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

___________________________________________________________________________________

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

__________________________________________________________

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.

Tip #2 for avoiding going down with the Woke virus.

Tip #2 for avoiding going down with the Woke virus 

Be very wary of who calls themselves a feminist by 

carefully unpacking the message they broadcast.      

One type to be warded off will make it obvious with these blatant language signals - pronouns in social media bios and referring to women as cis women.

I’m going to describe my recent interaction with fake feminist Clementine Morrigan who is a superb example of a libfem handmaiden.

There is a super simple test to discern who is a dinky di feminist and who is a virus addled pretender. A feminist is a woman who makes the rights, dignity and safety of women and girls (regardless of nationality, ethnicity or melanin) a priority in every community. Feminism is by women and for women.

 

Thus, any woman who believes a man can be a woman is not a feminist. If you do not believe Homo Sapiens are a dimorphic reproducing species of mammal, sharing genetic material through fusing of gametes (male) and ovum (female) to procreate our species….well, then you have probably not just touched grass for a long time, you probably deny it exists.

 

While I’m working in the studio throughout the day I listen to music, YouTube videos, audio books and podcasts. I forget whose was the specific podcast, but a few months back somebody was having an admiring interview with Clementine Morrigan. My Australian readers would likely be aware of prominent Aus feminist Clementine Ford but she is a different person. Morrigan is Canadian. 

I have a sort of romantic connection with Canada, having had one of its citizens fertilise my ovum with his gamete back in 1979, and as I was the uterus haver I pushed a baby (AMAB) out of my front hole 8 months later (he was premature).

I publish on Substack. Mostly I crosspost from this blog as a back up in case I’m cancelled (as I have been on Patreon, Twitter and intermittently get bans from YouTube. Shadow banned on Instagram for 9 months. A whole Pinterest board was removed with more than 500 lnks, claiming the links were to “hate speech”, etc). When I publish writings only on Substack its usually because they are more specifically about my resistance to Critical Social Justice. My Substack is free and anyone is welcome to join it if they are curious to know more. If you are mainly interested in my art then it probably won't interest you.

Pearl Red Moon on Substack, writes as Cosmic Pearl

After being impressed with her podcast interview I started following Morrigan on her Instagram then stopped after a few weeks when she used the gaslighting word cis women and I realised she was a Mens Rights Activist. Later I noticed she was on Substack so I read her latest piece and was so incensed I took out a paid subscription precisely so I could make a rebuttal to what she had wrote.

This is a link to her Substack item.

Clementine Morrigan, On Dehumanisation

This was my response

I recently stopped following you on IG but are delighted to find you write this Substack where I can sate my curiosity to investigate what I interpret as your rehash of the (old) New Age of All We Need is Love.

First test for you – I have been cancelled and blocked from following numerous social media (blocked often in advance of my first visit! there appears to be some sort of shared blacklist amongst the Woke) because I’m white (= racist, white supremacist) and a transphobe (= I say men cannot become women). Can you tolerate a white terf here?

Also, along those lines, I'd be curious if you have cancelled ppl from following your platforms and why? You didn't answer the DM query I sent asking if you believe men can be women. But I didn't take that personally as I realise a high profile influencer must get heaps and heaps of messages and there was no obligation to respond.

Reading this sure pushed buttons for me. Especially as it seems written to carefully exclude any sex based analysis of violence. Rape, it seems can happen to anybody! It set off alarm bells for me that you wrote perhaps a 1000 words about dehumanisation and violence without once referring to men/males or women/females. The reality is that violence is done by men to women and children of both sexes 91% of the time. I am deeply cynical that your call for the amorphous desexualised peeps that have been dehumanised by acts of violence to expend their energies on developing empathy for perpetrators is really a great idea.

I am glad I took the men who raped me to court. I didn’t try to kill them myself (having found out already they were stronger and knew how to use knives) but sought the legal resolution. However, I’m ashamed to acknowledge having weakly collapsed into long sessions of dehumanising them, especially as they subsequently broke into my house 4x, threatened the life of my 6 year old son, harassed and intimidated me by phoning up to 20x a day and stole and burned out my car. I am still working on having empathy for their humanity 34 years later and still live in hope that I might become a better person when I can ascend beyond the trauma instilled in me.

Your admonishments that I must stop dehumanising goes beyond just because it makes me better person but extends my responsibility to saving the world. To a gnarly old 2^nd wave feminist I have heard a zillion iterations of how women must save the world by stopping being angry about violence and oppression.

Are you taking the message about stopping dehumanising to the male perpetrators too? Given the aeons long history of male violence and oppression towards females it may take a bit more than guilt tripping them about how their tendency to objectify is ruining the Social Justice project.

She deleted it.

Morrigan also disables comments on her Instagram.

A “feminist” who doesn’t listen to feedback should set off klaxons and red flashing lights. A feminist who cannot use the word woman is losing her battle with brain maggots. A feminist who thinks rape and violence is an equal problem for everybody and denies the gendered paradigm is nuts.

After a bit more research I was relieved to discover I’m not the only one who understands Morrigan has lost it. Heres a link to a Reddit thread.

Reddit/Hilaria Baldwin

My unsolicited advice for tips how not fall asleep behind the wheel in 2023

Until I started banging my head on the brick wall of Critical Social Justice stupidity, beginning with the specific brick named Emily Ito, I didn’t think my personal politics had much interest for the wider world to know about. 

There are some artists who regard their production as being all about their politics and they call themselves conceptual or performance artists. I’m not that sort of artist. I describe myself as a decorative artist because I make art for arts sake. My oeuvre is to create artefacts where I’ve used colour, pattern and texture imaginatively combined. I could also legitimately be called an abstract artist.

                                         Hand of Fatima coat, back is shown. 2020

My preferred artefacts to create are garments because I like the idea of the owner of the art to be displaying it on the outside and putting their body literally inside of the canvas. It amusingly subverts the traditional way of standing externally and away from the art object and regarding it separated in space. I am often surprised that because the art I make presents itself as a wearable object, observers think of them as limited to being just clothes and that the objects only utility is to be worn. 

                                             Hand of Fatima coat, lower left front, 2020

Why should it be thought that putting art on fabric is significantly different from putting paint on the surface of a square of canvas and claiming the only way it can then be appreciated is to be hung on a wall and get described as a “painting”? There is absolutely no reason why someone couldn’t buy one of my art garments and hang them on a wall and call it a painting. If I was a Critical Social Justice warrior, and therefore political – as in a conceptual or performance artist - I would scream my coat identifies as an abstract painting and its pronouns are “painting/contemporary art”. My art garments also have the added bonus of being able to turn it around and show a completely different surface. Two “contemporary art paintings” in one!

The rise of Critical Social Justice (CSJ) ideology and how it’s a powerful compost accelerator - essentially everything it touches turns to shit

Making, showing and selling my art has been the way I interface with the outside world and I thought my artistic production was a perfectly adequate way to manifest my presence in society. Over the last 5 years I became vaguely aware of many progressives adopting an identitarian approach to manifesting their presence in the world. 

My personal response was to find it sort of cringey and judge it signalled a desperate demand for attention that some ppl thought blathering on about their race, sexuality and which letter of LGBTQ+ they identified as was interesting and relevant. In my world view, those are aspects of personality and sexual expression that might be of interest in micro intimate social circles, but are generally of no significance to the wider community. 

However, I’ve come to realise this kind of megaphone pronouncement of “who you are” is a necessary performative aspect of being a proselytiser for CSJ. SJ warriors define their existence within polarities of power and oppression. Visualise a sliding scale going from left to right with the most powerful and least oppressed at the left pole being White Heterosexual Male and the least powerful, most oppressed at the right pole will be a black LGBTQI+ female. (though its actually Trans Black Men, but that’s another complicated issue….). The more signifiers to the left a person has the more shame and guilt they have to acknowledge because its deemed those people have, and are intentionally oppressing everybody after them to the right of the polarity…

Daft, isn’t it!? Not to mention racist, sexist and breathtakingly thick as a brick ignorant.

This my first tip for not getting caught up in CSJ stupidity – 

don’t trust the mainstream media, they have been captured and obediently kowtow to the bricklayers. 

I saw an excellent example on ABC (Australia) television a couple of days ago. On their morning show 2 women presenters were pearl clutching in horror at the British Royal Family being exposed for racism. They were referring to the Ngozi Fulani v Lady Susan Hussey incident. To my incredulity they referred to it as if it were real evidence of racism. That is BS and demonstrates how they lazily trumpet the CSJ narrative instead of doing research.

Below is a small roundup of alternative narratives that are available on YouTube. Ngozi Fulani – not her real name - was born in London as Marlene Headley and is an experienced race grifter who has been profiting quite comfortably off her scam for decades.

The Freethinker Cast:

I Don't Think that she's Racist

Ngozi Fulani WHERE did she go?

Ngozi Fulani: WHERE did the CHARITY FUNDS GO?

additionally TikTok removed her video

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/muCst-GQTKc

FHI Prince Peter:

Lady Susan Hussey - Racially Abused by Ngozi Fulani

Lady Susan Hussey and the Woke Cultural Revolution

Podcast of the Lotus Eaters:

The Royal Race Grifter, Exposed

Tomorrow my next tip will be warning about another CSJ poseur to avoid. Clementine Morrigan is an Olympic class gold medallist contender for Smarmy Hypocrite of the Decade.

Fringe Dweller Dress

Tour the Tangled Webs dress

How I'm Flowing

detail of Tangled Web,
current work in progress, December 21, 2022

I have returned to writing on this blog. A couple of years ago I signed off intending to move on to developing a profile on Instagram and other social media platforms and to essentially archive the writings that began here in 2008.

I had the option of closing it down entirely and deleting everything and are now very glad I didn't choose that. I've come to understand that this is the only platform where can't be censored or cancelled by the new authoritarians:

this is the only place where I have total control and can freely express myself without the potential of being banished, silenced and cancelled. 

This blog has never had much of a public profile and a with just over 200 followers, considering it has been established 15 years, it hasn't been particularly "successful" in some estimations. But having a large following or being "influential" has never had relevance or been much to do with why feel I compelled to write ideas down. The reflections here comprise part of my archive of developing as a visual artist. It is the diary of how I've interacted and responded to personal circumstances and political ideas.

I am glad to return to recording ideas here and in some ways feel compelled to do so because dialectical discourse is being severely curtailed in many of the places where it is supposed to flourish, like within the SDA. In the international internet sewing community. I think apart from entertaining myself and writing as an act to clarify my thoughts, I might even have some interesting views to share. It can be done here without the reactionary Social Justice warriors shutting me down.

in my garden, "FLOW" carved into a sandstone block

Starting today, I'm going to write a little series reflecting on how I think the digital age is adversely affecting creative minds and how I believe there is an inherent incompatibility to successfully integrate technology into artistic ontology...or at least, how attempts to graft the frankensteinian organs are disrupting and significantly harming how creative minds work 

(hint...look this up: Flow)

There is absolutely an incompatibility in being an advocate of Critical Social Justice and being a free thinking critical practitioner of visual art. Any ideology that starts placing limits on what can be said and made is a dangerous, creativity stunting dogma.

                                                 passionfruit flowers growing on deck

FLOW, part one

I'm immensely curious how social media is affecting humans in modernity. I think as a 63 years old woman artist there are some insights, opinions and experiences I have which are unique and going to be valuable in the future. 

I've lived in the crossover eras of three enormously significant social changes putting me in a small group with contemporaries that have knowledge and experience of what our little bit of the world was like before, during and after those changes. By 2040 women like us will be gone so I feel its important to make a record of how I've experienced these changes.

 The social changes I refer to are:

 #1/ the rise and success of 2nd wave feminism, meaning I grew up not expecting to live my life in marriage/family/domesticity but that I would have a job and monetary income that was my own, 

#2/ women were not taken seriously as artists, even more so in non traditional media that wasn't paint, and it was exceedingly rare to be recognised or be a professional woman artist. 

#3/ the world before screens.(what to call this world? I intend to refer to it as "Pre-Tube", meaning before the invention and desemination of the cathode ray screen (television)). By the middle of this century there won't be a human being who hasn't stared at a glass screen that has text and coloured pictures on it. Just as the printing press was a momentous technology that changed how humans lived and stored knowledge the advent of the computer age will impact the direction human of civilisation into the forseeable future. What a strange creature I must seem to young people that I was 10 when I saw my first televison. My parents owned one in July 1969 because my Mum got my sister and I out of bed around 11pm to watch men walking on the surface of the Moon.

From 1969 until the late 1990s looking at screens with text and pictures didn't take up much time in my life. It was still only television, the box on legs that cost a lot of money and sat in the lounge room with all the chairs faced toward it. Then the dream of an American boy called Bill Gates that everybody should have a PC started getting actualised everywhere. I bought my teen son an Atari and a Commodore 64 because he would be left behind in the future if he didn't know how to use the technology.

Tangled Webs I've woven