Bonjour, Im Back....

Margaret, a workshop buddy wearing one
of her lovely creations

La Cascade

My retreat buddies

A million apologies everyone for my slack behaviour in blogging. I do have an excuse for the last two and a half months though. I know thats still not a good enough excuse. I will just have to try and make it up to you, if I can? 

I turned 50 in June and treated myself to a big trip. Now I have lots to blog about so you will be sick of me by the time I share with you what I saw and experienced.

One of Dayle's altered books

My first instalment starts with, a mixed media creative retreat I attended on June 26. The retreat was led by the wonderfully talented Dayle Doroshow, a mixed media, polymer clay artist from the United States. Dayle has been taking groups to La Cascade, a beautiful villa in the French village of Durfort  for over ten years now. Durfort is approximately one hours drive eastvillage  from Toulouse airport. It is a delightful reknown for making copper ware since the Middle Ages. I just fell in love with its beautiful artisans galleries, small streets, waterfalls and nearby villages .Oh and did I mention the French flea markets, known as the vide - greniers ! It was no wonder I had to mail a box home after only one week in this part of the world. I picked up a number of goodies, including an old letterpress box that housed metal letters in it for an absolute song! I was very chuffed with this purchase as I am collecting, ( yes, I know another thing ! ) pieces to create assemblage artwork eventually. My brother was not so pleased as he had to carry it in his suitcase for more weeks than he cared to know about.

  

A constantina, pop up book section

Artwork at La Casacade

Days in Durfort passed very quickly as we would spend half the day in the La Cascade studio learning a huge variety of techniques. Numerous ways of transferring onto polymer were covered. I thought I knew all of these. I particularly loved the packaging tape transfer one. Another area we covered was the technique of sculpting polymer faces , which will be great for my new found love of making art dolls. The other area we worked in was that of altering books. Suddenly childrens' books were transformed into magical works of art using gesso, paints, crayons, transfers, polymer embellishments, fabric, to mention only a few of the materials we played with. Dayle showed us several samples of art dolls with books incorporated into these which has opened up another world for me. I make canes and teach this art. Dayle had a very simple approach to understanding and making canes which I will show my students in the near future. Apart from studio time, each day was filled with field trips to nearby towns where we saw fantastic art exhibitions, flea markets to collect paraphernalia for our creations and general sightseeing. There is so much more to tell but watch this space and you may hear some more. Until then, a bientot, Kathy

Textile Art Stick Dolls

There has been so much on lately, what with exhibitions, markets and my workshops. Im sure everyone is a little crazy at the moment with ( I dont want to know, how many days there are until Christmas ) and everything else. My eco prints, natural dyed scarves have been selling well at the events I've attended. Due to the time it takes to collect plants, harvest and prepare them, these are continually ongoing, regardless of whatever else I might be making at the time. I will be off to Melbourne to do my 3 day workshop with India Flint this week, which is very exciting! I've included some of my eco print scarves here.

  

Now Ive, digressed a little, so unlike me , I know ( lol ) back to my stick dolls. I had the wonderful opportunity to attend a class at the Contemporary Craft Retreat where I was teaching in October with the gorgeous artist, Wilma Simmons. In this class , Wilma taught us how to make stick dolls which are also message sticks. This is a ritual with a long history. The idea of making something that was not only beautiful but had a deep meaning for the recipient was very appealing to me. Messages are attached to the doll via a tag that gets tied on to the base of the doll if you want this. Since then, Ive been happily creating my dolls, which keep leaving home at a rapid rate. They do make a unique gift. If you are stuck for a Christmas present maybe I can help. Here's a few photos to show you some of my girls. Several people have contacted me wanting a doll or two so I am now doing mail orders.

Im contactable at www.studioamara.com.au.

Enjoy, Kathy

 

Our first weekend at The Arts Trail

I was privileged to spend the weekend with 3 very talented artisans at Margaret Connor's studio, Duckpond Cottage. Margaret's studio with its luscious gardens, is the perfect setting for the four of us to display our varied talents for the Southern Highlands Art Trail event. Margaret is a feltmaker who uses natural fibres to create beautiful one off garments, scarves, wraps and wall pieces. Also showing is Mike Darlow, a woodturner who concentrates on functional turnings. Mike's work has been featured in major American, Chinese collections, The Powerhouse Museum and Rockhampton Gallery in Australia. Carol Bairnsfather, makes stunning felt hats and mixed media jewellery.

Our exhibition wil be running again on the weekend of November 12 and 13 from 10am till 4pm. On Sunday we are holding another fashion parade at 1pm. Duckpond Cottage is at 13A Hurlingham Avenue, Burradoo. Phone is 4861 2294.

Nuno Felted Beginners Scarf Class

I know my blog is not in order however its the best I can manage at the moment. Back in September, terrible, Im so behind with my blogging, I ran another nuno felted class. As some of you are aware, I have been obsessed with felting for some years now and many of you have begged me to teach felting items other than jewellery which I have taught for some time.Nuno felting was developed by two American felters based up in a commune in Queensland. As the Queensland is quite warm and not so suited to felted fabrics they developed nuno so the material would be lighter, allowing them to wear garments suitable for that climate. One of these American ladies, was Japanese. Nuno is the Japanese word for fabric. Nuno felting is taking fabric and combining it with wool in a very fine application to create a felted fabric. 


I ran two nuno beginner classes in September and judging by your fantastic feedback and results, I will do more! If you are interested email me on kathy@versacreative.com.au. Ive included some photos which are only of the second classes work as my photos for the first class got accidentally wiped. Sorry guys!

Cloth, St Josephs College, Hunters Hill

For 5 glorious days, I was immersed in multi disperse transfer dyeing taught by the amazing artist, Marie Therese Wisnowski. I can hear you asking whats Cloth? 
It was a 5 day conference organised by Glenys Mann - founder and owner of Fibre Arts Australia . Glenys organizes five-day textile/fiber conferences throughout Australia, which feature highly talented international artists and designers, who share their knowledge and practices.


Other international tutor’s, who shared their valuable knowledge, techniques and informative lectures included: John Garrett (Experimental Fibre Constructions with Alternative and Recycled Materials, USA); Sherrill Kahn (Mixed Media, Collage/Applique and Composition Techniques, USA); Cherilyn Martin (New Dimensions in Surfaces & Stitch, A Journey of Discovery, Netherlands); Cherrilyn Tyler(A Little Bit Of Frippery, UK); Els Van Baarle(Transformation through Wax, Netherlands). 



At our Cloth workshop we created our own fabric by applying paint, textured, printed imagery onto papers with disperse dyes and then we  transferred the prints to polyester and blended synthetic fabrics to create a suite of color and pattern studies via an iron or heat press. Each student from all the classes offered at Cloth participated in an exhibition on the final day.

My experimentation for scarf fabric

Part of my studies to make scarf fabric

Carolines exhibition piece - Marie Therese's class

Diane's exhibition sample- Marie Therese's class

Example from John Garrett's class

Example from Sherrill Kahn's class

Polymer Silkscreen Printing with the Wollondilly Arts Group

On October 22, I was invited to teach polymer silkscreen printing to the Wollondilly Arts Group who are based in the Wollondilly Shire of the Southern Highlands of NSW.This is a not for profit group compromising of artists and crafts people from many disciplines such as painting, ceramics, sculpture, leadlighting and glass art, woodworking, photo media, textiles, paper making, performing arts, printmaking, poetry, writing, bonsai etc. Polymer silkscreening is much like any other form of silkscreening where you make up artwork, expose it to film then print from the film. With polymer we use a special film known as photo Ez film which can also be used to print on paper and fabric. It was a great day with 14 energetic ladies and one gentleman. Only one person in the group had played with polymer before. Here are some of their results.

OMG Its been far too long

I must apologise for being off the air since April. Where has the time gone? I took three months off from teaching and markets which began in June. It was a wonderful time to do some exploration although not long enough to do all I wanted. One of the areas I was itching to immerse myself was that of natural dyeing. To me the guru in this area is our own India Flint, who lives in South Australia and has a Latvian heritage. You can check India out through Google she has a wealth of information on the net. Im lucky enough to be attending one of her workshops down in Melbourne, later this year. I feel like a mad alchemist . Nothing in the garden has been safe from my cutting shears. You name it, Ive tried it. Even drove around for a week with material wrapped around vegetable peelings and floers until it just got too smelly. It was worth that effort though as I created a gorgeous scarf. Heres the picture for that piece.