Gerda van Hamond artist talk

I was lucky enough to be able to attend Gerda van Hamond's artist talk today.  She has a show on at Hawthorn Studio and Gallery.
(If you follow the above link to her site, use the links below the image to see more or her work, the front page has nothing on it at present.)
You can see images of her work on the gallery website here.  Not sure how long this link will last though.

I asked for permission to take these photos for this blog and she said yes but to remind you that her work is copyrighted.

It was interesting to hear how she works and how long it takes her to do her tapestries - 500-600 hours each for the large tapestries. And that is just the weaving, not the art work, designing and dyeing of wool - yes, she does that too!

Actually, it was great to hear that she doesn't stress too much about getting exact colour matching with her dyeing because of the way she blends her colours on the bobbin and the way she designs her work. It is not essential that the colours match exactly.  Mind you, she has been doing it for a while now and probably knows what she is doing so that the colours will be similar anyway.

Gerda began by working with oil sticks and making artworks of approximately 24cm square, on paper. This show was also made with the gallery space in mind.  She said that she knew she could have several large tapestries with accompanying small ones, two for each large piece. For most of them, she worked on the large piece first and then did the smaller ones. The smaller ones are larger than the original artwork but not by a lot.

Gerda also said that she prefers not to work on a theme for all her work and so there were works with different stories behind each.
I loved hearing about the ideas behind the images.  The titles give clues but to hear the back story makes them even clearer. It is great hearing about the thinking that goes on behind the work, that you would never know if you weren't able to go to an event like this. It is also more personal to hear it rather than read it in a catalogue, as you can do at some exhibitions.

What was also interesting was hearing what people saw in the works and how sometimes that had nothing to do with Gerda's story but more to do with how the viewer was approaching the works. 

Joy Smith tapestry exhibition

Today's date is another good one - 12/5/12.  Once again, I have something I can post about, fortunately.  Joy Smith's tapestry exhibition opened today, at Hawthorn Studio and Gallery.  It was an exhibition of Joy's tapestries and Wendy Steer's paintings.
There was a good crowd there and it was great to see some familiar faces.

Joy hiding in the crowd

The exhibition being officially opened

Joy with two of her works (three, if you look carefully)

Congratulations to Joy on her work.  She seems to have done a lot of weaving this year, many of them had 2012 on them.
It is always amazing to see the intricacy of Joy's work.  It was good to be able to speak to her about some of them and to have her personal insights and explanations of the works.
Joy is hoping to give a floor talk about her works,  I hope this eventuates.  She did not have the opportunity to do so today but I went to her last one and it was great. There is always an interesting story behind Joy's work and it would be good to hear that in more detail.

Tapestry exhibition

Last week I visited the tapestry exhibition at Hawthorn Studio and Gallery.  The work being exhibited is by Joy Smith (my first tapestry teacher) and Gerda van Hamond.  They based their work on monthly visits to sites along the Yarra River but they have produced very different works.  Joy and Gerda spoke at the gallery and it was very interesting to hear about their beginning inspirations and processes.

Joy said she works more from photographs these days and is interested in people in the environment.  Her work clearly reflects this.  It was great to see scenes that I instantly recognised as places we have taken our dog for walks in, especially Yarra Bend Park.

Gerda tends to look at very small aspects of the scene, possibly fungus, bark or some very small element of the site. She also exhibited some of her drawings that she works on before weaving.  She does them with oil sticks and may combine several sketches from the day to make her cartoon.

Based on the river in flood.

Despite concentrating on such small images, her works can be quite large.

This one is based on a piece of bark but is quite large, over a metre square.

It was great to catch up with other students with whom I learnt tapestry over the last couple of years.  We will have to keep meeting at tapestry exhibitions, maybe even put on one ourselves.  I have not done any weaving this year but do have three images I would like to work on soon.  Maybe when this semester is over and I have less assignments due.