Ballarat Fibrearts 2018

I recently had the pleasure of attending a Fibrearts week at Ballarat, based at Ballarat Grammar. The weather was sublime-amazingly and I enjoyed many early morning walks around Lake Wendouree. A week long retreat is a great way to become immersed in a technique or theme with the bonus of lots of different classes to visit and chat to during the week.

The class I attended was Claire Benn‘s text on textiles. We had a very small class of 5 with very different art backgrounds which was great for bouncing ideas around. Claire was a very professional tutor and we had lots of notes and techniques to further explore at home.

We experimented with lots of techniques including writing text with multiple instruments on multiple substrates, paper and fabric.

My favourite technique was the breakdown printing, which I hope to experiment lots with to get multiple layered backgrounds. Using the mx dyes was great as the fabric, once washed out, has a beautiful soft hand. I would like to try this technique with some natural dyes. Kerrie dd a blog post for GeeTAG here about the breakdown printing I demo’ed at a meeting.

The last day was the exhibition of all the groups’ work, here is just a small selection of some fantastic pieces with Kerrie’s memory piece bottom left and my breakdown printing on the right:

On the last day Claire did a lucky dip for leftover materials, I was lucky enough to score the book below as well as some dyes and Manutex. Here is Claire in front of our group display.

I would highly recommend the Ballarat fibrearts week as a great way to do some intensive textile art work as well as having great fun with like minded people.