Sometimes stories and artworks need a long time to ferment before they are ready to emerge into the world.

I was reminded of this when I attended the soft launch of a fictionella by a dear friend of mine. The launch was on zoom so people from all over Australia and the world could join in. Her fictionella was about the rock, Granite. Which seemed like a strange thing to be writing about I thought. Also as she is a painter, I didn’t know how she came to write about a rock!

Turns out that the rock was part of a project devised by two artists who found a board with rocks on it. Many of the rocks had been torn off or fell off the board leaving only the stain marks of their presence. It was these marks that led them to devise a project spanning five years, where they asked artists to contribute to stories about human interaction and geology titled Lost Rocks.

My friend’s choice of rock was Granite. Exploring the qualities of this rock led her to tell the story of her status as an “outsider.” The story started from meeting a group of Indian women who had moved to a mining town because their husbands were working for the mining company in upper management, in south west Tasmania. However the  fictionella ended up becoming the story of her own life and the story of her mother.

I met Helena many years ago when we both lived in Mansfield, in Victoria. She was decorating Easter eggs as a traditional Ukrainian custom and teaching it to adults and school children. The eggs were exquisitely patterned and carefully drawn with wax implements, the colours applied with hot wax using a Batik type process. 

She told me the story of her family’s life in Australia arriving in the ex-army camp at Bonegilla, near the border of NSW and Victoria. Of how her mother embroidered koalas and gum leaves onto fabric as a way of bringing her village into her new life and integrating the two cultures.

 Helena entrusted her story to me to tell during my time as a storyteller, and I retold this story of Bonegilla and the magnificent embroideries many times to wide eyed children in country schools. It was a tale of struggle and cultural assimilation, a striving for belonging we all seek.

In the ensuing twenty years, Helena has always an artist traversing many mediums, sharing her tradition of painted eggs, to making beautiful ceramic wall sculptures with mythological motifs, to printmaking and finally painting. Now she adds writer to her creative expressions.

This time of development and fermentation has paid off. Her theme has developed slowly over time as parts of it became embedded into her creative life. This is the story of a rock but it is really the story of a heritage of life stories, all the rich ingredients which are added to make it beautiful. It is the story of patience – and the reward of patience is always patience.