Pukumani pole - last lines added

Lining added

Wings' lining added 12 June


 

Dot painting

Lower section done, middle section and wings awaiting further decoration.

Some links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiwi_people

http://shop.tiwiart.com.au/

http://www.aamu.nl/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_Australian_art

http://tactualtextiles.wordpress.com/2012/12/31/interpreting-cultural-sources-stage-1-tutinipukumani-poles/

http://www.outstation.com.au/stockroom/jimmy-mungatopi-tutini-pukumani-pole/

  

Painting eyes & etc

Painting the eyes took a lot of nerve and even more mental preparation

Yellow "ochre" from the discount shop

Adjusting the pole on its stand - this was actually May 23

Dots - added later that night

Aboriginal Pukumani Pole

28 February 2014 - neck and beak need fine-tuning

16-February-2014 After hibernating

 

I use the Aussie Arbortech woodcarver a lot

23-June-2013 Aboriginals use Ironwood, I think Ash approaches it.

 7-June-2013 I saw this Pukumani pole in the AAMU Utrecht

I chose this ash tree trunk. I like ash, but it is very heavy and tough.

Logging/cutting/pruning in our street 23-February-2013

Hwaet!

So!

It came at last, this codex of codices

word-wondrous and winding, hiding

still self-contained secrets pointing at

enigmatic mores, murder, past

from the distant dark dream-time ...

Today I got my Electronic Beowulf, which really made time stand still. It was the same kind of feeling as when I found that second-hand Klaeber, way back in the eighties.

Nobody had heard of Kiernan in those days, which is really astonishing. What puzzled me though, while still believing in an early date, was the fact that somebody around the year 1000 AD deliberately spent a substantial amount of vellum on this text.

I vaguely remember seeing the MS in the British museum and me reading it aloud.

I remember my teacher of Old-English having a facsimile - a Zupitza reprint I believe - which seemed totally out of reach for me.
That was nearly thirty years ago.

Today I found this e-version.


http://www.archive.org/stream/beowulfautotypes77zupiuoft



http://www.gafpa.nl

Atingting Kon

Slit drum-to-be after examples from Ambrym Island Vanuatu AKA New Hebrides

Brookfield Produce & Pet Pavilion Brisbane QLD August 2011

On seeing this holiday snap, three days ago, my mother asked whether this was going to be my next project? Well, I guess it has to. If only as a go-between.

A first sketch

Ambrym Island [Vanuatu]

Kröller-Müller Museum

Dreamtiid

Dawn over Queensland.
July 2011

Dreamtiid

Armstrong Beach QLD, August 2011.

Just a beachwalk and a random pattern. It looked like a Tolkien map of the Shire, and it looked like Aboriginal art. This moment has already become a slice of dreamtime to me.

When I was a student and we read Caedmon's Hymn and Beowulf I got fascinated by the cosmic notions of the Anglo Saxons and the world picture of the Dark Ages
Se Middangeard - under heofones hrof.

The middle of the earth is where you are. At the crossing of the cardinal directions. It is you, under the roof of heaven.

Maps have fascinated me ever since I was a child and became aware of travelling distances.

In Pushkin's words (Boris Godunov):

Excellent, my son! As if you were looking from the skies, you may thus oversee the entire realm. Its borders, rivers and towns.

Kak khorosho, moy syn! Kak s oblakov yedinym vzorom ti mozhesh' obozret' vsyo tsarstvo: granicy, reki, grady.

In my own language, Frisian:
Dit is it wurk jong! As wie it fanút e himel wei, sa kinsto yn ien eachopslach it hele ryk oersjen: grinzen, djippen, stêden.
[Boris Godûnov]

This is perhaps why I climbed the roof of the gym and sports hall next to my grandmothers house in Harns(Harlingen), at age eleven or twelve. Just to look at things from above, and to see the sea.

This past is present


A slice of Dreamtime

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.

[TS Eliot, Burnt Norton]

On the road

From DAlby tot Towoomba QLD

Sarina QLD

The people I saw today were Hobbits. Barefooted and thick-waisted. Not the wealthiest ones though. And life must be a some rather bad dream to them -I guess

Didgeridoo playing -

Dreamtime Cultural Centre Rockhampton

A wonderful experience.

Ceci n'est pas Ayers Rock

Nor is it Uluru, but Mount Coolum (QLD) is essentially a similar shape.
Less iconic perhaps, but still enormouslyinpressive to me.

The name would appear to be derived from local Aboriginal word "gulum" or "kulum", meaning "blunt" or "headless", referring to the shape of Mount Coolum, which has no peak. According to Aboriginal legend, Ninderry knocked off Coolum's head and it fell into the ocean and is now Mudjimba Island

[http://www.library.sunshinecoast.qld.gov.au/sitePage.cfm?code=coolum]

http://www.coolum.com.au/display_listing.asp?id=556&catid=229

It's a monster

Didge in the making... with my new Aussie woodcarver from Arbortech

With the Arbortech I could finish the whole process of felling, shaping and hollowing out within one afternoon.Not exactly slow carving, but it does leave more time for finishing.

El-Rukh with plumage in the making

Midwinter spring is its own season
Sempiternal though sodden towards sundown,
Suspended in time, between pole and tropic.
When the short day is brightest, with frost and fire,
The brief sun flames the ice, on pond and ditches,
In windless cold that is the heart's heat,
Reflecting in a watery mirror
A glare that is blindness in the early afternoon.
And glow more intense than blaze of branch, or brazier,
Stirs the dumb spirit: no wind, but pentecostal fire
In the dark time of the year.

TS Eliot - Little Gidding