Saturday, October 17, 2009

workshops

I have a very busy couple of weeks ahead, next Friday and Saturday I'm teaching papermaking and bookbinding at Art Education Victoria's conference, the theme is Asia so I'm putting together a powerpoint presentation on making paper nagashizuki style but we'll be making western style paper. The second day is oriental binding and I'm planning to show these three bindings.

I am putting together kits so I bought some papers from Zart Art for the covers and Melbourne Etching supplies and Eckersleys for the rice paper for inside the books. I picked up a few useful things from Reverse Art Truck and some threads and needles from Spotlight. I've made up hanks of the different coloured threads and like the way they look all together.


The other class I'm doing is a Christmas class for Lumina Gallery in Malvern, it is to be an ornament class making firstly eco ornaments which can be planted after Christmas. These ones have spinach, carrot, spring onion and candytuft seeds.


The second part of the class will cover ornament books, here they are closed.

And here open.

This class will be held on Saturday 7 November from 1pm, contact Lumina if you are interested in participating. I'll also be putting together some kits that will be for sale at http://www.luminatextiles.com.au/ and at the Alcove Artshop.

Saturday, October 10, 2009

poetry swap, show and new books

Haiku for today

water gurgles by
as the fern
shines in the sun

All this poetry started when Valda challenged us to write a quatrain for the newsletter so I wrote one to describe Amanda Degener's workshop, then I submitted several copies for a yahoo papermaking group poetry swap, printed on flax paper of course. I was looking for a poem to go in a book and I discovered the allpoetry website and started taking some online classes, so here I am inflicting my Haiku on my readers. Anyway I finally bound the poems from the swap, I made it difficult for myself by sewing the pages into two concertina strips then coptic binding the concertinas.
Here is a new book featuring a Melbourne landmark the skipping girl vinegar sign in Richmond, I've sewn the text block onto tapes and extended the tapes as a closure.
This is one in progress that I'm making to donate to Curves for the Girls Night In which is fundraising for breast cancer research.
Here are my books from the show with their ribbons.

Nest Book mixed plant fibres, coptic bound.

Oriental Fern Book kozo with fern laminated in cover and endpages, bound with toji binding using hemp string.

Oriental Indigo Book kozo dyed with indigo toji binding with indigo dyed cotton thread.

Byron Bush Book mixed plant fibres with digital images and haiku bound with hemp string and a stick found on the walk in the rainforest near Byron Bay.

And finally a photo of one of the sports teams from my high school years showing off our wonderful sports uniform of Swedish bloomers, I think they were meant to be worn down nearly to our knees but noone did. I was reminded of these when I read a friend's blog bettybloomers.blogspot.com where she is researching the history of women's cycling. By the way I'm not in the photo, I was never good enough to get in any of the school sports teams.