Psalm 137

Mmm, another challenge. This psalm contains probably some of the least-sung verses in the psalter: "Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock!"

The psalms seems to have three main sections each with a different mood: vv 1-3, 4-6 and 7-9. I'm not going to describe those moods in words, but will leave it to you to decide whether my representation speaks to you of these shifts.

I made 3 separate pieces of felt and incorporated things into them; in the first piece, this was crocheted leaves, and also some pieces of the broken crockery of Ps 84, only broken even more. It isn't just the accidental breakage of a pilgrim trinket here, but the smashing of hope almost totally. Remembering remembering, and somewhere in the distant past, happy times experienced as in Ps 84.

The whole thing is swathed in teardrops, and there is a kind of macabre name tape running up and down: Virgil, Aeneid, I. 462: 'Sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt; 'Things bring tears, and mortal matters touch the mind'. or perhaps 'there's tears in everything, and mortality affects the mind'.

Happy is she

As I say in the introduction to the whole series, I wanted to offer something soothing as a response to the vengeance and violence in this psalm, and so there is much use of Osnaberg cloth, which is oatmealy and thus is to cloth what porridge is to food. It seemed somehow wrong to be 'pleased' with the felt I made for vv 7-9, but I was; I have only done a very little felt-making in my time.

Goodbye and thankyou for coming!

It's well past midnight, and the private viewing is now 'today'. I hope I've given you some kind of flavour of things, why I did them, and also how I have tried not just to represent the psalms' content (though that is part of it) but to 'do' something in making each of them. Please write in my comment book if you would like to; it's by the cash till in the refectory. Or email me at vivrowett@aol.com. Thankyou for your attention; that's a great gift in itself.

And thankyou to all my helpers, friends, relative, Facebook friends, encouragers, and especially to Ian & Sheila - Ian for making the boards on which to display them, and Sheila for being my companion-critic. "What do you think of this bit, Sheila? Shall I.... or....?"

And now for the party........