experiments for my exhibition - practising just being
I have an exhibition that I am installing at the end of this month. It’s both very exciting and very frightening - mostly because I have a LOT of work still to create and finalise and fine-tune to be ready in time. But I am very much enjoying the making, creating, allowing images and words in my head to show themselves in fabric.
I thought I would share the experiments and the work that I am working on. Of course, not everything here before opening night, but I know I enjoy seeing how other people gather their ideas and pull it together from inspiration to installation.
‘practising just being’ is an ode to my landscape, to motherhood, to my place in the Universe. And almost like a simple, lyrical map of my heart at this stage in my life. A collection of my hand dyed using local plant dyes fabrics, and hand stitched works. My hope is that the exhibition feels like you’ve stepped both into the (my) landscape and also into your own personal experiences with place, memory, loss, joy and simply moments of just being.
These images are silk, which is manufacturer’s seconds and has slight marks and stains (perfect for the dye pot I say). I have Shibori-stitched, bundled and tied some. Some I am working on painting with botanical inks and plant brushes before they go into a dye pot. These are approx 2.5-3 m long and at this stage I’m not sure yet if I will overstitch any of them. I love the way they’ll sway in the movement from people walking around them… and don’t want to mess too much wiht the flow of the fabric.
The subtle marks are what I’m most wanting to share, to encourage the viewer to look closer and take a moment to ‘see’ things in the patterns. Like when you look at a tree, or the sunlight and shadows in the forest. These will be for a piece called ‘the way the light falls in the forest when i stop walking’, and while each is an individual (and available for individual sale) they’ll be viewed, enjoyed, hung as a group. Like a little grove of trees.
The pinks here are from loquat leaves, which I shared a blog post about recently. The colours in the linework is from black wattle bark (darkened with iron), madder and onion skins. And that delicious green colour on silk, I am still testing for lightfastness, but it is woad leaves from early Spring harvest (that’s now - rather than Summer when they should give blue). I’ll share how I extracted the colour after I’ve tested if it lasts or not.
*If you want to learn how to make your own botanical inks, I share my process in my Natural & Botanical Dye online course here.
If you would like to be notified about my exhibition, please join my newsletter list. Or otherwise simply add 1st November 5-7pm (NSW daylight saving time) to your calendar. It’s at M-Arts Art Gallery in Murwillumbah.
Perhaps you might want to support my arts practice in a financial aspect, through my Patreon page. It’s a space where you can donate each month to helping me buy materials, pay hire space for my exhibition and my studio, and this month particularly it will help towards the printing costs of a small exhibition booklet / catalogue I would like to create. Perhaps you’d like to help. The info and details are here.
*this blog post was edited due to the lovely Suzanne, who corrected me on my spelling of practising - previously I had written ‘practicing’ with a ‘c’, not an ‘s’, which is the US way of spelling the word. In British English practising the verb is with an ‘s’ and practicing the noun is with a ‘c’. I am always open to having someone proofread my work; much thanks Suzanne.
you might enjoy these blog post too:
01 : Why I love teaching workshops
02 : Nothing ever stays the same
