The four
days of show in Villefranche-sur-Saône were interesting, but long hours, and
overall very exhausting. Trying to talk French after having studied for my
Spanish exam (and there weren’t a lot of visitors who could speak anything else
but French) was a challenge, but I managed. (Of course, in yesterday’s Spanish
lesson I was again using French words when the Spanish wouldn’t pop up…)
I split up
the return drive spending a night in Memmingen, a city I was really only aware
of from a severe court case many years ago that made it into the nation’s
newspapers and that has always been a scar on my image of Bavaria. So much so
that I never thought about going to look at the town - it does have a really
pretty old town and is very picturesque.
So after a
really tiring week - two days of driving, four days of show, two days of
driving - I immediately went back to two days of teaching. But now my class in
doing two weeks of practicum and I am ‘on vacation’. Well - not really, except
for the fact that on Thursday I just needed to hang out, not do much, catch my
breath. But all week I have also been working on preparations for the textile
art symposium. I am one by one securing handwritten versions of some of the
articles from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that I am using as the
message for the quilt I want to make. Here is my student Puji writing Article
No. in Thai, which really is a fantastic script.
At first I
let the writers chose themselves, but now that a number of articles already
have been taken it is fun to consider which person or which language is the
right one at this stage for a particular language. For example, I chose my
Hungarian-born colleague to write the article on the right for demonstrations
and expression of opinion on Hungarian. She loved that, too.
Of course, my
son’s motivation for choosing Article No. 6 was completely different - he
looked for brevity to get it over with quickly. But I love and appreciate the
fact that he was willing to write it, after all he is not 2½ years old any more
as he was when I started using his drawings as inspiration for the series ‘Play
of Lines’ and could have said ‘forget it’…
Yesterday I
started stitching the intermediate layer after some procrastination, which
resulted in some changes of design and orientation.
This is the plan - but plans are there to be modified... |
And as I am stitching some
of the what I consider key phrases of the preamble, I am beginning to really
fall in love with these words.
I have always held a very very high appreciation
for this Declaration, but as I am repeating these phrases on the fabric, they
resound within me, it is amazing:
Recognition
of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all the
members of the human family.
- Freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want.
- Human rights should be protected by the rule of law.
- Dignity and worth of the human person.
- Equal rights of men and women.
What a
powerful message. Perhaps it will be heard after all, some day…