Silver at East Gippsland

I am back from Bairnsdale and catching up on computer work, the selected works from the silver exhibition look good in their new setting and attendances at the opening and artist talks were pleasing. The works will be on display at the East Gippsland Art Gallery until 28 August then they will come back to me. I will take what I can fit in my suitcase to Cleveland for the fundraising auction. I would once again like to thank those who supplied work for the exhibition and say how much they were appreciated by the audience. You can see some of the works closer up on the Gallery's website http://eastgippslandartgallery.org.au/ along with works by local East Gippsland artists, members of PAGE.

Exhibitions

I am about to head off to Bairnsdale to install and open the IAPMA Silver exhibition which will be shown alongside an exhibition by the local paper group PAGE (paper arts gippsland east). I intend taking the long way round via Meeniyan so that I can deliver the books of mine that were selected for the artist book competition and exhibition "Liberated Books" that is a celebration for the 40th anniversary of the Leongatha Arts Society. The books of mine that got selected were Atlas and Obsolete. I figured I should work out a good way of transporting it so I spent a couple of days earlier in the week making a box to fit.

I have made a couple of journals this week, the first is using my Japanese name stamp and some practice bamboo on recycled museum board with chunks of pulp fiction (an extra couple of sheets from a project I'm working on for Book Art Object).

 The other has waved sheets and a photograph I took on a recent trip to Magnetic Island of waves crashing on the beach, the binding is Celtic.

The last picture is of samples for the Papermakers of Victoria Occasional Publication which will features recipes that have appeared in the Deckle Edge over the years with a sample for each paper treatment. This is using verdigris wax from Langridge Paints and there is quite a variation between batches but I love the effect.

Japanese Name Stamp Workshop

Last Saturday I went with seven others to Ebisu Design, the shop and studio of Japanese Calligrapher Miho Araki for a workshop organised by Papermakers of Victoria.

We started the day by drawing thin and thick lines with the Japanese brushes the Miho came around with some ideas for our names, some of had plenty of options, I was able to chose from three options for G, two for AI and three for L (or ru). I ended up with 'myself, flow, great'. While we had lunch Miho designed our names that we transferred onto eraser and cut out.

A very happy group at the end of the day!

My stamp and some of the first sheets of lines.

We also painted lots of bamboo.

The final activity for the day was painting onto cards and positioning our stamps, the touch of red really lights up the card. Some of us got carried away and started on the envelopes as well.

I was so enthused that I bought some brushes, I already had a few and since we learned that the brushes need to be stored hanging down I needed a system. I went to the Op Shop and bought a wooden toilet roll holder with a flat top (for $2), then I started looking for something to sit on the top. At the second Op Shop I found a wooden plaque that also cost me $2. I came home and drilled a hole in the middle of the plaque and screwed it to the top of the roll holder. I then screwed some screws part way in spaced around the edge of the plaque so now I have my brush holder, now where to store it???

New Museum in Turkey

One of my books was purchased from IAPMA's Faszination Papier Exhibition in Germany by the Ege University for their new museum of Paper and Book Arts that was opened this month. Here is the flier with my book on the front page! 

Yabbers and workshop

I am teaching a basic papermaking workshop this coming Saturday at Bundoora Park in the stables at Coopers Settlement. If you would like to attend please either call me on 0424333136 or email info@gailstiffe.info.

At our last two sessions of Yabbers we have worked on doing suicide prints, I collected some pieces of mdf from Reverse Art Truck in Ringwood and we used these for our plates after cutting them into four. For my design I used a floral design from Dover.

These two images were made with the suicide plate.

 I used the other three pieces to carve the same design for printing the three colours on a plate each. I need to remove more from the backgrounds and in all my registration leaves a lot to be desired. But there are some areas I really like. When I get some time I'm going to have another go after I remove some of the excess background and I'll use the final plate of the suicide series to finish off this one.

I spent this weekend at workshops, on Saturday I learned Carolingian Binding from Elke Ahokas through Victorian Bookbinders Guild, here you can see the class books.






On Sunday I did the first session of a drawing class, we did still life and at one stage in the afternoon the sun came streaming in the window and made wonderful shadows, they changed too quickly to draw but they were stunning, especially the empty wine bottle (no we didn't drink it before we started!)