What people say about working with me ... and some of my work

 

Any time I raise anything on stage, I ask Di Mackey to join the project. Her photographic work is magnificent and I love her presence: her portraits are stunning, they expose intimacy, humor, and pensiveness; her photographs capture the space, the movement, human interaction deliciously, in a way that one feels invited to an event long after it disappeared from the public scene.

In all her unobtrusiveness when working with the camera, Di is great fun to hang out with, the artists, scholars, thinkers, curators of our big Berlin exhibition highly appreciated her, and when working together in Cairo, Istanbul, Berlin, or wherever else, I enjoy her kindness, humor, and delightful presence. 

I miss her at the time when we are “in between projects.”  One of the first things I will do when starting a huge new project is to ask Di whether she wants to do the photographic work.  I hope she will. 

Shulamit Bruckstein, curator, director of TASWIR projects / ha’atelier.

 

That Desire for Home ...

The desire to go home is a desire to be whole, to know where you are, to be the point of intersection of all the lines drawn through all the stars, to be the constellation-maker and the center of the world, that center called love. To awaken from sleep, to rest from awakening, to tame the animal, to let the soul go wild, to shelter in darkness and blaze with light, to cease to speak and be perfectly understood.

Rebecca Solnit.

I used to sit there, near the top of the hill, at the edge.  Located on the east coast of the South Island of New Zealand, it was a great place to sit and dream about the world ... 6,000kms away from my east coast they told me.

I'm beginning to believe that I'm finally going home ... after 8 years away.  I never imagined, not even for a second, that I would ever spend longer than a year away from this landscape that owns my soul.

But I've looked around while I've been gone ... fallen for Genova, loved Istanbul, live in Flanders, wandered in Cairo and Paris and Amsterdam, Barcelona and Salamanca, Madrid too.  Adored and was awed by Rome, smiled in Naples, survived Berlin.  Enjoyed Ireland and England, France.

But going home ... it's as the quote says, I suspect. 

 

Happiness is ...

The other day my lovely friend, the talented soprano Kathleen Berger, had this idea over on facebook ... she was going to post a photograph of something that made her happy, every day.

I liked the idea.  There's been so much doom and gloom lately, so much chaos. 

I have spent this year following the poet, Amy Turn Sharp, as she creates a poem every day through 2012.  I love her poetry.  I love those daily poems.

To begin ... one of my favourite things is surely my deep red bookshelves, the ones that hang next to me, here at my desk.  They are loaded with my treasured books and dvds.  And there are little gifts too.

The painting from and by artist, Karla Verdugo, the red cardinal from the lovely Lisa Ferreira.  The beautiful tile with the perfect message, from Raquel.