Fabricate 09

Today Pauleen and I made the trek up the Melbourne/Geelong Rd to the opening of the Fabricate 09 exhibition by the TAG (Textile Art @ the Guild) group.

There was a wonderfully diverse range of textile art by invited artists from Australia and internationally, including art dolls, indigo dyeing, felting, weaving, free machine embroidery and printing. The exhibition is beautifully hung, with the ‘luminous’ indigo dyed panels of Rowland Ricketts 111 dividing the space.

The photos below are taken from the catalogue, designed to allow them to be used as postcards, with funds from the sale supporting the TAG group activities (there are more photos on the TAG site).

All art pieces at the exhibition are for sale as well as the patterns for Jennifer Gould’s exquisite dolls. Well worth a visit.

Cheers

Sculpted Books

Not a great deal to show on the textile front as many projects are still progressing.

We had a Johnston Collection meeting at the Guild this morning and the pieces being worked on are just amazing. There are some truly talented embroiderers. However the pieces cannot be shown because they will be exhibited later in the year. The sea angels are progressing with the bases begun (just waiting for the final paint coat and being stitched together) and some hand stitchery on a practice piece of dupion silk.

Today I called in to the Geelong Art Gallery to see a fantastic exhibition of sculpted books by Nicholas Jones from Melbourne. Nicholas doesn’t seem to have an active website at the moment but this link will take you to a great interview and photos. The exhibition, called “the garden of forking paths” (the title of short stories from the 1940’s) uses books recycled from various sources and sculpted in a variety of ways. Nicholas kindly gave me permission to show some of his works here.

 

These photos do not really do them justice as they are taken through glass cabinets with my phone, but show some of the amazing range of Nicholas’ pieces, well worth a visit if you are able to get there before the exhibition finishes on Sunday.

The girls and I are off to Melbourne for a couple of days, it’s becoming an annual girl’s trip, to see the penguins at the aquarium and visit some other sites and of course, shopping.

The latest update is on the Creative Fibre Group blog for the April meeting and details for the Next meeting on May 9th.

Cheers

Show and Tell

I have quite a bit to show and tell as I haven’t blogged for a couple of weeks.

Firstly we received some amazing swaps from Val in the mail. Val sent the heart ATC for Claudia, which of course she absolutely loved. The postcard and ATC were for a swap we arranged on the theme of ‘Spring’. The postcard’s colours are just glorious, and she has used Beryl Tayler’s fabric paper techniques. My favourite, however is the ATC entitled mossy bark which has the most beautifully layered effect. Thank you so much Val, the returns will be winging their way over shortly.

Our last creative arts meeting in March was inspiring once again with all the beautiful pieces on display. Unfortunately I forgot the camera, but there are a few bits and pieces on the group blog.

Some of the group, with others from the guild, attended a Machine embroidery workshop with Fibre artist extraordinaire, Jan Preston on a very warm Saturday. The title of the workshop, ‘Free stitch with Nature’, was very apt. We had to take along some snippets from the garden, which we enclosed in solvy and free motion embroidered over. Jan had some beautiful skeleton leaves she had found in the Otways which she generously allowed us to use. It was a great, fun workshop and such a pleasure to spend the whole day stitching without interruption.

These are some leaves I stitched over and also a rose hip:

This next one was a dried agapantha flower head that I stomped flat and stitched and some bamboo wool that I stitched over as well:

I finally finished the triangular book I started weeks ago for Maggie Grey’s on-line workshops for her book, Textile translations.

The outside has stars torn from paper casting over a corrugated meat tray and some heated tyvek motifs. The colour is mostly from radiant rains and moonshadow mists sprayed over. The inside has some marbled paper pages stamped with ‘reach for the stars, feet on the ground’.

Our final challenge is to convert ‘killed’ catalogues into art. Maggie has the details on her blog if anyone wants to join in. Here is my catalogue (actually oldest daughter’s Cosmopolitan magazine), newly unearthed from the mulch under the rose bushes. Some people have had trouble with husbands and dogs trying to steal their catalogues away; my husband was quite happy to keep the mulch topped up over it and the rose thorns kept the dog away!!  I have sprayed it with vinegar to disinfect and will start playing once it is dry (might have to brush a bit more dirt off).

Cheers