(The beginning of the) End point statement – Caitlin Wood

I think I am ready to start this project now… World, will you wait for me to catch up? Oh well, next time round the merry go round perhaps I will jump on but for now I am content to wander in this rambling bumbling way, sometimes sidewards, sometimes backwards, sometimes upside down but ever onwards….

(Not quite) Mid Point Statement – Caitlin Wood

Ok, so I am sitting in a cafe, pondering the possibilities for a small slab of Jade and an objectionable bottle of pink paint. Held to the light, the jade is dreamy…a slice of kiwifruit…seaweedy…

The possibility to relate it to something present and relevant in only two days. Hmm. The shame of not finishing. I think of posting honestly, that I have not finished…

This Jade doesn’t lend itself to a quick resolution. I want to carve it, despite the weight of associations of the accumulated history of jade carving, (especially in the contemporary jewellery scene in NZ)

But this slab!

I taste it, but it yields no clues. It is unaltered by my attempts at digestive suggestion…

I sniff the paint, smell of earthiness, clay and chemical plastics together…

I signed up to this bondage willingly and then made a half, no, less, a smudge on the page of an attempt.

Why have I not done this project? Burning man festival and burning love affairs, oh and my usual disorganisation and laziness.

Oh, and don’t forget the text

A continuous dynamic energy flow.

Plastic Ivy leaves. and pink jump suits

Bamboo and magic and love.

Facepaint and wine.

A continuous dynamic energy flow…

Life. Love. Communication.

Water. Air. Breath.

Green – heart stone. Jade as mana – the stuff of which magic is formed…

Frogspawn. Growth rings. Algae.

Water based

Non-toxic

All purpose

- – - – - – - – - – -

Walking past the pond, i resist the urge to cast these things into the murky depths and be done…

Beginning statement – Caitlin Wood

Look, no offence to whomever gave me this material, but my initial reaction, one of complete and extreme horror. Pink paint! Insipid pink paint? A half empty, no aesthetic value bottle of pink hobby paint! How disgusting! What the hell am I going to do with this, yuk! An almost visceral response of bodily rejection to such a boring material.

I am pleased to find that at the bottom of the bubble wrap bag is a chunk of jade in a plastic satchel bag. It is beautiful, a slice, polished broad and flat on two opposite sides and rough all around the edges. I handle its pleasantly cool tactility, sliding it through my fingers with pleasure.

When I consider the thought of making it into a piece of jewellery however, I am slightly more sceptical, as my brain conjures images of tackiness, and the revolting effect of marrying this pale paltry pink with this deep dark green. I shudder at the possibilities.

Now,…I quite like pink, and funnily enough pink and green is one of my most treasured colour combinations for living in and with. But this is no passion pink, the pink of rose petals, the dusky sunset pink the rosy glow pink, the hot hot pink of 80s fashion revival, the fluoro pink of my youth, no crimson pink bordering on red, no soft orange pink, almost edible, no pink of lips, or of irritated skin, no angry rash, no obnoxious mozzie bites, no scar tissue pink, no barbie doll pink, no over the top little girl pink, no sweet strawberry cake pink, no pink panther. This is lifeless pink, pink with no soul, pink with almost no colour and no class. The pink that I used to use to try to paint pictures of peoples faces, before I realised that human skin was a much more tangled lurid mess of tones in yellow, blue, brown and green.

Later on, the next day, I reveal my material to friends at the pub, to share in my disgust. Look at this! How revolting! I delight in the disbelief I still hold that I have been given this bottle of pink paint to work with, this bottle of bane. But somehow, in this conversation, I realise that this pink is the pink of calamine lotion. (At first I say mercurochrome, but I know as I am saying it that it is wrong, and the person I am with, repeats my words, also grappling to retrieve and untangle these two medicinal fix-alls of childhood. But mercurochrome is grazed knees. The school nurses office, with tears and a bright red solution. The other is chicken pox, itching like hell, and the soothing cool of a damp cotton bud, and the smell, mmm that smell, and making patterns of dots on skin, marking the territory of pox.) Apparently my friend had a bath of calamine lotion when he was a kid with chicken pox, and I think of Cleopatra bathing in milk, and the luxuriousness of a whole bath full of calamine lotion…

Now from this comes two songs – that odd song that goes: it puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again… and poison ivy

You’re gonna need an ocean,

Of calamine lotion.

You’ll be scratching like a hound,

The minute you start to mess around,

Poison Ivy…

A text gifted from Neke Moa to Caitlin Wood…

Kia ora Caitlin, sorry for the very late exchange no excuses!!

short and sweet and oh so meaningful of course…

text: a continuous dynamic energetic flow

naku noa

Neke Moa

A material gifted from Sunni Gibson to Caitlin Wood…