Monday, May 21, 2012

Finale of the Cattails and Bullrush Adventure


 And so the week flew by. There were a couple of days with intense leaf preparation, first an afternoon using technology, Ipad and printer and a fun App for said Ipad which allowed Kelly to use a stylo to write her words directly on the Ipad screen - and a good thank you should go to Elly, for .... she is the queen of gadgets and without her I would have never ever known of this application.
So the house was quiet and Kelly wrote and then I printed and .....


The next day I spent with my sewing machine and many meters of fabric from the ample stash on the fabric shelf upstairs. Figuring out the shape of the leaves, making sure they were the right width to give room for Kelly's words and discovering that doing anything too narrow is not a good plan, especially if what you need is a casing wide enough to run a good sized bamboo stick through it.
Support sticks were needed, which became evident when the leaves sort of folded onto themselves - and so off to the barn I went and rounded up pieces of wood which would serve the purpose of giving each leaf some rigidity and help the printed words stay clear and un-crumbled.


And this day was the day ...... of setting up. Filling up the car with all the implements of the sculpture, all the extra just in cases - do we need to cut anything, bamboo, fabric, drill for the board that had been cut just in case the soil was too soft and the bamboo would tip over in the wind. Dressed/packed  for all eventualities is what we were.







And this leaf resting next to the three little cattails which were wrapped in ..... a pillow case, to keep them safe until we arrived.



A worried pooch. Freia had seen her 'dad' leave the house at 6:30am with the sail boat on a trailer and she was worried that ..... I would leave her behind too. Which I had contemplated doing, but her eyes, her eyes, I am often unable to resist and does it ever work for her!



Kelly hard at work, getting everything set up so we could get an idea of which way we were going.  What the final shape and taste of the creature should move towards.

 We had chosen a reasonably soft spot, the grasses there were already semi trampled, so we decided to trample on and get set up right there. By the way, we had been granted permission to place our piece by the Town of Kentville Parks Department. In case anyone was wondering.

Kelly spent a goodly amount of time down on her knees pushing the bamboo sticks further into the ground and then .....



It was time to place all the beach rocks we had gathered at our Wednesday excursion to Scott's Bay last week.

Kelly and Son, Dog and Pia all spent a beautiful afternoon on the beach. Admiring shapes and colours of rocks, feeling the light drizzle on the breeze - the dog joyously rushing across the little stream to walk further down the beach but having to come back with a disappointed face since we weren't wearing foot wear which would accommodate wading through the little stream to reach the other side.






The rocks are there to finish off the sculpture and to stabilize the bamboo so hopefully the sticks won't end up leaning too much in the wind.






And here it is, the final product, the cattail and bullrush sculpture in its place, words and seedheads at intimate play - if you drive by, take a moment to stop in and check out Kelly's words and enjoy the textures and colours of the weaving. The bamboo is pretty awesome too  =-) 

Gotta run, I feel another project idea coming on!