Skip to main content

Flying Free - after a month....


It is now a month since the Flying Free Project was launched. Four free workshops have been held, averaging twelve participants each week. This project has been developed to honour and remember the women who tragically have died as a result of domestic violence. All  the proceeds from the sale of bird kits and completed birds on International Women's Day 2016 will be donated to women's refuges in our local area.  Unfortunately in the month we have been making birds, two women have been added to the sad statistics of 43 female domestic violence deaths in Australia this year... However, we have sat peacefully each Wednesday at Timeless Textiles Gallery stitching birds and I would like to share with you some of the  wonderful  moments and creative achievements of "Flying Free" in the last four weeks. Thanks to UK artist, Abigail Brown who gifted Timeless Textiles a basic pattern for a bird. . 









Another 15 + birds flew south to Curve Gallery, Hunter Street, Newcastle. 






Comments

Popular posts from this blog

#SeptTextileLove26 Day11

#SeptTextileLove #STL26Day11 ‘Language’ …when symbols in stitch say more than words … my wonderful  Wednesday Makers group  has undertaken a community peace project ‘Petals for Peace’ - stitched prayer flags depicting flowers , symbolic of peace. . We have stitched many ourselves and other stitchers from all over Australia  have also been contributing as an impactful counter to the hate speech which seems to have pervaded  our world currently - the powerful language of stitch. 

#SeptTextileLove Day 12

  #SeptTextileLove #STL26Day12 ‘Friendship’ … This is a story of friendship based on the love of textiles and fibre art . Gallerist and artist, Anne Kempton and I have been friends for 15 years , meeting when we had both retired from ‘ top’ jobs in a government department and a high school respectively. Neither of us were the retiring types - Anne was establishing the first commercial textile art gallery in Australia and I was looking for a creative direction. We discovered we were both driven by a sense of social justice and community and shared similar artistic aspirations . Since then, we have co- curated exhibitions, collaborated on many projects. supported community art and women’s causes, and grown in our individual artistic expression - Anne includes more stitching in her work and she has had a more painterly influence on mine . Moreover, this friendship is multifaceted, deep and personal and one I value and treasure . Thank you, Anne.  

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...