Moving on to 2020 and 2021 - will we ever forget 2020 with lockdowns, isolation, safe distancing, hand washing and masks.

This is my work for our Nets exhibition ReNEWal at the Altenburg Gallery Braidwood.

White leaf bowl

White leaf bowl 

Test

Well here I go attemping to revive my blog Again!
This year has started busy. Trying to comlete my finished piece for Covet 1    At the same time opening aClub Account for this exhibition and doing a couple of spreadsheets with everyones contactable details.   Nearly completed these two tasks.

Vicki H is teaching us Corel Draw. We had our first lesson last Saturday. It was held at Yvonne's Reitement Village Community Hall.  Air con- comfort. Terrific.

We also started a stained glass class.

I like trying out different sewing machines.  The classes at this year's show was thin on the ground.

BERNINA Embroidery Software 6 - Outline Design - Tool Tip 3

One of the Panels we painted for the Spring Ball

The Tower Bridge and Big Ben.
Can you find the drowning woman?

The Spring Ball–London Calling

This is part of our group at the Bungendore Spring Ball.   We had a ball” dressing up for it.   Gareth won a prize for his costume.  Rosemary did all the work of glueing all the buttons on.  She did a marvellous job.   Avril was Britannia, Mike was a London Business Man along with the Times, Bowler, Briefcase and Brolly.   Bob was Prince Charles with ears and I was supposed to be Camilla but not a very good one.   Bob’s red,white and blue ribbon was a Bungendore Show ribbon with Champion Ram on the inside.   Later on he turned it round and got a few laughs with it.   We danced most of the night and enjoyed not only the food but the fun.

I belong to a group called NETS,  it is a group of artists who connect by meeting and discussing art and having exhibitions. It was the idea of local artist, Nancy Tingey, and was taken up by Valerie Kirk who is head of the Textile Workshop at the School of Art, ANU, Canberra, and we linked up with the University of Cumbria in the UK and the University of Turka in Finland.
Our latest exhibition, Networks was held at the Belconnen Gallery in August 2012.
This exhibition explored issues around social, political and ecological themes relating to nets and networks.
Eighteen artists from the group participated in this exhibition.
Jacque Schultze curated the exhibition and expertly made every work not only stand out but blend in with the other works in the gallery.
  

Capilliary Network 1

Capilliary Netwowrk 2

Capilliary Network 3

Diverse Directions Exhibition. 2012

This is one of the pieces of my work from Diverse Directions Exhibition held at the  Foyer Gallery School of Art, Australian National University, Canberra earlier this year.

During this year I had work in two exhibitions.  The first one was called Diverse Directions and I shared the Foyer Gallery at the Art School, Australian National University, Canberra with two other friends, Bev Moxon and Leonie Andrews.

Catching up

It's ages since I posted on my blog.   Hence the title Catch up.   I will post a few things that have happened since my last post - they may not be in order,  but like my life, it is never orderly.

The January School Holidays

I am lucky to have two of my three grandchildren stay with me during the long summer holidays and we all look forward to it.  Taylor is 10 and Jamie is 5.

This is Jamie on Christmas Day with his new Lego.   He didn't build it, his Mum and sister did - I think they got more fun out of that but Jamie is so happy with it.

This is Taylor and the cheeky face of Jamie.    Taylor in the top two is having fun on my Bernina 440  After making the teddy - she went through all the fancy stitches and had fun doing it.   The bottom one you can't actually see it but she has a baby duck.   These ducks - there were two walked into the yard and we could not find the mother, so we fed them until they were old enough to fly and off they went.   There is a pond down on one of the new housing estates and it has a few ducks on it, I am sure our two are there.

These are the ducks the top one is the size of them when they arrived and the bottom is just before they flew off.

2010 Christmas break.

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It is absolutely ages since I update my blog - put it down to laziness.    Since I last wrote, a Christmas has passed by.   We had rather a wet season just before Christmas and things just grew like topsy.   The family arrived for the festivities and I had to turn my shed over for sleeping accommodation.

 This is my shed when Kim and Lochie had it just after Christmas - now it isn't tidy at the best of times but this is    hilarious.   Fortunately I now have it back - it is still untidy but workable.

Then during the Christmas break our paddock had such a lot of growth that we couldn't see our pet sheep - she would wonder around in their so we went looking for her and bogged the ute.

Then Lachlan caught a tiger snake lurking in the grass.

However, I did take some more artistic shots during the Christmas break.
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Winners of the Wellington Internation WOW Awards.

The WOW awards in NZ are one of the fabulous Textile Awards in the world.  Two friends of mine, Bonnie Begg and Christine White entered this year and they won the Wellington International Award with their entry called Ecdysis.  A fantastic win - with a fantastic outfit.
Congratulations to you both.

2010 Winner Wellington International Award

Ecdysis, Bonnie Begg & Christine White, Australia

Birthday party

Elaine

Donna

Carol

Philippa

Suzie

Ola also with birthday hat.

Buffy with her Birthday hat on.Every second Thursday I meet a marvellous group of textile artists, at the  Strathnairn Arts Association.  Apart from being creative, we celebrate our birthdays.   In September we celebrated Buffy's and my birthday.   We had an assortment of eats and some lovely creative pressies.   It was a lovely day.   It is a day to share ideas and crafts.  Carolyn and Wilma are missing.

The Wangaratta Bushfire cope.

The Wangaratta Bushfire cope.   This is the link to the video showing the most amazing cope made from garments from the bushfire and also the beautiful work put in my some amazing artists.   My part in this was minor and I only did two of the pieces which were attached along the bottom of the cope.  This of course is another late post as we did this early this year.   It was a very proud moment for us, and some travelled to Wangaratta to see the handing over of the cope.   A very special moment.

This is one of the two pieces I did for the cope.

The Tree People

This is something I should have put in a month ago, but it was just before I left to go to Geelong and things as usual just got in the way.   I belong to an association called the ACT Textile Artists Association based in Canberra.    This year for our exhibition - it was decided to give it a theme - called the Garden Party and all things had to be made or reworked etc.   This was an idea by Sonia and Wilma so that all members would be involved.   Part of that was the making of the tree.   So as a sub group, we called ourselves the tree people and that included, Annie Bew, Jackie Hartley, Lyn Steele, Jenny White and myself.   We had meetings and got the tree started - we weren't sure how it was going to look and of course on the day things came together really well.   The photo shows us putting it up at the exhibition and some other photos I took of the exhibition.   It has now gone to reside in a local primary school library.   The exhibition was a great success.  We had members making tables, people, flowers, cakes etc and of course leaves.

The tree set up.

Jackie and Ola setting up the tree.

Textile tea  

More pics with Bob Adams

This is Bob wearing the Bog jacket we made for him.  On it are pieces of our discharged fabrics.   Not one of the best pictures to get the detail showing up.   He really liked it and enjoyed wearing it.

This is a discharged overblouse.  Originally it was black silk organza but it came up really well after being discharged.

can.

Workshop with Bob Adams

My friend Liz and I travelled down to Geelong Grammar where Glenys Mann was running Fibres Arts Geelong this year, as Janet (de Boer) was away on holiday.   Usually, it is run by TAFTA and called the Geelong Forum.   So it was slightly different this year.   It is a whole week of workshop/tutor talks and slides (although now Powerpoint), meeting old friends and making new ones and having fun.   All meals are provided as well as accommodation.   This year the less said about my accommodation the better.   I had nowhere to unpack any of my clothes as the 18yr old boy whose room I was in - this is one of Australia's most prestigious schools - had only cleared his desk top, every other space was filled with his clothes, books - there was no empty space in drawers or cupboards.  I just opened my suitcase and took what I needed out of that.  Of course none of that matters as once there you are busy doing your workshop - The workshop I was in was Bob Adams - he is from the US and is a quilter/dyer and discharger.   It was his workshop called Honourable Discharge that we did.   He is a terrific instructor, and we learnt well.  Our class was made up of 11 and everyone got on well - which is a real plus in a workshop. Here are some pics of our class and work.

On the way to Geelong Forum 2010

This was on the road to Wangaratta - it was the only one we saw, and we just had to stop to take a pic.  Actually we missed it on the way down and had to take it on the way back, the only problem was it was only shown on the way south, so we had to remember where it was.  

This is a detail of the hanging.   I was printing on gut as a metaphor for ageing human skin, gut looks fragile and frail but it has enormous strength.  
I had great fun doing this, my butcher was intrigued at me asking for so much sausage skin, he kept asking how many sausages are you going to make?    I had to tell him it was for art - so in the end I took in a piece I had done without the printing for them to see and feel.  At first I would ask for it in metres and then cottoned on that if I asked for it by weight it would be much easier for them, after all it wasn't a fabric shop.

Ways of Seeing

Ways of Seeing is an exhibition which was held at the Foyer Gallery, at the Art School which is part of the Australian National University in Canberra. Sharing the exhibition with two other textile artists, Bev Moxon and Leonie Andrews. We all started art school together and have remained good buddies since then. We all work in different textile directions and our work because of it's diversity hangs beautifully together.

One thing I forgot - there is a Weereewa Festival of Lake George being celebrated between 18-28 March and included in this years "Winds of Change" is "Windwash" initiated project from the Megalo Print Studio Project - where we have had artists in the community and surrounding district printing tea towels to be hung across the lake and around venues in Bungendore. It is a fun project and Megalo had two days inviting artists to bring their artwork and have it exposed onto a screen printing screen and printed on to a tea towel, for a cost of $10. I volunteered to help on the two days lending a hand with the printing, and anything that needed doing. I went back to Megalo last week and printed my own tea towel. Here is a print of it and a copy of the original photograph.

I haven't written for a while, been busy in other directions. Last week I was tidying up the vegie garden getting it ready for winter plantings, and I noticed some beautiful old withered pumpkin leaves, I spread these out as they weren't brittle and dry and took some pictures. I also took some from the old plum tree and my beautiful rusty chains - they make a real statement of imprisonment.

This poor wee creature was unfortunate to be trapped in the chicken wire. Imagine it’s plight when it couldn’t free itself, and the agony of being pinned in the wire net. How often do we find ourselves in situations where we feel trapped by our way of life and feel we cannot escape, it envelops us in our minds and lives, often ending like the bat in death.

Networks of branches giving a feeling of beauty through a tangled mess of bare branches. This was taken in Tasmania last September on a particularly cold and wet day. Looking at this as a 2D instead of a 3D makes it look like a structure of imprisonmnet.

Talking of 3D, yesterday I went to see Avatar, my husband was breaking his neck to see it and I went along, not too keen, but I was blown away with the art work and GCI - it was fantastic, I would love to see it again so I could take in more of the ingenious computer artwork.

As part of the Netwurks I have been thinking about nets and what they hold in - I have often thought of things being kept against their will, like my hens who are kept from going into my veggie garden. I find that we have invisible nets - especially in our society the barriers we place around people who are not the same as us. Take the elderly and the handicapped. We place barriers between them and us - usually unconsciously but barriers none the less. It has given me food for thought.

Hello this is my first post and I am not sure just how to go about it.   I live in a small village in New South Wales Australia and this weekend we had the local primary school fair and to coincide with this, there was also a small art show, and I was able to contribute as an exhibitor.   This art show, along with paintings of all mediums, also included photography, jewellery, sculpture and textiles.   We had a successful weekend and the talk is of holding one twice a year.   We shall see.