Expressions Of Love
Main Street Gallery, Montville, 8 May 2010 to 30 May 2010
Are we passing on our homespun knowledge, or is it disappearing from our world with the passing of our grandparents? The interaction with our children and grandchildren, the passing on of the skills of our foremothers, the sharing of memories and dreams, are all as precious as life itself.
Are the days gone when grandmothers passed on the skills of knitting, crocheting or stitching? Once these skills were part of daily life and often a necessity. Once ‘recycle’ meant the re-use of items in new ways for comfort in the home. Today ‘recycle’ seems to mean ‘dumping it in the yellow-lidded bin’.
As time escapes us, do we need to consider living life more simply and lightly, being observant of what (or who) we discard? Each day thousands of items are being discarded.
A used teabag is just one of them!
Thousands of used tea bags were needed to complete this body of work. Each and every tea bag was made into a cup of tea, and as I pinned and sewed them together, on my treadle Singer sewing machine the conversations that were shared with each cup echoed through my very soul. Memories made real in the crafting. The caring energy still remains …
Teabags, like life are delicate yet strong, fragile yet resilient, stained with the spreading of warm comfort.
My deepest appreciation extends to all my devoted tea bag collectors!! …and thanks most of all to my mother (whom I lost to cancer 9th July, 2005) and in whose memory these works were created.