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

Out of my Comfort Zone

 

End of the first week and 4.5 days of playing with paint and gel plates.   Some prints were successful, some were rubbish and some were so-so.  I expect I’ve learned something from it - I just need to ponder what!

If you have followed me for a while or have chatted to me about textiles, you will know I don’t do samples and I don’t just play.  So these few days have been a struggle.  I was playing and getting results but to what purpose?  When I’m making textile pieces, I know what I am aiming for and what it might look like, and then get on with it.  Sometimes it ends up looking different - but that doesn’t matter.

So on Friday I made the decision to stop making prints and to cut some of them up and make collages, They are 15cms square.

Earlier in the week I had made the horizontal collage (pictured at the top). I was going to make it into a concertina book but it looked better vertical.  I also added some marks with pen.

So what else have I done?  I took the train to Sydenham and visited a textile exhibition of work by Dijanne Cevaal.  I was the only one there for quite a while so was able to have an indepth conversation with her.  Some of her Bush Sentinelles.

Whilst I was in that part of Sydney I went to Reverse Garbage - a massive version of our UK Scrapstores.

So you may be asking why I entitled this blog post - Out of my Comfort Zone.  Well that’s because of the other things I’ve done!

I went food shopping in 2 different supermarkets.  I don’t do that at home - Roger does the shopping.

I’ve prepared my lunch everyday.  I don’t do that at home - Roger gets the lunch, and I do the dinner.

I’ve washed the dishes after meals.  You’ve guessed it!  Roger does the washing up. 

I washed my clothes.  I don’t do that at home - Roger puts the clothes in the washing machine.  I do the sheets and towels.

Next week I have to put the bins out -  Roger does that at home.

At this point you may well be asking what exactly do I do at home.   Not a lot obviously. Although I do sort out the technology problems that we both run up against.  Does that count?

On Friday night I was invited to the opening of a new exhibition at Hurstville Museum and Art Gallery.  I’ll tell you about it next Tuesday.

See you then

Bernice