Empress Wu Designs with Wilma

How to begin?  It's always difficult to start a new series of art works .... researching and experimenting and making samples  Hopefully, these samples I made this week will form the basis of a series of  mixed media artworks I have been planning for  a couple of months. This is my main  "Borders"  assignment for a twelve month Masterclass I have been studying online this year.  All will be revealed in posts over the next month or so. As you can see from the photos, the underlying comment is feminist. I was very lucky to find   and purchase beautifully stitched corsets, complete with boning to work with.   The rationale for this work?  Considerable achievements towards gender equality have been made throughout history. Many ‘societal’ borders have been crossed. Nevertheless, barriers guarding gender stereotypes and the culture which surrounds them remain firm. The appalling statistics of domestic violence, the unequal treatment of female leaders, the growing dem

" Landmarks " is the current theme for  the  Tag Tuesday   challenge. While I made a tag celebrating the Sydney Opera House  last week, I remembered an art tag I  made for the "Italy' challenge a few years ago and it used a landmark! I am not sure now  exactly the process used making this tag back in 2013, but obviously some background stamping and painting with a cut out of the Mona Lisa face and the leaning Tower of Pisa.  And to complete the connection between landmarks and Italy. I am very excited to hear that a textile "map" of Newcastle ( Australia) created collaboratively  by NCEATA ( Newcastle Creative Embroiderers and Textile Artists) will be exhibited in Italy next month.   Already this textile art work has been travelling around various countries, but will be on display at Perugia University 10 - 17 September with other maps interpreting "where I live".  Our Newcastle map shows many of the local landmarks interpreted in stitc

The team at Tag Tuesday choose the most interesting themes for our fortnightly tag challenge- Landmarks was chosen by Wendy from the design team, and when you see her two fantastic tags, you will see how I was inspired by them.  My tag is made using a technique I  learnt just last weekend, so I wanted to practise. The background is created by dry brushing three colours of acrylic paint on art paper, in this case, I used watercolour paper. Then, when the background is dry, with a fine rigger brush and white pigmented ink, I painted the outline of what I hope are recognisable representations of  landmarks - the Sydney Opera House and the Sydney Harbour Bridge. I added an Australian postage stamp, just in case there was any doubt. Although I don't live in Sydney, Newcastle is the nearest biggest regional city in NSW and only 168 km away, so these landmarks are almost local!  Please pop over to Tag Tuesday to see the other  tags submitted for this challenge - they are great! 

  Who's feeling lucky this week? Perhaps it's time for a game of bingo. Bingo is the current theme for Tag Tuesday, nominated by design team member, Michele. I made a couple of tags. One explores the theme of  taking chances and luck - with a background of an instant lottery ticket, an image of a vintage bingo card and a miniature playing card  with a few scattered stickers and a "sticky" tape transferred quote. The others is simple a pen and watercolour drawing of a bingo player all ready to win!  I also found out some interesting information about Bingo, as I was curious about  the word itself  Bingo is the American version of a game that originated as an Italian Lottery called “Lo Giuoco del Lotto D’Italia” that was all the rage dating back as far as the mid-1500s. When the game reached North America in 1929 it was known as “beano” but later renamed bingo after a caller yelled out "BINGO" instead of beano .  90-ball bingo (also known as “hous