Saturday 19 April 2008

TIF Challenge for April

The TIF Challenge for April is "How do I see change" Well, whether this is good or bad it is debateable but I see change as moving house, not staying in one place as I rarely have. I think that travelling is in the blood. My mothers parents were from Ireland but although my Grand mother was what you would expect from a true Celt, my grandfather's side were romany people. I don't draw very often from my head because I nearly always use symbols in my thought processes but it was a starting place. The wheel is a very strong Romany symbol which is often used by the travellers so it was an obvious choice. I then thought of the people walking besides the wagon and also the idea of putting down or pulling up roots.

I was going to work with Sun dye as this changes the fabric. However, we don't have much sun here in Britain at present and I was not completely happy with the way that all this was going.

Then purely by chance I came across this old photo of my Grand Parents and
my mother. The back ground is, My Grand dad who is sitting in the foreground, his mother came from Spain and they were horse people. My Great Grand dad on that side was a horse doctor and bearing in mind this takes you back many years to the time of the great famine in Ireland, he was quite an important rural visitor as he would travel around all the farms and help to cure the livestock with his herbal cures. They lived in bow top wagons. Well, because of the potatoe famine my Great Grandparents came over to England in the mid 1800's. There have certainly been many changes since their time, there have also been extreme changes even since my mother's time. She was born in a wagon in 1921 around the time of the great depression, times were very hard but they were survivors or I wouldn't be here. The two gents in the rear of the picture I believe were just friends of the family. My Grand dad who is sitting in the front of the picture died just after the picture was taken. I believe he died of the effects of mustard gas he had inhaled during the first world war. My Grand mother is also sitting in the front and my poor mum who looks thoroughly fed up is standing in the picture, she is only 7 years old. I suppose they had to stand still for a while in those days for pictures to be taken. The picture was taken, I believe, because they had just won a race with one of their horses, I think that there is some sort of trophy on the table. Well, this is where my challenge starts:

I have decided to work in monochrome as the original picture is and it seems so appropriate to show yet another change in the way we look at photos today. This piece I have needle felted in natural sheep wool colours.
My idea is to take parts of this picture and place these in the wheel. Look back to see how I get on.



5 comments:

beadbabe49 said...

What a wonderful interpretation of this month's challenge! I'll be watching to see how it goes!

Tricks said...

Thanks for the encouragement, this is my first TIF Challenge so it's so good to get feedback Cheers Tricia

Anonymous said...

what a beautiful wheel you have made! And how very precise you can work with your punchmachine, I can see those tiny details as if you embroidered it!!! Wauw, inspiring you are!

Helen said...

such a rich family history! I want to know more :D

Tricks said...

Thank you for your comments, yes, it's lovely focusing on something so personal and then getting feedback.
I do have a very varied family background, this was only my mother's side of the family. As far as tracing them all goes, even though there were lots of them, it's difficult to go back very far because of the movement. Travellers are very hard to pin down as it were, where they were at any census date is beyond me? I prefer to go back a little further, not in my own family history but one which I can find out more about and that is the history of the people/race. I am very interested in my Grandmother's people, she was a Gallagher and it seems that the family name goes right back to the cheiftains/kings of Ireland, I believe that they are linked to the hill of Tara which is a very well known Celtic place of importance. Well, I could waffle on for hours about the research I discovered but I won't for fear of boring everyone. Needless to say I am fascinated in pre Roman Britain before our tribes were made to be civilised "So called". I wonder what it was really like for these people. Well, I had better leave it there. Thanks for all the interest.