Art to Wear by Pearl

reverse applique, red and green zig zags

Applique and stenciling

"Sandgate Angel" 

Pictures of some of my "art to wear"garments available in my shop.

Rodney and I will be at the "Art Bazaar" market in Singleton this coming Sunday. Civic Park from 10 - 4pm.

Tah dah-dah!!! Fanfare for shop opening!

Pearl outside her shop, on the New England Highway, Murrurundi

I'm back after another long non-blogging sojourn.... 

....BUT! a lot of art has been happening!

With very little fanfare I opened a retail shop in the middle of Murrurundi village a month ago. It is at 71 Mayne St  -  or more simply in the middle of Murrurundi township, directly opposite Dooleys Store.

I'm making womens clothing. Original one of kind items - hand painted, dyed, stenciled, appliqued and embellished. 

At present I'm only open Saturday and Sundays 10am - 4pm. Next month opening hours will extend to 4 days a week.

The room behind the shop is set up as my studio where I sew, paint and print in the room adjacent to the retail area and can therefore look after the shop at the same time. My fine art canvases are also on display and for sale.

 

What she saw

Another digital image

"What she saw"  digital manipulation, Pearl Red Moon, 2013

Head Nest, tired and heading home

Textile and Art Academy finished yesterday. Rodney and I both did great classes and enjoyed our time away immensely. This afternoon we start heading home.

I received some images from the photographer Sally Alden of the lovely young model we styled and photoed a week ago. I had a quick play with photoshop this morning and produced this image. These digital manipulations will be used as the basis for pictures ....yet to be made

Jade Lace

HUZZAH!! Rodney and I set off to Brisbane tomorrow to have our annual holiday at Textile and Art Academy. We will both be doing 5-day workshops. Rodney is doing a mixed media drawing class and I'm doing nuno felting with Catherine O'Leary. We spent many hours packing up the van this morning. I'm always anxious I may have left a kitchen sink behind....

This afternoon we did a photo shoot in collaboration with professional photographer Sally Alden over at Willow Tree. We had a most extraordinary young model who was fabulous to style and work with. We look forward to getting some great source material for basing new artworks on. I'll share some of those images eventually and show how we use them as the basis for imagery to develop into new pictures.

Meantime this evening I had a little fun playing in Photoshop to create this digitally manipulated image I'm calling "Jade Lace" I send the two original images it was evolved from just to give you an idea to what degree it is altered. The face was taken from my work "Out of the Violet and Blue" (2011) and integrated into a picture of a piece of lace made in 2008.

"Jade Lace" digitally manipulated image. Pearl Red Moon, 2013

Visage book sent to Brisbane

Over the long weekend I finished the container for the visage book and the whole thing was sent off to Brisbane on Tuesday. I'll see it again at TAA after the 24th when the whole collection of Project 22 books will be on display.

I made a container of painted, stencilled paper which was hand stitched onto a wire frame I constructed. two flaps close over the cover of the book.

Looking down on the book in the container, flaps closed

Book in the container, shown from the back, flaps opened

Book in the container, flaps opened

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.