Weekend at Blarney’s

It is school holiday time and though I am super busy still with uni work I snuck in a quick weekend away at Port Fairy to visit Peta Lloyd and Nanette Balchin’s wonderful exhibition at Blarney Books and Art. What an amazing place! If you haven’t visited this quite amazing venue plan a trip. The exhibition is on until Sunday 29th September so if you are down that way on the weekend pop in.

Port Fairy also has a great artist studio trail. I was lucky enough to be able to chat to and view some fantastic pieces by Jill Edwards at the Whalebone Gallery.

There also happened to be a creative art journaling workshop happening on the Saturday so that was fun too. Tamsien West was very generous with her tips and materials for many different styles of journaling and showed some great examples of her own.

Art Quilt Australia 2019 at the NWM

As a member of the National Wool Museum I was lucky enough to be invited to the opening and prize winners announcement on Thursday night. Openings at the NWM are always well run and have interesting speakers so Kerrie and I went along for the preview.

After a glass of Hill wine (one of my favourite cellar doors), a welcome to country, and a few speeches the winners of the Expressions: Wool Quilt Prize and OZQN Award of Excellence were announced. Here are a few of my favourites from the night. All the quilts were amazing and very different so do go along and see the exhibition.

The winner of the Award of Excellence was Neroli Henderson with her deceptively simple and very effective quilt Whitewash. Highly commended in the Wool Quilt prize was Alison Withers Change for Earth. Not only is Alison’s execution and skill incredible she also makes very pertinent statements about current issues.

Prize winners

Two other quilts that I loved were Susan Mathews and her use of print effects in Banksia Country 3 and the wonderful composition and texture of Jill Rumble’s Landlines

And another wonderful piece from the entries that appealed to me was Kerryn Taylor’s Flinders Ranges Panorama with a wonderful group of tapestry inserts. I absolutely loved the texture and colour of this art quilt.

This is a must see exhibition for all textile and art quilt lovers.