What I have been working on recently, particular found objects I am currently looking for, and general thoughts on life and artmaking.
July 2010
With the public sculpture for Wollongong Council behind me, I have been focusing on getting back into the rhythm of making my own works. Commissions are good for the bank balance but they can be a bit disruptive to the flow of creativity. This month I have cast a few little bronzes on a miniature scale – an animated wheel complete with dolls hands. Interesting how a little nudge one way or the other can create a different gesture all together within a human form.
This month I have started teaching modeling the figurative form in paper-clay again. It is also interesting in this class how little is required for the reading of a particular emotion into the elements of a human form.
I have added photos of the project for Thirroul if you want to take a peek.
Working leather trimmings around the edges of a felt form has been a new venture for me. I used a very soft kangaroo skin that when wet became so deliciously pliable that it was easily moulded between my fingers and when dried set into that shape. This is an exciting new skill to play with in future works. Leather is such a perfect companion to wool felt. It is almost I guess like bringing the parts of the animal back together again. Maybe the introduction of bones will be next!
June 2010
I have added a couple of images to the sculpture portfolio recently. Empathy, the bronze shoe/feet that I exhibited at the UWS Sculpture Award last month, Generation Machine, the commission I completed in April using parts of an old telephone, and also At a loose end, a new work using tennis rackets again. I would love to know what you think of these new works.
I am installing the Public work at Thirroul District Community Centre and Library this month with the official opening on 25th June. It is on the outside wall facing in to the community centre so take a look if you are there. I am looking forward to getting back into the rhythm of working on my own works after these months spent working on this public project. I have many ideas that have had to be put on hold in my sketchbook until I have installed this work.
May 2010
I have been in full swing making the waxes for casting in bronze for the Thirroul project this month, as well as making about 80 clay tiles for the wall relief of figures for this project. For the bronzes I have shaped them into small boat or seed pod shapes and pushed type writer keys into them for a reference to layering of stories and language, some words can be read such as life, death, joy and sorrow. Some of the boat forms grow feet as they wander toward the clay figures. The clay figures form the shape of a big tree trunk and are imprinted with found objects collected within the Thirroul community. Some interesting shapes and stories are to be found within these clay tiles.
I have also had a busy month teaching: Teaching sculpture at an Art Camp for Pymble Ladies College and feltmaking in Canberra and New Zealand. I am exploring more ideas about using multiple resists in different ways and feltmaking continues to provide surprises and avenues for learning about the material and its processes. Intriguing stuff! I have just added an image to the felt portfolio of a Cabbage Vessel in which I used multiple resists to make the vessel in one piece.
April 2010
This will be a busy month for me as I have been selected to make a public artwork for the grounds of The Thirroul Library and Community Centre, to be installed at the end of June. The wall where the sculpture is to be sited is 10 metres long and I have designed a series of bronze forms as well as ceramic low relief tiles. The tiles are made up of a family of figures forming the trunk of a fig tree with their arms outstretched. The bronzes are pod shaped with some growing feet. This is a big outdoor work and I have been doing a lot of planning, drawing, and making models. Wollongong City Council has been great to work with.
The University of Western Sydney is showing a new work of mine at the end of this month, titled 'Empathy' It is a pair of bronze feet morphing into shoes. If you are in Campbelltown take a look.
I have also been working on a lovely commission. I was given complete freedom with all the used objects given to me, to create whatever I felt. The objects belonged to a wheat farmer who has since passed away. It is to be a gift for his daughter. I am making the sculpture to fit inside his old wind up telephone - such a beautiful thing in itself, so I will only add what I feel is necessary and leave the phone in much the same state it was given to me. It is lovely to be asked to do something so meaningful and personal.
March 2010
My felt work Conduit has joined the collection of Wollongong City Gallery. The work joins two people together at the head, heart and feet using felt apparatus'. I have finished a new work, now on show at Number 10 Arts Precinct, involving the use of more tennis rackets. I think this may be the last of the tennis racket works. The work is titled " At a loose end" and seems to emulate a strange type of hanging fruit. The work has a lovely lyrical quality. In making this one I have discovered the use of sand bags to hold segments together instead of the frustrating effort of trying to clamp these odd shapes. I wish I had thought of it sooner!
I have been teaching figurative sculpture working in paper clay this month. Mondays at Number 10, and have enjoyed it immensely. The human figure is so intriguing and complex, and paper clay is a wonderful material to work with for students as it is so forgiving. Paper clay can be modeled like clay, but also re-assembled in its dry state, carved into and build up layers of fresh clay onto dry clay. It definitely opens up the possibilities of sculpture with clay.
February 2010
The annual Defiance Gallery Sculpture survey opens this month and I have made two new works for it, these are added to the sculpture portfolio on this site if you want to take a look. The work Device for listening to Ants is one of my favorite works I have made to date. It has a real sense of animation about it, and seems as if it has stepped out of a time past when perhaps we took more notice of the tiny things in life. I wonder what Ants would say to us if we could listen to Ants?
My two year old, Oliver, starts learning at the circus this month, and I am very much looking forward to the inspiration to be found for both of us in that environment. I love the characters at the circus!
I have also added some more images of felt works to my feltforms portfolio with some beautiful images by photographer Bernie Fischer.
January 2010
I have had a work selected for The Climate is Changing exhibition which will tour Italy, Germany and UK during 2010 and 2011. The feltwork is a helmet with two large listening devices at each ear. I have posted an image of Speak to me of things Unknown in my felt forms portfolio here. At the moment I am working on felting another strange head apparatus for my exhibition at Wollongong City Gallery in 2011. The Border Leicester fibre I am working with is so beautiful and lustruous.
January is a time for programming teaching workshops for me, and I have been busy teaching a few felt workshops already. Teaching is a great way to keep fresh your enthusiasm for your craft. I enjoy so much sharing my wonderment at the forms feltmaking can produce. Children’s felted hand puppet workshops in Jamberoo have been popular. The humid weather has been so good for felting that I have made several new felt things this month.
I have also been working on some waxes for bronze again with a work that reveals a dolls arm holding a key reaching out from within a padlock.
December 2009
Number Ten Arts Precinct has opened its doors at 10 Allowrie St, Jamberoo (next door to the pub). The precinct houses four artist studio spaces, a gallery space, coffee shop, and workshop teaching area. Kate makes a wonderful cup of chai. I have some of my sculptures and feltwork there on exhibition, and will also be sharing a studio space there with my good friend, Wendy OMalley. Number Ten will be holding art workshops. I will be teaching various aspects of feltmaking as well as a regular sculpture class on Mondays and weekends. www.numberten.cc
I love my new studio space and am working there two days a week so far. It is a wonderful companion to my little studio space at home and I can finally breathe a bit again with the added space. This past two years I have found it difficult to work in a very small space, and to have some physical distance between home and work space is good for everyone I think.
I am looking forward to quite a productive 2010. Come and visit me at number ten if you come to Jamberoo. Maybe you know someone who would like to learn some aspect of sculpture or feltmaking with me…
November 2009
Wallop has been awarded The Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize Viewers Choice Award this year. This exhibition is for sculpture less than 80cm in any dimension. I enjoy working on this scale very much as it has a direct relationship to the dimension of the human body and thus creates a level of intimacy with the viewer that I find intriguing.
I quite enjoyed making Wallop as it had a real sense of play. It sprung to life with each join that I cut and doweled together there was a wide variation of potential angles the drawing in space could take. This work kept me wondering as to its final form right until the end. I like there to be a healthy dose of mystery as to the final form a sculpture takes, I guess this is the positive aspect and also the challenge of working with found materials, they are always unpredictable.
I am on the hunt for copper sheet rounded forms, tank floats, bowls, more tennis rackets, and old rubber hoses out of the engines of cars, from radiators. If you find any of these things in your travels send them my way please.
I have applied with a felt sculpture to see if I can get into an international exhibition The Climate is Changing, that will travel to Italy, Germany and England during 2010 /2011. There is a lot of competition for this exhibition so we will see….
October 2009
The Southern Hemisphere Feltmakers Convergence in New Zealand was an inspiring event with so many feltmakers gathered in the one place. Many, including myself, shared their skills in feltmaking and it was interesting to see such diverse ways of working with this intriguing medium. I lead a forum, 'Felt in Conceptual Art', discussing the use of felt as a medium for conceptual artworks. The forum also looked at the felt works of Marion Borgelt and Stephanie Metz, both inspiring artists. I am looking forward to the next feltmakers convergence in Bunbury W.A. for 2011. Anyone in W.A. who is interested in me teaching a workshop or giving a lecture I would be most interested to hear from you.
I have had a proposal accepted for the UWS Acquisitive Sculpture Award and Exhibition for May 2010, so have begun in earnest modeling in wax the shoe/feet forms for this work. I have previously formed a cast for the parts using Accucast material. It has given me wonderful detail in the cast with the surface of the skin and the leather of the shoe revealed so truthfully. Barnes products in Sydney I find is a great place to get any casting and modeling materials I need.
Joining the parts of the wax forms together is a long job, I am trying to make the join appear seamless and maintain a natural shape of the foot. Then I will be making a silicon mould and casting again in wax to then be cast in bronze by Crawfords Casting.
This is quite a long process but I feel it will be well worth it.
The Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize opens this month and I will be participating in the artist talks on 24th October at 2pm. Maybe I will see some of you there.
September 2009
Wallop has been selected for exhibition in the Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize 2009.
I have also had a proposal accepted to have a solo exhibition at Wollongong City Gallery in 2011. The solo show involves a work that spans the room from one wall to another made of recycled wood and wooden chairs. Making a work that is suspended between two walls is a new venture for me, and I am looking forward to the challenge. If you have any wooden chairs that are no longer useful or you don’t mind parting with I would like to use them in this new work I am planning titled leaping chair.
The Defiance Gallery Miniature Sculpture Show is coming up and I have been working on a tiny 6-inch scale as well as planning for the large work for Wollongong. Scale of a work is such an interesting thing to explore. Something quite diminutive can appear larger than life, defying its size. Small works on a minute scale can bring a sudden intimacy with objects that are otherwise overlooked in our everyday lives. In these tiny works I am using brass watch parts and bronze cast dolls arms. Exhibiting something large like leaping chair that the viewer can walk under builds quite a different relationship of the human body to the object; there is more of a consciousness of the space surrounding the sculpture as well as a consciousness of your own physicality. With a large work there is more of a physical dance between the viewer and the work.
In feltmaking I am continuing to explore the potential of multiple resists stacked upon each other in making forms. Some intriguing multilayered ‘cabbage’ felts can be made. This is a method that I will be teaching in 2010, alongside other feltmaking workshops.
The Illawarra Feltmakers have this month become officially incorporated.
August 2009
Thankyou to all those who gave me wooden tennis rackets. I have added an image of Wallop to the sculpture portfolio here. I am quite pleased with this work. A humble object of an orderly game has turned wild and unruly! I am always searching for ways to animate the inanimate object, to bring a sense of life to the collected and abandoned. I feel this work is successful in this respect. I have made plans and drawings for further works using wooden tennis rackets.
This month I have also started working on a sculpture in BRT clay, a figurative piece, a man-mountain moving along on a platform of stone wheels. The immovable on the move....It is slow going as I need to wait for the lower parts to dry a little before adding another row of clay in order to support the weight of the clay. When fired this clay looks like stone.
Clay is such a forgiving and sensuous medium to work with. It is unusual for me to work with a material that is so pliable, and I am quite enjoying the process.
The bronze components for some works are nearly finished and I have been working on plans for the strange organic 'machines' they fit into.
Felting has been interesting too with the completion of a much more successful Utility Scarf in which the 'scarf' has numerous seamless pockets felted in along both sides. I am looking forward to wearing it at The Southern Hemisphere Feltmakers Convergence in New Zealand, September.
July 2009
I am on the hunt for abandoned wooden tennis rackets at the moment with a new work underway using these forms in new patterns within a sculpture. I need quite a few of these, so if you come across any or have some in the shed you can part with please let me know. I would be most grateful. They are such wonderfully beautiful curves to work with....
The last scouring mill for wool has closed down in Australia. This is a problem for sourcing and processing the unusual breeds of coloured sheep wool that I like to work with. I work with a variety of fibres with coloured Border Leicester wool from Delco stud being a favorite. Camel fibres are also a treat to work with, creating a sensual felt that still exudes evidence of having been made from animal hairs.
I have been teaching in Melbourne last month with an exciting and challenging workshop for The Victorian Feltmakers. The class started with natural found objects and worked drawings up into intricate and complex template designs. Some startling felt vessels and bag forms were created.
I have also been working on some waxes to be cast in bronze. The smell of the melting wax has permeated our little seaside house, and my nearly two year old son, Oliver, wants very much to help me 'cook'. The bronze components will be used in conjunction with found objects in new works based on journey and displacement.
