Giant craft tagging

I love the whole idea of 'knit tagging' where people knit or crochet covers for everyday public items, such as street signs, parking meters etc. I came across this huge project where a group covered a whole abandoned service station. A pretty big project and an interesting result.

Visit the website here
for more information. I came across this info from the fantastic supernaturale website which totally rocks for interesting and contemporary DIY and craft.

Tapestry Symposium... some people...

After listening to lots of tapestry chat I did get to meet some excellent tapestry folk who's work is fantastic but who are also lovely, grounded and lots of fun folk as well. (a combination that I love - good work, good drinkers, good jokers! ;-)

Just to mention a couple of fabulous people and their websites etc...

The lovely Fiona Rutherford (UK) makes excellent tapestries and she's a great speaker as well! Her talk on how she moved away from one way of working (inspiration, colour, design etc) and has been inspired by Issey Miyake and Japanese textiles in her current works. She has been making these long strip like tapestries that combine various colour and texture components and they can be displayed in various formats. I love the fact that she was inspired by fabrics to create other fabrics. Also talking to her and hearing her mention Newcastle and Sunderland reminded me how much I love the Futureheads!!! Very rock!
http://www.rutherfordtextileart.com/


Susan Mowatt (Scotland) works at the Edinburgh College of the Arts and also is a tapestry weaver and artist. I loved her works on show at Canberra mostly from the wide range of materials used and the installation method. It was loads of smaller works, almost collaged onto the wall in a rough circular format (a way of displaying small works that I tend to use alot in the gallery!) Susan's talk on Scottish tapestry in relation to the Edinburgh College of the Arts really hit a note with me due to the similarities of what had happened to the tapestry course at Monash University in Melbourne. Susan also was on my panel at the end of the symposium (thanks so much Susan) and is an absolute asset to moving tapestry into the contemporary art field - she's a switched on and lovely lady! I'm not sure of a website of Susan's but she can be googled!

This is a side view of one of the larger combined works that Susan had on display in Canberra.

Kay Lawrence (Aus) also was persuaded to be on my panel. Kay or should I say Professor Kay Lawrence! is based at the University of South Australia and more can be found here.

Although Kay didn't formally present at the symposium, other than on my little panel thingey, her expertise and good humour are a pleasure to work with!

Tapestry Symposium in Canberra

Well, I'm back in Melbourne now after spending 2 full days sitting and listening, looking at and talking about tapestry. Can be quite a lot to take in really!!

There was a pretty wide variety of people at the symposium, from amateurs to professional folk and a couple of exhibitions of tapestry works. I didn't have anything on show.

I have taken some photos of the shows and random weird shots and they can be seen on my flickr site for comment and question.

I think that my cat Miss Nina is pretty happy to have me home too!

Threadless tee photo submission

Although this is a pretty old photo, I submitted it to threadless and finally got some 'Street Points' Yay!!! I'm wearing the threadless tee-shirt, Whoa it's like I'm in a comic book, which I find funny as I'm with some comic/illustrator folk!

I'm making it a mission to add more photos and get more free $$$$!

Canberra and tapestry weaving

Well I'm here in Canberra at the moment for the symposium - Tapestry 2008, the fine art of weaving. The actual symposium stuff kicks off tomorrow morning however there is a blog that people can check out and find out more here.

What have I been doing? Well...

• Today I walked around, looked at exhibitions and shopped. I think I also did my ankle as it's pretty bloody painful now, hopefully it's ok tomorrow!
• I'm staying at the University House on the ANU campus (Australian National University) which is pretty good, like staying in a personal apartment.
• I had dinner last night at the restaurant on campus called Boffins, mostly because they have oysters with Zubrowka vodka and tomato and herbs - nice!!! I actually ate 2 entrees because the oysters were pretty pricey - but definitely delicious!!

Things I've found weird in Canberra:

• beer seems really really cheap! I saw a 6 pack of Carlton Draught for $7.50!!! What the?!
• They seem to make up for the cheap booze with more expensive stuff - pita bread cost me a whole $2.20 more than in Melbourne at the same cheap booze place.
• I saw mushrooms that were red and white - I've only ever seen illustrations of them in fairy tales! But they really do exist! wow...
• I'm really bad at navigating around here, maybe that's how I did my ankle, turning around in a circle too much!

It's interesting to be here on my own just checking out stuff and getting to use my New York Parka again - maybe I should put a photo of that?! yes, I will! I really love that Parka. Yes shots with hood on and with it off!