Eucalyptus pods and leaves fractured by cutting into bits, chunks, and squares. In this case, reassembled and overlaid with circles to become nearly whole again if only in memory. A Zen meditation and tribute to the giant, regal, scented Eucalyptus tree with its colors of taupe, celadon and plum.
Information for the docents:
I start work with no concept of where it will go. This piece started with a single piece of hand made felt (wet-felted by me), cut into squares, and hand stitched individually. The meditative process of stitching is so enjoyable; I don’t need to know what will happen with the results. Another piece of hand made felt, another set of individually stitched squares. As I began to lay the piece out onto 48”x36” of pieced, hand dyed cotton batting, I realized I didn’t have enough squares to fill it up. Out to the garage to create another piece of hand made felt! The large size made it too difficult to hand stitch as one piece, so I assembled it by doing one quarter of the quilt at a time, intuitively arranging the squares of color to fill the space.
I’m a native California, and, to me, the scent and multi-colors of the ubiquitous Eucalyptus trees are endlessly fascinating and beautiful. Early in my career as an artist I created a large watercolor painting of just the trunk of a 100 year old Eucalyptus, and framed it in Eucalyptus pods, because I wanted to retain the scent along with the image. Included in this piece, is also an earlier piece of hand made felt (by me) of the leaves and pods of the Eucalyptus.
Watch this video, and see me talk about Zen Eucalyptushttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7Xbi-_9Dzc.
