Beautiful things and sewage

Its five days until the opening of my art show in Murrurundi. The picture shows the hours it will be open. 

The venue is the lovely historic Old Tattersalls Hotel, located on the corner Adelaide and Haydon Streets at Murrurundi, NSW.

I’ve shown quite a few of the garments made for the show here, but not all. I try to video record the process of making many of the pieces but as I always struggle with the video cam technology and the editing programs, quite a few videos end up failed.

My husband and I will be manning the gallery floor so if you have a chance to call in it would be lovely to meet you and talk about textile art.

Before the show finishes I will load up a video tour around the gallery floor.  

   

Long term followers might realise I have been through some weird shit over the last 5 years – starting with the appropriation and mass manufacturing of copies of my work, my inability to assert my legal copyright to have the platforms enabling the sale of the fake garments to take down the images, being accused of being a racist during the kimono fracas, various cancelations around social media, more, more…   Dealing with all this stuff has been seriously distracting to my art practice, has lead to heightened levels of anxiety and at times left me feeling quite fragile and broken. The common factor in having been exposed to all this is social media. A great deal of the time I feel its like a open sewer running through my home. Fetid and stinking. Being on the spectrum I have a tendency to fall into obsessive compulsive thinking. This is actually a benefit in my artmaking as I have an inherent ability to focus intensely and a passion for organising tiny details. But when it comes to social media I can’t separate as a passive observer and it activates an addictive response in me where I feel compelled to keep seeking solutions to the problems in front of my eyes. In the last few years I’d reasonably calculate having wasted at least 50% of the time I could have spent far more productively and joyously on my artmaking.

So I intend to make it a goal to limit and start to wean myself off the time I spend on it. One platform has already been removed completely whether I choose or not!

Four days ago my Instagram account. @pearlredmoonart, was hacked and taken over and I am locked out, without any control over it. The bad actor who hijacked it is sending out malware virus to my followers. If you follow my Instagram I recommend to unfollow. I’ve sent 5 notifications requesting urgent help from IG without any action or acknowledgement. I am well aware of not being a valued user so perhaps they intend never to unlock my account? Frankly I've gotten to a point where I hardly care, it causes more problems than being enjoyable. It controls me rather than being a tool I use to make my life more interesting.

I’m mulling over some possibilities which will allow me to divorce from social media, spend lots more time on artmaking and still be able to share what I make and sell my produce. For example I want to develop the YouTube channel in a much more sophisticated way and perhaps offer fee paying classes. As soon as the show is up this weekend I'll start work on publishing an illustrated booklet showing the garments made for exhibitions this year, in the same way I did for Thirty Coats in 2020. 

Thirty Coats is For sale in my Etsy shop.  

And I’m thinking on expanding on that by publishing specific art garment projects with both technique and patterns. 

The 3^rd enterprise I’m considering to develop is something I’ve thought about for 2 years. And that would be to offer “Art and Garden” tours of my beautiful garden and home studio where artworks can be offered directly for sale to visitors. That would be by appointment.  

Next blog to write up after the show opens this weekend will be back to the more dreary subject of my politics and the latest round of social media cancellings and castigations. 

I really must redirect the social media sewer...