Observations: Session 6

Today we talked about putting on a brave face. I shared a cloth book I made when travelling in India.  Inside the book was stuffed tiny objects I collected along the way.  I shared too a prayer doll I made for a friend who was not well, and a doll of myself.  We talked about wrapping and unwrapping.  Wishing ourselves and others well.

Paula Tew, Textile Artist, assisted on the session, and set up a digital tablet, as a way of documenting the  activity around the table.  She also placed on the materials table a small paper mache doll she had made of her history, photographs and images of self, family and friends.  The tiny papery blue figure sat in the centre of the table, arranged with the women's journals and a rather scary looking old rag doll.  We discussed the possibility of taking portrait photographs of all us participating and I used my Olympus Digital Pen camera which offered the option of taking images with a selected inbuilt art filter.  Everyone was very brave and chose their own setting, from Pop Art, Sepia, Grainy Black & White to Soft Focus.  I look rather orange said one, like I have to been to the local tanning shop.  Each of us decided on what the image would depict.  The portrait prints can be used to fit inside story pages of each book, or make a small story doll figure.

"I really noticed how negative I was when I first came to the sessions and my book reflected that, now I am focusing on the positive aspects of my life.  I've really changed."

"I can see how I'm feeling, what makes me happy, the places I go which make me feel relaxed" she said gently.

There is talk about ourselves as children, of mothers who told us there are no such things as fairytales, and now as mothers experiencing how children change our lives and how we respond to the disruption, disappointments, joys and challenges.  We stand the books up and look around and inside the pages...and discuss how individual they are...

There's only one of me!

"Looking through your journal you can tell each week what emotion you've gone through"...