SAlt exhibition- My work on display

As posted earlier, my work will be on display in the Exhibition Buildings in the Carlton Gardens Melbourne from the 18-21st April 2013. 

Below is copy of the artist statements from each of the SAlt group members and our logo.

My artwork on display in Melbourne this week

After two years of working on artworks and not being able to show any of the work (very frustrating) it is finally time for the exhibition to open. I blogged several times over the last 2 years about the group called SAlt that I am part of. South Australian living textiles (SAlt). There are 5 of us in the group, Judi Bushby, Julie Haddrick, Francie Mewett and Suzanne Gummow.

Our exhibition is entitled 'The fabric trail... journeys of five textile artists'. The works all revolve around the themes of journeys. It has been a very challenging 2 years and some of the individual themes on the topic 'jounreys' have been quite challenging.

From the 18th - 21st April you can find my work at the Royal Exhibition Building in the Carlton Gardens in Melbourne.

After Melbourne the work will continue to travel around Australia for approximately the next 18 months. I'll let you know when and where it will be at various times.

Hope you all get to view the works as they travel around Australia.

Below is a closeup photo of one of my works from the individual theme 'journey within'. Each topic was open for each artist to individually interpret.

I''m the guest speaker at an upcoming exhibition

I've been invited by the 2012 Certificate IV students from Marden Senior College to open their upcoming art exhibition called 'Creative Fusion'. 

Below is the invite along with a little blurb about the exhibition. 

      Creative Fusion (Marden Senior College)

     Painting & Textile Art Works by Marden Senior College Graduates

      2 - 26 April 2013

Address: Phone: Fax:

558 Magill Rd, Magill (Corner Pepper St & Magill Rd) (08) 8364 6154 (08) 8332 3164

Email: Open Hours:

pepperstreet@burnside.sa.gov.au Tuesday to Saturday 12 noon - 5pm Find us on Facebook

Work going into Pepper Street Exhibition

I found out about a month ago that a piece of my textiles work has been accepted for an exhibition at Pepper Street Gallery (South Australia) titled 'backyard'. My work is based on the circular shapes found in my dad's backyard wood heap. The work is used as the header here on my blog and is also on my business card.

Southern Textiles Conference- Carol Wilkes

Carol Wilkes from Queensland is one of the tutors at the Southern Textiles Conference. She works in a range of areas including wearable art and wall based textiles pieces. She is a fantastic teacher (I did one of her workshops a few years ago) and manages to pack so much information into a short period of time. She shares all her trade secrets and so wiling to help students in anyway possible. Gorgeous person.

Below are examples of her work, these ones are mainly comprised of machine made cording.

My published work

Well after my work being accepted some time ago for a Fibre Design book it is now on the TAFTA website. If you click on the link below my work comes on the first 2 pages- Sarah Smith.

http://www.tafta.org.au/design_book/Surface%20Design/Surface%20Design%20FINAL_edited_resized.pdf

I also have my own flickr site with some of my work on it. 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/barefeetsarah/sets/

My work accepted for publishing in a book

I was so excited to receive an email the other day saying that my work had been accepted for publication in an Australian textile fibre book. To my dismay, I read on to find out that the digital standard of the other work submitted was of very poor quality. As a result, the book will not be published.

I am disappointed, but not surprised by the fact that a lot of the images were low quality. Unfortunately I think this is somewhat to do with the age and lack of technological knowledge that a lot of our textiles artists lack. I don’t want to sound like some young little know it all brat, but I am constantly observing textiles artist’s/students in my work place and so feel I am in a position to comment on this matter. My observations often worry me in regards to the mostly middle age and older students we continually attract. We are always trying to find younger students at my school to do our textiles courses, but students under the age of 40 are in very small numbers.

I think we need to look at ways of encouraging younger students into the textiles area and also improving the technological skills of the older students. As a teacher I'm going to put some real thought into how we can go about achieving these goals. Any suggestions???

Here are the photos of my work that was accepted. 

This red piece was based on my fathers wood pile I remember from when I was a child. I used to love the way he would stack all the logs in perfect order. The piece has numerous hand dyed fabrics that were cut to shape and then free machine and bobbin stitched place. 

This piece is reverse applique based on how I love lying under trees looking up into the branches.