Out and About

I’m now into my third week of the residency.  Last week I tried out some ways of folding books from an online course.  This week I’m planning on trying out some of the books in the book I brought with me: The Art of the Fold.

I had a lovely weekend celebrating my son’s 40th birthday with the family.  When I got back to Hurstville I tried work with the pianola roll I bought.  I first looked through my Australian Connections workbook and the ideas from ArtHelper and then started.  I first wrote the four significant dates with a Posca pen and then used my Australian flora stencils.

Then I added some blue koh-I-nor paint.  It says it’s watercolour but it seems permanent.  It was far too bright and I wanted to knock it back.

I got some leaves from the garden and did some leaf rubbings using Neocolor 1 and wet strength tissue.  I used gel medium to glue the tissue to the pianola roll.

I love that you can see the holes of the pianola roll disrupting the image.  The dates indicate times of disruptions or changes in life’s direction.  1922 saw my grandparents emigrate to Australia.  My dad was born in 1924.  The family returned to England in 1931.  Andy emigrated to Australia in 2006.

And lastly I added a poem I had written some time ago about this history.

You do have to be up close to see the words.

I’ve also been to a textile exhibition at Gallery 76, the headquarters of NSW Embroiderers Guild.  It was an exhibition by 39 international textile artists.  Here are some of the pieces I liked.

Kathy Landvogt: Matrescence

Josephine Jakobi: Appropriation

Adeline Contreras: Untitled 

Eszter Bornemiszer: Interplay 

Jette Clover: Urban Poetry

Helen Macritchie: Gaseous Exchange 

Ruth Harries: Dwelling 

Next update on Saturday. Hope to see you then.

Bernice 

Different Styles and Approaches

On Thursday as part of my residency, I taught a paper-based workshop as part of the agreed community engagement.  The museum workshop space had the most amazing range of art and craft equipment.  However I wanted to use as little as possible, as I wanted the activity to continue at home where possibly the participants had very little paint, coloured pens etc.

There were 6 people booked for the day but for various reasons only 3 turned up.  This was probably a good thing as this was the first time I had taught this workshop so I got to practice with these three who embraced the activity with mostly open arms - a slight hesitation at the beginning but that’s natural when you are introducing a new idea.  All of them were in to knitting, crochet or drawing in some form but hadn’t done collage since childhood.

The workshop is called an A to Z of Me.  The aim is to build up a word portrait of yourself. In an A5 sketchbook each page is allocated a letter of the alphabet.  The first task is to create a list of words that are associated with you in various categories - colour, places, friends’ names, relatives, etc.  Then using journaling, lists, photos or words cut from magazines build each page.

The whole point is for the pages to be meaningful to the participant and not to copy my pages.  To take my suggestions and complete the pages their own way.  And they certainly did.

One lady was a planner - she spent the time planning how her book would look but using things she had at home.  One lady was a visual person and spent her time finding pictures of places she had been to in Australia.  I had provided lots of brochures from last year’s road trip and this year’s.  The third lady was more text based and searched for words or used ‘ransom note’ words.

It was a fun day.  The ladies learned some new things.  I’m debating whether to launch this workshop back home for 2027.  I’m repeating the workshop at the museum at the end of the month so I’ll see how it goes.

I’m spending today with my family.  It’s my son’s 40th birthday and hooray, I get to celebrate it with him.  The first birthday of his that we’ve celebrated together since his 19th birthday.

Thanks for joining me today.

Bernice

Animal Skeletons and other things

On Friday evening I went to the opening of a solo exhibition by Michele Beevors called Anatomy Lessons.  It is the culmination of 17 years work.  I didn’t take photos of all of it but here’s a sample of the work.

The work is astonishing.  Each piece has been meticulously made and then each bone has been covered in knitting. At a nearby library, there’s a full size elephant skeleton and a full size giraffe.  I’m planning to visit next week.

I’ve continued to play.  I made another collage.

And made some of my gel plate prints into books.

And lastly here’s some wall art on the Council car park in Wollongong.

This week will be about learning about the making of books from an online course I signed up for and never completed.

Next update will be on Saturday.  I hope you can join me.

Bernice