Empress Wu Designs with Wilma

Having a long time obsession with making art with tea bags ( see previous posts September 2014 including exhibition invitation ) and with new inspiration from tea bag artist Ruby Silvious  , I started a very humble tea bag drawing project while on a break last month in Townsville, North Queensland, "Humble" is an apt description - I had a black felt tipped marker and five coloured paint markers and six dried used tea bags as my materials - all one needs for an 11 day holiday. As this wasn't really a sightseeing holiday to somewhere exotic, and more of a family visit, I recorded the minutiae - some of the trivialities which create memories.  These funny little drawings  were a few minutes each day of quiet reflection and single focus - no pressure, no deep meaning, no attempt at  artistry. Even now, a month after, just leafing through the little tea bag pages has a calming effect - just appreciating the little things in life. top row l-r : drinks at the airpor...

I often wonder if perhaps I am  becoming a little more eccentric. When the last fortnight's Tag Tuesday themes were announced - Masculine and Feminine - my mind wandered all over the themes until I settled on using some cardboard templates I  already had and with scissors, glue, a couple of abandoned book pages and some magazine and stock images, I came up with these "Quirky Characters". I need to mention that the book page backgrounds were from a book of literary criticism, with the masculine ( apologies to Salvador Dali) about  Shakespeare's Richard III and the feminine background came from a page about the work of Jane Austen. Quirky, but fun!

On a recent visit to my home town, Townsville in North Queensland, I was really happy and super impressed to discover an arty place I hadn't heard of before...Renegade Handmade.  I visited this delightful  "handmade"  gift shop on a Saturday morning. It was  23 July 2016 - a warm day for Winter. The arcade was abuzz with people indulging in coffee and snacks, shopping at the fresh food market  and browsing and  enjoying  the various trendy and bespoke shops in the arcade. This scene was hardly the Townsville of my childhood and I am embarrassed to admit  that it surprised me that the atmosphere was so cosmopolitan , contemporary and "with-it". I applaud Renegade Handmade for its vision for both the shop and the markets - to offer "opportunities for makers to mix with shoppers in an environment that is supportive and nurturing of handmade."   That nurturing support was obvious - the art was well displayed, presented with style and ...

This week, Tag Tuesday happened while I was in transit to my sister's. I caught up today, albeit with limited art resources - newspaper, a blue art marker, black pen, grey and white pencils, and a scrap of cotton. This is another little newspaper sketch of some cups and spoons. My interpretation of the " Cups and Cutlery" theme. 

Here is a video of Artist Sylvia Watt announcing the winners of the  handmade brooch, "Brooching the Subject"competition. Sylvia had the very difficult job of judging the competition.  Before the announcement, I chose Olivia Parsonage's  wall brooch, "how do you get, how do you get to Parry Street?" as my favourite amongst the 120+ brooches in the exhibition, and purchased it. Now I am so happy I will be the owner of the first prize winning brooch, especially as there were many at the exhibition opening vying for Olivia's work. Olivia has long been one of my favourite artists and you can read other articles I have written about her here and here.  Thank you also  to Sylvia for the generous mention of both my entries, "Silver Lines" and "Bees" amongst the commended. This exhibition is only open at Timeless Textiles until Sunday 2pm, so hope you  are able to see these beautiful small works of art.

Having recently attended a workshop with Ines Seidel, at  Timeless Textiles , I am enjoying creating with paper and especially newsprint. Here is  this week's tag for Tag Tuesday, my online art tag challenge group. The theme was "Down the street ... A row of houses".  It was inspired by a black line drawing I saw, but cannot find it again or the source. So if anyone recognises it, I would be happy to acknowledge the original. However, I have used a completely different technique and the style of houses  and the "moon" are also different.  I cut out some columns from the travel section of the Sunday paper - some of the words relate to housing and buildings  and pasted them down on a magazine page. I then used black felt tipped pen to draw in rooftops and  houses. The section of  visible street is also a newspaper photo from the same section of the newspaper. I like the idea of lights shining through windows, so made this a "night" scene wit...

Brooching the Subject Competition at Timeless Textiles Gallery - Viewers' Choice.... online.  Would you like to be in the running to win this beautiful brooch created especially by Ines Seidel (German fibre artist) ...make your choice from over 100 brooches   here  .