pigeon gillian: July 2012

Tuesday, 31 July 2012

Monoprinting Workshop

Today I attended a mono printing workshop at Zart Art in Melbourne for a professional development day. It was lots of fun revisiting mono printing and having a whole day of drawing and making. Here are some of my prints from today...

Rugby player...

daffodils...(my favourite from today)

a doodle...

a big orange flower...

face doodle...

teapot doodle...

Monday, 30 July 2012

Reminisce Art Club Submission

Here is my recent lino print which I made for Around the Kitchen Table Art Club last month....

For last month’s Art Club 'Reminisce' theme I started to think back to my earliest memories as a child. I have two very vivid memories from when my family lived in Union Street, Greenock in Scotland. I don’t know how old I was, but I was able to walk about and I can remember my line of vision being quite low down, so I must have been quite little.

The first memory relates to the image of the fish. Dad had been fishing and had brought home a big dead fish, it was night time and the lights were on in the kitchen. He lifted me up on the side of the kitchen bench and I began examining the dead fish. To my surprise dad lifted out the eye of the fish and pretended to eat it, yuck! I remember that I started squirming and squealing and then there was lots of laughter because of my reaction.

The second memory relates to the key. Two policemen came to the front door one day enquiring about a young woman who had been murdered in the local area. I remember peering through the legs of my parents and feeling a bit scared of the men in uniform. Mum and dad said they didn’t know anything but the told the police about a key they had found when they were gardening a few days earlier. I remember my parents giving them the key and that was the end of the conversation. Keys have interested me ever since.

I was telling my parents about these memories recently and mum told me that the case of the dead girl has still not been resolved. It was strange having the conversation with my parents about my earliest memories as neither of them remembered the fish, and they said they only vaguely remembered the police coming to the front door.

Louise Saxton

I have been studying the work of Melbourne based artist, Louise Saxton recently as part of my year 11 coursework in Studio Arts Textiles. On Thursday last week I, along with another teacher took a group of students to visit her 'Sanctuary' exhibition at Heide Gallery, Melbourne. The students loved her work, as did I, so I thought I would share it here! I was so keen to find out more about Louise's work that on Sunday (my usual day of pj's and lie-in) I went to Louise's talk at Heide gallery. What a pleasure it was to hear Louise talk and have the chance to ask questions!

Louise collects pieces of needlework from op shops and cuts out the embroidery motifs, which she then assembles into these wonderful pieces. It's hard to make out in the images, but these are actually pinned together, and not sewn. The tiny bits of embroidery are arranged and pinned onto fine tulle then are pinned to the wall. The pins are silver or brass and give off a lovely sparkle in the gallery lighting, and the artwork sits slightly away from the wall, which creates wonderful shadows.

The colours and textures of these work are just stunning. It takes Louise a very long time to arrange and pin these works, which I greatly admire.

Louise based these works from the Sanctuary exhibition on old watercolour paintings (see the emu image below). It was really interesting to hear her talk about her interest in making homage to the anonymous needlework artists and the art of needlework which is a dying tradition in today's society. She also talked about how she is paying homage to and highlighting the beautiful illustrations of long forgotten naturalists and illustrators. Interestingly she does not view herself as a textile artist, as she doesn't actually make the embroidery, she re-works them.

You can see more of Louise's work here, and there is also a great on line interview with Louise here. She has a lovely blog too, which you can find here.

Hope you like!

This is Louise in front of two of her works at Heide gallery. They are much bigger than the real life birds which makes you really look and consider the detail in the tiny embroidery pieces. You are constantly moving back and forward when looking at her work, so you can see all the detail and then when you step back you get to see the beautiful birds better.