Visiting Heide

Last Thursday I went to visit Heide with two of my daughters to see the Fiona Hall exhibition Big Game Hunting. It was fascinating and very inspiring. I loved the big tapa bark pieces she had done recently- these were huge and  so subtle yet wonderful. You were allowed to photograph but without a flash so my photos were not very good.I think I need to go again.Her work incorporates much of the detritus of our society- all the things we throw away and she reweaves them, knits them, reassembles them- it has me thinking! Her Djalkiri etchings were there as well- I love the colouring and detail in the etchings and the layering of the colours.

As always we walked around the vegetable Garden at Heide- I love the garden there and  as I am reading  The Heart Garden: Sunday Reed and Heide by Janine Burke( I can't find a good link but here is a review) it seemed all the more poignant. One of the  gardeners was trimming the pelargoniums, and when I asked he gave me several big cuttings- so a little of Heide lives here in downtown Newcomb! The Reeds were great patrons of modern art in Australia- and without them one wonders where it would all have gone- yes their lives were messy because their relationship with the artists was often also personal, and though altruistic in their passion for modern art there was an  amount of manipulation involved as well. However without them there would be no Heide, wish such patrons existed for the textile arts!

I have taken up my morning pages again- I had let it go just before I went overseas to work-they do help sort out the muck from the mire and also allows me to focus more positively and to plan a little.

And I have been working on a hand stitched piece for the Voyage art group. Last year I made a piece that was for our first submission, which I sold ( the downside of selling work, sometimes it is needed again for exhibitions but I cannot afford not to sell work, so it becomes a bit of a juggling act) and as the work form our first year is going to be exhibited at Veldhoven in October I needed to make a new piece. My first piece last year was horizontal ( dimensions are 10 inches x 20 inches) but all my other pieces after that were vertical, so I have made this new piece which is to replace the piece I sold  also vertical- then all the pieces will be vertical.

And there is still time to join the Traveller's Blanket Class!- just send me a message.