Mapuru weavers coming to Melbourne

Two and half years ago I travelled to Mapuru, a small indigenous community in Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory, where I sat the women weavers and learned the basics of their beautiful, highly skilled craft. I blogged about it here and here. The image above is of a basket woven by Mapuru weaver, Margaret Bambalarra. After buying the basket from Margaret I carried it all the way back to Melbourne. It's now hanging on my wall at home. Each time I walk by it I drink in the colours of the top end and think about that wonderful community of women weavers.

If you live in Mebourne (or even if you don't but are prepared to travel here) Friends of Mapuru are bringing some of the Mapuru weavers to Melbourne in late January 2014 to participate in a cultural exchange. Part of that time will be spent sharing their weaving skills. If you'd like to take part in the weaving workshop check out the information on the Friends of Mapuru website and sign up. It will be a blast! Believe me, you will learn so much more than weaving skills from these amazing women.

weeds

In my mind, weeds are pretty special. Meg Keating has a whole exhibition on at the moment focusing on this very specialness. It's called Nature Strip and can be seen at MARS Gallery in Port Melbourne until 5th August. Meg's also doing a floor talk on the 21st July if you'd like to hear more about her work. I'll be going along so come say hello.

When I saw Meg's work it reminded me of my own interest in all things weedy. When I was living in Kyoto (Japan) I made this woodblock print, Wallflowers, based on some weeds I fell in love with in my local neighbourhood. To me they were beautiful.

And then I remembered my recent obsession in photographing one kind of weed I saw everywhere in Greece on my trip there last month. I found a great paddock of them in Crete and went crazy with my camera. Fortunately for you I'm only posting one pic here.

I think the information for Meg's exhibition captures the special quality of weeds:

"In the body of work Nature Strip, weeds are presented as graphic silhouettes that are both beautiful and elusive. The motifs hover through thin veils of pearlescent-layered paint on natural beech grounds. They are delicate in their appearances and at times disappear from view. The wildness presented here is ideal and alludes to utopian gardens and serene vistas while the simple motifs are common and ordinary in their depiction." [MARS Gallery]

a market worth its salt (& pepper)

The Harvest Xmas Market was so wonderful last year that you'd be completely mad (IMHO) to miss it this year. But get there early; it's going to be packed & crazy & super fun! And just look at the line up of talent.

18th December.

art worth seeing

Chute, 2011 by Sarah Amos
collograph and gouache

Fink Truss, 2011 by Sarah Amos
collograph and gouache

New works by Sarah Amos are showing now at Flinders Lane Gallery in Melbourne. These two images are just a delicious taster. And if you're lucky enough to be in town this Saturday 3rd September go along to the floor talk at the gallery, 2pm sharp. I've been a huge fan of Sarah's work since I saw her massive prints at an exhibition 2 years ago in gallery 101. Gorgeous stuff. Lots of fine line detail and imagery. Images above courtesy of Flinders Lane Gallery.

Belinda Fox
August bloom II (blue), 2010
etching, aquatint and screenprint on hand stained paper

Seems Melbourne folk are very lucky at the moment. Belinda Fox is also exhibiting in our neck of the woods. Belinda is a mind-blowingly talented printmaker. No exaggeration - her work makes me weep with joy. This time she's showing at Niagara Galleries and is exhibiting mixed media pieces and ceramics. I first saw Belinda's work several years ago in Sydney and could not believe how beautiful it was. I think what I'm especially drawn to is the reference to Asia through her use of lotus flowers and jagged mountain ranges. Image above from Niagara Galleries.

Go see and enjoy!

carving

It's been slow going these last few weeks but this morning I managed to put the first colour of this print design onto wood and start carving. I decided to rub the design onto the block with a boning tool & tracing paper instead of with carbon paper (my usual way). There are tiny little elements to this design so I need to carve carefully. One slip and the wood I want to keep will be gone. Patience + care.

Forgive me for using hipstamatic again but I'm loving these smokey yellow shots at the moment.

This article about Cibi and Mr Kitly in Saturday's Age made me smile. So beautifully written by Dan Rule. I'm so happy two of my favourite places in Melbourne are getting some media attention.

autumn colour

Loving these autumn days. The light is so lovely and gentle. The grape vine on our back fence has changed into its autumn shades and the leaves are slowly dropping to the ground. Crunchy dry leaves from elm and plane trees are floating down the streets all over town at the moment. So lovely to walk in! A favourite spot to ride my bike at this time of year is the gorgeously autumnal Royal Parade, apparently an old northern stock route in the 1800s. The canopy of leaves is so lovely along there. Such pretty golden yellows.

It's definitely chai weather now. I'm aiming to make this classic French pear tart over the weekend. I made it last year and cannot describe how good and rich and buttery it was.

pretty paws

My neighbours were trimming the flowers off their gorgeous kangaroo paw plants last night so that more can grow. I stopped them in the street and asked if I could take flowers from their bin. They laughed and snipped me a beautiful branch full of perfect flowers to take home. I can't stop looking at them - they're just so sunny and furry and lovely and uniquely Australian. I mean just look at those gorgeous furry paws! Aren't they beautiful?

These neighbours don't know how much I covert their front garden. They have lots of healthy clumps of red and yellow kangaroo paw and a lovely weeping gum tree too. Top all this off with a stylish black wrought iron fence and you have one pretty special inner city front garden.

Will it ever stop raining? Everything is so damp inside and out. And we haven't even been flooded like our poor fellow Aussies up north.

iro iro

I finished printing and sewing up the tea towels. Succulent blossom in black on natural linen/cotton blend.

The opening of Mr Kitly last Thursday was fun! Such a sweet space filled with beautiful Japanese inspired zakka. If you're in Melbourne do go see. It's on Sydney Rd in Brunswick.

All my new summer reading has just arrived via post from the Book Depository. Happiness!!! One of them is Jonathon Franzen's Freedom. Has anyone read it yet?

green

Walking through Melbourne's Carlton Gardens this morning I was mesmerised by the all the green around me. There's no denying it: we've had a lot of rain. I've recently been gifted a 4th hand iphone (yes that's one with 3 previous owners, now how green is that?) so I whipped it out and used an app I'm currently in love with called hipstamatic. Got to love those 70's colours, no?

egg-ity

twig

solo

two eggs

These are a few new prints from the growing egg series based on sumi ink illustrations. All available here.

Melbourne folk - are you going to Finders Keepers this weekend? If I can work out how to get to Shed 4 I will be.

6 sleeps until Kyoto for me.......

dash

Swirls of dashes in repeat on paper. I'm testing the repeat before I commit it to fabric.

This recent cold weather has found me cooking and eating apple, rhubarb and pear pudding with fresh cream. I'm not sure there is anything better on a cold night. Except perhaps the pea and ham soup that was eaten before it.

And speaking of foodie things I recently had the joy of eating the best eggs benedict ever at the newly opened Aquarium Cafe, 382 High St, Northcote.

Have you seen 'I am Love' (lo sono l'amore) yet? If not, do! You won't be disappointed. It's epic, it's gorgeous, it's Italian and it has Tilda. What more can you want in a film?

whiskers

trees with whiskers, edinburgh gardens, fitzroy north, melbourne

Last Sunday I had a drawing date with a friend in the lovely Edinburgh Gardens. We had so much fun sitting there drawing in that gorgeous winter afternoon light. We worked until our hands grew frozen and then wandered up the road to a cafe for hot chocolate and other sweet treats. It was a lovely way to spend the afternoon. We've decided it might be a semi-regular thing and we'll invite anyone we know who would like to come along and draw.

I've been totally drawn into Design for Life. Is anybody else watching this amazing series? French product designer Philippe Starck takes a group of young UK design folk and puts them through a series of exercises in the hope of finding someone who will get to work with him in Paris for 6 months. Thankfully it's not as painful or cheesy as most reality shows of this kind. From a teaching point of view it's absolutely fascinating and everyone at work is talking about it. You can see episode one here. If you're quick eps two and three are here on iview. And there's a good description of the series here.

black and white

I don't know where these headless dresses are going, do you? I've been drawing these for the last few weeks and they keep multiplying.
And this is a close up of one panel out of a set of four purchased from Spacecraft in Gertrude St at their recent sale. Black, grey and white wild fennel screen printed on canvas. To go above our bed. Looks like that wall isn't going to be wallpapered after all. But am I complaining?

billie julien

Billie Julien
Autumn 2008
from The Seasons series
synthetic polymer paint, linoprint, watercolour
81.0 x 50.2 cm
Presentation College, Windsor

If you want to be inspired by very talented year 12 students have a look at this year's Top Arts exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria (Ian Potter). The lovely thing about this year's show is they seemed to have caught the lino cutting bug :) as there are quite a few very gorgeous prints on display. Like the one pictured here by Billie Julien, who has 2 prints in the exhibition. If in Melbourne it's worth a look. Or just click on the NGV website here to get a taste of the work on display.

layers - day 2

Day 2 of workshop - more layering of the prints we started on day 1. It was really freeing and playful to work like this. No plans, no expectations, just experimentation with a range of stencils we'd cut.Day 2 repeat print - when I signed up for the workshop I decided that I needed to loosen up my usual design style a bit and that this would be a good chance to work quite differently. Get out of my comfort zone if you will. I usually work quite tightly and on a fairly small scale. So working with the banksia ink drawings I'd done on day 1 I decided to design a fairly loose abstract repeat pattern print with some of those ideas. I used a cotton base cloth that was 'stone' in colour. Choosing and mixing the right coloured ink to print with was challenging though. I think the colour I made was too light in the end - a pale pistachio. It think this design might look quite different if printed in black.

I can't recommend this 2 day workshop enough. It's run by Harvest Textiles and they're just so lovely. Lara, our teacher for the weekend was as patient and knowledgeable about printmaking as they come. And we got such a buzz from being a small group of people doing this together. If you want to learn some basics about textile printing then this is the place to do it.

emma morrison: figments

Speaking of figs, this little exhibition, figments, is just wonderful. Emma Morrison's prints and paintings at Sixtynine Smith Street Gallery, Collingwood. Her fig etchings are really extraordinary, such wonderful small scale lines and tones. It's on until 14th March and is a real treat for the eyes. Queen is right next door if you need another excuse to pop by and then there are all those little Japanese eateries north of Gertrude on Smith that are also so worth stopping in to enjoy.

plum lucky; plum grateful

Last night we headed off down a back laneway near our house to a plum tree loaded up with fruit that the owner seemed not to want. Branches were hanging over into the laneway and in Australia it's legal for the public to take that fruit. As I was picking the plums I could hear the wings of fruit bats near my arms. We were in competition for these luscious red morsels! I plan to make jam on the weekend with that big bowl in the first pic. There is nothing quite like a liquidy plum jam drissled over dessert 7 months from now in the dead of winter. Behind the plum tree was an apricot tree also loaded with ripe fruit. It was well in the man's yard so sadly we could not pick any. We're considering knocking on his door and asking if we can fill up a few bags and pay him for them. I just hate seeing fruit rotting on the ground.This one little plum is the first and only fruit produced by our young plum tree this year. We planted it 18 months ago so were surprised to see she had produced already. Just one but delicious! I can't wait to see how many she gives us next year. It's plum crazy around here at this time of year. So many fruit trees to choose from! Figs galore in another 6 weeks or so, plums, apricots, lemons, limes, the list goes on. All because 50-60 years ago when immigrants from the Mediterranean arrived in Melbourne they planted fruit trees all over the inner city suburbs where they lived. Am I grateful or what?

zen and minimalism

I've been having fun designing this new giclee print. I just love the whole feeling of ikebana. Shop fronts in Japan have the most gob-smackingly gorgeous ikebana arrangements in their front windows. It makes me want to run away in horror from the front of some Australian shops because they just have no idea. Not all of course. But some seem to have never encountered the principles of shape, line and form or the symmetry and balance of ikebana. Or the concept of minimalism.

I suppose those of us in Melbourne could head off to Ikebana Melbourne for some lessons to help rectify this sad state of affairs.

This photo by markfountain52 on flickr taken on the streets of Kyoto is the kind of thing that makes me swoon.

art deco beauty to go

Why is it that beautiful old buildings need to make way for more department stores and we call that progress?
I've just heard (via Ink & Spindle) about the impending demolition of the gorgeous art deco building, Lonsdale House in Melbourne. It needs to go because apparently the world needs another Myer department store. Can you believe this?

When friends and family visit they always tell me how much they love the way Melbourne preserves it's architectural history unlike other big cities like Sydney, which has been only too keen to tear down it's history and replace it with shiny new (read lacking in character) buildings. This demolition would be tragic in terms of preserving Melbourne's unique heritage.

There's an online petition where you can register your opposition to this crazy decision. And Melbourne walking tours which include this art deco beauty while it still stands.

tessuti fabrics

I've died and gone to fabric shop heaven. I swear. This place is gorgeous. No more Spotlight or Lincraft madness for me. This is how finding beautiful fabrics was meant to be.

Tessuti in Flinders Lane, Melbourne, near Russell St. Plus they also have shops in Sydney.

And they have a cute blog too.

I'm in the process of making 2 new skirts in light of my success with sewing and printing hanabi. So I've purchased some luscious dark, dark denim (almost black) and some cherry red 100% linen. I could have bought a lot more fabric in that gorgeous shop but kept myself in check. I am proud to say this as I am known to go overboard with these things. My new challenge is going to be learning how to put a lining in the red linen skirt. That will be interesting.