VISITING DEBORAH KLEIN IN HER STUDIO

A few weeks ago, I organised a school excursion for my Year 11 Studio Arts class to visit the studio of artist Deborah Klein in Ballarat.  What a fabulous morning it was!  Deborah was incredibly generous and welcoming, and shared so much information about her artistic practice and ideas.  The students had brought along their own visual diaries and were able to get some individual time with Deborah, talking through their ideas for their lino project.  Everyone on the excursion felt enthusiastic and inspired after leaving the studio

Thank you Deborah and also to your lovely husband, Shane Jones for making us feel so welcome and for the lovely cake!

COLLABORATION FACES BY CHRIS & GILLIAN NIX

I'm back blogging a little as I kind of forgot to post these here earlier.  This submission was part of the 'ART CLUB/AROUND THE KITCHEN TABLE' project, for the month which was 'Collaboration', and I created the collaboration with my lovely husband, Chris!

Hope you like them....

We got the idea for this project after seeing some online images from an exhibition called 'The Rituals', including the work of Melbourne based artist/designer Beci Orpin.  

We completely ripped off their idea of each artist having to make an image centred around the eyes.  We began our process by finding a head template (see below) and we both came up with a design for our own 'face'.  

Chris's face is a development of one of his characters - he has tonnes of them doodled in sketchbooks and on scrap bits of paper.  I'm a little bit obsessed with patterns at the moment, and this particular pattern is one from a mug that I have at home, and is an 'Octopus' pattern someone told me once.  I don't know for sure, but I like it.

Inking up...

We used a different print press than normal.  This one is a bit like a spongey sandwich toaster and you squeeze the lino and paper together for an even print.

"SQEEEEZE!"

The magic reveal...

"SQUEEEZE.....!"

I wasn't very happy with the alignment, ha ha!

We tried a few different colour variations...

All the prints lined up and drying...

Our favourite print...

The original templates that we used to create our faces...

Keiko Minami

Keiko Minami is one of my favourite artists.  She was born in Japan and lived in Paris from 1954 to 2004.  In 1959 she was given the title of 'Official Artist of the United Nations' for her print, 'Tree of Peace'.

I have one of her books and came across it again yesterday and thought I would share her wonderful, whimsical work here.

Hope you like.

And here is the lovely book of hers....

Barry Moser

Yesterday whilst having a look through Readings book shop in Lygon Street I found a fantastic book about American artist/illustrator Barry Moser (biography here).  Never before had I heard of him or seen his beautiful art works!  I am a big fan of wood engravings and lino prints and also portraits, so naturally my eyes were dazzled by his very textural and highly contrasting work.  Here is an interview with Barry Moser here.

'Self Portrait with a Stetson'

'Jonah and the Whale'

 'Flannery O'Connor' (this is my favourite)

'Kathe Kollwitz'

'William Blake'

 'Eudora Welty'

'Moby Dick' illustration for Arion Press 

'Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum'

The book which caught my eye...

And here are some examples of his work....

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.