Visage book is almost finished

Only a couple of weeks to go before Rodney and I head off to Brisbane to be students at Textile and Art Academy 2013. Almost a couple of years ago I joined Project 22, an altered book project that was proposed by Lena Tisdall, the convener of TAA. She called for 22 participants and laid out a very loose set of suggestions for creating a book. Virtually the only requirement was that at least a portion of a certain book she had selected should be used in the project. All 22 participants received the same book. The finished books will be on display at the event for the 7 day duration.

I started work on the book about six months ago and are finally close to finishing. Very little of the original book is identifiable. I completely dismantled it, cutting off the spine to release the individual pages then glued 3-4 together to create rigid boards and then gessoed over the original text and pictures. I assembled my art on the pages and stitched them onto a strip of canvas which was folded concertina style and stitched to a spine. On pages 7-8 there is small flap which is the only identifiable fragment of the original book.

Pages 7-8, the image to the upper right is a flap that turns back

the flap turned back, revealing an image of a little ferry boat and the word "River" at the upper left, which are cut from the back page of the original book. The frame of the flap surrounding the faint image of the eye and nose was also from the original back page of the book

pages 8-9

pages 5-6

The last thing I have to do today is make a box or container to enclose the book then it will be sent off to Brisbane next week.

and into June

I haven't had anything to say for months. Everything has been quiet, not much art happening and the garden is going into dormancy with Winter approaching. Rodney installed a combustion wood heater in our lounge room last weekend and we've been enjoying the comfort and warmth. One of the nice things I look forward to over Winter is using the original, still functioning woodstove in our kitchen. It is a big perk of living in the country to have wood fires, made easy by having ready access to collecting wood from the properties of local farmer friends. Winter is a whole lot less daunting and dreary gazing into the flickering flame and clutching a steaming mug of milo in front of the crackling embers. Very primal....

the newly installed wood combustion heater in our lounge room

On the floor to the right thats Oscar, our fur baby, doing what dogs have done around the fires of their human companions since the beginning of time - snugging in as close as possible without singeing his fur!

One of my few creative projects recently was to make this charming dress for a 7 year old child. Just a few houses down our street lives the very accomplished artist Charlotte Drake-Brockman and our granddaughters are only a year apart in ages. I offered her a gorgeous dress my granddaughter had grown out of but it also didn't fit the other child.....but Charlotte loved it so much I got talked into making something similar.....

The patchwork bodice with hand beaded detailing

The whole dress with stencilling on the skirt

Rodney and I are looking forward to taking our annual holiday at the end of this month. We are off to Brisbane to attend "Textile and Art Academy" at Indoorpilly. I'm very excited to be taking a 5 day nuno felting workshop with textile artist Catherine O'Leary. I have long admired this ladys fabulous creations and know I'll be coming home fired up with lots of inspiration!

our exhibition at Breathing Colours

Rodney and I were in Sydney last weekend for the official opening of our exhibition at Breathing Colours on Saturday afternoon. A good crowd attended and we had some sales...yeehaaa! I sold "The Threads that run Through" along with some other work. Very pleasing to have such a positive reception!

The municipality of Leichhardt Council was having an event called "Art Month" and last weekend coincided with their artist "open studio" day so Rodney set up on the street outside the gallery and I put up my sewing  machine in the gallery and we showed visitors how we work.

Rodney outside Breathing Colours on Darling Street

My sewing machine inside the gallery

I took "Valda" along to use as a work in progress to demonstrate with. The last time any work was done on the canvas was 3 months ago. In the 3 hours that we were "open studio-ing" I managed to get quite a bit done as well as chatting to people and explaining how I work to build up the layers of paint, stitch and textile.

Breathing Colours is located at 446 Darling St, Balmain, in Sydney. The show is open until late next Sunday afternoon, April 7th.

exhibition at Breathing Colours

Rodney and I are having our first exhibition in Sydney at Breathing Colours gallery, located at 446 Darling St, Balmain.

Breathing Colours

The official opening will be this Saturday, 23rd March, between 4-7pm. Please come along for wine, hors d'ouvres and to say hello to us!

The gallery has been recently taken over by new owner Robin Hill and she is a passionate supporter of avant garde and emerging artists. The gallery shop has a marvellous selection of jewellery and ceramic arts.

If you can't make the opening the show will be up until April 8th and the gallery is open 7days.

A thread that runs through

I finished the above work a few days ago. It was started about 3 weeks ago and I showed the beginning of it in a previous blog. I had intended to submit it to American artist Lesley Riley for consideration to include in a book she is putting together of artworks inspired by quotations but there wasn't time to finish it by her submission deadline. The quote it is based on, which Lesley supplied me, was by Georgia O'Keeffe "The painting is like a thread that runs through all the reasons for all the other things that make one's life"

My digital camera has been broken so I haven't been able to take any pictures to show the process of how the layers of paint, textile and embroidery were built up. The finished stretched work measures 55cm x 90cm. Below is a close up detail

Rodney is a Champion!

Rodney with "Outback Worker" at Wallabadah Art Show

Last night Rodney and I attended the opening of the Wallabadah Art Show. Wallabadah is a delightful bush town, also on the New England Highway, about 50km north of Murrurundi. They had their 4th art and jazz festival last night and Rodney and I entered 2 works each into the art show. Last year I won the champion prize and this year Rodney won with his fabulous work "Outback Worker"

The portrait is of well known Murrurundi resident Shane Brown. Shane expertly and adeptly removed half a dozen dangerous gum trees from our backyard a few years ago and we enjoyed his jocular and larrikin humour and were impressed with his wonderful craggy features. Rodney thought he would be a great portrait subject with his piercing blue eyes and strong bone structure.

Rodney has been exploring and experimenting with using media in unorthodox ways recently, for example using charcoal and raw pigment colour with bonding agents and rubbing them into coarse textured board, then overworking with thick and thin layers of crayon and pastel. When the various layers are built up he works in reverse to pull off colour, with rubbing, scaping and scratching to reveal the under layers, often right back to the board (a technique more traditionally described as sgraffito). This results in a wonderfully complex surface that is gorgeous to look at both up close and from a distance.

Congratulations Rodney! you are not only a champion husband but also a champion artist!

Art for charity raffle

Raffle tickets – at the Chemist

$2.00 each

“The Garden of my Mind”  by Pearl Red Moon

“The Garden of my Mind” was created in 2009. Pearl’s studio is in her garden and she is an enthusiastic gardener.

The plants and flowers of the garden, its seasonal cycles of flourishing, dormancy and regeneration are a frequent inspiration.  In this work she portrays a womans face surrounded by abstract fragments representing lush & exotic plant forms.

Pearl Red Moon is a well known mixed media/textile artist who has exhibited, taught art workshops and sold her work to collectors in Australia, New Zealand and the USA for over 20 years.   She now lives in Murrurundi.

Pearl’s Gallery is next door - call 0431 566 021

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Tickets will also be available for sale at:

Murrurundi Art Prize - RSL Hall  Exhibition dates are:   May 2 –19        Open 10am to 4pm        Fri/Sat/Sundays.

Drawn on May 20^th 2013

Winner will be notified by phone

All proceeds go to Murravale Community Hostel

Arranged by Murrurundi Arts Council

The Arts Council are putting my mixed media work "The garden of my Mind" up for raffle. For those of you who read my blog and live locally it will be on display in the Chemist shop window and tickets available to buy there. The work is about 40x45cm.

If you live far away or overseas and want to buy tickets you can forward $$$ to me by Paypal or email me for direct debit details. I'll write your name and phone number on the ticket stub and email your numbers. If you win the art I'll post it to you free!

new visage

I made another face image to add to the VISAGE book today. This one is a bit "pop art" inspired

Visage book

A couple of days ago I signed up to do a class at the 2013 Textile and Art Academy event in Brisbane. I've long admired the superb felting of textile artist Catherine O'Leary so when I saw she was offering a long and indulgent 5 days of tuition I succumbed to the temptation and signed up. She taught at the same event in 2011 but it coincided with when I recovering from surgery so I couldn't go. At that time the convener of the event, Lena Tisdall, had also been calling for volunteers to join an altered book project which she called Project 22. I joined up along with 21 others. We were allowed a very generous 20 months to create the books which Lena plans to display at the next event coming up at the end of June this year.

Yesterday I got out the book Lena had sent to each of the players. Fortunately she had given very open guidelines that we could choose whatever appealed as a theme for the book. The book for altering was called "Pictorial History of the Brisbane River" and had some lovely black and white photos from over a hundred year period but a book based on that theme had no interest to me....so I dismantled the book by cutting off the spine and glueing groups of 3 pages together to give a nice firm surface to work on. The book is quite small, the pages are 17.5 x 24.5cm

The cover of my altered book - VISAGE

I choose the theme "Visage" for the book ("Facebook" being already taken!)

Today I made a cover and 2 pages for the book. I used an image of the same face cropped to various different sizes and printed them in grayscale through the inkjet printer then over painted them with colour, stencilled, stitched and appliqued in various ways. My plan is to do 12 -20 images of faces in this way.

"Ava" fully framed

Today the work  "Ava wears a Gorgeous Yoke" was finished and mounted in this elaborate backframe. The actual painting on the inner canvas is 40 x 130cm so its one of the largest images I've done. The scale I can work at is limited by the practicality of getting the canvas under the sewing machine arm for embroidery.

The inner edge of the frame is stencilled with pale blue triangles.

Heres a close up picture showing the stitching and embellishment on the lower part of the figure.

I'm going to enter this work for the Muswellbrook Art Prize. It is a major biennial show with a $20,000 first prize. Its also juried so I have to submit the image to the initial selection process first! I put in a work a couple of years ago that was not selected (Rodney got in) but that same work later won first prize in a section of our local art show so I don't think it was too lousy!

Wish me luck!