Femina II: "Things I Wish I'd Said"

When someone important in your life passes away, you often wish you could talk to them one last time. While it's not possible, Japanese garden designer Itaru Sasaki sought a way to do this when his cousin died in 2010. In an effort to connect to him, Sasaki set up an old telephone booth in his garden. The phone has no religious connotations but is simply a way to deal with loss.

He said in an interview, "Because my thoughts couldn't be relayed over a regular telephone line, I wanted them to be carried on the wind."

The next year, the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami hit Japan, killing nearly 20,000 people. Following this disaster, Sasaki made a wind phone available to the public. Over 30,000 people have visited. Wind phones are now found all over the world. 408 in the US, 122 in Canada, and 53 in other countries. This is the website where you can find them: https://www.mywindphone.com/windphonelocations

Below are two windphones where I live.

Skyline Memorial Cemetery Windphone

Boring, Oregon Cemetery Windphone

A few wind phones from around the world.

"When Grief Needs a Voice" Los Angeles, CA

The settings and phones differ. Some have mailboxes, while others have journals where you can leave notes to the people you loved and miss.

They all say something different, but the message is still the same. Share whatever your feelings are and however you wish.

"To say hello, To say goodbye, To say I miss you, To say I love you."

To create a mood of peace and tranquillity, I painted the background with blue-green fabric paint. Next I placed stems of Silver Dollar plants aka Honesty, Pope's Coin, or Money Plants on a gel plate and painted over them in Pea Green, printing onto the background.

Silver Dollar stems

Finally, I stenciled blue ferns.

I auditioned my photos and text, deciding where to place them and which ones to use.

I added butterflies for their representation of the soul in ancient Greece.

Rather than use traditional batting, I fused gray felt between the top and backing, using Misty Fuse, an idea I learned from Jane Dunnewold. It proved to be challenging to thoroughly fuse given the photos and text were on silk, which requires a much lower iron temperature than cotton. Lesson learned. I would try to fuse prior to adding silk appliqué.

I wanted to convey the idea of movement since the theme centers around wind phones. Google images provided a number of drawings. Here are the two I referred to below.

Ultimately, I stitched lines in only three places, keeping them quite spare.

Don't forget, the phone line is always open and will carry your words into the trees and beyond.