DUNDEE
KATHLEEN - loss
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Kathleen keeps in her handbag the beribboned First World War medal that belonged to her grandfather. It is her talisman of courage. He died three days before she was born but his medal was left to her and somehow it connects them. Two of her grandfather's and three of her grandmother's brothers died in the Great War and Kathleen feels their deaths have affected her own world view. She is a member of CND and a life-long pacifist. Some years ago she went with her father to visit the war graves in Ypres, a pilgrimage that she found deeply moving. She has appliquéd photographs of her grandfather and his brothers on her wall hanging, threaded through a red poppy for remembrance. The angel is thee central image from her grandfather's medal.
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The first thing Ishrat's mother dressed her in when Ishrat was born was a little white cotton dress she had made herself. She made other clothes for Ishrat while she was growing up, clothes that were handed down to her sisters. But her mother kept the dress. And when the time came for Ishrat to leave Pakistan and come to Scotland to be married her mother gave her the dress as a reminder of her family. Even now, when Ishrat is upset, she looks out that dress and inhales the aroma of home and the faraway scent of her mother. It brings her comfort. For her wall hanging she made a replica of the dress and surrounded it with portraits of her parents, her husband and her four boys. Between them is scattered a motif from an embroidered tablecloth she brought with her from Pakistan.
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ISHRAT - spirit
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LYNNE - weave
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The women in Lynne's family have always been good with their hands. Lynne herself makes all sorts of things, but the thing she likes to do most is weave. For her wall hanging she has woven ribbon to fill a map of Scotland. Individual strands mark places of family connections. stretching across the cloth to pictures of her grandmother, mother and her own two daughters: a female family tree. Below them is a photograph of a lap bag, the first thing she ever made at school. At the top of her wall hanging Lynne intertwined ribbons into a Celtic design, the unending loop of perpetual love and care that, for Lynne, is the joy of family. |