Playing with paverpol

Had a play day with my daughter and we made diva's.   Well that's what they looked to me :-).

Materials -  Timber, wire and alfoil armature, interlock body, lace and braids all stiffened with tinted Paverpol.

Working towards exhibion, visits to Melbourne and Sydney

Part of Grandmother's Garden Installation for exhibtion in mid 2018

What have been up to since last post?   Not really hands on in the creation stakes.   Spent time in Melbourne keeping appointments and dodging rain.

I did get to op shop though and was pleased as punch as I picked up a lovely vintage tea pot, sugar bowl and milk jug which will complement the Grandmother's Garden installation I am working on. I am recylcling old and vintage embroideries  and playing with the hexagon shap which us the basis for the quilt pattern Grandmother's Garden.   In doing so I am remembering special times with my own grandmother who always set a "proper" table with embroidered table cloths and napkins.

And I picked up a couple of books on drawing fantasy figures.   Thinking they will have some inspiration for sculpting faces and different body forms.   One of the books set out its drawings based on the skeleton – much the same as the life drawing classed I had been going to.  Sadly the classes have missed out as they are on a Sunday and I seem to have been away from home for about the last five!!

And this last weekend I went to Sydney and caught up with an exhibiting group I am part of to finalise plans for our joint exhibition in 2018.    The deadline for finalising works to photograph is 1^st of May – only a month away!    There will be a bit of panic between now and then as I have looked at my calendar and a lot of time has been blocked out already.   But I am a long way along and  when I review what I have done much closer to completion than I thought.

Whilst in Sydney I was taken to Designers on Show exhibtion.   It showcased and sold work of  Australian artists and designers in all mediums and included fine art, jewelry, homewares such printed designs on linen, hand made one of a kind hats, bespoke shoes and knitted items.  I could go on.  But instead I will go again next year.  It was inspiring.  I purchased a couple of cards of works by Jane Stapelford and one of her peg people.

I have been reading up on Olmec, Maya and Aztec civilizations and got information and a couple of sketches into my visual diary.    It has been fun and I have started a collection of ideas for a body of work.  

I am intrigued by the saying “as drunk as 400 rabbits”.   A group of Aztec gods called the Centzo Totochtin (also known as 400 rabbits) were associated the agave plant from which an alcoholic drink called maguey was made.  They partied hard it seems!  It was belived that the rabbit first discovered maguey by nibbling on an agave leaf.  Maguey was a ritual drink in Aztec times and the population at large were not permitted to drink it.    If you are interested you can find a little more information here .

My mind is humming with the thought of cartwheeling and leaping rabbits and how to make them😊

Up date on doll making

In November last year I posted that I had become interested in doll making.

Whilst I haven’t written about it since but I have been slowly progressing with my skills.     

I got two craft orientated presents from my better half this last Christmas a: doll pattern by Cindee Moyer and an online course  with art doll maker Deb Wood through A for Artistic (no affiliations).   Deb's course was polymer clay face making over four weeks  I haven’t quite made the soft female faces that Deb makes but my faces have improved leaps and bounds.

Meet Arnold -  not quite the beautiful smiley girl I set out to create.    But he is alive with humour and is patiently waiting for a body.

The next face I made was more like an old crone.  But Deb kindly said she reminded her of one of her fairy godmothers.  I have made a few more and there are more faces in the pipeline..

Cindee's pattern was called "the Gatherer" and involved simple needle sculpting and a a lot of mixed media :-).

In the past I have resisted courses because I didn’t want to duplicate other peoples’ work or replicate their projects.   Silly me!   Very rarely is anything ever exactly the same.   And now I realise that have missed opportunities to learn.   But most importantly I have missed making friendships and connections in the creative community.  

And of course like everything in life, if you want to get better one must practice, practice, practice.  Which is fun, fun, fun when it comes to creating.  

To this end I have been working on a small series of cloth dolls which I have called Garden Girls.   They are simple skittle shape and the  purpose is to practice painting faces  and designs on cloth.  This is Lily who is singing in the garden.

I have heaps of idea to work on  - recorded in my visual diary   The trick is to remember to look through it occasionally :-).

So where am I going next in this doll making adventure ?   I will keep at the faces and bring embroidery back into the bodies or the costumes that I put on them.    I have ideas tucked away in my visual diary for garden girl variations and will remember to look at them.

And I am finalising pieces for a group exhibition with Six Running Feet.   We are five textile artists who have each worked on pieces which reflect what "off the beaten track" means to us.   We have a date next year and I will tell more next week.

Cheers

Reasons to write and draw in a journal

I write just about every morning and record my thoughts.  It’s a habit I kept after reading and completing the exercises contained in The Artists Way by Julia Cameron.   I haven't quite got this discipline with the blog and when life is full, as it has been the last few months, the blog loses out ☹.

Sometimes my pages are meaningless… verbal blah about family, garden and domestic chores.   But I keep writing.  There have been occasions I write about the fact that I don’t know what to write about for 2 pages.   But by keeping writing the subconscious bubbles and ideas rise to the surface.

A very recent example  of this relates to a discussion with a Garden and Cafe venue I have been having about mounting an outdoor show .

The garden is are broken up into subcontinental regions such as Africa, the Americas etc and I had got caught up in trying to do something which would reflect the whole of the gardens.  My ideas were becoming too broad and my research for inspiration too far reaching!   The solution came out of the blue when writing one morning.  So obvious – stick to one region!   I had got so caught up with the idea of capturing the whole the gardens I couldn't get past that point.

I have an interest in pre-Columbian history so the Americas became the obvious choice.   Since then I have narrowed the theme down to Mesoamerica: early settlement in the Mexican basin and south to the areas which encapsulate Columbia and Peru.

Ceramic figure of seated woman (AD50- 200) – trace of red pigment 

Serendipity also played a part in this choice.   I am an op shopper and if given the chance will not pass up the opportunity to visit and op shop.  Very recently I came across (and away) with a publication called El Dorado Columbian Gold.  This book accompanied an exhibition of a selection of ancient gold objects from the Museo Del Oro, Bogota, Colombia in the major galleries in each of the States of Australia in 1978.    It is full of amazing photos and very good text.    This complements  other books in my library which focus on textiles, architecture and sculpture in the region. 

An anthropomorphic Tairona bat pectoral (AD900-1600) . Photograph: Museo del Oro, Colombia

Now I am chock full of ideas that can be interpreted in both assemblage, contemporary clays and metal work embroidery.  Bliss.

Next step is to go one further with recording and start getting ideas from a text format to sketches.   The hardest part for me.   This is, I think, because I have been mulling ideas over in my head for quite a while and just want to get on with it and get my hands dirty or stab some cloth.   But I have learnt that my design and execution is almost always better when I do this step.

I'll keep you posted.

Inner City Vibes

I have forgotten how vibrant and busy an inner city is.  Not only the traffic and people but the streets:

Banksy in lane way in inner Melbourne

Lane ways in Brunswick East

Bicycles near a cafe

Surpise in a shop window

Art work by 23rd key outside Banksy exhibition

And the old and the new juxtaposed in the streetscape

After six weeks I will be glad to be home to the quiet of my country town.

Hello 2017

Goodbye 2016. 

You were a ride! 

We moved house – not just across town but across the state.     

Sun set

Our house is up high and we have the most entrancing views across the town of bush covered hills and an ever changing ‘cloudscape’.  Some days it is difficult to actually move from the table – weather watching can be so absorbing.

We made some new friends and managed to stay in touch with old ones: and have even reconnected with people we haven’t seen for 10 years plus!

I have a new and, even better, established garden which I love.    And a dedicated space in which I can make.   But old habits die hard and there is a definite ebb and flow of all sorts of materials from my studio.

I have managed to keep making art – though that has been a bit sporadic of late.

And most wonderful of all my partner has a new kidney … thanks to his donor brother.   They both came out of hospital on Christmas eve and both are doing well J.   We are in Melbourne till the end of January and then home.    (So miss my bed – it will be about seven weeks away by the time we get there).

With a gift of a kidney comes a new freedom and we are no longer tied to a machine.   We will be able to take more than a night away and we plan to explore the country about us – free range road trips.   Expect to see some photos posted during the year of the world about me.  

 And I will keep making.   For Christmas I got a book on Scottish Folk tales.    Look out for more fey folk inspired by tales of brownies, bogles and selkies.

Filling the creative well

I have been back and forth to Melbourne several times in the past couple of months.  Add to that a trip to Sydney, a trip to Canberra and one to Swan Hill.  Travel has taken its toll on creative endeavours.    On the plus side, I have seen new or revisited familiar vistas which add to the well to be drawn on at some time in the future.

Entrance to a café in Seymour:

The Mangoplah Pub:

 Canola paddocks between Albury and Wagga Wagga ;

Public Art in South Bank:

Mural at Victoria Market;

Murray River at Swan Hill:

And amazing clouds  just about very trip: