Homage to Dufy Finished

Finally I can say my homage to Dufy is finished- it really took a lot a lot of stitching, a lot more than I had anticipated. All those roofs had to be stitched several times to make them stand out. I  used a light coloured thread on the back of the piece  so that you can see the  image albeit reversed- may as well see all that stitching! Even though there was movement in the  final print ( the river is not quite where it should be) and it was my fifth attempt I really could not spend any more time on it, as the transfer papers take more than a day to paint.And why am I so taken with Dufy- well this scene is based on a design he made for a tapestry and he did a number of tapestry designs- so there was a  textile  sensibility that he used in creating the design  and well I could see it translated into lutradur. As you can see I have called the piece  Hommage a Dufy and Paris

Tour d'Eiffel  on the wrong side I know, but when you do this amount of stitching , it's worth seeing ?

I also belong to a small group called Voyagearttextiles and our brief this year is to create six A3 pieces  exploring a personal theme. I am exploring Faces of Old, but there will be more explanation on the Voyage art blog, but I did want to share the image of the piece I worked on this weekend.These beautiful and whimsical elongated figures on the Western entrance to Chartres Cathedral capture my attention every time I see them- they are a mix of romanesque abstraction with  the gothic.

Fleeting Moments

I finished my Fleeting Moments piece today for the Colours  of Africa outdoor exhibition.I had to make something light weight but also able to endure a months worth of weather so I hope it will stand up to the weathering process. It is quite large about 1.6 metres square so i suspect the wind will have quite a role to play in how it survives. It was a bit of a dilemna making it,because how much time do you spend on something that  will disintegrate. Anyway it is off to Belgium and we shall see!

My eldest daughter Celeste  and I have been designing "dolls" that will form part of my "France" exhibition. We drew the figures and then made linocuts and hopefully will have them made into kits  by Fiona Wright's The Stitching Project so that they will come ready to stitch with threads included.At the moment they are still in the try out stage- they are both exactly the same size but because I put a bottom in the female shape she grew a bit taller. We have to think of a name for our project- any ideas anyone? I also used brown printing ink as I did not have any black ink on hand and I don't especially like the brown ink but I was anxious to see how they would stitch up.

Sunday Getting Hotter

I often work in the sunroom attached to this house which is not insulated- so in the depths of winter it's too cold and in the heat of summer it is way too hot.Today is one of those days- it's been hot all week, so even my other workroom which gets the full sun gets too hot to work, so it's been a week of uneven work habits- and yet I feel like I am shoring up for something- not quite sure what- but it creates that odd feeling of expectancy- but expectancy of what?

My tour of France has been cancelled- not enough travellers unfortunately and none for the tour of Italy.It's a pity there were some wonderful things to see and enjoy.

I have been  doing volunteer guiding at the Geelong Gallery. It's been fun, not that I have done a lot of guiding but it does get you looking at the collection on a regular basis and of course any new exhibitions. At the moment  there is an exhibition of glass  by Nick Mount entitled The Fabric of Work- which is just wonderful. I think I just about love every single piece in this exhibition from the scent bottle inspired urchin like pieces to the more statuesque sculptural assemblages and the fruit and vegetable inspired pieces.

 The  lustrous translucent aubergine glass piece is accompanied by some Lionel Lindsey woodcut prints.

 On my walk on Friday- again mistiness through heat and  in the middle ground that is the reflections in the water- it doesn't look like water at all.

There is a fallen tree trunk along one of the paths- I wondered why it had been left there but on closer inspection it had actually been  played with  with bands of coppery  sheets and rusty nails. Lovely textures which the camera doesn't really pick up.

Oh and I have more news on Hortense Hazard- but I will save it for another post- I found her novel written in Italian and quite a lot of other things including a living descendant!

Paris , Homage a Raoul Dufy and On-line Lutradur Class.

I have  been working on a transfer printed piece inspired by some Dufy paintings and tapestry designs of Paris for my France work. I must say it's taken me some time to get a decent print because I made  a few mistakes as I went along- in the first instance I forgot to reverse the image, then when I did the paper shifted and I ended up with a blurred image, then I tried it with transfer crayons and the same thing happened. Then another print had movement, too much and finally i came up with this print, the paper still moved a little but I can rescue that with stitching, and in any case after five tries enough was enough as it took more than a day to paint the transfer paper. The stitching is progressing at breakneck speed in comparison to painting the papers to create the transfer which is approximately 90 cms square. The  image has been printed on polyester non-woven ( lutradur)

And...on working with lutradur

Last year when I was in France last year I made an instructional video for 2Mains Pour Creer on the use of polyester non-woven ( lutradur) the way i work with it which is slightly different to the way a lot of people work with it.  You can see a preview of the video here and you can enrol for the class ( which is in French or English) here.

Coffee Pots and Heide

Last Sunday was my birthday and two of my daughters and I went to see the Louise Bourgeois Late Works being exhibited at Heide. I thoroughly enjoyed seeing the work in the flesh rather than in books and loved the spider installation and some of the very late works where she had sewn pieces together , patchwork style from  her clothing which she had recycled in this way. There was also an exhibition of Albert Tuckers work from his European Years and  of Sidney Nolans' experimental works in the Reed's House. I would love to have a house and library like in that house- such lovely roomy yet not overly large  spaces. We walked around the kitchen garden and encountered these lovely sculpture above- I love the vignette viewed through the hole in the  matted reeds.
I also found a Sturts Desert pea in flower in the garden- I have never actually seen one flowering.

I have been working but things are going slowly. I am still working on the Paris  inspired Dufy scene- have made four transfer prints so far and am unhappy with all of them so have been working on a fourth and managed to spill some of the paint i was painting with- I did wipe it up quickly but I hope I wiped away enough colour for it not to print too strongly , otherwise I will have to start again!

And I have stitched a lutradur printed coffee pot linocut.I like. the way it turned out though I should have used a better background fabric ( the one I chose was int he same tones as the print) The coffee pot print ( without the stitching ) is available for purchase at $15AUS plus postage- the print measures 11 x 14 inches approx.

Morning Walks and Some Stitching

I don't know how this week got gobbled up so quickly- but it has disappeared and I haven't got nearly enough work done.

I have been going on morning walks with a neighbour from down the road and we have been walking  along the Moorobool river and the foreshore. It's lovely to get out early in the morning and do some walking whilst the air is still cool.

 The colours were lovely and there was still some mist coming up from the cool water. We walked as far as the old Fyansford Mill. What fun to discover an old petrol bowser still in gallons- that is pre-1965!

And despite the water looking dark and murky from all the tannin from the gums the reflections were wonderful.

I worked on a sample of stitching- I will be teaching  in Italy and France come April as well as attending Quilts en Beaujolais. The image is of a friends cat who has  wide green eyes ( she is not well at the moment so I am sending a little prayer with the image!) You can see the original photo and my translation- I was really happy with how it came up!

 I did finally manage to get a successful  transfer print of the Paris Dufy inspired scene- not without mucking up the first print and having to live with the second as it takes such a long time to draw the whole scene. This time I did it with transfer crayons which in a way were not fine enough pointed for fine detail, but allow me to wash the colour where I wanted it. The problem with crayons is that you usually get only one good print- and I mucked up the firt print as the paper is about 1 metre square and it moved - so I basted the  paper to the lutradur so it wouldn't move and crossed my fingers that a second print would happen- and it did on the whole and the bits that did not transfer so well i can rescue with stitching.


And last but not least......
Last year I also made a video for  Emma Coutancier in France and her on-line lesson  2Mains pour Creer. The video is about working with lutradur or polyester non-woven. There is an English version and a French version, depending on which language you would like to see it ( though the french version is not spoken by me as my french is not good enough). It's odd seeing yourself on a video and of course I did some dyeing before I left Australia so my finger nails have a bluish tinge- the hands of a working artist! here is the link

Tentmakers of Chareh el Khiamiah

I have been lucky to have travelled to many places  as a result of curating quilt exhibitions and trying to show off Australian art quilts in the wider world. One of those places was Cairo and I spent many delightful hours accompanying Jenny Bowker  around Cairo on such a trip. Jenny  has been and is  passionate about sharing and exposing the work of the tentmakers of Cairo. You cannot help but be seduced by this covered street filled with bright booths filled with remarkable appliques- all patterns and foliage and birds. I feel truly fortunate to have spent time with some of these men, to have watched them work, to have drunk tea with them and to have purchased some of their work. And as many of you know I am passionate about history and the history of textiles- it is as if the work of the tentmakers has stood still in time and yet it is  also of this time. So how wonderful it is, that Kim Beamish a friend of Jenny Bowker's is making a film about the men and  their work and their life in Bub Zuwela ( also known as Chareh el Khiamiah) .

 But like all things making something takes money and so Kim is hoping to raise $20,000 for the film project through http://www.pozible.com/tentmakers . At present you can pledge money, and if Kim reaches his target  on Pozible you will be asked to donate.You can pledge as little or as much as you can afford.  I can't imagine a more wonderful project to support, because not only does it create an  archive of what is a dwindling art form, but it all shares the remarkable work of these men to the wider world. You can find more information on This Facebook page

 My eldest daughter and one of the tentmakers.

I purchased this piece- it measures about 1 metre square and I loved it for it's embroidery details which were a little different than the traditional patterns.Just looking at these images have brought back memories of a wonderful and amazing trip.

So please if you want to help document  this wonderful and rich heritage which dates to pharaonic times and to share it with the wider world, help Kim bring his project to fruition. And please share this information with the wider world- but lets show what the textile community can do ....... we are powerful!


Jenny herself has written this about the tentmakers:
'The Tentmakers are a group of men in Cairo who make spectacular applique. Nowadays most of what they make is intended for the walls of houses or on beds, but in Pharaonic, early Islamic, and Ottoman times it
was intended for the inside walls of tents. With canvas behind it which formed the outside wall, the rich appliqué glowed with light on it, and was intended to amaze visitors to a leader's tent. Did you know that Cairo was originally called Fustat - which means the big tent? In pharaonic times the tents were appliqued leather, now all the work is cotton.

The art has been slowly dying. Big pieces of cheap, badly registered, printed fabric made in China have poured into Cairo and people buy this rather that the real appliquéd pieces. On top of that disaster - tourism has stopped with unrest for the last two years. Without the work sold in the exhibitions that I have been arranging in other countries they would all be gone by now - instead - stitchers who left are coming back and young ones are learning again. I am thrilled with the progress we have made and very happy with the AQS who committed to them for three years. But - it is still hardly documented at all. There is not one piece in the Cairo Museum or even in the Cairo textile museum. The best article I have ever found is in the Uncoverings magazine and there are no books. Older stitchers are dying and no history has been written.

Kim Beamish is an Australian friend who - when I took him to visit the street on his third day in Cairo - picked up the baton I offered and ran with it. He is making a film about the Tentmakers in these difficult times. He has given most of five days a week for the last seven months - or more. He has paid his own way to shows in England, and has had to pay for three more that have not even happened yet in France and two in America. He has become part of the street and the men are used to him and his camera. He has two young children and a wife who works in the Australian Embassy in Cairo. They have to pay a nanny so that he is free to film. He is, like I was, a trailing spouse. He did not choose to live the 'cocktail parties and bridge' life, but has chosen to go out on a limb
to tell a very moving and necessary story. I know that at the moment he is on the bones of his behind financially and simply cannot afford anything else

Slowly but Surely

It is as if something is in the air to dampen the mood and feel like I am trawling in the doldrums, and sometimes I am at a loss how to lighten the mood- I have been walking, watching the vegies grow( i was given an above ground vegie garden for Christmas, though it only arrived a few weeks ago, but already we are eating lettuce out of it!), visiting the gallery as there is a lovely print exhibition on, trying to work. Watching the news and seeing  fire and floods affecting many parts of Australia does not help, and my heart goes out to everyone affected. What is even worse is that some of the fires have been deliberately lit or lit through negligent behaviour by people who should know better.

My youngest daughter started her final year of high school this week- it will be a tough year- it always is for children who set their aims high though I was  a bit  perturbed( well really perturbed to be honest) when she  announced last week that she was totally unmotivated about this year- we have not even begun- she seems to have perked up a little .Starting school also necessitated the buying of books etc and shoes and whatever else is needed for school ,some textbooks are scandalously expensive even second hand!

All in all it was a week where I intended much but did not achieve much. Gave a small talk at a neighbours' house- to other  creatives- so that was a lovely  experience. I met my neighbour on the bus stop a year or so ago, and  we started talking and now we go walking and  of course talking!

My friend Laura Liebenberg from Beligum is again organising Colours of Africa  in Essen with a group of friends. This time apart from indoor exhibitors they are also having an outside exhibition with the idea that the weather impacts on the pieces. January 31 was the deadline for the delivery of some images- and I had been procrastinating on this one for quite some time , not only procrastinating, but also lacking motivation. I know I wanted to combine cotton pieces with polyester non-woven pieces so see how differently the weather would impact on the pieces- but what to put on the pieces. I suspect that it will be quite an ephemeral piece so I have called the piece Fleeting Moments. In the bottom photo you can see the effect the wind has on the applied pieces of cloth- I had in mind a kind of giant prayer flag- with little thoughts or prayers sent out into the world- tread softly because you do not know who you tread on, snippets, wishes and small dreams.It's going to be about 1.6 metres square.

I like the way the pieces of applied fabric looks in the wind- almost like the pages of a book. I am also thinking I might tie strips of fabric into some of the in between spaces to add more texture- but I need to keep the piece light as it has to be sent overseas.

 The photos below are of  an autumn leaf which I have translated with solufix into a stitched piece.I tried not to use the original photo for comparison whilst I stitched so was  surprised  at how much the same it looked  to the original photo.I deliberately did not stitch in the background as I wanted to see how long this piece would take as it is a class sample.

Don't forget there is still time to enroll for the Travellers' Blanket Class which starts on Feb 11- just email me if you are interested and I can send you an information sheet.My own stitching on my tangerine  blanket is making slow progress, though I like what is happening with it.

Les Matelles- Stitchery

I have been working on a small stitched piece ( A4 size) of a scene in the small medieval village Les Matelles which was the next village  to Le Triadou where I lived in 2010( I miss the south of France...) It's a lovely village with stone houses and stone stairways and with loads of shades of grey. I had toyed around with the image previously, trying to draw it in the hope of making a linocut but in the end the nuances of shade/light and grey were too varied to reduce it to a  drawing suitable for a linocut. Then last year when I worked with Solufix, I thought yep that is the solution- I will stitch the image with solufix and see what happens. I did not print off the original photos as I knew I  did not have the silvery green/grey threads for the olive tree- so  I used a bit of poetic licence in the interpretation of that tree. I am also amazed at how many shades of grey thread I used- thank you Mettler for your silk finish cottons they are just perfect for this kind of job!

 The top photo is the original photo which I cropped a little as the top left corner was a bit over exposed and below is my stitched interpretation made with the aid of Solufix. I am  preparing classes to work with this material and will be teaching  with it at best of Quilting at Marcoussis ( France) late in April.

And I have been walking again- one of my neighbours whom I met at the bus stop and who  is also an artist and sometime quilter and I go for a big long walk once a week ( although I walk other mornings as well)- this morning we walked along the foreshore where they were gearing up for the Festival of Sails- I love the textures of the ropes to tie up the boats.

Bayeaux Madonna

I have been working this week but  feel as if I have achieved very little. I have manage to catch up with a few people , I had barely seen since being back and I managed to do a few walks, I still haven't caught up with everything. We have also had some incredibly hot weather and have watched aghast at all the bushfires in Tasmania, in NSW  and  in Victoria, it is so early in the year and the fires are moving at such speed.

I belong to a small group called Voyageart and our brief last year was to make a piece every 2 months ( a total of 6 pieces) to do with the theme of where we are going, where we are. I finally managed to get myself up to date for 2012 and made a piece which in the end was a reflection of some of the things I encountered last year on my travels but also with a firm eye on the future.As some of you know I am very enamoured of the Madonna in the Bayeaux cathedral and I really do wonder at her provenance as I have since found out she may have been moved and so is probably form a different period than the cathedral. I guess some of my travel is a quest for madonnas- seeing how they gaze- whether it's the child or the world. I like the ones that look out into the world.So I have been toying how to incorporate her into a piece. So my last piece for the group evolved a little like a page in a journal.

So in the end I made a bit of a collage of different things. I worked with polyester non-woven onto a bright blue fabric and then used black and aqua thread. The coffee cup you will recognise from a linocut I made in 2012.

And I have been stitching on  my tangerine travellers' piece piece- progress is slow as it is all hand stitched , and whilst i do sit and sew there are  many other things to do during the day including  making work for my book and planning the book and just getting ideas down.It was starting to look a little boring with just the circles and I am much happier now the connecting lines are going in and then I have to think about the spaces in between.

 And I shall be starting a new on-line Travellers' Blanket class on February the 11 th. Email me if you are interested and I can send you more information and details of how to make payment. For those of  you who live in the Geelong area I shall be conducting a class from home- this involves a dyeing session and then  sit and stitch sessions. I have 2 places available for a class starting on this coming Tuesday at 7pm.

Coffee Pot Linocut

In  November last year whilst staying with my friend Christine at Soissy-sur-Seine we went to Chartres for the day to see the progress on  the renovation of the cathedral. Christine told me there was a very nice restaurant across from the cathedral and that she would shout me lunch there. It was indeed a very nice restaurant- the food was excellent as was the wine, but one of the nice things about the place was it's ambience.Some very nice panelling from wine crates adorned the wall- some wineries have such lovely logos.

The windows had large sills and each  sill had been decorated with porcelain and enamel ware coffee pots- they looked so inviting!

 I thought they would make a great linocut and did some preliminary drawing but got no further. I always feel that I can't draw thins kind of thing and put it off- and  as usual the first coffee pot looks blegh but once you start filling in with the other coffee pots and other detail it starts to assume another life- see the drawings below.

 Then comes the cutting- it took quite some time as the linocut as it measures  11 inches by 15 inches- and I did forget to reverse the image but decided not to worry about it.I was quite happy with the way it came out and can see all sorts of fun things I can do with stitching on this.

Thank you  so much to everyone who visited my Recent Works for Sale page and who purchased work from me. It's been a life saver I can assure you!

I have also created another new page  with highlights from the tour  I took to France in  April of 2012. I will be taking the same tour to France in 2013 hopefully. One of the highlights will be visiting Quilts en Beaujolais where I will also be  exhibiting my french inspired work. If you would like any information or the itinerary of this tour or the tour of Italy in May 2013 please do not hesitate to contact me.

A Plea

I know everyone is affected by the financial crisis and I have mentioned it before, but I wasn't expecting my father to be as ill as he was or to spend as much time as I did in  getting him better ( and to  have his partner looked after as well and spend time with her and taking her out for necessities etc) and then to spend as much time as I have done getting him and his partner settled into independent living. I did tell people I was a single mum and that  I worked full time- but everyone just seemed to turn a blind eye to this and just merrily ignored the fact  so that I have fallen way behind with my work and projected targets, because no one else was going to step up to the plate. This has meant that the book I am writing has been stalled ( you need  clear headspace to write and work things through in logical order) My business income has also been affected by the ridiculously high Australian dollar value as I earn some of my income teaching overseas and also generate some sales overseas.I am still actively looking for a job but as I have not been able to get an interview in 2 years , it seems like a hopeless task though I continue to try. I would move somewhere cheaper to live but my daughter goes into her final year of high school next month, and as she has her aims set high I want this year to have as little disruption as possible, and there isn't much housing that's cheaper available in Geelong in any case.

I also understand that some people don't enjoy reading about the "difficult" side of making a living from art, but as I can't find a job I have to continue down this route because there isn't any other way to earn a living.And I will be trying everything to  somehow turn things around! But the reality is  working in an arts practice isn't all sunny , a lot of it orients around finding product/goods/services that are saleable to sustain the bigger and more  individual work.

Anyway the long and the short of it is, I wasn't able to make as much small work to sell as I normally do- and that has meant a substantial reduction in sales I  might ordinarily have expected around Christmas time.
So my plea is this

1.  If you see any older work you might like to buy please contact me- I will be prepared to negotiate.I have added a new page here, or simply click on the tab with Most recent work at the top of the blog.
2. I will be starting another Travellers' Blanket on-line class on February the 11th. Email me if you are interested in joining the class and i can send you an information sheet.
3. I am writing a new course called Form and Variation ( for want of a better name), if you are interested please drop me an email and I will send you information when I have put it together.The results have always been interesting when I teach this course in real life.
4. I have 5 new Teapot and Rosewater jug pieces for sale. These pieces measure 8"x 8" ( 20cm x20cm) and are designed to fit into Ikea shadow box frames- they are hand printed polyester non-woven  and machine stitched.( Images below) The cost is $45AUS inclusive of postage.
5. Also I am thinking of running small workshops from home ( Geelong)- if you are interested in learning anything from me at all  and don't mind that I do not live in a castle please drop me an email and we  will work something out

SOLD

SOLD