Empress Wu Designs with Wilma

Original fabric for textile art ... an article   'Surfaces for Stitch " by Pauline Verrinder in the February/March edition of Quilting Arts Magazine caught my eye. It reads " Scrim or cheesecloth - is an inexpensive woven cotton that is both open and loose. It has many uses around the house : cleaning windows, straining cooking ingredients, and as a bandage. But for textile artists, it is the perfect material for creating richly decorated art cloth...."  So, with some cotton fabric,  gesso, paint, pastels, pencils, newspaper headlines and cheesecloth ... this is what I got :  I also applied the same technique to a cloth doll body - inspired by the ocean and shipwrecks.  (The100th anniversary of te Titanic sinking is next month )  So enough of playing around with paint... back to some naked bodies desperately waiting to be embellished into some message stick  art dolls. I wonder what the person who ordered these would think if he saw them like this? 

I consider myself very lucky to have such great opportunities to go to workshops fairly close to home (Sydney is only 167 km away) with well known artists . Yesterday, I attended a workshop with Christi Friesen, Polymer Clay Artist Extraordinaire - please click here   to see Christi's work.  The workshop was held in the fantastic new workshop of the Sydney Jewellery School  - so lovely to work in such a light and spacious area. And here are some of the pieces I made in the workshop - sort of " art nouveau". Some of the pieces need repairing as they weren't cured before the trip home to Newcastle and got a bit squashed in transit.  I was fairly happy, considering that I haven't made polymer clay jewellery for a couple of years. And today we celebrated a grandson's fourth birthday...  what a happy weekend it's been.

Tag Theme : Birds ( nests, eggs)  Although  very busy, I have been determined to create a tag each week for the Tag Tuesday Blog Challenge    All the tags  on the blog are very artistic, with so many different techniques used to interpret the theme . The tag I made for the "Birds" theme last week  is a silk screen print,  sewn onto the cardboard tag template, with satin and gingham ribbons. I bought the print from a stall at the Hunter Art Bazaar last weekend.   The tag below for "Mad March" was created from painted handmade paper, and a moon from a  paper circle coloured with texta markers and dabbed with rubbing alcohol. Then I stamped a pattern and the words, and added a silhouette cur from black cardboard, with some sari silk ribbon.  Tag theme: Mad March ( hares, rabbits) 

Asian Girl portrait ( in the style of  Patti Culea )   By now, you are all most likely sick of hearing about my Wise Women Exhibition.  The opening was last week and it went very well - beyond my expectations. One little corner of the exhibition was my Asian themed  mixed media art works - not many of these have been seen before, so here is a glimpse. The image above is of a Patti Culea style  fabric portrait, and the others are photos printed onto silk and.or organza and  some have been distressed with heat The Denson sisters _ my grandmother second from left  Jan See : my great grandmother as an older and younger woman.  Stone Buddha : Cambodia Series #2   Temple Dancers : Cambodia Series #3 Here are some scenes from the opening night of the exhibition.  For more photos from the opening night, please click here  For photos of all the exhibits, please click here If you would like to see all of these in real life, the exhibition remains open until 2

Display of a few of the artistic paper dolls donated for the exhibition  to raise funds  to support education programs for refugee women.  Opening night of Wise Women Exhibition at Timeless Textiles Gallery - Thursday night .   This was today's checklist.  1. Email final list with prices to the gallery  2. Put hangers on art works  3. Put backing on the last art work  - still wet last night.  4. Organise the paper dolls into lots , ready for auction on Thursday night.  5. Contact the recipient of donations from the silent auction to check if a representative will attend the opening.  6. Pack all the work into boxes for transport.  7. Organise a meeting with the person opening the exhibition.  8. Set up the exhibition  All done - but phew I'm tired!  Only a few little jobs tomorrow....  my best helper resting after a long day  Lovely Meredith who  displayed  the 130+  paper dolls.   Thanks to Anne from Timeless Textiles and the many supporters

Here is my interpretation of this week's theme for Tag Tuesday - Books. I found this image in Sunday's newspaper, in an ad for a Sydney Ballet Company performance. I immediately thought of " Wuthering Heights" and  Catherine and Heathcliff  ... For more details how the tag was made and to see all the amazing  artistic tags made by other participants in Tag Tuesday .... please click here