Dust

The artists built a house with hand tools, from materials found in the forest and the streets of the city. Their home then their studio, it had survived the bushfires of the long drought, when rain returned to the Valley with daily thunderstorms. A bolt of lighting struck – the cottage, numerous stored artworks, tools and new works in progress, all burnt to the ground.

Then earthquakes hit Christchurch and Japan. This was what the artists had been taught to expect, growing up in the Pacific Ring of Fire. Boyd’s old mother Mary had a stroke. At the beginning of her life, she had survived the great Napier earthquake of 1931. Now, as the world was again transfixed by cataclysmic earthquake, she drew her last breath.

Boyd began to compose a piece of music. He thought of breathing and of the times in life and death when we need music or silence.

Alison began to work in the ashes and remains of her destroyed work. She thought about sorrow and beauty, so close. She collected wands of willow tenaciously re-sprouting, Phoenix-like, from the poisoned trunks along the River. There it is a despised weed out of control, but willow was traditionally valued for it’s healing qualities, used for centuries as a medicine for pain relief, the basis for modern aspirin. The artist wove the resilient yet pliable stems into tent-inspired structures, emergency shelters over the burn-site.

Out of the ashes, weaving hard strands of matter and thinking and feeling together, the artists made a new work to gather, sigh, and draw breath.