedly posting. Forgive me. Stay with me as the threads unfold.
For now….. take a minute with me to stop time.
pause…..notice the sounds around you

have a good day.

View from Wongawallan seat

Christmas musings

It is Christmas Day 2019.

Sydney skies are grey with cloud. The smoke from summer bushfires seems to have lifted. 

We decided to spend our summer holiday on the road visiting friends and relatives around the country.

Heading down the coast from Tamborine Mountain we drove into more bush fires around Port Macquarie, Taree, skirting Sydney  heading for Canberra the sky was yellow and the air difficult to breath.  From Canberra heading to the coast more fires at Braidwood, Victoria was green relief but heading into Adelaide the  hills were crested in billowing smoke and a pall of smoke lay over the landscape from Hay until we reached Sydney.

In my 58 Christmases, I have never known  our country to be suffering under so many fires in  so many places. 

A bush fire is a frightening experience and the devastation for communities across Australia must be a bitter pill.

On this day, this Christmas Day so many will be struggling with the aftermath of bush fires, of exhaustion, of dislocation.

On this day this Christmas Day, so many ideals are pinned.  The ideal party, family gathering, gratitude  and celebration, hope and peace.  But life isn’t always like that.

I remember the feeling two months after my late husband had died.  The shops screamed at me to celebrate, spend, party. Everybody was doing it…but not me…or that was how it felt. I am grateful for some pragmatic children who came up with a plan- to celebrate a goth Christmas., my husbands empty chair at the table, a sense of humour, and a firm nod to his tragic passing but also a nod to the going forward and a shaking of the head and fist at the so called traditions of Christmas shopping must dos.

Things have indeed changed over the proceeding years. Every Christmas is different. Different locations, different people around the table of picnic rug. A moving feast….one not everyone can cope with joining. 

I tip my hat to the ones for whom this is one of the most difficult days.  Days of enduring, remembering and avoiding.

This too shall pass and the smoke will clear.

seeing things differently

Saturday midday Weston Park Canberra

in 2010 I heard the author Kate Grenville talk about the power of the arts to change the way we think. She told the story of being asked to talk at the festival of Big Ideas or some such gathering about climate change. She wondered what she could contribute as a writer of fiction to the discourse that had not been said by journalists, scientists, educators, politicians and environmentalists.

While pondering this she found herself wandering through a park in Canberra and came across the memorial for the Siev X. On reading the didactic plaque she was saddened but somewhat neutral. On taking a closer look at the public art she came to a part of the work that traced the shape of the boat which had held the 353 people looking for a better life. The Siev X had sunk and all on board perished. When she grasped the significance of the size of the boat, the number of people who had died, the age, the effort of the collaboration to create the memorial she was moved deeply. The words alone had not moved her but the artwork itself had a visceral effect. She recounted how at that point she realised the power of art to speak to us in ways that create shifts in perspectives, create new neural pathways….She also realised that her work could contribute to changing attitudes and viewpoints on matters that were of significance in ways the bare facts could not.

I loved that story and have told it many times ( thank you and apologies if I have paraphrased you somewhat Ms Grenville)

It’s Summer, we are on a road trip, smoke and fires have been part of the landscape everywhere we go. We arrive in Canberra to visit friends who are worried about their house in the path of the Braidwood fires.

The news feeds on social media from the Australian Government claim we are on track to meet the Paris targets. That the 140 fires across Queensland and New South Wales are just the result of a cyclical drought - not climate change.

We are travelling in a ute loaded with kayaks, bikes and camping gear. We cycle through the city centre which is shrouded in smoke from the nearby bush fires. Parliament House complete with nearby tent embassy looms large in the haze. The national monuments and institutions, the ordered streets and the lake.

The thing I want to see most is the memorial to the Siev X. We paddle across the lake, to the park where the memorial is situated. it is a sobering moment. Each pole of the artwork has been created by over 300 schools or community groups across Australia to mark the passing of each of the passengers. It is a protest, a cry for compassion an appeal to our humanity.

The poignancy is not lost on me. This was a controversial artwork in 2001, a collaborative community project a direct plea and expression of community concern and it is situated within cooee of Parliament House and Yaralumla.

As smoke makes my eyes stream and visibility is severely decreased I wonder what a memorial for our planet might look like.

18 years after the Siev X memorial was made the Australian government has decided that we should no longer have a department with a major focus on the arts. If we cannot rely on government to support the arts as an integral part of our children’s education and as a fundamental expression of our nations identity then so be it.

We will just have to find other ways to raise our voice and shift perspectives.

Space means a lot to me

6.30 am Stingray Creek

In 2010 I completed a Masters in Contemporary Art through the University of Tasmania. I developed a large body of works that looked at the history of the region I live in and also a research thesis on Placemaking and how to make more compassionate places.

What I found is, though we may be passionate about the places we call home, we rarely understand the multiple layers that make up the heritage, environment and culture of our places. We fail to see our place in the ecology of life or the responsibilities we have as custodians of the places we call home.

Australia Day 2010 I asked the people attending a friends Australia Day lunch what Australia meant to them. At the table were Fijians, Dutch, German, Irish and English Australians.

I used some of their quotes in a work I called Diaspora. This work took the conversations about being Australian and the stories I collected from our region on where people had come from and stitched them together in my interpretation of a songline. We are all part of the songlines of this country no matter where we come from - we just need to stitch us and the world together not apart.

In a 2017 exhibition held at the Centre Beaudesert we asked artists from across Australia to contemplate and respond to the theme of the exhibition Caring for Country. ( see link to the works by Elizabeth Poole) Overall the works that we exhibited did not lean towards imagining a world with green walls and solar powered vehicles as I expected might be the case but overwhelmingly focused on slowing down and listening to nature and our place in it.

This was also the message from the First Nations at the recent Arts Ablaze Conference

Today I am on holidays, a road trip- taking some time out to slow down and listen to nature. We have been camped by the bend of a river. Under the shadow of a mountain. I can see evidence that the trees that adorn the mountain are dry and stressed. The night sunset glows through the haze of nearby bush fires. The National Parks are closed and smouldering.

Where I live is a region Arthur Groom called The Scenic Rim- mountain ranges that formed 20 and 23 million years ago as Gondwana moved over hot spots beneath the earths crust. Arthur was the founder of Australia National Parks movement and established Binna Burra Lodge in the heart of World Heritage Listed Rainforest- 8 weeks ago burnt to the ground. Right across my region, across Queensland, News South Wales in fact much of Australia, fires are now burning. This too becomes an opportunity to see, become aware and adapt for the future.

Here at the bend of the river the nearby bushfires turn the sunset more resplendent than ever but on sunrise it is a new day.

Nature is the greatest healer.

Do I travel this world collecting picture postcard impressions of life or tune into the stories of our past in order to be more present and make a future for tomorrow?

Today we leave for Canberra- our nations Capital!