Young Places & Pieces Artist's new Works!

Here is a proud little post of new art works by the young students I worked with at Bendigo Senior Secondary College whilst on residency there for a project called Places & Pieces.

This one is by Karly - it is called Felt Master Piece 2


A Piece of Lace by Akasha


This lovely ceramic braclet by Simone called Hope and Dreaming


Eve Lace and Night

Gearing up for a new commission

This isn't my work - but from rubycrownkinglette, whom I often admire on flickr

I am collecting some images, some works that are propelling me into my next commission - The Enlightenment Project.

What I am liking here is the use of found material, whimsy and joy. I like the out door-i-ness and the collection of material to become.

Other works of mine that are ticking over include this little collection of oddments (which really what a museum is all about is it not - oddments?) Like these lovely little bits of rolled up paper.





When watching Where the Wild Things Are I nearly passed out to see in the little boy's bed room a city structure of some sort made up out of rolled up cardboard - oh to have a still of that scene.

This Friday on my visit to the museum again I need to take some additional shots of the outside collection of machines and sheds - full of inventions for men to make order of agriculture. All rusting and mostly weighing a tonne - but I like the idea of these bits and bobs complementing the shadow houses.

Actually it was a camping boredom distraction activity that I planned for the kids that has also fueled my need to make stuffed things. More about these creatures soon...

Visit the yoyo dragon in Bendigo's Conservatory

I don't think this dragon would make any grrs or grunts, just a plop plop plopping sound as he trotted along sniffing and enjoying autumn gardens. He has a pleasant dreaming nature and is always hopeful to find some wings to fly.

You can visit him now during the 2010 Bendigo Easter Festival at the Conservatory. He is on show with another artist Georgina Duckett.

This light-hearted work represents a mythical creature, transformed into life by imaginary play and joy. It’s soft decorative patchwork body is hand stitched from second hand fabrics using the patch work technique yo-yo.

Inspired by a yo-yo patchwork scrap a dear friend gave to me and I have had hanging in my studio for some time now. Other background information about the work can be found here.

Comically chair legs poke out from the bottom of the work, wearing tailor made frilly socks. Invoking creative childhood cubby play. Like Sun Loong’s ancestors, its physical form takes on the combination of many animals.

Easter Art in the Conservatory

Like this patchwork? I just love them. I discovered them in a library book I recently took out and was delighted the direction they provided me for my first 2010 commission with the City of Greater Bendigo - Easter Art in the Conservatory.

They are images soured from Quilting, patchwork & applique : a world guide by Caroline Crabtree and Christine Shaw.

The idea of the commission is to create an installation of new work that celebrates Easter Bendigo style with a Chinese influence - in this case coming through the use of the colour red.

The circle is a found piece of paper from a recent workshop my kids did at the local Chinese museum - but I believe the curved form plays a major role in Chinese culture.

Both patchworks are Chinese children's hat - the first being a three dimensions fierece tiger face to protect the child. The second being a festive hat; the red colour, the fish, the pomegranates, lotus and gilded toad are all auspicious symbols.

The work I have said I will make is a "decorative patchwork quilt featuring the colour red draped across 5 to 6 chairs in a row. The work will be playful and cubby like - invoking thoughts of handmade and creative childhood play and imagination."

The work represents a mythical creature, transformed into life by imaginary play and joy. Its soft decorative red dragon body is hand stitched (gee don't think I will be hand stitching any more!) fabrics using English Paper Piecing - actually I am thinking of machine sewing using a rectangle pattern that has flaps of curved shapes that I will hang tassels off.

I haven' drafted up the pattern yet - but have drawn up many times in my head.

So these patchwork masks at the top of the blog are the lanching point for the head of the creature I am making - I am yet to nut this out.

I have collected the fabric for the dragons body - this Wednesday evening I am taking the PLUNGE and starting.

Will keep you up to date.

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!

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.

National Works on Paper Prize

Received a lovely email informing me that my work above has been selected MPRG's The Tallis Foundation 2008 National Works on Paper.

The exhibition is coming up in May.

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!

The Hedonism Handbook

"You are not a to-do list, series of responsibilities or a roster of achievements. Your life consists of much more than that, and your foremost responsibility is to yourself (unless of course you have very small children, in which case your nirvana may be temporarily compromised.)"

The Hedonism Handbook: Mastering the Lost Arts of Leisure and Pleasure by Michael Flocker


A showing coming up at TROCADERO Art Space next year is embroidered works of my to do list

here is a bit of my proposal for Mummy Packaging

what

Bowls – dessert, soup, breakfast – wrapped in fabric with my daily list of what I need to do to keep my life running as a mother (two children under five), associate producer with Next Wave, coordinator of Allan’s Walk and also an artist, embroidered onto the fabric stretched over the mouth of each bowl.

365 bowls (once for each day of the year) will be covered, embroidered then stacked in the space. Viewers will be invited to touch and rearrange the bowls and their stacks.

The stacks will be unstable and unpredictable – bowls may smash. The stacks are like my life as a mother kinda just keeping balanced.

Ararat Drinking Water Fountain

Coming up for me in 2009 is a show at Ararat Art Gallery.

This gallery space is in a very small rural township about 2 hours or so from our home in Eaglehawk. The space specialises in collecting and presenting textile works.

The director is fantastic to work with and last week he emailed through some images of a Water Fountain in the township.



It is a bit tricky to make out the words - but they read Grace, Majesty,

Due to the drought the drinking fountain hasn't been in operation for many years - a waterless fountain. He said each time that he went past the fountain he thinks of my work - isn't that great!

Previous bodies of work include quilts and wall papers of a Queen Victoria Statue here in Bendigo and also a Wall Paper Fountain.

We are visiting Ararat next Wednesday so I can get a good look at this fountain & I hope the beginnings of a new work will unfold!

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".

They Sold before the opening!

Got a phone call late this afternoon and both pieces I was fretting over last night have sold right before the opening how is that!

I am feeling full of confidence as I made them deliberately as a test to see if they would sell and they did as soon as they went up - I was concerned that my work wasnt connecting to people and sure enough it is - but would I really pack it all in if it was a flop?

Hell NO!

Here is a little snippet of a work that I am making as apart of a crafty blog exchange thing. It has been initiated by an amazing woman called Meg McElwee and from her blog



















Our instructions are:

To your partner, you will send:

1.) One handmade holiday decoration. Decorations made from any kind of medium are acceptable – from fabric to yarn, paper to paint.

2.) Your favorite holiday recipe.

3.) A "Tradition" Tutorial. This is description of one of your family's special holiday traditions. If needed, you should provide step by step instructions. (For example, if your family makes graham cracker candy houses each year, you would provide more concrete instructions.) You might also consider sending along a couple of photos of the tradition in action.

My partner is Stacey and she has a blog too.

This week the last week of spring and just before the first week of December I have finally started making my Christmas cards.

Here is a sneak preview



























got a bird theme happening - this year.

Palooza

I have two little works in a show opening on Saturday - it is a group Christmas show at Alluvial Gallery in Bendigo - for some reason the gallery director hasn't uploaded images of my work on the site (the dreadful doubt pit settles in my tummy with the thought she doesn't like my work or worse it ISN'T art) ; yet she has uploaded all the other artists exhibiting hmmmm


This work is called Leaf Sample 1: (from the experimentation interior stitch series)
Leaf Sample 1: (from the experimentation interior stitch series)