Saturday, August 29, 2009

WE BEGIN TO SEE THINGS IN DIFFERENT WAYS

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed.
Second, it is violently opposed.
Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Over the past number of years and especially since May when we began the manifesting of COSMIC HOUSE, we have been reading many books, viewing videos and listening to radio programs and pod broadcasts and discussing ideas on everything to do with global warming, energy systems, waste and recyling, water wars, community gardens and growing our own food, the value of material things, sustanibility, spiritual and planetary renewal and lots of other big ideas! Cosmic House has spawned these discussions with troubling as well as exciting ideas. It has been wonderful to work together and to fuel our directions in the physical creation of our little-BIG house, COSMIC HOUSE.
We would like to pass on some suggested books etc for your bedside pile.... and if yours is anything like ours....it is a towering pile, a vertical library of great porportion!
Just a few to begin with: PLEASE ADD MORE TO OUR LIST!
It would be great to hear from you and to add your suggestions to the pile!
Omnivore's Dilemna - Micheal Pollen - in fact any book of Michael Pollen.
Abundance and Depletion - Life on the New Home Front - Sharon Astyk
Trash -
Poetics of Space - Gaston Bachelard
Smelling Land: The Hydrogen Defense Against Climate Catastophe - David Sanborn Scott (CBC pod cast from Ideas as well)
David writes in his Preface to the book,
"Smelling Land also touches on the energy systems of life and of Earth. It's intended for poets historians, legistlators and industrailists every bit as m uch as for engineers and physicists. "
COSMIC HOUSE is about thresholds, doorways, portals, - points in time and space where we currently find ourselves and looking beyond the now into what may be in the future. As we build our house, it speaks to us about transformation and renewal and the hope and hard work which lies ahead.
Please add to our list of books and ideas as these thought manifestations in the end, will aid all of us in beginning to turn the tide on the continued old industrial way of thinking and doing... ...we are as much responsible for all of this as are our neighbours, so let intention and action be our guide in making the best choices for the future.
Now enough of words and back to our sewing and felting needles!

MONKEYING AROUND!

The sinister tool mistress, Miss Kate! She says to herself..."hmmmm my next experiment will be to....." Having a break the day Robin brings her hand-molded monkey masks to the studio!
Ahhh those felting needles!

COSMIC HOUSE OPENS ITS DOORS TO FRIENDS AND FAMILY

COSMIC HOUSE OPEN STUDIO On August 15 we served tea and cookies and a peek at work-in-progress for COSMIC HOUSE. Exhausted after a full day of talking and explaining our process, we lie down on our printing and ironing table covered with our 9 soft and luxurious felted cloths and promptly fall asleep!

Thursday, August 20, 2009

The Green Man Returns

The archetype of the Green Man returns as the portal/doorwary to our Cosmic House.
'He is the threshold of the imagination between the worlds of our outer natures and our deepest selves.' " Our remote ancestors said to their mother earth - 'We are yours'. Modern humanity has said to Nature - 'You are mine'. The Green Man has returned as the living face of the whole earth so that through his mouth we may say to the universe - 'We are one'.
William Anderson Green Man

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Growing the Green Man Portal

Green Man emerges....the portal to the Cosmic House
Needle felting wool on lutradur cloth.
Our friend and fellow felter, Robin, offers 2 days helping us in the studio, working on the Green Man portal.
Thank you, Robin, for your wonderful energy!
User Beware - The sensational super turbo needle cluster tool! Listen to your mothers! Do not run with this tool! Lethal weapon!
Lou Lynn stop drooling!!

Ongoing, continuing, still in process

Final Felting in the Fullness of Time!
Ahh, those big beautiful fulled cloths!
Sew, you think you understand the cosmos?
Copious amounts of canvas continue to constrain our consciousness. Seeking freedom through sewing!
Sew there!
Dying for the perfect green......

Thursday, August 6, 2009

Some reflections

Coming from a week off, we are now ready to jump back in the saddle and begin working again. Time to reflect a little on our 'little - big' COSMIC HOUSE.
As Coomaraswamy, the Indian philosopher wrote in 1943,
" the house and world are two equivlent sums....and the family living in it is the image of the countless crowd of creatures dwelling in the shelter of the cosmic house, of which the ceiling or roof is heaven and the the sun...."
And as we continue to build up the Green Man portal I returned to Gibran's THE PROPHET,
"Your house is your larger body.
It grows in the sun and sleeps in the stillness of the night; and it is not dreamless. Does not your house dream? and dreaming, leave the city for grove or hilltop?
Would that I could gather your houses into my hand and like a sower scatter them in forest and meadow.
Would the valleys were your streets, and the green paths your alley, that you might seek one another through vineyards, and come with the fragrance of the earth in your garments."

Baa Baa Rainbow Sheep have you any wool?

Wool wool wool
Maggie sorting wool
What joy! Rainbow colours for Green Man and the portal panels!
Kate beginning to needle dry felt in the Green Man's face.

Green Man front Portal begins to take shape

The cartoon for the Green Man threshold begins to take shape
Kate is transferring the image of Green Man to brown wrapping paper.
Taking stock of the front portal panel of the Green Man cartoon.
Thank you, Gordie! for being our Green Man model!
We love your nose!
Stitching lutrdur together so we may begin the colouring in of the image.
Ahhh, almost done and ready for colour!

The first Cube

View from above! - The beginnings of the Room of Persuasion - an 8 ft cube.
Gerry, our Carpenter Man, putting up The Cube
Final touches to the skeleton structure of our first room, The Room of Persuasion.
Thank you, Gerry!