Spirit Festival on Kaurna country (Adelaide) 2008

The photos say it all…Proud young Black Australians dancing in the Spirit of New Dreams, celebrating the Old Ways…as the healing and restoration unfolds…..

Family, song , dance, connection, Culture and open spaces without walls….

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Nunga TV – Smart Mob – The Car that makes people smile….

Sometimes when we are out and about I forget that we are driving in the NungaTV car- so beautifully painted by Mark Blackman and the Warriappendi students. People often smile and some feel compelled to wave…such is the Spirit of connection and appreciation that Aboriginal Art invokes. Although if I have forgotten about the outside of the car, it does feel as if people are just waving and smiling because they are having a good day!…….(;-)

With the NungaTV car, it’s as if people are seeing a mobile dot-painting for the first time.  

And they are of course!……..

 

 

 

Even  grown men, when they  stand near the NungaTV car, just want to play!….

 

 

The EarthSong Brothers………

Great to see Tony again after nearly 15 years and to be able to share in the   EarthSong vision together…….

It’s official….’ProsperArty’ has been named, signed and sealed!

Last year I began the process to trademark the name “ProsperArty”…a name I created to define my ART of Change tools and programs.

ProsperArty = Experiencing Prosperity by using the mediums of Art / Creativity.

Prosperity as I define it, is  to develop, grow  and flourish in what ever areas we value and consider to be  important…ProsperArty is a personal journey on a Universal theme that recognises the balance and harmony of nature and the creative state.

I had an afternoon tea with some of the Women I have worked with in the past, currently work with or have projects emerging throughout 2009…

It was a wonderful afternoon with some great food… unfortunately in  the images below  my ProsperArty guests are absent, as we were too busy nattering and chattering in our talking circle and eating and laughing to remember to take photos.

However I did capture the food!…and the flowers…and a few other things from the day…beginning with the Zebra that pulled up out the front just as we were getting under way…a noisy Zebra that came to trim trees and chomp branches! Before long we were noisier than the tree munching Zebra of course!

 

Sal made chocolate mousse that I decorated with mint and twelve white chocolate buttons…representing the Clock..because “It’s Time” for ProsperArty……

 

Sa’s gorgeous daughter Gemma made lime and lemon tart…I made peanut crunchie biscuits and apricot with white chocolate and almond balls…What a high calorie, yummy launch!

 

I chose the Celtic triple spiral theme (Triskele)  for the ProsperArty gift …we had a lot of fun threading them onto elastic to create a pendant. The 7 purple dots represent the 7 Sisters…that cluster of stars that has birthed  mythology and Dreaming stories right across the planet.. There were 7 Women present at the time, more guests  arrived later …

My recent trip to Matariki bay- bay of the 7 Sisters in Aotearoa (New Zealand) is a significant part of the essence of  ProsperArty…

 

I liked how the river stone-shaped  pendants looked in their circle before sharing them around. (Made with air drying das clay, painted with acrylics and sealed with high gloss varnish. I drew the design with permanet marker)

 

My Trademark Certification…ProsperArty…

 

Pilawuk made a gift of the most breath taking silk wall hanging based on some of my ProsperArty designs…if you look closely you can see the Warrior Woman image in the centre..and on the sides forming “Yesterday, today and tomorrow”…a theme from my invitation…      

Magic!!…thank you Pilawuk…Silk Queen Goddess!

 

Here is a side view…aren’t the colours just deliciously  ProsperArteous?!

 

Thankyou to my former colleagues Cathy, Desi and the Malvern Place team for the flowers and words of great encouragement and good will…

A lovely afternoon with a group of Women who live and breathe the essence of ProsperArty’s highest hopes and dreams…..

Let the Magic begin!

*****************************************************************

“ProsperArty” was dreamt and created on traditional Aboriginal Land and I acknowledge the Kaurna people as the custodians of this part of the country and recognise the authority  of the  Dreamtime as holding the key to many of the challenges we are facing in Australia today.

EarthSong Aboriginal Healing Pathways Foundation is Incorporated…

We are very pleased to announce that EarthSong is now officially incorporated as of September 8th 2008.

Here are two of our founding members Misters John Hartley and John Williams holding our certificate of Incorporation.

If you are interested in learning more about EarthSong, who we are and what we are doing, please checkout the Facebook EarthSong Aboriginal Healing PathwaysFoundation group here:
EarthSong….Putting Action to the shared Vision for Change…

Photo update on our first working bee….

Lighting the Fire in a room without walls…

Lit the fire for the first time this winter and we sat outside under a windy, wintery sky breathing in the heat and enjoying the warmth of good company and one of my very favourite Elements of all…

NAIDOC 2008 – Adelaide

Here are three gorgeous gals who caught up with one another during the NAIDOC march and Family day on the banks of the River Torrens.

Katrina Power, Pilwauk White and Jo Rigney…

The heART of the Apology …

We are having the launch of the heART of the Apology exhibition on Wednesday.

There were 11 posters created during the Apology at Elder Park here in Adelaide in the ‘heART’ Space that we established as a way to give ordinary Australians, of all colour, culture and creed a place to express their thoughts and feelings in a way that was divorced from the political footballing and rhetoric that was flooding the media in the months….and years … leading up to the Apology.

 

There was sadness and there were years and there was joy…

My buddy Katrina has worked for justice for many years and like so many other Aboriginal Women. her courage and resilience in the face of systemic racism have been out standing.

Adelaide [Tandanya] – City of Contrasts…

People often relocate to Adelaide because of the beauty and the lifestyle, the smaller population and the general sense of not-quite-a-city-and-bigger-than-a-country-town.
Sometimes those same people complain about Adelaide being slow to change and resistant to development whilst also appreciating the things that make this city unique.

Heritage listed buildings (there are many) are protected from the 21st centuries vastly different architecture, though sometimes only the outer facade remains as the inside of the old blue stone buildings undergo radical surgery and extraction of almost all body parts.

The other day we were attending an event in the relatively new Mawson building in North Terrace and looking out of the window I was taken by the light of the late afternoon sun and how the new overshadows the old along this stretch of the city that overlooks the railway station and River Torrens behind it.

In the background St Peters Cathederal looks like it has a team of 2 storey fly swatters in front of it…the fly swatters being the lights that surround the staidly old home of tradition, The Adelaide Cricket Ground…

It is a good place to live and the surrounding country side produces some of the best wines from MacLaren Vale through to the Barossa Valley, from grapes that are perfectly suited to this climate.

The hills form an arc shaped range and we are nestled between the hills and the sea and the land in and around the city and in the further afield country side is rich in the Dreaming stories of the Ngarrindjeri, Kaurna and Nurrunga people – three of the largest tribal groupings of this part of the land..

The Adelaide Central markets offer fresh, locally grown fruit and vegetables, breads, cheese and scrumptious cafes and all along Grouger and Grote streets, (the back and front of the market) there is a wide vareity of restaurants and more cafes that are a constant reminder of how truly fortunate we are to be living in a place such as this.

Death of the corner deli. Once the center of story telling and Community..

This afternoon I was driving through some of the older suburbs near where I live, about 4 kilometres out of the city, and noticed one of the old Rosella Sauce signs on the side of what was once the local store …that also been a ‘High Class Shoe Repair” store…(see second image).

Across the road was another old store, now closed that may have been the fruit and vegie store or the local butchers….perhaps even the post office back in the days when telegram changed lives and parcels from over seas took months to arrive.. Milk was delivered daily, leaving milk money out overnight was the norm and the fruit and vegies often came in the back of a truck that strolled through the streets once or twice a week…

Except for a rare visit to the city the corner store was the only ’shopping centre’ around and was also the centre of the story telling, gossip and information sharing hub in the ‘village’ of the surrounding streets.

These two stores that once supplied the groceries, meat, fruit and vegetables of hundreds of families are now old fashioned relics to an era that has all but gone…

Remember “Northern Exposure’ that huge hit tv show of the 90’s that was set in Alaska?
Ruth Ann’s store was a relic of the past, brown paper bags, tins on low shelves and an assortment of grains and goodies near the counter – stories and news exchanged over that heavy wooden counter.
It was personal and the word ’service’ really meant ’service’… not a corporate marketing theme.

What a time of rapid changes and extinction we are living in as mass marketing’ gobbles up the slow and familiar ways of not-so-long-ago-times.

Breathtaking is the canvas when the Sky Gods illuminate the heavens on a warm summers night…

I recently drove a western suburbs beach area as the sun was setting.

The sunset was dramatic. Cloud spirits appeared, dazzling streams of light…a big glowing orb landing on the horizon as the sun set.

Truly growing older could not possibly mean failing eye sight
……I feel like I am seeing things better than ever before…and EVERYwhere!