Bright Tendrils

Documenting the very early stage of making a textile for my next wearable art garment using multiple techniques

tour the Channel Country dress

Drat, foot in mouth...again

First...update on the current work in progress if thats all you come here for.

This dress will be finished today and then I'll do a close up visual tour and commentary of how its made published to my YouTube channel.

Pearl Red Moon Artist

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News from the CSJ battlefront

Uncancelled here

Last year I was banned from Twitter for saying trans women are men and that gender dysphoria is a mental illness.

That was in June and I appealed several times but each was denied and I was told the ban was going to be permanent and for lifetime. Astonishingly Twitter advised I couldn't even close my acct unless I had died and my will executor provided a legal death certificate! Its almost beyond parody.

I joined Twitter in 2012 and had never used the account until around March 2022 when I become active following the international Gender Critical (GC) community. It was a way to keep up with current affairs and share news. 

Between June to November 2022 I remained banned then was mysteriously reinstated without notice or explanation. My own interpretation of this was it was to do with Elon Musks proposed purchase and it was part of Twitters strategy to give themselves a bit of gloss by minimising bots and bulking up the mumbers of real human users.

Free speech didn't last long, on New Years Day 2023 I got another suspension. The notice is shown at the end of my last blog a few days ago. In that version of suspension Twitter required me to delete the comment they described as "hateful". It seemed a lovely New Years gift to be freed of Twitter for a while so I had no intention of doing so unless it suited me.

Strangely, about 8 hours ago I got reinstated again without notice or explanation and without deleting the comment that hurt somebodys feeling. 

Its wonderful to see a flood of GC people coming back onto Twitter in the last few weeks.

Below is an article from Australian journalist Edie Wyatt in which she also celebrates the GC voices who have been silenced gradually coming back into the cyber public square.

Twitters Free Speech Threatens Radical trans Activism

Edie Wyatt writes a really great Substack too, where you can stay updated with the CSJ tomfoolery and support a woman who is doing great work.

Edie Wyatt on Substack

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Cancelled here

I started my Instagram account about 3 years ago and thats been a weird trip too. I've had notifications from IG that my account is limited due to opinions I have that they disagree with. I've been refused to start a business acct unless I deleted a list of posts they showed me. I've written about this in previous blogs and noted their craven hyprocrisy after Instagram facilitated ChicV the Chinese mass manufacturing company to appropriate 14 of my artworks to defraud naive buyers. Interestingly they now censor my IG feed so I don't see what ChicV might be currently stealing from me. I guess if I can't see it then I can't complain about it and IG+ChicV can keep benefitting from my intellectual labours and content.

Pearl Red Moon Art

My follower numbers regularly collapse after I post anything supporting the rights, safety and dignity of women and girls. 

13 year old who had her healthy breasts removed to facilitate

her belief she can change into a male

Its apparent I've been shadow banned for around 8 months as I get more ex Army Veteran American Doctors following me than women interested in textile arts. The docs all have very flashy cars, fluffy little dogs and are lonely and looking for love. I regularly block droves of the doctors, probably 10 a week, whereas genuine followers grow at a glacial 3 weekly...

But its not about follower numbers. I truly don't care. I write this simply as evidence reflecting on how social media is a tool of the mad lefties in the culture war.

Sometimes though, I do feel deeply saddened by getting on the wrong side of somebody and this is one such person.

The Cat Who Knits

Fibrechats Episode 89

Broadsheet

Rebuilding Queerness  - 2022 Melbourne exhibition at Blak Dot Gallery

I started following @thecatwhoknits about 2 years ago - I can't give a link to him as he blocked me yesterday. 

The "Cat" is Andrew Chan who lives in Melbourne and he is an absolutely fabulous textile artist. I adore all his output and made many supportive comments on his IG posts. My impression was that Drew was an introverted gay man who had emigrated to Australia about 5 years ago. During covid lockdowns Drew posted often and was prolific in his wearable art output. 

When he was taking the plunge to work full time at his art and asked for commissions I was thrilled to ask for him to make me a garment and we had some brief chats through DM. Then before I could commit to finalising and sending the $$$ I lost my little baby Eclectus parrot Velvet that I'd hand raised from 20 days old and consequently spent weeks in a state of grief and devastation. I had barely enough energy to get dressed in the morning let alone go ahead with the commission at that time.

me and Velvet, the last picture, 12 hours later she flew 

out the front door and I never saw her again

During my brief chats with Drew I suggested sending him some pieces of my textile art that he could potentially incorporate into a collaborative garment. And I wanted to send a box of yarns and fibres from my own collection as I have collected all sorts of interesting stuff over the years.

Drew had an exhibition at Blak Dot Gallery in Melboune in August 2022 and I hope it was a great success for him, he deserves it. I would have gone if I'd heard about it in time. When I did hear about it it wasn't until December last year and I was surprised it was called "Rebuilding Queerness", which may in truth have put me off.

I was dismayed to see Drew recently posting stuff about "queer" on his social media and railing at passerbys on public streets for looking at him in a way he interpreted as a micro aggression. Its strange for people of my "generation" to hear young people taking up what was a slur against homosexual people for most of the 20thC. It alarms me too because the descriptor queer has its own particular meaning within the loose net of Critical Social Justice ideologies as it relates to "Queer Theory". The actual application of Queer Theory in contemporary society would be very harmful to women and children.

This is a definition of queer that was on top of the list when I googled it, and I hope this was the relatively benign version of queer that Andrew intends:

Genderqueer: Genderqueer describes a gender identity that is not defined as exclusively male or female. Genderqueer people experience their gender in unique ways. Their identity can include elements of the feminine, masculine, and nonbinary, or none of these. Identifying as genderqueer may be viewed as a rejection of associations or labels.

That kind of queer is just sort of cringey and semantically incomprehensible. I think it would include a great many people, including myself, quite comfortably.

It was whether he was alluding to the other kind of Queer that I was curious to find out about so I left a public comment on his IG asking if there was more info to expand on what he meant. I'd looked at his links in the bio and there was nothing describing whether his queerness was to the political ideology or just some sort of angsting to be interesting.

Drew has absolutely zilch obligation to answer my queries or to be polite or respectful to me in any way whatsoever, so when I didn't get acknowledged that was of no consequence. Then a couple of days ago he posted stories about "white" people looking at him in a way he didn't like and I responded in a way he obviously didn't like too....and got blocked.

I really regret this has been the outcome. I wish I'd been able to eventually renew my commission and have bought one his garments made for me. I would also loved to have sent some pieces to incorporate in a collaborative work along with a carton of some unique fibres. 

It seems that none of things will happen now because I was too curious and my curiousity got interpreted as aggression.

 

New Year, same old kimono

Sometimes I wish I was a post modernist performance artist!

I've been having visions of making a special tribute kimono for Emily Ito to display in my upcoming exhibitions of wearable art this year. I visualise it as a costume of extremely coarse fibre embroidered with golden luxury beliefs. Soaking wet with tears of people whose feelings have been hurt. Every colour will be celebrated except white, as that is the colour of the devil. The Ito Kimono will be affordable for elite individuals who've had tertiary education and induction into the upper echelons of the Critical Social Justice warriorhood. 

Readers may recall my blog from the17th of December describing my fracas with the Surface Design Association and how they kicked me out for not aligning with their values and code of conduct (otherwise known as getting revealed for not being in the cult of Critical Social Justice ideology).

Despite the SDA board director denying they were going to publish a transcript of the Zoom meeting "Holding Space: Unraveling Appropriation in Fiber Art "  it has appeared on their website and is now available for the general public to enjoy. During the live event on December 3rd the moderator Karen Baker intentionally removed me twice me so I couldn't participate.

                                                      work in progress, January 2023

Now that I've been able to listen this is my response.

Overall, I had to admire how moderator Baker maintained her sincere belief that appropriation is a real and significant problem and kept working hard to get the three presenters to find examples. The presenters, Japheth Asiedu-Kwarteng, Meghan O'Brien and Emily Ito, didn't discuss real, specific examples of appropriation but felt it adequate to cite "personal experience". Their personal experience evidence is that because they feel hurt it proves appropriation has occurred. Asiedu-Kwarteng and O'Brien didn't point out any examples of appropriation, as none seem to have happened to them personally or to the ethnic groups they identify as belonging to, other than vague references to colonisation and things "white" people did in the past.

(An aside, don't call me white, I find it racist and offensive. "white" is a reference to my skin colour. White is not a national or ethnic group. 

 (Even the President of Ghana hates the world referring to "Africans" while not recognising African people are many different nationalities, ethnic groups, religions, beliefs, values, et al. Ghanian President shocking comments on African Americans)

Any person dismissing me as white intends to imply that my skin colour is a package deal of ethics, values, beliefs and world views that I have no control over or choice. They see me as a stereotype white coloured human that unavoidably holds specific ideas because my skin coulour is white (unless I can prove otherwise by finding a BIPOC blood relative)

Ito, is an old hand at seeing appropriation everywhere who has been dining out on her fare of stale crackers and stinky tripe for about 5 years now, so she had her pre packaged mincemeat sanger with pictures ready to go. Despite Baker referring several times in the opening comments to the outstanding quality of the artists who were going to present, Ito is not any sort of fibre or textile artist. She admits to barely knowing how to sew. At 41.20 in the video she denies even being an activist, asking to be regarded as a person who is "activated". Apparently her expertise on appropriation is mainly centered around her pride in haranguing children what they are allowed to wear for Halloween. In the video go to 42.00 - 43.22 to appreciate that I'm not kidding she is proud to be teaching elementary school kids Critical Race Theory, maybe she shows the Pyramid of White Supremacy to the kids so they are educated how scary white people are...?(...mmmm, isn't Halloween appropriated from a Scots tradition "All Hallows"....?)

Another interesting segment is around 44.00 when Ito pauses to spruik for a publisher for her memoirs. Although only in her mid 30s she must feel she has some notable accomplishments. A Netflix special next, perhaps? Something along the lines of a Meghan Markle martyrship and struggle expose?

Sadly, its apparent her angst over people using the word kimono will probably never be assuaged as people all over the word continue to call robes kimono and many, many people cannot make sense of why she finds it offensive. Quite probably, more of the people who won't stop saying kimono are not even white!

The fact that the SDA finds Ito a credible commentator on appropriation in textile art points to the debasement of its own credibility as an arts organisation now that it is promoting lightweight propaganda devoid of genuinely academic critical analysis. Itos most compelling argument is that it hurts her feelings that non Japanese people call some garments kimonos so somebody should pay attention and make her pain go away. Beyond that....there is nothing. Despite pedalling really, really hard for many years, and having to tone down or excise some of the more ridiculous things she started out trying to legitimise, its hard to prove there is a problem....when there is not. 

One of the most annoying things Ito made us look at (apart from emotionally loaded family pictures, especially the one of her and little daughter Koto holding up placards at a political rally, protesting their oppression?) was this...

(my apology for the crap quality of this image. I've just upgraded laptops and haven't installed a program for editing yet, so this is a photo of the screen. On the actual video talk, Ito presents this at 48.10)

She has used this pyramid before. Some time back on another platform I made a response about it that was probably deleted. 

Pictured is piece of nonsense described as "The Pyramid of White Supremacy" 

Pyramid of White Supremacy

It was generated from a 3rd rate University in the USA in 2018. It is tool of Critical Social Justice agitprop intended to impress the credulous. It may be trying to resemble Maslows Hierarchy of Needs.

The Pyramid has no academic credence whatsoever. Its not a visual tool to illustrate facts or data. It is based on speculative assertions about "white supremacy". It illustrates someones THEORY, and isn't evidence of anything. Nada. 

I suggest the SDA should remove Karen Baker from being on the committee for Equity, Access and Integration. Futher I think the SDA board should consider Bakers academic competence to present the Holding Space seminars and the likelihood that Baker is making the SDA seem an organisation of questionable academic calibre.