A close look at Wedding Gown and see it in San Francisco

 

This video was made the day before I went to Queensland for the Wearable Art Festival. It shows a close up detailed look at the surface of the garment.

Wedding Gown for a Woman to Marry Her Garden

After getting back from Queensland I packed up Wedding Gown and sent it to the United States. During the 7 weeks I had been expelled from the Wearable Art Festival I had been contacted by an art collector who bought the dress to show in an art exhibition in San Francisco in September. The exhibition is called

 A Nasty Piece of Work; The Art of Dissident Feminists

It opens on September 16th 2023 (open until October 15th) in conjunction with the Womens Declaration International conference. If you are interested to see it in reality check out the Saturday 16th schedule for the conference where the opening of the exhibition is advertised at 7.00pm.  Entry to the opening night comes with paid registration to attend the conference and the venue for the exhibtion is not currently being advertised due to concern for attracting anti womens rights protestors. After the WDI conference the exhibition will remain open for a few more weeks with viewing available by appointment.

My work will be represented along with these other women artists from around world who have all been cancelled and vilified in various ways for attempting to speak out about how womens rights and child safeguarding comes into conflict with trans gender ideology.

Laura Becker

candio.

Claudia Clare

Jess de Wahls

Melissa Gwyn

Laura Ichikawa

Rosie Kay

Sarah Vaci

Nina Paley

The Famous Artist Birdy Rose

Beverley Talbott

Last month I spoke in Brisbane at another Womens Declaration International seminar with these other redoubtable women. Moira Deeming is on the left of me, psychiatrist Jillian Spencer first to the right and Hobart City Councillor Louise Elliot to the far right. I'll publish a transcript of my talk on my Substack in a few days time.

Cosmic Pearl

Remember,

Nolite te bastardes carborundorum

Garden Wedding Gown in the Wearable Art Festival

 Just a reminder for anybody following my art - I can only be followed here on my blog or on my YouTube channel

Pearl Red Moon Artist

I am banned from Instagram due to being a Gender Critical Feminist. If you search you may find my artefact account there, but I am locked out, meaning I have no control over it. Since March 2023 I've been unable to publish anything, nor can I delete it or start a new account. Meta decides who is allowed to use its platform and I've been expelled due to being designated a hate speaker, bigot and nazi. Nowadays this  can be considered a normal consequence for speaking your honest opinions or to defend womens rights. 

Over this weekend I had the immense delight of being able to present the garment I'd entered to the Australian Wearble Art Festival on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland. I had the great good fortune to have the most beautiful young woman volunteer to model the dress. Her name is Kinsey and she is on holiday from Taiwan on a working visa until later this year.

She was an awesome model and I'm so grateful to her for the wonderful way she presented it. Thankyou Kinsey! I hope you enjoyed the very special experience.

Over the next few days I'll show many more pictures and talk more about the wonderful festival.

Garb Age tour

Walk through of my wearable art exhibition at the Old Tattersalls Hotel, Murrurundi in April 2023. The show was called "Garb Age" as a play on the word garbage as all the fabrics and fibres I used to make the clothes was stuff salvaged from the waste stream. comprising mostly used clothes, homewares and unused fabric remnants taht had been donated to thrift shops.

Many of the garments on show at Garb Age, less the ones that were sold and a few more I've made since, can be seen in my upcoming Sydney exhibition - Tangled Webs She Wove - opening Saturday 8th July, at Balmain Space, 79 Beattie St, Balmain, Sydney. The completed wearable artwork that was banned from the Australian Wearable Art Festival, "Wedding Gown for Woman to Marry Her Garden" will also be displayed.

We'll be having an opening celebration in the gallery all day long on the 8th, so pop in for horse doovers and champers and admire some of the most accomplished works of wearable art you'll ever see. I spent 45 years getting this good.

On Sunday 9th, between 1-3pm, I'll be teaching a class in the gallery about stencil printing and embellishing cloth with hand stitches. Fabrics, threads, paints and all materials will be supplied, attendees are required to bring only dressmaking scissors and wear protective clothes. Class will be repeated on Saturdays 15th and 22nd July. Cost is $65 and and book if you wish (through Balmain Space Facebook page) or just turn up.

Wedding Gown for Woman to Marry Her Garden

Work in progress

Wedding Gown For Woman to Marry her Garden

Australian women under the pump

Tangled Webs She Wove

 My next exhibition of wearable art called “Tangled Webs She Wove” will be at 

Balmain Space 

opening Saturday 8^th July and closing Sunday 23^rd. The gallery is located at 79 Beattie St, Balmain, Sydney, Australia.

I will host 3x 2 hour classes on Sunday 9^th/16^th and Saturday 22^nd July, from 1-3pm. If you wish to come along please contact Robin the curator, through Balmain Space Facebook page for more information and to book in. We will play with one of my most favourite techniques, stenciling onto cloth, cutting and patching it together and building up layers of embellishment with hand stitches.

Regarding my expulsion from the Australian Wearable Art Festival, 4 days ago I sent this email to them but haven't heard anything back at this point

Dear Wendy and Helen

Since receiving your email of June 4^th saying AWAF did not intend to represent my work in the festival I haven’t replied back. However, if you’ve read the blog posts I’ve made over the last week I think you’ll appreciate the anger and hurt I feel.

In March when I was notified of being selected I wrote back indicating my concern that AWAF was aware of my public outspoken support for womens rights. Here is a quote from Wendys reply "I've been personally following you for a while and I am aware and have absolutely problems with your women's rights activism. Australian Wearable Art Festival is apolitical and we value each artist for their art - no problems. Thanks for the heads up about potential issues though. I will keep an eye out and deal with any comments as/if they arise."

Getting that acknowledgement was a huge relief to me and gave me confidence to go ahead with investing the time, energy and resources to develop my concept. To date, I’ve spent at minimum 60 hours working on “Wedding Gown for Woman to Marry Her Garden”.

I hope that AWAF will reconsider its decision to expel me as a finalist. I’m under the impression a number of people have contacted AWAF on social media saying they support me being in the festival, regardless of what my beliefs might be and to say they believe my expulsion was unfair. Many people have contacted me to say those things which leads me to feel I have significant support. Most Australians still believe ordinary people are entitled to hold beliefs that shouldn’t be the cause of getting discriminated against or result in having an opportunity withdrawn.

Though still not finished my garment is beautiful and I’m so proud of it. People who have seen it in progress in the studio are impressed. I hope we’ll be able to reconcile and that my artwork will be showcased on the runway along with the other finalists in August.

I look forward to hearing from you

Sincerely

Pearl Moon

___________________________________________________________________________

At present I'm continuing to work on Wedding Gown for Woman To Marry Her Garden and the finished artwork will be on display as part of the Balmain Space exhibition. 

I have some amazing news I'm busting to tell about Wedding Gown but are bound by confidentiality at this point! All can be revealed sometime in the next week or 2!

Sometimes shit turns into compost which can grow something extrordinary.

 

Expelled from the Australian Wearable Art Festival, part 4

 I am grateful to internationally famous screenwriter Graham Linehan who has publicised my story on his Substack a few hours ago

JL on the Glinner Update

Graham Linehan is the much beloved creator of satirical sitcoms Father Ted, Black Books, The IT Crowd and much more. As a person in the arts he has also been vilified, deplatformed and regularly attacked for his defence of womens rights. Along with his Substack publication, The Glinner Update he has an irregular YouTube podcast called The Mess We’re In where he chats with with Irish feminist Helen Staniland and Canadian LGB activist Arty Morty.

If you’re wondering what the hell is going on in the world please check out and follow Grahams channels.

What has happened to me is part of a much larger story of how Australian women are being vilified and silenced when we try to talk about our concerns how the political agenda of Trans/Queer/Non Binary activists are regressing womens rights.

Below is a list of Australian women who are daily experiencing backlash from trans gender ideologues. Please google their names and follow their social media platforms to learn more and support them. These are some of the Australian women who are speaking out to stop our rights from being taken away and to uphold child safeguarding. We are not, and have never been “anti-trans”. Trans identifiers have rights, none of which they are being deprived of – it is their demand that women must give up the traditional and status quo rights and spaces that our female forbears fought for that we are questioning and resisting.

List of high profile womens rights activists in Australia

 Angie Jones, Kathryn Deves, Moira Deeming, Kirralie Smith, Stassja Frei, Sall Grover, Professor Holly Lawford Smith, Edie Wyatt, Janet Fraser, Rachel Wong, Jasmine Sussex, Anna Kerr, Jenny Kyng, Kat Karena, Nina Vallins

Womens Forum Australia   

Kirralie Smith, convener of Binary  

Sall Grover and Giggle crowdfunder

Thankyou to the people who contacted The Australian WearableArt Festival to give them feedback about my expulsion. I heard that the contact form on their website is now disabled. I think AWAF are hearing from people on their Facebook and Instagram social media but obviously negative comments are going to be moderated there too. Somebody observed that if you go to the “buy tickets” menu on their webpage there is a contact option there that still works. I am not seeking to be personally reinstated (cobblers chance) but hope you will let them know if you believe it is wrong and unfair to dump a woman artist who was selected on merit because they fear my belief that men can’t turn into women is going to cause upset to people who do believe that humans can change the sex they were born as.

It seems to me the Wearable Art Festival thought I was a lone woman with unusual and wrong opinions and that once discarded no one would notice or care. Perhaps they thought I would just go off quietly goosestepping into the sunset, feeling ashamed to be such an opinionated woman? (Vote Daniel Andrews out of govt, he who cynically slurred women speaking up for their rights as "nazis") In one of their emails to me they opined piously that I should reflect on my cancelings and deplatformings as to whether it was time to consider my opinions were wrong. Along with millions of women before me I am glad to be one those women who won't shut up, behave or stop making a fuss when there is justifiable cause. I think AWAF might be surprised to find out I am part of a vast international network of women and men who are actively resisting the incursions of Critical Social Justice Theory. Far from being alone and alienated I believe I am the mainstream.

My art has never been the least bit political. I’m not a post modernist and have never desired to plaster political slogans on my work. I am a woman textile artist working with the traditional mediums of women and interpreting textile embellishment in a contemporary paradigm. Until 6 years ago in all the decades of my art practise there was never any inclination to make public political statements. I kept personal my far left opinions and having voted Greens for 40 years as it had no relevance to my art making. It is only because I am truly alarmed that the ascendance of Critical Social Justice Theory is a massive threat to womens rights and the stable, successful flourishing of our democratic societies that I’m motivated to come forward wanting to talk with others who have the same concerns.

I am overjoyed to let readers know there are still curators and gallery owners that don’t bend over to accommodate the bullying and intimidation tactics of anti womens rights activists. My Sydney exhibition “Tangled Webs She Wove” will still be shown at Balmain Space located at 79 Beattie St, Balmain, opening on Friday July 8^th. 

I intend to complete the wearable artwork that AWAF would have shown on the runway at the Gold Coast Festival – Wedding Gown for Woman to Marry Her Garden – and the finished garment will be on display in the gallery. 

You can also book to attend a 2 hour workshop on Sunday 9^th/16^th or Saturday 22^nd July with me to learn some of my textile art technique. All welcome, including trans/queer/non binary, though I won’t use your preferred pronouns.

Expelled from the Australian Wearable Art Festival, part 3

 TERF WARS - the Women the Left Fear the Most DOCUMENTARY

I doubt there is any possibility I could be reinstated as a finalist in the Australian Wearable Art Festival 2023. Selected on merit then dumped for having a “hot potato” belief. I get the impression the organisers hope their problem is contained in just me personally and now that I am expelled everything will be just hunky dory and dinky di. 

Problem solved – now that the woman with the reprehensible beliefs has been thrown overboard they can get on with navigating the passenger ship through the ice field.

generated this in AI

I think the "she's right now, mate" hope will likely end up as wishful thinking. In workplaces, organisations and communities around Australia people are being confronted and polarised by what trans gender ideology is demanding we believe. Its their way or the highway. It was conceded in emails that my views made them fearful of disruption from LGBTQUIA+ and dumping me was a way of trying to protect the Wearable Art Festival from public controversy.

It anguishes me that the organisers and myself find ourselves in this situation where they believe there is the possibility of an existential threat to their business that I might be the cause of it.

In future, textile artists applying to enter AWAF will need to understand that believing men can’t turn into women makes it possible their application may get rejected because that belief is too “hot potato”. Perhaps it will become necessary to trawl through each applicant’s social media postings in case they have ever said anything vaguely critical of Trans/Queer/Non Binary identifiers? By expelling me AWAF have demonstrated that a finalist who supports Gender Critical Feminism is likely going to be unacceptable and they fear being associated with them. In this way, they are propagating to others the same fears they have already taken on.

Its surreal that Wendy and Helen view me as a potentially disruptive problem for the Australian Wearable Art Festival. The three of us share a passion for textile art. I started making art to wear clothes around 1983 and work full time as a textile artist. Wendy and Helen are significantly invested in a business that promotes art to wear. Wendy told me she is an admirer of my art and has followed my blog for some time. Sadly, along with 945 others she can no longer follow my account on Instagram after it was hacked and shut down in April by a mens rights activist going by the moniker “Dr Panti Bliss Cabrera”.

During our phone chat I discovered Wendy had been in the audience at the old “Benson and Hedges Fashion Awards” back in New Zealand in 1986. The B&H was an early forerunner of the now world famous ‘World of Wearable Art” still held in New Zealand (I am a NZer by birth). I was in the audience too as one of my garments had been selected and got modelled on stage. I called it “The Aviator” and the ensemble had a close fitting fabric helmet that is the same pattern I used for the headdress made for my AWAF entry. Regrettably I’ve lost all the pictures I had from that time and can’t show my original Aviator to readers. 

Heres some pics of the headdress for “Wedding Dress for Woman Marrying Her Garden”. The tall sides are supported by being stitched to the close fitting cloth helmet.

Diving deep into my closets yesterday I pulled out this cape that I wore on the night of the 1986 B&H fashion parade. I handpainted it on silk chiffon, the square in the centre is where it is put over the head. I wore it over a straight white sheath dress that was sashed at the hip, catching down the front and back hems of the cape, with a wide band tied in a bow (in the picture below, its photographed sideways, pegged to my clothesline with a blue sheet behind it)

Many people admired my ensemble and I wonder if Wendy noticed it too. How uncanny that now she probably feels only antagonism toward a woman artist she admired up until recently.

I have another exhibition of wearable art due to open in an inner city Sydney gallery on 8^th July – “Tangled Webs She Wove” – now only a month away. I’ve been literally too afraid to announce or talk about it due to fearing anti womens rights activists will target myself, the curator or the owner of the gallery with their outrage that I get public recognition for my art.

Trans Gender Ideology is not only polarising society between the believers and the questioners, it actively demonises anyone who resists their beliefs by slurring us as people who intend oppress and harm LGBTQUIA+. The ideology press gangs individuals, workplaces and organisations into furthering its dogmatic beliefs by cloaking itself as a “social justice” movement.

I feel like I'm the one who has been harmed, not them.

Expelled from the Australian Wearable Art Festival, part 2

Apologies to the Upper Hunter Valley Shire Council and those who attended the Sustainability and Upcycling talks at Murrurundi Library yesterday. I pulled out due to the mental health crisis instigated by the cruel and unfair treatment of the Australian Wearable Art Festival. I felt too shattered to stand up in public to give my presentation. I should be OK for the events tomorrow and later this month. They will be held at the public libraries in these towns.

Wednesday 7 June:      Scone 10am and Aberdeen 2pm

Wednesday 21 June:   Merriwa 10am and Cassilis 2pm

The picture below is a jacket I made from upcycled denim and cotton plaid fabrics in 2020. The pattern is my PDF sewing pattern "Zambeesi Jacket".

________________________________________________________________________

I’ve written this blog since 2008 – 15 years – and it may possibly just disappear into the ether without explanation, in a similar way to how I’ve been silenced, excluded, banned and blocked from other social media platforms. Here’s a link to YouTube channel Womens Declaration International, to a video where I discuss in detail my cancelation from social media.

Pearl Red Moon statement on Womens Declaration International

If the blog gets nuked and you’re curious to know what happens to me, here is a link to the Substack I publish. Substack is currently a platform that seems impervious to shutting down counter cultural views - so far….

Cosmic Pearl

___________________

Please watch this to get a sense of the enormity of how women are being silenced in Australia when we want to speak about our issues. It was published only a few hours ago....prepare to be horrified.

Court of the EDI Jester

Incidentally, I left a public comment about that video and it has already been removed.

__________________

For anybody who might wonder if I am just a nutty old crone, vegetating in a basement and hating on trannsexuals...here is a link to John Anderson, ex Australian politician who was shadow Deputy Prime Minister in the Liberal government. Anderson has 337,000 followers to his YouTube channel and shares the view that humans cannot change sex and that Queer Theory is a threat to womens rights and the stability of our society.

This is a clip, but the whole video is worth watching.

The truth is transphobic

________________________________________________________________________

Now to continue explaining my expulsion from the Australian Wearable Art Festival...

In February 2023 I applied to the Australian Wearable Art Festival to have my work showcased at their event. I was ecstatic to be advised on February 26^th, 2023 that the concept I’d submitted was successful in getting selected. In good faith I proceeded to start working on my garment. Over the next few months AWAF and I exchanged routine emails about our mutual preparations.

On May 23^rd I got an email indicating they had concerns that a thing I believe might be a “hot potato”. Obviously this made me very anxious and I sent 5 emails over the next 9 days seeking to clarify my status. None of those emails was acknowledged or addressed so on May 31^th I rang Wendy and asked to talk. In the phone conversation Wendy told how she had heard about Kellie-Jay Keen (or Posie Parker, she referred to her as) for the first time at the end of March this year in relation to the Let Women Speak rallies in Auckland, New Zealand when Kellie-Jay was mobbed and driven out of the public park where she had a permit to have a rally. Wendy referred to Kellie-Jay as “anti trans” and in other comments she made I felt it was implied Keen was an awful woman who got what she deserved when she was attacked. This left me aghast as I understood that awfulness was probably getting transferred to me. Eventually we arranged that Wendy, Helen, my husband (who I often need as an advocate and support person because I’m autistic) and I would get together for another phone discussion sometime over the weekend.

Dress made from fabrics recycled from a collection of stripey teeshirts

At 3.36 pm on Sunday, June 4^th I received an email from them stating I was expelled as a finalist in the Australian Wearable Art Festival. I presume this is due to having a “stance” that other participants in the event might disagree with.

As a finalist in AWAF I was one of 40 entrants who were selected on the merit of their artistic concept. 

I wonder how the other 39 feel about my dumping? I wasn’t invited to join the private WhatsApp and Facebook groups that the other finalists were given access to. I asked to be joined but it wasn’t acknowledged. I find it hard to believe that every single one of my fellow 39 finalists might disagree or find offensive my view that men cannot turn into women. In truth, I think more than a few of them might be in strident agreement. However, now that they see what the consequences are if they don’t keep quiet it means having to stifle saying anything or get dumped too. Even if they think my view is wrong they might have wanted to just publicly support that I’m allowed to state my beliefs in a democratic country without getting ejected. If any finalists share my view I wonder how they feel being in a position where they are required to tacitly endorse Queer Theory?

Having experienced the bullying and silencing tactics of anti-womens rights activists I understand why probably none of them are going to publicly support me. I wouldn't be surprised if they are already hearing from AWAF specifying what they are allowed and not allowed to say publicly.

I went to two Let Women Speak rallies in Australia, Sydney and Canberra. I spoke at the Sydney rally addressing my concerns at how trans ideology is regressing womens rights. 

In the rally address I spoke a lot about Critical Social Justice Ideology (CSJ) and how its adherents take on the mission to “queer” everything in society they disdain as normative, and especially despised is anything “heteronormative”. The roots of this transgressive ideology go right back to the mid 20Cth and started out as something fairly anodyne called “post-modernism”. I was an enthusiastic young acolyte of it myself until the late 1980s. Then four years of living in the notorious cult “Centrepoint Community” gave me the lived experience of what happens when heteronormative gets queered. Essentially women and children got sexually exploited by men who insisted normative boundaries are limiting Kumbaya being realised. Love is love! 

I learned boundaries are good and necessary to protect women and children. I am fighting for them.

_____________________________________________________________________

If you feel I have been unfairly treated by AWAF and want to let them know you disagree with my expulsion, here is a link to their contact form.

AWAF contact

Also, you might like to take a look at the Australian Wearable Art Festival Facebook page. 

AWAF Facebook

If you attend the event I hope you'll enjoy it and probably best not to wear your teeshirt that says "Adult Human Female". Those words are now considered transphobic and women have lost their jobs for wearing them in public.

I'll have more to say tomorrow.

Expelled from the Australian Wearable Art Festival, part 1

 

Yesterday, about 15 minutes after publishing my Going Nowhere blog post, I received an email confirming I am expelled as a finalist in the Australian Wearable Art Festival.

My expulsion is due to my public stance defending womens rights. The organisers of the festival, Wendy and Helen feared there would be backlash from the Trans/Queer/Non binary (TQ) people involved in the event if I was present. A particular focus of their concern was ensuring the backstage area should be a “safe space for everyone”. The backstage is of course where the models change into the garments that are going out onto the runway and get their makeup done.

Initially Helen, Wendy and I were going to have a phone conversation on Sunday but I got the email cancelling me instead so there wasn’t a chance to have a discussion about what happens backstage. If it had happened I did plan to ask what were the privacy arrangements for women who are getting dressed and undressed. It seems likely that backstage there may be men who say they are women, identifying as trans women and non binary. I am pretty sure the toilet facilities will be unisex and that correct pronouns may be enforced. And if any or all of that is true, it would have made me uncomfortable.

The foremost thing that makes me uncomfortable is that there is no consultation with how women feel being put in that possible situation. While some might have no misgivings at all, others may feel differently. A conservative Muslim woman would most definitely not allow herself to be in that position. Therefore a conservative Muslim woman would either not apply to enter the Wearable Art Festival, or have to make other arrangements backstage for her dignity, privacy and religious obligations. What happened to the much vaunted TQ assertions that they uphold “diversity and inclusiveness”?

This scenario neatly encapsulates many of the problems I have with the imposition of TQ ideology. Women are put in circumstances where we are directly impacted and not consulted about how we feel about our right to privacy and dignity. If we express discomfort or concerns we are scorned as bigots and transphobes. If we express them too publicly, you can lose your job or be cancelled off social media. Or get expelled from the Australian Wearable Art Festival. That we have a right to speak and not be shamed or coerced into going along with things we disagree with is not given any respect. It seems that the right of men to claim rainbow identities will always override the concerns of women and give them a free pass into spaces that have been segregated exclusively for women until recently.

I’ll continue this blog post tomorrow as I'm still in a state of extreme distress and upset. 

I’m incredibly grateful to the people both online and in my local community today who are rallying around to support me.

Below is a link to the contact form of the Australian Wearable Art Festival. If you think I have been unfairly discriminated against please send the organisers an email to let them know you think they made a wrong decision.

Contact AWAF

Going nowhere

Various forces are working very successfully toward completely obliterating my presence on social media and anywhere else in public.

It is with sorrow that I doubt my artwork "Wedding Gown for a Woman Marrying her Garden" will ever get modelled in public.

This picture of my workspace shows how hard I work to make sense out of chaos.

But sometmes the forces of chaos cannot be constrained and when powerfully driven by male-volent forces little things are always going to get overwhelmed.

Local sustainability talks and Garden Wedding dress update

 Local followers of my blog may be interested to know I've been invited back by the Upper Hunter Shire Council to give another talk for World Sustainability Day, as I did last year too. I'll be talking about why I base my art practise on principles of environmental sustainability, especially in regard to upcycling clothes and textiles. The talk will last about 10-15 minutes then I'll show and discuss some my latest upcycled fabrics and clothing and answer any questions people want to ask me. 

It would be wonderful to meet any of you in person if you were close enough to come along.

This picture of the promo poster advertises the other speakers and what their specific topic will cover. Our first event is at Murrurundi Library on Monday June 5th next week. Then we will bring the discussion to other public libraries of these other Hunter Valley towns on additional dates -

Wednesday 7 June:      Scone and Aberdeen

Wednesday 21 June:   Merriwa and Cassilis.

Meantime....back to labouring on the farm...I did a lot of work yesterday on the garment I'm making for  the Australian Wearable Art Festival - despite Lulus best efforts to peck everything apart!

Its gotten to the stage where I was able to pin it to one of my dress forms with stiffening inserted at the hemline to make the front, back and sides stand out rigidly so that the sculptural form I had visualised in the original concept is getting closer to being realised.

My apprentice is totally a Galah

My husband and I love birds and keep 14 of them as pets.

Lucy Lou, is an Australian native parrot that we call a Galah. Americans usually refer to her species as a Pink Breasted Cockatoo. Galahs are numerous in Australia and as I live in a rural area there are literally flocks of them in my yard most days. Along with King Parrots, Rosellas and all sorts of adorable little finches.

We've had Lulu for nearly a year, since she was about 6 weeks hatched (when we first got her I had to hand feed her liquid formula) and she is extremely tame. Lulu, and another one of our parrots, Rozita, who is an Eclectus female, live freely in our house and have never been caged.

Lulu interacts with us during the day as we go about doing things in our house. She absolutely loves beads and textile art. She is so naughty I literally can't do any beading or stitching with her in the room as she will want to take the scissors or needles out of my fingers. She will bite, screech and fight to take fabric, beads and needles off me. To get any textile art done without harassment I have to shut her in the conservatory or leave the house altogether and go to my studio to get any hands on work done.

This morning I made this video of Lulu playing around on my part made garment for the Australian Wearable Art Festival which is hanging in my lounge room.

Progress on Garden Wedding Dress

 A week ago I started creating the dress that is my entry for the Australian Wearable Art Festival.

I want the surface to be very textured so that motifs look raised and floating above the background.

For inspiration I consulted one of my favourite textile art refernce books - The Art of Manipulating Fabric, by Colette Wolff. This book is brilliant but for anyone seeking it out it may be hard to find as the original edition was printed in 1996. As I have been doing textile art for nearing 40 years I have accumulated quite a substantial reference library and note many books in the collection have been out of print for decades.

At this very early stage the dress looks quite soft and limpid but if you refer back to the illustration of  my concept garment in the blog post previous to this you can see how the hemline at completion will be a rigid square. That will be quite easily achieved when the surface is finished by making channels along the hem that will have stiff plastic threaded into them. If necessary to achieve a very structured look I could also make vertical channels along the seams to make the dress stand out from the waist down.

The pink background fabric was a nylon curtain. Its there as backing to support all the decorative elements as they get stitched on.

I'm really happy with progress so far but anticipate working on for another couple of weeks yet as I want the surface to be really dense with embellishment.

Australian Wearable Art Festival 2023

 I'm proud to announce having been selected as one of 40 finalists for the Australian Wearable Art Festival 2023. This awesome event will be held on the Gold Coast, Queensland over 2 days on August 11/12th, 2023.

Above is the concept picture I submitted when I applied to enter. The picture was a collage created by gluing on pictures of other surfaces from garments I've made in the past. Mostly they were taken from my 2019 coat called "Coat for a Bohemian Princess".

 

At the time of entering my vision for AWAF I was uncertain what to name the concept garment, but after much brain racking I've settled on "Wedding Gown for a Woman to Marry Her Garden".

In the last week I finished the headdress and have now started making the dress. Though the dress looks simple in the illustration, it will be quite an epic production. The most challenging bit to construct will be the hem as it is square and rigid. The garment will be effectively hang suspended from the models shoulders. Rather than making the dress from conventional cloth pieces I've built a frame and have started filling in the spaces which comprise the 4 sides.

I'm somewhat restricted in what I can show as part of my committment to help the Festival succeed is not to reveal the entire finished garment until the night of the parade on August 11th.

So here is one picture only of the headdress to serve as a little tantaliser.

Garb Age exhibition, the full tour

Garb Age exhibition, full tour 

I'll be gradually shutting down my YouTube channel - Pearl Red Moon Artist.

Due to my wrongthink political opinions I have already received 2 strikes on YouTube and are currently shadow banned, so its likely only a matter of time before they delete my entire channel. 

Going forward I'll be uploading videos to my newly started Rumble channel - 

Pearl Red Moon Textile Artist.

short Tour of Garb Age

Short tour of my wearable art exhibition.

Beautiful things and sewage

Its five days until the opening of my art show in Murrurundi. The picture shows the hours it will be open. 

The venue is the lovely historic Old Tattersalls Hotel, located on the corner Adelaide and Haydon Streets at Murrurundi, NSW.

I’ve shown quite a few of the garments made for the show here, but not all. I try to video record the process of making many of the pieces but as I always struggle with the video cam technology and the editing programs, quite a few videos end up failed.

My husband and I will be manning the gallery floor so if you have a chance to call in it would be lovely to meet you and talk about textile art.

Before the show finishes I will load up a video tour around the gallery floor.  

   

Long term followers might realise I have been through some weird shit over the last 5 years – starting with the appropriation and mass manufacturing of copies of my work, my inability to assert my legal copyright to have the platforms enabling the sale of the fake garments to take down the images, being accused of being a racist during the kimono fracas, various cancelations around social media, more, more…   Dealing with all this stuff has been seriously distracting to my art practice, has lead to heightened levels of anxiety and at times left me feeling quite fragile and broken. The common factor in having been exposed to all this is social media. A great deal of the time I feel its like a open sewer running through my home. Fetid and stinking. Being on the spectrum I have a tendency to fall into obsessive compulsive thinking. This is actually a benefit in my artmaking as I have an inherent ability to focus intensely and a passion for organising tiny details. But when it comes to social media I can’t separate as a passive observer and it activates an addictive response in me where I feel compelled to keep seeking solutions to the problems in front of my eyes. In the last few years I’d reasonably calculate having wasted at least 50% of the time I could have spent far more productively and joyously on my artmaking.

So I intend to make it a goal to limit and start to wean myself off the time I spend on it. One platform has already been removed completely whether I choose or not!

Four days ago my Instagram account. @pearlredmoonart, was hacked and taken over and I am locked out, without any control over it. The bad actor who hijacked it is sending out malware virus to my followers. If you follow my Instagram I recommend to unfollow. I’ve sent 5 notifications requesting urgent help from IG without any action or acknowledgement. I am well aware of not being a valued user so perhaps they intend never to unlock my account? Frankly I've gotten to a point where I hardly care, it causes more problems than being enjoyable. It controls me rather than being a tool I use to make my life more interesting.

I’m mulling over some possibilities which will allow me to divorce from social media, spend lots more time on artmaking and still be able to share what I make and sell my produce. For example I want to develop the YouTube channel in a much more sophisticated way and perhaps offer fee paying classes. As soon as the show is up this weekend I'll start work on publishing an illustrated booklet showing the garments made for exhibitions this year, in the same way I did for Thirty Coats in 2020. 

Thirty Coats is For sale in my Etsy shop.  

And I’m thinking on expanding on that by publishing specific art garment projects with both technique and patterns. 

The 3^rd enterprise I’m considering to develop is something I’ve thought about for 2 years. And that would be to offer “Art and Garden” tours of my beautiful garden and home studio where artworks can be offered directly for sale to visitors. That would be by appointment.  

Next blog to write up after the show opens this weekend will be back to the more dreary subject of my politics and the latest round of social media cancellings and castigations. 

I really must redirect the social media sewer...