Kiama's Charm - no. 18 is found

I had a lovely Email/comment from two children, Makayla and Charleigh, from Odessa in Washington, who found charm no.18 hanging of a park bench. Thank you both for your comment, I published it under a previous post, see here.

The shadows on the grass were created by this signpost sculpture, which is why I chose this site, as it looked a fun and creative way to direct people to the town shops and services. There is even a symbol with an artist palette on it, making an association with Kiama's love for art.

Originally my eye was caught by this large grain silo near the petrol station, where we were filling up for our way back to Ellensburg.

The letters DARE made me think of a line in Kiama's Bucket list: "be spontaneous and dare yourself"
If you click on the picture and zoom in you will further read "to keep kids of drugs". This made an even stronger impact on me as Kiama was so strong against drugs, alcohol and other intoxicating substances. She was very social and outgoing, a real party girl, who could dance anybodies socks off, but she wouldn't join in abusing her body and mind. She preferred to be awake and aware and live a more healthier lifestyle.

We were staying 1 night in Odessa on the Whitaker Grassfed Beef ranch and although we are vegetarian for quite some years, I do like Richard's way of raising his cattle, with care, plenty of space and totally organic. We had a lovely time of interesting conversations, lovely vegetarian food with lots of organic homegrown vegetables, a private music gig of Richard's own songs, accompanied by his lovely wife Ladawna and sister Mary and to top it off: for John a very cold dip in the cattle trough filled with water from their stream.

The greatest gift is the present

Hi and welcome to my blog, especially if you came here after finding an unusual arty/crafty thing somewhere in the state of Washington, Oregon, or California.

I am on a road trip there with my husband and my best friend, Mary, who lives in washington, from the 17th until the 28th of June 2013.
I am a textile artist and live in Hertfordshire in the UK and i decided to leave some kind of mark behind whilst cruising through a part of America.
The idea was stimulated by the memories of my daughter Kiama Petit.

Kiama suddenly died last year on the 11th of May, within 10 days of falling ill from what was later discovered to be the 'forgotten' disease of Lemierre Syndrome.
She was an art student  in her final year at Norwich Univetsity College of the Arts, who awarded her with a post-humus first class honours degree for her work.
Kiama was interested in Participatory Art  and liked to get people involved in community enhancing projects.
One of these projects was Paper girl Norwich which involved a group of cyclists distributing 365 free art works given to her by 52 artists for the public of Norwich.
In another project she would write postive messages and secretely stuck them onto parked  bicycles to brighten up the day of the unsuspected owner.

She loved to do random acts of kindness and  enjoyed the element of surprise.

She lived her unexpected short life to the full and treasured every moment inviting and inspiring people to do the same.
We discovered she had written a Bucket List, which was printed out as a poster from which 1000 copies were  given away by the university  during the graduation show.
Feel free to download a copy here.

Kiama was 22 years old when she died, so I decided to leave 22 craft decorations behind during our trip in honour of her spirit.
Kiama never visited the USA but she had all intention to travel different parts of the world so we are also leaving some of her ashes on American soil with the wish that her spirit may touch who ever feels the connection.

If you came to this blog because you found 1 of the 22 decorations I would love it if you would leave me a comment, mentioning the number, written on the scroll and I promise I will get back to you.

Coffee, cakes and other taboos

There is so much happening in my life that I want to blog about that I can't seem to keep up with the pace. The last week in particular was unusual busy with lots of social interactions, communications and lavish consumptions of coffee and cakes  - no regrets at the time, but oh I do need to address some health (read weight) issues before summer.
So I attended some interesting lectures, one by the artist Cas Holmes for the HVA and one by Hilary Hollingworth for the Embroiderers' Guild. I met up with my textile art friends for our monthly stitch morning, had a very belated yummy X-mas diner at Jamie Oliver's with the members of the HVA Textile group and started my first new yoga class. 

But for now I want to talk about the other taboos...

Sunday, a week ago, we went to visit the last day of the exhibition Death: a self-portrait at the Welcome gallery in London. Not particular inspiring - lots of skulls and skeletons and for me, personally, far removed from any emotional connection to death. The highlight of the visit was meeting up with people of the Society of the Natural Death Centre, whilst drinking coffee and eating cake!

The  Natural Death Centre (NDC) is a charity with a 24 hour helpline, which gave us tremendous inspiration and support in organising Kiama's funeral and life-celebration. They are also working very hard to make people aware of the rights and wrongs of the funeral industry and highlight the importance of talking about death, funerals and our wishes for a 'good' death and funeral. There has been several occasions in the last year that I became painfully aware of the awkwardness some people experience when they try to avoid the subjects of Kiama's death and our grieving. I know people are afraid to upset us, but for me it is so much more upsetting when they even avoid speaking out her name, as if she had never existed. To me there is nothing wrong with openly expressing our emotions, it shows we are human. Also to me, crying and laughing are part of the same coin, so to speak, yet for some reason they are in our western societies not treated as equal acceptable expressions. So through these experiences I have become quite passionate about talking about all kind of matters surrounding the subject of DEATH and volunteer some of my time to support the NDC charity.

Through the Natural Death Centre I learned about a 'new' movement of 'pop up' Death Café's. It sounds a bit morbid and personally I would have preferred a different name, perhaps even keeping the original French name of Café's Mortels. Although, having said that, the English name goes extremely well with the 'Death by Chocolate' cakes, like this gorgeous looking chocolate heart cake by my friend, Gina.

Anyway the idea came from the Swiss sociologist, Bernard Crettaz, who found that several problems in Western societies are attributed to a taboo of talking about death. So he started these café's to help breaking the silence about a subject, we all sooner or later have to deal with.
The Brit, Jon Underwood, who also works for the charity Dying Matters read about this and introduced the English speaking world to the concept of Death Café's, the first of which was in London, in 2011.
Since last November I  have visited 3 Death Café's in London and met all kinds of people from different backgrounds, different ages and with different reasons for attending a Death Café, but we all shared a need and curiosity to talk about death, bereavement, funerals and more.

Some of the interesting people I met was the Australian artist Pia Interlandi who makes Garments for the Grave. She works at a Natural Burial site near Guildford and we are starting to exchange and share some ideas. So who knows where that will lead.
And then there is Sophie Marsden, a final year student in multi-media journalism. She filmed one of the Death Café's I visited and keeps a blog about her project, 'Dying To Talk'.

The atmosphere at a Death café is quite relaxed, respectful and I dare say, even inspirational. I was able to share our story of how we organised Kiama's funeral and life-celebration and also tell people about the poster of her 'My Bucket List' (see my first blog post), which echo's in part the objective of the Death Café:

 "To increase awareness of death with a view to helping people make the most of their (finite) lives".

So all this led up to my announcement that I am organising and facilitating 2 Death Café's.
The first one will be on the 7th of April in Hemel Hempstead for which you can find all the details on the Death Café website here.

The other one will be on the 2nd of June at Global Tribe Café in Leeds. Global Tribe Café is a lovely vegetarian/vegan café in the centre of Leeds, which opened 2 months after Kiama's death, on what would have been her 23rd birthday.

It is owned by some very dear friends, who also own the Global Tribe Crystal shop in the same building.
Details for the Death Café there will be announced next month, but if you happen to visit Leeds in the meantime, do go in and enjoy your meal - leaving some room for coffee and cake...

Welcome to my world

It has been several years now that I wanted to begin this blog but the indecisiveness of my Piscean nature kept me in procrastination mode. So blame it on astrology, my parents and the universe - anything else but me - for the long wait of this peep into my life.

I have always had a great need to express myself creatively, it keeps me sane. I also have the desire and will to leave some kind of inspirational mark behind. Perhaps to justify my very existence, although I know very well that that doesn't need any justification, I am just who I am.

Although writing doesn't come that quick and easy to me (too much thinking and pondering) there have been several phases in my life that I seem to be attracted to pen and paper or tapping a keyboard. From my teenage years onwards I used to keep a diary, wrote poetry and tried my hand at some short stories. I even self-published a poetry book in Dutch with the financial support of friends and family.

The truth is I love words in all its forms and not-so-secretly belief that there is a book somewhere hidden in me. Although I don't know if it will ever come out of its hidden place.

My love for textiles and stitch stems from early childhood. I still remember the reassuring sound of my mum's sewing machine until the early hours of the morning. She was a dressmaker, born between the wars, with the 'make do and mend' mindset, now so fashionable re-invented as 'upcycling'.
 

 
Being the oldest girl of a 'good' Roman Catholic family with 13 children she had to stay home, from the age of 16, to sew and repair the clothes of her family. She was very upset about that, as she wanted to study, so when she was well in her 20's she took her chance and trained as a Montessori Kindergarten teacher. She married my dad, for those days, late in life (32) and it was more out of necessity that she picked up her sewing again.

My mum bought me a second hand Singer sewing machine when I was about 14 and taught me how to make some of my own garments. Later when I started my own family, I took great pride in making clothes and toys for my two little daughters. Living in my home country, The Netherlands, I started to follow adult education classes in all kinds of textile techniques and was hooked for life.

Before I go any further I want to thank all those creative inspirational people out there and in particular my friend Gina, whose blog 'kindled my fire' for the blogging world.

Though foremost I want to pay tribute to my daughter Kiama Petit, who suddenly after a short illness, passed away on the 11th of May 2012 at the age of 22. This devastating and most shocking event in my life is slowly opening up new roads, insights and inspiration. Last but not least it was the direct push to start this Blog, as Kiama showed me clearly that life is too short to waste it with procrastination.
She was a happy, enthusiastic young woman with a passion to inspire people to live a more positive, healthy and happy life.

   

Kiama was a 3rd year art student at Norwich University College of the Arts (NUCA) and was just weeks away from finishing her course in Visual Studies.

During the preparations of her funeral and Life Celebration, which we organised  ourselves with the help of friends and family, we discovered in her journal that she had written, several months before she died, a 'Bucket list' (a list of things you want to do before you die). As far as we know Kiama was, like us, unaware that she would die so soon and suddenly.

Her sister, Ilana, read 'My Bucketlist' out during the Life Celebration. It is such a moving and inspiring piece of writing that her friends and tutors at NUCA did ask our permission to make a poster of it and print out a limited edition. Ofcourse we agreed.

 
The students and tutors wanted Kiama's work to be part of the graduation show. She had done a particpatory art project, called 'Papergirl Norwich' and it was decided to present an impression of this through film, photographs and a wooden crate full of 'My Bucketlist' posters, which people could take away when visiting the graduation show.

They went out as hot cakes and the university ended up having to do several print runs, printing 1000 posters in total, and they all went. The graphic design of the poster was done by her friend, Luke Emery, and can be viewed and printed, for free, in high resolution via his website here.