Empress Wu Designs with Wilma

Get in quickly  before these two art workshop sessions book out!!! 02 4974 5100  Visit the Newcastle Art Gallery website for more info.  http://nag.org.au/ Whats-On/Event-Calendar/ Workshop-Making-paper-pods Image: Anne Kempton, small delicacies held lightly 2016 (detail) 30 - 40 paper pods made with hand made, painted and dyedpaper, Chinese German English text, inspired by Ines Seidel, Artist collection Courtesy the artist

 Some days are just your lucky days - today I was very fortunate and privileged to open the first ever Australian exhibition "Fragments" by  UK  Fibre Artist  Sue Hotchkis .  Here is a little about the techniques of this amazing textile artist from her own website  ...  Working intuitively with print and stitch, marks, textures and colours are exaggerated, intensified to reveal the detail and complexity within the images. Materials are deconstructed using modern methods, ripped, burnt and dyed. Time is invested in their reconstruction; pieces can take from a week to several months to create. Whilst being aesthetically pleasing the work can also act as a metaphor for deterioration and ruin, associated with urban decay and ultimately death and loss. They evolve organically, built up with layers of print, cloth, paper, and stitch into three-dimensional abstract forms that hover between object and image; to create a unique, visual and tactile landscape of form and textu

Sketch and completed ATC with a Christmas theme ( watercolour and ink)  - copyright Wilma Simmons  The current craze of card collecting amongst the youngest members of the family  is the World Explorer cards from  a supermarket giant. I am not promoting this, but  there is little wonder that curious kids would want  to collect this series of cards.  I was thinking about card collecting yesterday, when my doll making group, Gumnut Dollies Newcastle   made some Artist Trading Cards (ATC) for a Christmas swap with a group in Queensland.  If you haven't heard of an ATC before , here is a Wiki explanation: Artist Trading Cards (ATCs)  is a conceptual art project initiated by the Swiss artist  M. Vänçi Stirnemann  in 1997. He called it a  Collaborative Cultural Performance . Artist Trading Cards are  2   1 ⁄ 2  by  3   1 ⁄ 2  inches (64 mm × 89 mm) in size, the same format as modern  trading cards  ( hockey cards  or  baseball cards ). They are self-made unique works or small s

"She didn't claim to see the fairies or hear their music, but she did find the fairy rings of dark grass, sprinkled with toadstool left by their dancing feet. "  Having completed a small watercolour and ink sketch this week led me to thinking about  "fairies in the garden". I remembered a story of an amazing hoax  by two young girls in 1917.  Have you heard of the Cottingley Fairies? Much has been written about the five photographs produced by two cousins, Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths in Yorkshire, England. I would love to show  here all  five photos but there is some controversy about the copyright of the photos and I would not like to be in any sort of dispute about the use of them. However, they are reproduced on these sites - click on the word link to see the photos  : 1. Wikipedia   2. Museum of Hoaxes 3. The Telegraph - Five Famous Hoaxes   Elsie and Frances took  photos with a quarter plate camera in their garden - images of the girls wit

"As the sun sets" - charcoal,ink and watercolour sketch . Copyright Wilma Simmons   The "woodland" creature  as a trend in  fashion and home decor and  bespoke design was (and in many places, still is) very popular. Dashing deer antlers, awesome owls, and then fantastic foxes.... I know I am often behind the times with trends, but I was surprised to hear that foxes have been "in" for well over 3 years! Perhaps a year I thought, but it seems that foxes have been on the rise as a popular design motif for some time. At the well known  international Renegade Craft Fairs  there were reports of items with "fox" images to be the best sellers as early as 2011 and then followed the predictions...  " Trendspotters  called it   back in February. (2012) More and more, foxes are popping up on the radar as stylish elements in design, outfoxing the omnipresent owl as the  It  thing in woodland animals. Could foxes be the new owls in hipster home deco