Leaf Sewing: The Next Generation.
The mess in my studio has reached critical mass, I can’t begin to describe the layers of…well mess. I start to sort it out, titivate around the edges, I put like with like and throw out anything mouldy or rancid. And then I come across a dried up leaf conglomerate but as it almost leaves my hand on its way to the bin, I remember what it is.
In the summer we were invited to a neighbour’s special birthday barbeque party, it was a lovely day in their beautiful garden with a live band and even livelier dancing on the lawn. Early on, finding my way to the glorious pop-up bar (installed in the garden shed) I passed a very large fig-tree, oddly moving and shedding leaves. As I got closer I saw four little girls inside busily pulling off leaves and branches. They were making a den and the bit of me that is still six, got quite excited, growing up in a big family with a large garden in a village provided endless den-making opportunities.
However, I had a simultaneous thought from the tidy well-behaved part of me that worries about the fig trees and possible damage. Looking on was the hostess and grandmother of one of the girls, I relayed my thoughts to her and she replied that she didn’t mind at all, the fig tree would grow back and if the shed had not been turned into a bar she would have fetched her saw to help the children with their den. My admiration for her increased.
Later the girls left their den and were clustered, heads together on the grass. They were sewing leaves. In my previous blog Two Steps Backwards I sewed leaves, well darned leaves to be specific. Each girl had two large fig leaves and a collection of long sharp pine needles which they were using both as needle and thread (See picture). I felt like an early anthropologist coming across some potentially ground-breaking evidence of huge ethnographical importance. And I could not help think about gender itseemed to me thatthere was something so essentially female in their behaviour. I talked to the girls about what they were doing, they were making purses they said, and explained their use of materials and techniques with great seriousness. It made me think about something called Isolate Song, that is: pure birdsong the part not learned by imitating the parent, the part the bird is born with. Perhaps playing in nature releases our own wild, Isolate Song still available to us in childhood and might explain why to me as an adult, it seems almost unbearably precious.
Nurture and Nature debates aside, I am collecting leaves again which is a great distraction from clearing out my studio.
My thanks to: Ella, Connie, Willow and Grace.
