Arty Places #11 : Maitland NSW

" Welcome to Maitland in the beautiful Hunter Valley. Maitland is made up of a patchwork of places, townships, colourful communities and immense history. As you explore the various destinations on offer you will notice the uniqueness and warmth which makes Maitland, Hunter Valley the wonderful area it is.... " This is what is written for tourists to Maitland, but nothing is said of its art culture.

I had a wonderful day in Maitland last Sunday. The Hunter Art Bazaar had its annual Winter event in the grounds of the Maitland Regional Art Gallery. With over 70 stalls of high quality hand made creations, the bazaar was such a stimulating and inspiring experience. I particularly loved the colourful fibre and felt wearables and was drawn to the outstanding quality silver jewellery and handcrafted silver art pieces - so much artistic talent in one place!

photos courtesy of Bobbi Oliver

It is always such a great opportunity to catch up with friends and to chat with the artists.

Bobbi and Jane -LamboArt

I also took the opportunity to wander through the gallery - something I always promise to do more often.

image from http://mrag.org.au/

And if all that wasn't enough arty-ness for one day,we stopped for a late" lunch" at the Central Park Cafe at the Information Centre which offered another arty surprise - an exhibition of knitted "local produce" by the Maitland Knitters. Every imaginable vegetable, fruit and even bottles of preserves in wool... I added an image of a little pattern book I found because I just wanted to come home and knit a whole vegetable garden.

I also want to add that the food at Central Park Cafe was beautiful - highly recommended ! And the view from our table on the verandah was fascinating, too- art on tree poles which also register the Maitland flood levels of the past. This park called Ministers' Park( named after the government ministers who have planted trees here during visits to Maitland) has long been a favourite park of our grandchildren, but it was lovely to sit back with a cuppa and admire with fresh wonder what beauty there is locally!

29 Faces

"29 Faces " is an online art challenge - blog and Facebook . The challenge is to create a face each day of September ( with one day for catch up) .... I decided to take up the challenge to practise drawing faces for my dolls and to practise techniques with coloured pencils. I received a set of 60 pencils from my daughter last Christmas so I wanted to be sure I used them before next Christmas! I love making tags so I combined tag making with "29 Faces", so I will also have some unique Christmas gift tags for gift giving this year. Here are the first 9 faces for the first 9 days of September

Covid Man and Book Print

This is my tag for the current theme at Tag Tuesday - Book Print. I like using text as a background for tags and today, I reduced one of my recent line drawings and printed it on a small book page .... as you can see, the book's chapter is entitled "Of Holy Living and Dying ( from The Book of Books) . I thought this was appropriate as this 'Covid man' drawing depicts Nature happily thriving while man appears to be "unravelling " at the edges of body and mind... Original drawing - Wilma Simmons Silk screen print on fabric : Wilma Simmons Silk screen print on paper : Wilma Simmons And here are some other tags on book print backgrounds - these are free motion stitched "Nature" portraits done earlier in the year.

Fish and Sticks : Art Dolls

This week I've been working on fish and sticks .... The sticks are the message stick art dolls which were very popular, attracting some attention and a few orders at the Wise Women exhibition. Each of the message stick dolls are from the Wise Women series, each with her own personality and message of wisdom, handwritten on a handmade timber tag. I gather the sticks during my walks around my neighbourhood and the tags are made from special bits of timber, some collected by me or my husband or from off cuts gifted to us from another doll making friend whose husband makes bagpipes. These dolls start off very simply with a wrap around a stick, in the general shape of a body. 'Naked" message stick dolls - strips of wadding wrapped around found sticks. Then I usually wrap other layers of fabric, wool, and/or fibres, over which I do some simple embroidery. I sculpt or mould small face masks for these dolls. I really like using "sari ribbon" as w...

Empress Wu Designs with Wilma

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