Jumping Ship

Ummm - just took down my show from Craft Victoria - thank goodness that is OVER.

I really buried my head in the sand when it came to writing and doing anything about this show - I was ill - but perhaps I am jumping from the art ship.

Craft Victoria did do two posts about me and the show here and here.

And you can see the video piece of the work by the brilliant Dylan Fowler






This is my most recent embroidery - from a drawing by my wonderful son - it is the pirate ship I am jumping on board from the art ocean. ARRR ARRRRR

Not just Frills

Today was my first official day in my new studio (pictures to be posted soon) - as well as yesterday my first day at my new job!!!

Loved the day in the studio - complete BLISS and JOY

Working mostly on frills thanks to the loving instructions of my good friend Ellen Coyle.

These frills are to finish off my quilts for A Little Lady Like Tinkling and Smearing show coming up at Craft Victoria.

Very happy with how they have turned out.

Neatly, a Lady's responsibility

This is a new stitched up work - which as always I am not sure about - but very happy with myself for creating.


It is a submission to a member's group show at Craft Victoria.

It is playing around with the fabrics I am using for a Little Lady Like Tinkling and Smearing and also harking back to a earlier work from last year called Gentle, but Useful.


Planning to get up super early and write about tomorrow!

animation story board

Finally this weekend I got around to drafting up my story board for a friend who is helping me make an animation for A Little Lady Like Tinkling and Smearing.

I am super tired and leaving this post like this.

Wont it be lovely to show off the film.

Pencil Drawings & Utopia

Have been enjoying myself this week doing some pencil drawings - I haven't really done much of this since the birth of my second child. I have been enjoying my new ipod while drawing and listening to a lot of podcasts from Radio National, Classical ABC and also RRR. This week I listend to

Breakfast with John Gray who talked about how our society is hooked on Utopia (I think it is a law to always write Utopia with a capital U) and thinking about my recent drawings and be they about child birth and children I got reflecting (in that special quiet time during the drive home from the supermarket) that my drawings arent really capturing my emotion of the process of birth - especially my extreme fear and that I am really holding tight onto my Utopian view of childbirth - hmmm think I might need an evening with a philospher to sort me out on this one.

Drawings of installation for a Little Ladylike tinkling & smearing

Installation view of pieces I am working on for A Little Ladylike Tinkling and Smearing

In the front you see the Cubby (which I wrote about here) and in the background the large wall piece with my champion sketch of Bendigo's Alexandra Fountain



This is a view of what you will see in the cubby - thinking of scanning my long stitch work and getting printed onto silk to make some lovely cushions for inside the cubby - any leads for this job - your comments are welcome.

In case you are wondering the black thing is a projector and it is projecting an image of a cat feeding her kittens.

Today I started some research and collecting images to work from for the black and white annimation I am putting together - really took me back to preparing for birth and also the birth experience. Things like the stages of labour and the positions your body is within, the use of rugs/cushions/light/props and other people during birth - all good thinking and plenty of more research activity.

finding the words to sum up my quilt making

Stumbled across Californian artist Anne Von Mertens today, through a review of By Hand: The Use of Craft in Contemporary Art from The Journal of Modern Craft , Volume 1, Number 1, March 2008 , pp. 161-163(3)

Her artist statement from her web site:

I use the stitch as a marker of time, to consider our oblique relationship to the past, present, and future, and ways to forge a relationship with this shifting terrain. I use the stitch as an orientation marker, a way of siting where one has been and where one is going.

- that is my stitch EXACTLY in my English piercing work

Alexandra Fountain

Back to routine the festival is over and I am home - early morning and returning to my neglected blog.

Over the festival I spent no time in the studio (or the gym/kitchen/at home etc) but I did see a lot of art and I spent a lot of time time thinking about a Little Lady Like Tinkling and Smearing coming up at Craft Victoria in November.

A saw work ranging from installation, dance, performance and photography - a strong theme that came to me time and time again was nature, instinct and the animal and its relationship to humans and the animal within us.

show such as
The Puma, the Stranger and the Mountain
Just Filling In
2020!
Six Minute Soul Mate
Night Club 1 at the Gentle Men's Club

Lyndal Jones body of work at ACCA also connects to all of this.

I think I have finally grounded my ideas - and that is upon this fountain - sitting in the centre of Bendigo. Sourced from here and here a few lines on the history of the fountain.

The Alexandra Fountain, Charing Cross, Bendigo, was designed by local architect, W. C. Vahland and erected by local craftsman. It was named after Alexandra, Princess of Wales whose sons, Princes Albert and George, attended the opening ceremony on 5 July 1881.

Constructed using over 20 tonnes of Harcourt granite. It was presented to the city of Bendigo as a gift from George Lansell the 'Quartz King' of Victoria. George built up an impressive personal fortune from gold mining and speculation during the gold rush era.

The fountain is a landmark in Bendigo situated centrally on the most prominent intersection in the city. Built as a symbol of the rapid development and consequent wealth of Bendigo as a result of the successful gold fields during the second half of the nineteenth century, Alexandra Fountain is a good example of late Victorian ornamental exuberance. The design of the fountain, like many other late Victorian ornamental structures, has a strong classical influence in the composition and detailing.

The Alexandra Fountain is of aesthetic and historical importance to the state of Victoria.

The Alexandra Fountain is aesthetically important as one of the largest and most ornate municipal fountains in regional Victoria. The fountain is a very good example of late Victorian ornamental public art influenced by classical models. The fountain has historical importance as a manifestation of the enormous financial success of the central goldfields and of the consequent prosperity of Bendigo, one of the largest gold mining centres in the state. I am interested in the fountain because of the women and their naked breasts. The fountain isnt far from the Queen Victoria monument - which I have used many times in my work before.



The fountain will be embroidered onto a large scale horse hair canvas pannel (approx 4m x 4m ) and also in the exhibiting space will be a cubby-like structure that I have been imagining in my head.

It is kind of like a cubby that I use to make as a child and that my children make now - however it is also like a birthing nest (here I will elaborate further with Michael Odents writing later) where a women comes to hide and return to her primal being to prepare her body for birth.

Hiding herself from the man-made world and into an animal.

The cubby will be made out of again horse hair canvas stitched together - but with also lace work and small structures made out of life style magazines teatering on the stop - this all will be sitting ontop of wodden furniture - chairs, tables etc...




Inside the cubby I will use small projection works. During the festival it was really refreshing to see artists using black and white line drawing projection works and also shaddow works - a relief to not see it all designed up and wizz bang - I am wanting to portray the hand, mistakes, the joy, the person, rather than the machine and the removal of the person.

This is an exciting break through for me and somewhat distant from my first proposal - but not too far off the mark - now for reading and drawing.

The handmade

A little lady like tinkling and smearing started forming itself as an idea from Germaine Greer's article Why Women Don't Relax about women and leisure time and her comments about the uselessness of stitching as a leisure pursuit and or as an art form.

"useless, pointless, unproductive, repetitive work: beadwork, shellwork, tatting, making cut-paper patterns and silhouettes, japanning, plus what George Eliot called "a little ladylike tinkling and smearing".

Don't get me wrong I am a fan of Germaine - I listened recently to an interview between her and Margaret Thosby on Classical ABC (unfortunately the interview is no longer online) and I had no idea she is in her mid 70s - I especially enjoyed her thoughts upon the future of our society and that children must be at the heart of this. Inspirational and a woman who isn't afraid of being heard and saying such straight forward things about our society - but few do.

Here is a link to another article that Germaine got her pen stuck into stitching also being an irrelevant art form!

"...why any woman would set about to make a portable artwork, a picture, out of bits of old fabric? What could be the point of such an exercise in futility? The work of art
is supposed to defy time but fabric is bound to fade and rot, even when it is kept in between layers of tissue paper and shut away from sight. There's nothing new in this kind of heroic pointlessness; women have frittered their lives away stitching things for which there is no demand."

ouch

Germaine got me all worked up about stitching being an irrelevant activity to undertake in one's life. I do agree that I dont have a hell of a lot of lesisure time but the time I do have I stitch because I love it and it fits in around my family - no smelly spills or waiting for layers to dry and it isnt expensive and if I stuff it up I can unstitch it.

Also when I sew I fell connected to other women - women at home caring for a family. Although I am alone and isolated in this house I know that this activity has been shared by other women for generations.

So how does this all fit in with the notion of the handmade landscape?

Unfortunately this video has arrived on its side - for a better viewing visit here. It is a bit of a treat - an extraordinary hand made feat - a rail way bridge. You can go riding along this old bridge - it is at Skipton near Ballarat.

A web site dedicatated to the cultural landscapes of central Victoria states

Landscapes both shape and reflect the lives of their inhabitants.

As does Alain de Botton

where we are heavily influences who we can be

So how does all this relate to stitching?

My stitch work is representational in its presentation and also its process.

Stephen Gallagher wrote about my last exhibition when I started touching on this subject


Born in the Central Victorian town of Dingee, Marwood now lives in Eaglehawk. She draws deep upon her present environment and that of her upbringing. The impact of the human's assault upon the environment, the constant carving up and division of the open flat grass plains with vast straight stretches of lonely road systems are reflected in the subtle pattern of the fabric's grain in ‘Paddock Division'. Comprised of small horse hair canvas panels joined with a loose basic stitch, its subtle blue thread exposes the making process. The panels expand like the subdivisions of land—intersected with a network of roads, visual paths, along which we alone travel. ‘Paddock Division' takes on the practicality of the decision making process—rigid, black and white, left or right.

I am wanting to get close to the solider settlement landscape I grew up upon - this was a thriving community now going under due to drought. I want to get close to the people that shaped this landscape and also how their decision making is still carrying through in our actions and activities today - and I guess now that I don't live in this landscape my actions are my stitching.

The planning for the install at Craft Victoria begins

This morning I had a wonderful meeting with Director of Punctum and Castlemaine's amazing new arts resource and venue the ICU which is a live Arts Incubator.

I am planning to hold a preview of my work in progress, for Craft Victoria, in August at the converted old hospital basement. Unfortunately I have been going a bit mad lately and didnt even think to take my camera - my brain has been over taken by the Next Wave Festival.

However this conversation what just what I needed to revive me - it is so tricky being an artist, a mother, an arts manager and curator - that sometimes all my ideas about my art just go round and round in my head and are late night blogging activities. Today made me realise how wonderful it would be to have a studio space with lots of other active artists that have a similar practice to mine and how this really helps you to move forward in leaps and bounds.

I often remind myself slow and steady - and every activity counts no matter how small - but sometimes surely leaps and bounds must be useful - especially when you are spending money on making art and getting no return.

She identified for me the key themes of my work

- the presence of the hand or the work of the hand
- nostalgia (the use of the body as a machine)
- landscape
- the presence of the past and how our internal and external landscapes are constructed from the activities of the past

She identified four activities for audience members who visit a little lady like tinkling and smearing
- watching an animation
- sitting
- walking between art works
- activating art works

Also she helped me come to the decision that I will be come apart of the exhibition as a performer (YIKES) - to sew!

Ok - all of this probably makes no sense at all - but it does for me - I will endeavor to blog about each of these themes and the audience activities.

Her expertise is developing relationships with audience through how an audience interacts with art within a space - this has really honed in my ability to make decisions about my objects I am making and also how the show will be planned out.

Oh so much to do.

Space in between book project

OOoo - I nearly forgot all about this - some how I thought March would never arrive; but I have some work in a show at the Bendigo Art Gallery called Space in between book project. (it was originally shown at the VCA Gallery August last year)

It is a touring exhibition curated by Tara Gilbee, and includes the work of 32 artists who have each responded to the internal space of a book carved and presented to them for their artistic intervention.

I am involved in presenting in an artist talk 11am this coming Thursday, the 20th of March (munch on nails) at the Bendigo Art Gallery.

Tara emailed while I was away to say that the show has been reviewed in Artlink by Simon Gregg. Unfortunately the review isn't online - will have to pop out and buy a copy.



This is a close up shot, taken by Tara, of my work Gentle and Useful.

I made it last year while spending a glorious month in Sydney baby sitting my sisters apartment in Sydney - it is embroidered onto a linen that was incredibly expensive >$70 a meter (I don't think my husband reads this!).

The embroidery patter is a pattern I have used many times as you will see here, here, and here.

The pattern is from an amazing wall paper from a commission/residency I did in 2005 with the Castlemaine State Festival at Tutes Cottage, a historical relic from the Castlemaine Diggings.

I loved this lavish red wall paper that the resident - I am assuming a woman, would have ordered and awaited for its arrival to adhere to the tiny, stone plastered walls in her living room.

It was the last layer of many layers - must have been over ten layers of wall paper.

I imagine that she would have spent a great deal of time and also money decorating this room to entertain her family and friends and to present herself as the woman of this household in this room. I wonder what she baked for them.
I am reading lots of decorating books at the moment as we are doing a little decorating to make the best use of our own tiny stone gold rush cottage and today I came across a wonderful little idea and lead for more research and thinking.

"After the Second World War, Germany embarked on a huge program of new housing. This boom was followed by the discovery that people who lived in these homes started to suffer from disase and ill health, and a connection was very swiftly made with the construction methods and matrials that were being used. It led to the formation of the Bau Biologie movement which fosters a view that a home is an extension of the human body and that there are various ways to building homes that reconcile modern construction methods with nature. If we are indeed connected to the homes we live in, then it is quite possible that any changes in their construction and their contents may have an adverse affect on our health." (The Healthy Home, Gina Lazenby)


Funnily enough my sister Joy Chell has just done a post on her blog about how the clutter in our homes relates to the amount of fat we have on our thighs and bums!

Filet Crochet

Found out what the name of the cotton lace I am using! It is called Filet Crochet.

"Filet crochet is an old technique, which reached elaborate heights in the late nineteenth century. It is still very popular today, particularly in Holland, France and Germany, where it is used to make curtains, table cloths and figurative panels, as well as decorative edging. It consists of a regular square mesh, made from trebles (triples) and chain stitches, and the design is crated by filling in some of the spaces which blocks of stitches." sourced from Creative Needlecraft Handbook by Lucinda Ganderton

Hhhhhmmmm I have never been one for crochet or knitting - I have had a go - but the results were more like knotting! But I am feeling tempted to learn - just did a quick surf at how tos and I think I will have to ask someone to show me - those instructions look way too complicated

Crafty Posts

Thanks to Lauren at Craft Victoria for posting my blog on their site today.

She was interested in this site being a place for documenting the development of my work.

I must say that June Fox has played a big role in all of this - I just adore the way she has set out her blog to capture her idea development. Thanks!

What I like about her site is the layout relates directly to the development of her ideas, then bodies of work from exhibitions and also works in progress.

I also get a kick out of her work as she works in craft based practice, mostly tapestry, then shifts it into animation and film making.

She has a show on the streets of Sydney at the moment for her current residency with First Draft if you are in town you might get to visit her cardboard planetariums.

I have also just discovered someone who first got me hooked into this blogging stuff has just started blogging again. JOY Looking forward to some inspirational reading Loobylu.

The Architecture of Happiness

A little playing last night - between quilting and paper form - a segmented landscape, a desire to be close, or a fear of the wild and isolation. A fear of living without broadband!

Some quotes from The Architecture of Happiness : The secrete Art of Furnishing Your Life by Alain De Botton - that help me think about my ideas for A little ladylike tinkling and smearing

"... our love of home is in turn an acknowledgment of the degree to which our identity is not self-determined we need a home in the psychological sense as much as we need one in the physical to compensate for a vulnerability we need a refuge to shore up our states of mind because so much of the world is opposed to our allegiances. We need our rooms to align us to desirable versions of ourselves and to keep alive the important, evanescent side of us."

"... abstract sculptures (to) demonstrate to us the range of thoughts and emotions that every kind of non-representational object can convey... sculptures afford us an opportunity to focus with unaccustomed intensity on the communicative powers of all objects, including our buildings and their furnishings."p.81

"... our reason for liking abstract sculptures, and by extension tables and columns, are not in the end so far removed from our reasons for honoring representational scenes. We call works in both genres beautiful when they succeed in evoking what seems to us the most attractive, significant attributes of human beings and animals." p.84



He identifies maternal tenderness in Barbara Hepworth's work Two Segments and a Sphere.

A little lady like tinkling & smearing

This is a sample of a beginning of a work I am putting together for a show at Craft Victoria coming up in November.

Using English piercing patchwork technique that my mum used to make me patchwork quilts when I was little.

This body of work carries on from two previous bodies of work - You Make me Feel at Alluvial (unfortunately this gallery has shut & the web site no longer exists) and the other body of work from collaborative project with a group called FOURCAST.

Fabric used is called Horse Hair, generally used for stiffening in men's coats, although the shop I purchased it from said although it is called Horse Hair it is made from Yaks hair from Nepal! (the link to Horse hair is an article about how to make your own horse hair fabric which sounds very freaky to me and much prefer buying off the roll!)

The lace is a cotton based lace - I don't know what it is called - it is something I picked up at Spot Light and wanted to work with it - since then I have been collecting a variety of cotton laces from a second hand store near out home to incorporate between the card board pieces.

I am enjoying working with the lace as previous works have been without lace.

When chatting to Kate Rhodes before her departure from Craft Victoria as curator she called it fru fru! and loved the contrast between the plain and the decorative, as do I.

More writing to be done about A little lady like tinkling and smearing - this is a quote from George Eliot's Middlemarch and I got directed to this from an article by Germaine Greer discussing women's leisure time in our society, entitled "Why Women don't relax".