Goals and aspirations

I met with 3 of my friends today to wish each other well for the festive season and to discuss our goals for the future (whilst eating obscenely big slices of cheesecake and drinking very nice coffee at Mia Cafe in Inglewood). We have been meeting in each others homes (roughly once or twice a month) to work on our art (mostly textiles) for quite a while. We get on really well and today we decided we wanted to continue meeting - maybe a little more often and regularly. We discussed what we each want to do in the next couple of years and what is important to each of us in terms of our art. We discussed some individual and joint goals. We are thinking of having a group exhibition in 2014 - with venue, date, and all other details yet to be decided. I am going to create another blog which can only be accessed by the four of us so that we can post pictures of works in progress, results of experiements, and discuss how we're going to achieve everything. The picture above is of the Christmas pressies I received. Margaret was obviously really in the planning groove by providing us all with a calendar :-) Julie has challenged us by providing some materials to experiment with. And Louise challenged us all with some big questions to think about. I think the support and encouragement of the group will help us all stretch ourselves artistically. I also think the group will give us all the confidence to aim just that little bit higher and promote ourselves more than we each would have done alone.

Sold! Fib #358

Louise bought Fib #358 on the opening night of the Designing Women exhibition "Dimensions". At that point I hadn't embroidered a signature on it so last Tuesday while Louise, Margaret and Julie were visiting I did that. I also promised to give Louise a copy of the Artist Statement for it. This is an incredibly difficult work to photograph because the greater part of the work is white silk on white cotton stitched with a grey-white thread. Texture brings the work to life when it moves gently in an area with plenty of natural light. In real life the white bars stand out quite a bit - but this texture does not photograph well. I'm looking forward to seeing Fib #358 installed in it's new home.

True Colours Exhibition

After visiting the Ellenbrook Gallery yesterday I went to see an exhibition of textiles and paintings by Rowena Walsh at the Tresillian Centre, 21 Tyrell Street, Nedlands. The centre has various classes running during school terms. There were also works by Robin Bray. Works were displayed mainly in one large room, along corridors and some works were in rooms where classes were being held (it is understood that it is ok for visitors to interrupt classes to look at works). Lighting is adequate. Rowena had a lot of work on display - about an equal mix of paintings and textiles. Although quite an eclectic mix overall there were several series-style works where Rowena had explored one particular stitch technique or various colour paint combinations on a similar size canvas. Rowena had sold some work, and at the time I visited there were some works still for sale which I am sure will have found a new home before the end of the exhibiiton.

True Colours runs from 19-28 August 2011 at The Tresillian Centre, 21 Tyrell St, Nedlands, WA and is open from 10-4 daily. Phone 08 9389 1977. On weekdays there is a cafe on the premises open 9am-2pm during term time and I enjoyed my lunch there in the very pleasant courtyard.

Presence Exhibition, Ellenbrook Gallery

Today I visited the exhibition "Presence" comprising textile works by Elsje van Keppel (1947-2001). I never met Elsje but I had heard about her from other textile artists here in WA. Elsje was head of textiles at Edith Cowan University in 1989 and I imagine ECU is where many local artists came into contact with her. The works are well presented and there is a dvd of Elsje describing her work, her philosophy and her inspirations. I spent quite a bit of time there on my own absorbing the essence of Elsje's work and I would recommend taking the time to watch the dvd while you're there as it adds greatly to the meaning of some of the works on display. I would describe this as a "must see" exhibition.

Presence runs from 7 August to 11 September 2011 at The Gallery, 34 Main Street, Ellenbrook, Western Australia. Gallery hours are 10am-2pm Mon-Fri and 1pm-5pm weekends.

Do go, it will be well worth the trip - and Dome is just across the road from the Gallery if you forget your cut lunch and water bag - grin.

InTension Exhibition

This is the invite for the WAFTA InTension Exhibition which I'm planning to visit today.

WAFTA "Naturally" Exhibition

The WAFTA "Naturally" exhibition is wonderful, with a huge variety of work presented as either a 3.6m hanging banner or as a sculptural work. The exhibition is at the Moores Building Contemporary Art Gallery, 46 Henry St, Fremantle, Western Australia. It is on from 8-16th August 2009 and open 10am to 5pm every day.

I’ve got 2 pieces in it which I only finished by the skin of my teeth (2.30am!) because I also did the invite, the catalogue and the floor sheet (with lots of input from Kate, Louise and Alison). The exhibition is well worth the trip to Freo - that's a cut lunch and a water bag from here! The opening was last Friday night and I had no idea that so many people went to exhibition openings. The catalogue is a gold coin donation but other than that entry is free.

You can download the invitation and floor sheet for the exhibition, and read more about it here

http://www.wafta.com.au/exhibition.html

All of these photos were taken by Louise Snook, President of WAFTA. The "Hanging Committee" are... L to R Front: Louise Snook, Mandy Harwood, Rosie Whitehead and Tanya Peters. L to R Back: Wendy Lugg, Liz Arnold, Anne Williams, Kate Weedon-Jones and Trudi Pollard. The middle photo is of Mandy and Mark hanging works using cherry picker. The last photo is a sneak preview of the exhibition.

The thank you section of the catalogue reads: Thanks go to the exhibition organising sub-committee: Liz Arnold, Alison Barrett, Mandy Harwood, Kate Weedon-Jones, Lia Overman, Tanya Peters, Helena Pollard, Trudi Pollard, Louise Snook (Chairperson), and Anne Williams. Thanks also to the WAFTA general committee for all their support, especially Heather Morton and Lisa Repsevicius. Additional thanks go to Brian Thompson of Snap Printing.

WAFTA Exhibition "inspiration" workshop

On Sunday I went to a workshop held by WAFTA which was an informal "have a go" day to get as many members inspired as possible to enter the Member's exhibition to be held in August. We are to make a piece 3.5m long (with hanging sleeve it will be 3.6m) by 0.5m wide in muted colours. The work will hang from rafters in the centre of the Moores Gallery in Fremantle which means the work will be visible from both sides so we need to bear this in mind for the finished piece. There were 3 dye boiling vats, set up on the stove by Bernadette Aitken, of eucalyptus leaves, puffball (a fungi), and loquat leaves (Bernadette has a CALM permit to collect plant matter). There were rust, tannic, and caustic dye baths set up outside by Trudi Pollard. Trudi also had some of these dyes thickened with Guar Gum so they could be painted, stamped, stencilled or squirted onto the fabric in a more controlled manner. Kate Weedon Jones had a demonstration table of stencilling, stamping, screen printing, flour paste resist, discharge, and a few other techniques for putting images onto fabric after dyeing so that we could create additional interest on our fabric.

I took along some kimono linings (obtained from Sanshi ages ago) which proved to be silk since they took up the various dyes so I was pretty happy about that. I didn't have a go at the stencilling/stamping as I've been doing a bit of that at home, but found Kate's samples and work books to be really interesting and inspiring.

There was plenty of discussion throughout the day about techniques (including Shibori), and discussion about the exhibition with some people bringing along some show & tell of what they were making.

All in all it was a very enjoyable day - now I just have to start stitching! I also need to make some Artists Trading Cards (ATC's) for another group that I belong to and I'm thinking some of this silk might be good for that purpose too.