Small Piece exhibtion: Amy O'Brien

Meg from New Zealand has organised a virtual 'Small Piece' exhibition and I am hosting Amy's woven piece on my blog. 
Amy is 10 years old and this is only her third time weaving at a loom. Amy wove on a Saori loom, 2 shaft with a pre-threaded black cotton warp. She brought all the weft yarn with her from home. She wove this last Saturday and it took her about 3 hours.

"The idea of a ‘do whatever you what’ weaving piece sounded epic, but what the problem was … what should I do? At first I thought an aboriginal flag, then I thought about doing bubbles. Finally I decided an ocean landscape. I weaved different blues and greens together so it began to look like the ocean. Next was the hard part I made a sort of hilly thing and made clouds and sky above.

By Amy O’Brien"

Weaving by Amy O'Brien, Photo by Suzie Fry

Small Piece exhibition

Last year, 2 pieces of my weaving were accepted into the 'Petite' exhibition.
Meg has organised a virtual 'Small Piece' exhibition based on that idea, small pieces of textile work woven on a loom.

I repeated the 2 pieces that were acquired by Wangaratta Art Gallery, and added another 2 pieces into the series. This series of work was inspired by a lecture at the International Shibori Symposium in 2011.

'Yoshiko Wada explained at a lecture on ‘Slow Fibre’ that we must understand our materials in order to create something special.

My work explores the notion that in understanding how these fibres, made of different materials behave on their own and their interaction with each other.

It is then possible to manipulate them with calculated expectations.'

All the pieces were woven on a 2 shaft loom in plain weave with various yarn bases made from plant, animal and mineral fibres. All the pieces are approx. 23cm x 16cm.

From Left: Plant Mineral i, Plant Mineral ii. Plant Mineral Animal i

Plant Mineral Animal ii

Plant Mineral i - detail

Plant Mineral ii - detail

Plant Mineral Animal i - detail

Plant Mineral Animal ii - detail

This last piece is also new and is inspired by the Tour de France; the category climbs that the cyclists have to endure and conquer.

Col de Noir ii

Coinciding with this virtual exhibition, I have actually entered these pieces in the Brunswick Street Gallery 'Small Works' exhibition. If you are in Melbourne, you can see these pieces in real life and they are for sale.

Fragments

It does not seem like more than 2 months had passed. I have been on the looms a bit this winter. Probably the most that I have woven in a long time. All 3 looms had warps on at one time or another.

There was the Bendigo Sheep and Wool Show - Kaz and I took our looms there and had 3 days of intense fun with lots of people weaving on the Saori looms. Many of them trying it for the first time.

There was the trip to Wangaratta and Beechworth - my mum and I went for a weekend and saw the exhibitions at the Wangaratta Art Gallery and the Old School House Gallery. It was great to see those red dots next to my pieces!

There was the Olympics and I signed up for one of the challenges on Ravelry. I wove a baby blanket for a friend. Her baby girl was born last week.

There was a commission.

There was a young convert who came to weave on my loom and made her own fabric.

There was a football scarf long overdue (finals are this month and Spring is here), and I tried to make it not look like a football scarf!

There was craft camp, but that is another story.

It seems like I packed a lot into the last couple of months. Maybe the latest project on the loom is a reflection of how I feel...... a bit fragmented.

They called me an artist.....

First, they accepted 2 out of 3 pieces submitted.

Second, they asked if it was possible to use one of the images for the promotion of the exhibition.

Then, this week, I received a note to say that the gallery would like to purchase a couple of my pieces.........

I am so excited you can not wipe the smile off my face.

8ISS: Yoshiko Jinzenji

I thoroughly enjoyed my first time at this event. The program was full of variety: contemporary, tradition, technology, processes, sustainability, and so much more. It was inspiring, intense and exhausting - both physically and mentally. I wanted to attend ALL the talks and demonstrations, but that was not possible.
Needless to say there will be a slow drip feed of information as I process things in my brain and gradually sort out my photos and papers.......
One of the speakers was Yoshiko Jinzenji.
I am not a quilter but had fallen in love with her book published by Interweave.

I did not know much of her other work outside of this book. When she gave her talk, I thought that there was a sense of deja vu and quickly realised who she was. What a revelation! As I had also bought some fabric designed by her just before I left for Hong Kong. (from Patchwork on Central Park, her designs do not show up in the online store but is available in store) 

One of her pieces at the exhibition was shibori dyed with bamboo! It gave this very subtle white on white pattern.

Who knows, quilting may be soon be on my list of things to do........

Hong Kong_8th International Shibori Symposium

I am so lucky to be able to attend this event in Hong Kong. Some pre-conference talks and exhibitions have already started.

In the last couple of weeks, Edith Cheung from Cloth Haven gave a talk on the use of wool in Traditional clothing, and Yoshiko Wada gave one on 'Slow Fibres'.

Below are some of the images from the exhibition: 

Animal Fibres: Art Informs Shibori. 

All the images are taken by me and if you use any text or images, please link back to here. Thank you.

Amanda Ross: Rise Up (Handwoven, Hand-dyed, Felted Shibori)

Hiroshi Murase: The Large Surcle Shibori (Yataramiura Shibori, Somewake Boushi shibori, Fulling)

Charlotte Buch: Untitled 1 (Feltmaking)

Jeung-Hwa Park: Panel 2 (Machine Knit, Tie, Felt, dye)

Jeung-Hwa Park: Panel 1 (Machine Knit, Tie, Felt, Dye)

Mie Iwatsubo: the Wave (Knitting, Shibori Stitching, Felting)

As above

Tomoko Iwaizumi: Fire of Passion (Felting, Shibori)

Jorie Johnson: Zebra Crossings (Hand feltmaking, Itajime clamp resist acid-dyed, Japanese lacquer application)

Sarah Martin: Mound #1 (Felting, Tegumo Shibori, Dyeing, Discharge)

As above

Takumi Ushio: Shelter (Felt)

This is only a small selection of work on show and all of them are breath-takingly beautiful. I hope you will enjoy them as much as I do!

A flying visit: Praha

The three days that I spent in Praha (Prague) was totally inspiring. I can not really describe the energy that I felt in that city. It was not only the activity with lots of people around you but the visual feast of textures, colours and creativity that was scattered around the city.

I apologise in advance if I missed out on credits to works of art and not being able to tell you more as I could not really read any of the signs - they were in Czech.....

Located in the foyer of the public library:

The column of books

The column of books

On the river bank, it was the Prague Contemporary Art Festival:

nuclear cocoon by Carol Hummel

nuclear cocoon by Carol Hummel

shendra stucki
(i don't know if this is the name of the artist or the artwork)

In front of the town hall:

Snowflakes by Cestmir Suska

Outside the Museum Kampa:

There was also an artist book and paper exhibition at the library, but they had run out of catalogues and no photographs were allowed. We were lucky to have caught it on the last day!
I hope that you have enjoyed a glimpse of this amazing city as much as I did.

The honour and the glory

The Royal Melbourne Show is on. It is where the country comes to town and we all get to understand it a bit more. It means more than rides and show bags. It is a demonstration of living crafts, the skills of the working dog rounding up sheep, the assessment of the quality of fleece, the breeding of animals, and cooking/baking skills.

There are also cabinets of lace work, spinning, knits, decorated cakes that are truly labour of love and obsessions. I have read about how the strict the rules are for the baking entries, the consistency of how even the fruit is spread out in the fruit cakes, the swirl of the colours in the marble cakes, and perfection of the shapes, etc.

I have noticed that the categories for weave have been slowly decreasing and the number of entries fluctuates. The amount of display space gets smaller. As a result, I try to put in at lease one entry each year, to demonstrate that there are still weavers out there, that weaving can be done with fibres other than wool. This year there is one cabinet. It is a terrible photo, the lighting is bad and it is in a dark corner.

However, luck is on my side, and I am proud to say that this year both of the Pic to Picks pieces were awarded prizes. The other entries are beautiful too and I would hate to be the judge.

The P2P piece was awarded first prize and best exhibit in its category. It was displayed in a separate cabinet that was brightly lit. I wish the other pieces could have had the same treatment! The P2P2 piece was awarded 'high commendation'.

PS: I did visit the cat pavilion and there is a 'pat a cat' stand. I could not resist! I do miss my sweetie so much........

To be inspired.....

We do live in exciting times and there are much around to inspire me.
If you live in Melbourne, there are a few must see exhibitions.......

From left to right:

The Shumei Kobayashi - weaving the future at the Lesley Kehoe Gallery.

Wangaratta Contemporary Textile Award 2011 opens this weekend at the Wangaratta Art Gallery.

aRtECYCLE is at the Incinerator Arts Complex at Moonee Ponds.

The following images are from aRtECYCLE:

Virginia Miller
Horizon Deficit Syndrome: Antidote 2007

Anna-Maria Plescia
anew 2011

Brook Morgan
Untitled 2010

Kim McKechnie
Bound by the Collective Self 2008

I hope you make it there and enjoy.

Note: all of the photos are taken by me with permission at the gallery, with the exception of the last one, obtained from here.

Pics to Picks Design Challenge II

Meg from unravelling has organized various virtual events over the years. I have previously participated in a couple of them. This year is the second Pics to Picks* and there are 19 of us participating.  We each send the name we are given a series of pictures (from 2 to 6) and we use them as a starting point for a design for weave. I think that this is an interesting design method and what is exciting is that it takes me out of my 'comfort' zone a bit and makes me push the boundaries or work with elements that I may not have otherwise considered.

You can have a look here or click on the poster on the side to check out the rules and what the others are doing and how everyone is progressing.

The following 6 pictures are the ones I sent to Alienore and hopefully she finds them inspiring!

There is also a secret to 2 of these pictures. I have actually used them for 2 designs previously and I wonder whether she would choose those images and what she may do with them if she did choose them. Of course, I am not going to reveal which ones they are until the very end......

The following 6 pictures are from Geodyne and I got them this morning.

I think this bonus image of Charlie, the ginger cat, who is just focusing on some thread is to give me inspiration! and a demonstration of how I should be thinking about the pictures!

* a pick is a pass of the shuttle in weave terminology, i.e. one weft thread, and pics is short for pictures.