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"Letting Go" on International Women's Day



I celebrated International Women's Day on Sunday, 8 March by  participating in a very happy and colourful textile art installation - a 72 square metre fabric tile mosaic  which was the culmination of many months of innovative  planning and creative workshops at Timeless Textiles Gallery, 90 Hunter Street, Newcastle East (NSW, Australia) ....  You can read more about the project in  my previous blog post.
"Letting Go" was such fun with hundreds of women, led by community leaders, textile artist coordinators and  a well known Aboriginal artist and elder, scattering the fabric tiles to the wind.



The mosaic followed Elsie Randall's  Aboriginal design of four large butterflies, and while it took many hours to prepare on the footpath outside The Lock Up Cultural Centre , it was exhilarating to see the fabric tiles scattered with  happy abandon by one and all.







People came from far and wide to participate, and it was great to see visiting textile designer and artist, Abigail Brown  enjoying the event.


It was just a wonderful memorable  experience and I am grateful to have shared it with lovely friends and family. I'm very interested to hear about how you spent International Women's Day or of other creative IWD celebrations - please comment below.


Post script : And what happens to all of those 2,000 odd tiles?
Two exciting creative  events are planned:
1. Rachel Daireaux, A French textile artist will be in Newcastle, creating a large figure of humanity, by knotting many of the tiles together. To see Rachel's work go to : https://vimeo.com/40824624

 2.  At Timeless Textiles Gallery, we will be holding free workshops making fabric birds from a design by UK textile artist , Abigail Brown ( http://www.abigail-brown.co.uk/) . The birds will be created from the remaining tiles and  sold, with proceeds  donated to women's and children's refuges in the local area - Jenny's Place, Carrie's Place and Warlga Ngurra. This may be the focus for International Women's Day 2016... can't you just see 2000-3000 birds in the Norfolk pines out the front of Timeless Textiles Gallery? 

 STOP PRESS 10 March 2015  - I have just heard that Rachel Daireaux has cancelled her trip to Australia, so another artist is being sought for the task of textile sculpting / knitting/crocheting/ weaving a large figure. Are you the artist we are looking for? 

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