New Project - Overwintering

Sharptailed Sandpiper - off season colouring blends in so well in the wetlands

 

​Brown birds in a brown landscape, migratory shorebirds are our most endangered group of birds. Every year they migrate from the shores of Australia and New Zealand to their breeding grounds above the arctic circle in Siberia and Alaska. The remarkable annual circuit that they fly is called the East Asian-Australasian Flyway and it passes through 23 countries.

 The Overwintering Project: Mapping Sanctuary seeks to raise awareness for our migratory shorebirds and their habitat by inviting artists to help make them visible.

​Anyone can join the Overwintering Project.

Source:   The Overwintering Project - Mapping Sanctuary

I am thrilled that Creators Art Space has taken this on as a project . Whilst it was started as a print project Creators has opened up the project to members whose art practice is in other mediums.   I am planning a soft sculpture of a sharptailed sandpiper.    These amazing little birds travel from Russia  to wetlands in  south east Asia and Australasia after breeding - at least 5,000 kilometres over roughly seven days!

I made an appointment to visit the Melbourne Museum and was fortunate to be able to see some mounted specimens up close and spend a little time drawing.  It was great to be able to see dimensions and form which are next to impossible to get by books and watching in the wild.

I was surprised to see that a couple of specimens had been caught at Lake Tutchewop, Victoria.  It was a not far from where I grew up and my sister and I would bike and horse ride there as kids and teens.  Brought back memories.

If you are into information like me I found this government site which has some pretty neat information about sharptailed sandpipers in Australia.

Ok - now I better get to work.

Take care all.

From Where I Sit: Stories from Within

Armchair Travel series: Plover

I got most of my work to the Albury LibraryMuseum Tuesday morning.  Of course it had to be raining!  But there was a window of time to get my works out of the car and inside.  Phew!  But I didn't cross stich my earworm QR code!   Not enough time.   (see previous post for more about that)

I completed a series of 15 works based on armchair travel for this exhibition.   It is a series of travel adventures conducted entirely at home.  These small works reflect Ireading and travel through written and visual media when I couldn;t travel.  Instead, I read travelled through words, TV and film documentaries and travelogues

Its all exciting to actually see the works being sorted and going up.   Other than my two solo shows which I self installed I haven't seen a big exhibition go up.  Emma Williams, the curator, is being challenged by the large number of  3D items that need to fit into a largely 2D space.  But she is a whizz and its coming together.

From where I sit- Stories from within - Exhibition & Earworms

Four friends and I have formed a small group called RE-create Collective.   We are exhibiting at the Albury Library Museum and the launch is scheduled for 11.00 am on Saturday 25 June, 2022.

It's been such a long haul.    I was working on my last piece - that's it above. It's not completed and hasn't made the cut.    I was discharge dying on black fabric with bleach and though it sort of worked it requires more hand stitching than I'm prepared to do at this point.   

London's burning melded with a small series I was working on based on the Black Summer fires.  I found I was singing the nursery rhyme a lot and it  has become a persistan earwork ever since.  It occured to me the earworm itself, rather than the work which was its casue, could form part of the exhibition.

I'm feeling pretty chuffed (probably easy for others but) I managed to find my round the internet and phone and laptop and record that earworm, upload it and fix it to a QR code.   Now I'm wondering if I have time to cross stitch it! 

Exhibition anxiety, worthyness and words

Green & Blue Series 

 

Life has been bus.  My colleagues and I (RE-create Collective) are at the pointy end of our exhibition From Where I Sit – Stories from within which will be launched at the Albury Library Museum on 25 June, 2020.

Super excited and over it all at the same time!

I have prepared a series of textile works and have been umming and ahing about whether to submit them. Exhibition anxierty.  Are they worthy? I have decided to offer them up for the exhibition and let the Albury Library Museum make the curatorial decision.   

The works are an interpretation of a poem by Lesbia Harford which I wanted to do for some time:

            Green and blue
            First-named of colours believe these two.
            They first of colours by men were seen
            This grass colour, tree colour,
            Sky colour, sea colour,
            Magic-named, mystic-souled, blue and green.
            Later came
            Small subtle colours like tongues of flame,
            Small jewel colours for treasure trove,
            Not fruit colour, flower colour,
            Cloud colour, shower colour,
            But purple, amethyst, violet and mauve.
            These remain,
            Two broad fair colours for our larger gain
            Stretched underfoot or spreading wide on high,
            Green beech colour, vine colour,
            Gum colour, pine colour,

            Blue of the noonday and the moonlit sky.

Why did I change my mind?   Because when I sit at my table and gaze out the window I see green and blue.  When I rest in my garden I see green and blue.   These colours are restful and calming and often observed whilst sitting and pondering. My artists statement will reflect this.

Slow making

 

Being involved in slow stitch and collage in both paper and fabric of late.   The joy of slow making is priceless. 

Translating text to textiles

Green Lovers - Marc Chagall 

                    Green and blue 

                    First-named of colours believe these two. 

                    They first of colours by men were seen 

                    This grass colour, tree colour, 

                    Sky colour, sea colour, 

                    Magic-named, mystic-souled, blue and green.

                    Later came 

                    Small subtle colours like tongues of flame, 

                    Small jewel colours for treasure trove, 

                    Not fruit colour, flower colour, 

                    Cloud colour, shower colour, 

                    But purple, amethyst, violet and mauve. 

                    These remain, 

                    Two broad fair colours for our larger gain

                    Stretched underfoot or spreading wide on high, 

                    Green beech colour, vine colour, 

                    Gum colour, pine colour,

                    Blue of the noonday and the moonlit sky. 

I’ve been thinking about how to interpret this poem by Lesbia Harford in a textile format. 

The words have the same effect on my brain that the feel of textiles has in my hands.

Can words be tactile? 

Palpable. A synonym of tactile: a feeling or atmosphere so intense as to seem almost tangible. 

I’ve been exploring artists too. 

Modernist Marc Chagall uses a lot of blue and green and interesting vistas and skies.  (The Tate has a great teachers pack for an introduction and a little self-directed learning.) 

A further poke around the Tate online brought me back to Wassily Kandinsky and his inspiring use of colour and line. 

 Circles in Squares - Wassily Kandinsky

I’ve been pondering on how to express this poem in fabric and stitch for a fair while now. I have silk sari strips and threads. A few days ago I found some interesting wire frames tucked away in the garage. They may be just the thing to help create a work that is either flat of 3D – or both?

Chairs

 

Dolls House Chairs

As a result of a throwaway line I’m working towards a small exhibition, Chairs later this year with art colleagues under the banner of RE-create Collective.     

Chairs explores reuse, recycle and repair by way of practical and fanciful refurbishment of old and discarded chairs together with wall art featuring chairs.

I have taken the opportunity to learn how to fix and reupholster chairs with the exhibition in mind.  It has been a slow process and I haven’t been as focussed as I had hoped to be.  I have been taking apart the chairs and regluing them with the assistance of an awesome instructor at an upholstery class run at a community centre near where I live.   I'm currently working on dining chairs punning on fine dining.  I also plant put together  a third dining chair with a fun theme.

One of a pair of dining chairs reglued.  My awsome  tutor is in the backbround

Starting to  remove fabric from my second chair.   It wasn;t as easy as I had hoped.  There were two layers of fabric and a huge number of tacks and staples

After I started the project (and with 3 chairs waiting attention) I saw this beuaty at the tip shop.  Sadly torn, worn and broken it called out to me as I passed it on leaving,   I returned the next day :-)