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.

Primary Colour Collages

My year 7 art class made these primary colour collages a few weeks ago. I forgot to photograph them before being laminated a stapled to a display board. As a result, the photos have reflections on them and are very oddly cropped. Hopefully you can still get an idea of the great work the students did.

As always, I can't put names on the students work for school privacy reasons.

year 7 Asian artwork

Some of my year 7 art class have just finished their small Asian style canvases.

Students had to complete their work in several steps. They first had to complete colour theory exercises so that they would understand the results of mixing colours.
They then learnt to dye paper using orizomegami (similar to origami but involves dying the paper). They then had to draw a range of paper lanterns from real life. The next step was to draw a branch (we had some very creative interpretations of the branches provided) on their dyed paper and add their images of hanging paper lanterns. Finally, we stretched their paper around a small canvas.

It was wonderful watching the girls dyeing their paper, one of them even had a 'lightbulb' moment. Whilst dipping her paper in the dyes she looked at me and said, 'we learnt colour theory so we would know what dye colours would mix well together didn't we'. It was a relief to know that some of what I teach them actually makes sense to them.

The girls who had finished were so pleased with their work that they begged me to take them home. I agreed they could take them home only if they took a photo of their work and sent me a copy. The photos below were taken by the girls on their ipads.

Yr 9 Colour Wheels

My year 9 art class are just finishing off their colour colours. Below are a few photos of the ones I have received so far.

This first one is fantastic. It is sliced up pencils, crayons and an assortment of beads, etc.

Bit hard to see on here but the yellow section above has little tiny chickens on it.

All the flowers were cut with a stamp type thing out of the different coloured 

papers and then all assembled. 

Papermaking workshop photos continued...

In my last post I  shared some photos from a papermaking workshop I held several years ago. The last post showed the equipment, some of the pulps, etc. This post shows some of the examples of the actual work produced by the students. 

I still can't believe it has taken me nearly 2 years to be able to find these photos.

Papermaking workshop photos

I just found some photos from a papermaking workshop I ran a few years ago. I had always planned to publish them on here but when my computer died a few years earlier I thought I had lost them. I just found a copy on an old portable hard drive. It reminds me of the importance of backing up your work. I will post a whole pile of the photos (yes I'm biased) but I think there are some really great ones.

I haven't taught papermaking since this last workshop as there is a huge amount of preparation needed. Maybe one day I'll teach another one.

The photos shown were a 4 day workshop that included a whole range of papermaking techniques.

Some of the equipment for the day

Some of the additional plant products I provided for adding to the paper pulp

The room setup with vats everywhere.

Tubs of cross shredded paper waiting to be processed.

White paper pulp with dye squirted on top- yet to be mixed

Some of the many sheets drying.