2024 – Shooting stars

Driving home from a gloriously entertaining and generous evening I saw what I thought were two shooting stars falling and fading into the night sky. A mini meteorite shower. There was a full moon too, a celestial crescendo to end my day.  

Shooting stars remind me of the Neil Young line “it’s better to burn out than to fade away”. One last burst under the weight of it all collapsing into finality with energy to burn. 

I had been in conversation during the evening with a woman in her late eighties, a world renown artist and creator. Single handedly she has inspired generations long before wearable art and inflatable beings decorating bodies and landscapes was popular. Committed to colour, she is a walking kaleidoscope. Full of joy and on the brink of her ninth decade a constant reminder to live life as fully as possible and to stretch yourself at the seams. Community arts, movement, the ephemeral nature of all things including us, and our environment are woven into her creations and her co-creation endeavours.  I want to pay tribute to this pioneer Evelyn Roth who has made her home on the coast in Maslins Beach having arrived from Vancouver many, many moons ago. There will be no fading away into the sunset for Evelyn. 

Evelyn Roth – also the Cover girl on this seasons Fleurieu Living Magazine

Play as gift, seeing the world through a child’s eyes, valuing found objects, treating colour with respect and disrespect concurrently, treating your body as a canvas, taking community seriously as creatives – are all some of the lessons from Evelyn. She is not a hidden treasure to be discovered in the recess of a dark, and damp cave, she is a bold multi-jewelled and bedazzling beacon we can all see as soon as we lay eyes on her. She sparkles.

As I watched the creatives of a new generation design and deliver on the Recycled Runway, brainchild of Megan founder and creative of She Sews I am confident there will be many more people making art, wearable and functional, clever and enchanting and inspiring. Making do with what you’ve got is not an instruction to austerity, it is an invitation to create, to challenge, to apply techniques, to mix and match … it is an invitation to the future.  It is also a moratorium on fast fashion and way to hail the arts and crafts leaders as heroines in our journey to sustainability.  Imagine an entire community walking around in the gear and garments made from what we already have!

She Sews seamstress Renee Haskett took out the People’s Choice award

Textile waste is a huge challenge to our sustainability. Australia is now the second highest consumer of textiles per person in the world, after the USA. Each Australian disposes an eye-watering average 23 kilograms of clothing to landfill each year. Let alone thinking about the water that is used in making denim, I have resisted buying jeans for decades and this year bought a new pair which I also plan to be my last. Thousands and thousands of litres of water are used in their creation, and then microfibres are released every time they are washed, that end up in the ocean. Then there are the working conditions. I saw the documentary River Blue years ago and it turned me onto the issues.

I was shocked to learn

approximately 93 billion cubic metres of water are consumed every year in the garment industry, which would be enough to meet the needs of 5 million people. And about 20% of our world’s wastewater is a direct result of fabric dyeing and treatment, with this untreated wastewater being pumped back into our water systems, contaminating them with toxins and heavy metals.

The waste from the textile industry has a bigger impact than the airline industry, generating four times more carbon. 

The Recycled Runway event was a great way to educate, inform, and motivate us to recycle, reuse and repurpose. If we have to fade away, lets make it in old denim and put landfill on notice of its impeding demise, by creating more beauty for us all to cheer on.

I think Kate Miller-Heidke should buy this creation.