My Home from Home themed Christmas Card 2012

This is the Christmas Card that I sent to family, friends and colleagues with its message of 'There's no place like Home at Christmas!' The reference to the travelling gnomes is about an incident that I recall from my childhood in Wem, Shropshire, when a garden gnome was 'borrowed' from a front garden by a sailor, who then sent postcards back to the owner from her missing gnome from the many places around the globe that they travelled to together. Since then, the practise of stolen gnomes sending back photos from famous landmarks has gained a cult following, and appeals to my sense of the surreal. The  gnome I used in the artwork is from my Cabinet of Kitsch Curiosities in my Understanding Art Studio at Yale College, and had a former life in the back of my first car, my beloved red Fiat 126, when I was a student in Liverpool. The gnome tableau was completed with the inclusion of artificial grass and flowers made from lips. Yes, I was just as eccentric then as I am now!

I assembled the card into a folding concertina, rather like the books of postcards you can buy.

John who just about steals the show from my fox terrier, Ruskin, wrote the poem below which appeared inside:

GNOMES FROM HOME

TRAVEL SNAPSHOTS

Two garden gnomes had just vanished, poof… gone!

One was called Julia, and the other was John.

Their adventure started with a lovely photo,

Taking tea with a Geisha in Gion, Kyoto.

Then the two gnomes with excitement did shudder

As their picture was taken with Nara’s Great Buddha!

To Sydney next, the grand Opera House view,

That iconic landmark they loved through and through;

After snapshots they entered to see what they’d find,

And Bizet’s ‘Pearl Fishers’ just blew their minds.

The wildlife in ‘Oz’ was diverse everywhere,

And the gnomes had a climb with a Koala bear!

Their last port of call? A delightful finale,

Exploring the paradise island of Bali.

With its shrines and its temples, calm people in tune,

The gnomes made offerings at Taman Ayun.

Their travels now over, these cultured cognoscenti

Were returned to ‘Oak Bank’, their garden of plenty.

And a lesson they learnt, that wherever you roam,

There’s nothing like having CHRISTMAS at HOME!

And of course, to explain to any bemused recipients who received the card but had not heard me going on about the great theme we have for the new academic year of 'Home/Cartref', I wrote the note below:

‘HOME/CARTREF’

This is the current theme that Julia has been exploring

with her art students, in her job as Contextual Studies

Lecturer at Yale College, Wrexham.

The two of us went on a primary research trip to

JAPAN, AUSTRALIA and BALI this summer, to witness how

other cultures live, and their concepts of ‘Home’.

Our adventures were chronicled in an illustrated

Travel Blog which you can visit online at

http://juliastronguk.blogspot.co.uk/

The Blog was created to provide the opportunity for

students and colleagues, friends and family, to share in

the epic month-long global journey of discovery.

‘Home’ as a theme is rich territory to investigate,

both in the inspiration it provides to artists past and

present, but also to engage us with the issues of

Homelessness, and at Christmastime especially,

to remind us how fortunate many of us are to

have a place that we can regard as

‘Home sweet Home’.