In Residence

Well, here I am.  In residence in an amazing one bedroom apartment in Carss Park, Hurstville, NSW.   The studio is an amazing space.  This was before I unpacked!

And here’s the view

I unpacked and set up my work space.

I spent the afternoon playing with paint, stencils and the gel plate.  I also watched some of the videos from Jane Faase’s course ‘Next Level’ Laser Image Transfer - however my image transfers didn’t work, so back to the drawing board.  

I’m pleased with the results from trying out the stencils and using cling film to create a background.

I have spent so much time in the last 2-3 years on textiles and neglected the mixed media side of things.  It’s great to get back to being messy.  I’m looking forward to seeing how this develops.  I particularly want to experiment on taking what I’ve learned from Jane Faase and developing my own style.

I wrote this poem 12 months ago.  I’m glad to say that I had the opportunity last night to chat with this particular friend on a video call before I went to bed.  I had a much better night’s sleep than I predicted in the poem.  Mind you, we had a torrential rainstorm and I suspect the creatures that would have produced the rustlings were sensibly holed up somewhere.

In Residence 2026        

My dearest friend, how I appreciate
your prayers. In the night’s almost silence
they comfort me. Unknown rustlings
in the shrubs and trees surround me. 
I’m alone in this apartment, alone in the park.
Only the twinkling lights across the river mouth
assure me that human life continues.
Sleep comes slowly. Reading past midnight,
in the hope that sleep will overcome
the apprehension of living companionless, 
in an unfamiliar apartment,
in an unknown city, in a foreign land.
Daybreak. And messages from home.
Early morning risers jog past my balcony.
The café next door is open for breakfast.
The anxiety of the nighttime has passed.
The curtains opened to another day
of unexplored creativity.

And so onwards with my experimentation and play.  More creativity and hopefully more ideas.

See you on Saturday for my next update.

Thanks for joining me today

Bernice

Not necessarily packing light!

You may be wondering what I have brought with me to Australia for my Artist in Residence time which starts next week.    Of course you might not be wondering but I'm going to tell you anyway!

My plan, such as it is, is to actually read 2 books that I've bought and follow the instructions rather than just look at the pictures.  In addition I am going to do the Making Books and Gel Plate Printing online workshops I've signed up for, but not done anything with.  For example, Jane Faase courses on gel printing and Toni Harthill's workshop Unbound.

So of course, I needed to bring gel plates and brayers.  There were more gel plates and brayers originally but they were culled due to weight.

With gel plates I need paints.  I was going to buy the paints in Australia - another weight cutting exercise - but Hobbycraft had a half price sale so each of these tubes was £2.  On Amazon Australia they are around £8 each.

I will be buying a ream of printer paper here in Australia to use, but have brought a plastic bag full of a variety of tissue papers, and 3 Khadi concertina books.

Other media that made the cut were my Neocolor 1 wax oil crayons, 3 ArtGraf water soluble graphite blocks, a Koh-i-nor watercolour palette, Inktense Blocks - I have the pencil crayons but these are lighter, and my favourite Matte Medium.

 

Choosing a sketchbook has always been my difficulty.  I actually use them as workbooks rather than sketchbooks and over the past few weeks various combinations of sketchbooks have been laid out and then discarded.  I eventually settled on 2 8" square Pink Pigs and an A6 concertina.

 And finally various tools which eventually included paper scissors, a ruler, pens and pencils.

I will be blogging my progress, hopefully twice each week, during the 4 weeks of the Residency.

I applied for this in May 2024.  And now it's finally here.  It starts on Monday.

Watch this space.
Bernice 

Summer School

I have spent a lovely 4 days at Littleheath Barn taking part in Summer School.

During the first two days we printed our fabrics.  The theme overall was the colour of the seasons.  I chose Autumn, not because I want to do work about a season, but because I'm hoping to do some work on my Australian Connections.

These are my fabrics washed and ironed.  The brown pieces, bottom left, are actually more purple than brown.  Despite all my years of breakdown printing, my screens didn't breakdown and the fabrics look more stencilled - not a look I particularly like.

 

However I carried on and started making a book.  I tried out some Cotton Woven Fusible  Interfacing as the base layer.  It's okay but not really suitable if the fabrics are also lightweight eg. muslin, cotton lawn, organdie.

 

Here are some of the pages for the book. 

 

 

I also started making another book in a different colourway.

I didn't like the big orange bit in the top one and eventually covered it up.  I experimented with transferring images to the pages using a paper lamination technique with bondaweb.  The original pictures aren't very good so I'm pleased that it worked at all.

At the end of the 4th day we had a Show and Tell.

You can see how I covered up the bright orange next to the ship!

I've got lots of fabric left so who knows what will become of it!

Thanks for joining me today
Bernice