Workshop results and As If Women's Art Register members show

Since I got back from teaching in Ballarat I have made a bit of paper and done some batik dyeing. Women's Art Register is turning 40 this year and we have funding to put on a women's art festival in Melbourne this October. The theme for the Festival is As If : 40 Years and Beyond and it promises to be a great boost to the Register and to the women artists represented.

I am one of the curators and have made a couple of pieces for the show. Years ago, probably 1975, I made some batik Tshirts, several had the women's Liberation symbol and some had 'Shame, Frazer, Shame'. My sister still has one of the shame ones and is going to lend it to me but I was inspired to make another WL one for the members show but instead of using commercial dyes I went with indigo and rust. I also did some batik on a sheet of recycled paper and dyed that with indigo too.

I came back from the workshop with quite a lot of pulp even though I sent the participants home with some. I made some landscape concertinas and had a bit of a play with red and black pulp.

Here is a picture of my class on the final day with all the work produced on display, you can see that I had a very talented group.

Late in June the exhibition 'Pulp and Fiction' opened in Negev, Israel. Here are a couple of pictures of my work hanging in what looks like a fabulous space.

New Books

Sorry it has been so long between posts, I guess I've been too busy with this and that. I've nearly finished putting together the Women's Art Register Bulletin and should be working on the IAPMA newsletter at the moment. Instead I am writing this and playing scrabulous, GRRR.

I have made a couple of books lately and intend making another one for the Noosa show, the theme is Back to Basics and at first I wasn't going to enter but now I have decided on a book similar to the one I've made for the Southern Cross Uni book show. The book is called 'Sand Stories' and is based on a simple star book with a few extra folds. On our recent holiday I took lots of photos of the bubbles in the sand made by a small crab Scopimera inflata. I felt that they could be interpreted as text. Here are some pictures of the completed book.




The next book I'm going to make will be the same format but will feature a picture of this apple pie I made for the purpose of the book, What we do for art eh!

My copy of 500 Handmade Books arrived yesterday, what a treat. I have flipped through it and then studied about half, I was very pleased to see that many of the books featured had some handmade paper. Last week I received my copy of Beater Finesse for the Paper Artist put together by Catherine Nash, what a great resource that is going to be. My Handpapermaking magazine also arrived in the last week and I'm in that too, what a week!
We had Yabbers last week too and here are the popup postcards that were sent. Mine is the one made from magazine on the left , it was my mockup for sand stories and I hadn't sent it through the mail but the one I sent didn't arrive so we included it in the exchange.

Christmas Cards and creativity

I have just spent over an hour reading emails in between looking at blogs and there's so much more I could read but I promised myself I'd catch up on the washing, dishes and try to do a bit of a tidy up. I'm looking forward to a very uncreative day, I've packed away my papermaking gear and drained the pulp. I have only one more project to complete before the end of the year and that is to get some denim beaten for some friends, I promised it to them months ago but then my beater stopped working, in fact it is now in pieces, so I guess the first thing I need to do is get it back together, I'm afraid I've put that in the too hard basket. I'll see if I can hire Papermakers of Vics beater this week and then put my mind to getting mine fixed, I might need to hire a handy man.



I feel very relieved I finally posted out all the IAPMA (http://www.iapma.info/) bulletins, I've been working on them since 1 September, got them back from the printers about 3 weeks ago and apart from the first night have put covers on and samples in over 350. The paper for the covers was sent from Scotland months ago and I sent J one of my Bundoora books in exchange for the postage costs, I hope she's happy with it. My next editing job is the IAPMA newsletter, then the Women's Art Register Bulletin. The newsletter should only take a couple of days but the Register Bulletin will take a little longer, I didn't have much for it but I've chased up a couple of articles and have extended the deadline to mid January. On my way to Portland last weekend I called into the Warrnambool Art Gallery and saw a couple of shows, I was very taken by an exhibition by Katherine Bowman which was black and white figures, almost just suggestions of figures but when you looked closely small sections were beaded. I bought a copy of the catalogue and was able to contact Katherine re including her work in the forthcoming bulletin, she pointed me in the direction of Craft Culture http://www.craftculture.org/Review/rbarry4.htm where there is a review of the exhibition and sent me some images for the bulletin. I'm also hoping to include an article on Bronwyn Oliver, her work was on the cover of our second bulletin back in 1988 and not since then. Given her untimely death last year I thought it might be time to feature her work again.



I have been doing a little bit of creative work lately. The time came to make Christmas cards, it's go so that each year more people expect handmade cards from me. This year I've taken a bit of an easy way out, instead of handmade paper as the base card I've used watercolour paper. When I did the card class I discovered a shop in Croydon that sold books of 280 gsm watercolour paper for $10, there were fifteen A3 pages so I was able to get 60 cards from one book. It wasn't very good quality for watercolours but fine for cards with a rough and a smooth side. I got a bit carried away and made over 60 cards (I've bought 3 books all up). Here are pictures of four of them, the others are all similar, just variations on a theme. It all started with the scraps from my Christmas books, I just added a bit of paper which had been sprayed with a bit of gold acrylic and with strong red dye.


Now I really must get off the computer!

Bulletin and Show

I haven't done much this past week apart from work on the IAPMA Bulletin. I've nearly got it done, just waiting on a couple of things and still struggling a bit with InDesign.

I ended up just taking the hemp out of the beater half beaten and I've put in some pulp with an additive that Mark sent me to sharpen the blades. I'm hoping that will stop it sticking. Then I might have another go at the hemp.

I did quite well at the show this year - two firsts and a second. I had planned to go to the Show on Friday but decided instead to do the galleries with a friend. We started at Charles Nodrum, where cousin Bill Yaxley's show is about to finish. Then on to Pollock, Dickinson and Christine Abrahams. Then we went to Albert Street and did the galleries on one side of the street then went to Kazari - this amazing warehouse with Japanese furniture, fabrics, old books, etc. Then back down the other side of Albert Street and home. All in all I think we visited 10 galleries - a record, even for us. We saw some great art and some ordinary art. But it was a good experience to prepare for the Women's Art Register gallery walk I'm organising for the 27th of October.

Dream Diaries and Book Exhibition

So much for daily blogging. It has been ten days since my last blog, In that time I've finished the IAPMA newsletter and bulletin, worked on a brochure for ecorecycle, bought a new second hand car, grooved at the Apollo Bay Music festival and sorted out Women's Art Register (well spent Tuesday there). Last night I went to the opening of Peter Lyssiotis and George Matoulas exhibitions at Deakin University Stonnington Stables. All the usual suspects were there. I liked Peter's work particularily the large prints of manipulated photographs and some of the photomontage. Didn't think much of the star concertinas upstairs though!

I've been trying to get some paper made for about a week, maybe today I'll get to the vat. I covered several dream diaries last night after dinner so will have some examples for the workshops on Sunday and Monday. Last week I took some photos to put on this page so I'll put them up now, they are the pages, covers and finished dream diaries.