Textiles

'Circles of Friends' 2011 120cm x 180cm

'Comfortable Friends' (2011) 220cm x 220cm

I looooooovvvvveeeee textiles. They are an endless source of inspiration and fun. When you think of textiles, you may just think of cloth but there is so much more to this medium than cloth alone. There is paper, plantlife, dyes - natural and synthetic, computer cable, wire, mesh ... it really is endless.

This was the original colour inspiration for my finished pieces. I love the colours used in this cloth.

These are some of the pieces recently completed. The square quilted piece is completely hand stitched with the exception of the border and each piece of fabric was given to me by a girlfriend and nothing was new.

Some pieces were formerly clothing while some was old bedlinen. Each piece was dyed using a range of dyes, from food colouring, gum leaves, onion skins through to synthetic dyes.

The biggest thing to appreciate about this wonderful artform is the amount of time it takes to complete a piece. Textiles in any form equals 'time'.

This cloth was made using a bag of rags that were joined together using random cutting. They were then wrapped and dyed using Eucaluptus leaves to create the base for the stitched circles. The circles are to represent the circle of friends that if you are lucky, you have throughout a life time.

Old Stuff...

I find portraits challenging but a great exercise for recalling facial dimensions. After talking to a old friend recently it reminded me of a few pieces I have sitting in my folio. It's funny how your style doesn't really change over the years, it just improves with practice.

Ready to go back...

In cleaning up my files ready to start back again in a weeks time I came across some of the work completed for a drawing unit last year. Focussing on three dimensional forms and the human body it was a great lesson in teaching your brain to switch off and only draw what the eye can see.

I spent some time viewing some of Henri Matisse's work which I found beneficial when working on these compostitions. Each image was completed in a matter on minutes with the top one being done by only looking at what you are are having to draw and not the paper you are drawing on.

Self portraits are one of the most complicated things to accomplish. When you have to add in a dark space and working only by candlelight you begin to focus only on what the eye can see and not what your mind tells you should be there.

End of 2010

What a busy year. I've been really bad at posting this year but will endeavour to improve. Here are a couple of projects that formed part of final assessments. The drawing project was a collaborative effort with 5 of us (myself, Emily Hall, Jodie Whitby, Maryanne and Francis Glanville).

The other images are the results of Sculpture...

And Textiles...

Last piece

Spirituality (acrylic on cardboard - March 2010)

Forgot this one...

End of Term

On the Inside (bark, wire, nuts, leaves - March 2010)

End of term was also assessment time. I finally got my head around collage and put together the above piece looking at bark as it falls from the tree. I wanted to encourage the viewer to look beyond what you can see to what's on the inside.

Swinging with the Daisies (cardboard, acrylic, string, paper, wood - March 2010)

Our last task for the term was to create a piece (still focussing on the ideas that evolved from our words) but where one dimension of the piece was equivalent to your height. The other link was that it had to have a connection to a favourite object that we had brought in.

Mine was my Gingham Daisy Megacino Mug in a Paisley design. The finished result was this cute swing using a book as the seat with the cover painted in an Indian inspired henna design. The ropes were simple pieces of string with daisies threaded through (to resemble daisy chains) hung from a branch. I could picture myself happily swinging there for hours. I think I might have to make a real usuable one of these.

Roll on Term 2...

March and April

Week 2 found us working in groups to create some form of artwork using overhead projectors and obscure images such as a photo of zebras, a really crappy plastic poinsettia flower, a transparency of some manequins and another transparency of a grid with little car and truck shapes on it.

Not very inspiring objects but what we came up with was interesting. It certainly puts the individual dynamics of four people who are nothing alike to the test.

Cup of Life (pencil on paper February 2010)

For week three we had to use the three words from the previous week along with one of the design elements (mine being tone) to create another piece. Must say I quite like my giant teacup...

Books of Life (acrylic, cardboard and paper - March 2010)

But rather than just using tone as in black and white, I experimented with developing the 'tone' of a piece which is what the Books of Life does. Each book contains a poem relating to the title. The books represent each stage one goes through in their lifes journey.

Later in the term provided the opportunity to work with collage and also to manipulate photographs. I particularly like the second photograph. Originally it showed a group of students sitting at individual consoles in the library but when it was folded removing the computers from the image, it ended up with some very intense gazing.