Mild Summer Days

I hope I haven't brought the mild days to an end by being happy about them!

It is that time of the year when we have had Christmas and New Year holidays, it is the summer holidays, Australia Day is coming up, the tennis and cricket are on and you lose track of the time.
And a lot of your friends are away.

It is the time when you think you are going to be creative, get stuck into things, and you don't.

So today, feeling a bit not-knowing-what-to-do, I went to Heide Museum of Modern Art, to see the exhibition there. We went to see the O'Keefe, Preston and Cossington-Smith: Making Modernism exhibition.
It was just what I needed - inspiring.

I took the camera along in 'just in case' we were allowed to take pictures but, of course, we weren't.

So I took a couple of consolation photos out in the gardens. It is a lovely spot, full of sculptures, people having a wonderful day, a vegetable and herb garden and just lovely surrounds.

Visiting Heide Museum of Art

It was time for our yearly get-together at Heide today.  Lovely day, nice and cool indoors, a good escape from the summery weather.  Hope it doesn't get hot too quickly, our bodies need to adjust.
We started with the all important part of the day - lunch.  And a good talk.
We finished with lovely hot chocolate, with even lovelier images on top.  It reminds me of a post about our dog on an outing recently. Turns out it was the same cafe. I had forgotten that.

Then we wandered up to the house to see the exhibition of Erica McGilchrist's work. There were some very moody images and some very thickly embroidered pieces.  She worked in paint, pencil and some textiles.  We were impressed by the density of some of the lines, and sewing, and the amazing control and patience she had in producing these works.  Quite a bit of the work was about the degradation of the environment, seems we are still talking about this issue, long after it first became a topic of concern.

On the way we saw some interesting sculptures in the garden.

You can just see some of the metal frame inside the weaving.

The interesting weaving in the sculpture made me think of a brochure I have recently read, Stepping Stones.  It was from Indigenous Community Volunteers and one of the articles was about Hands on Weaving, a grassroots, community driven women's groups in the Wagga Wagga Community. We have been looking for donations to give as Christmas gifts and this seems like a good one to support. 

Getting some Cultcha

I have seen two exhibitions in the last two days!  One was Louise Bourgeoise at Heide Museum of Modern Art. 
There is an amazing sculpture of a spider, over a cage.  In the cage is a seat. When you see pictures of it, you don't realise the size of it - it is huge.  I loved it.
There is a lot of old tapestry in the exhibition - she is from a family of tapestry restorers and a lot of the work we saw was using recycled materials.
There were also some patchwork pieces, using her old clothes, that I particularly liked.  They weren't called patchwork but that is essentially what they were.  Mind you, she must have had some lovely clothes, the fabrics were gorgeous.  I especially liked the ones where she laid transparent layers of chiffon over each other.  They were my favourite pieces in the exhibition.  We weren't allowed to take photos, you'll just have to try to get there yourselves.

There is an article about in The Age today - the reviewer writes about the 3D pieces, rather than the 2D.  I must admit, I was drawn to the less disturbing images.

The second exhibition I went to was Capturing Flora at the Ballarat Art Gallery.  It looks at 300 years of botanical art of Australian flowers (and some mosses). It finishes on the weekend.  I have been meaning to go for ages and nearly left it too late.  We went up on the train, a very comfortable and stress-free way to travel.

The art works were amazing, all that intricate detail.  The process of taking sketches, writing notes and using colour cards, then painting it later was well set out.  They must have had very good visual memories, as well as the drawing and painting talent.

It was interesting to see this just after having been to the Napoleon exhibition which also had engravings and drawings of the early European settlement of Australia.  It is strange to think that wars and revolutions so far away were in any way related to Australia and impacted on the journeys of discovery of botanists and other scientists.

Textile Exhibition at Heide Museum of Modern Art

On one of our excursions taking our overseas visitor around, we called in to Heide Museum of Modern Art. Most fortuitously, there was a textile exhibition on  It was Louise Saxton's Sanctuary. She had made some very interesting pieces using old fabrics, embroideries, laces, tablecloths, doilies, etc.  She had cut the up into very small pieces and then reassembled them to make new images.  They were pinned to tulle, no sewing that I could see.
Actually, now that I think about it, I saw some of her work a few years ago, in the Tamworth Biennial exhibition. (This link is actually teaching notes for schools, quite interesting.)
She used old embroideries such as we still have in the cupboard.  I really must get them out one day and see what sort of condition they are in.  I definitely recognised some old tablecloths in her work.
Once again, no photos were allowed.  There are some nice images here.

We wandered around outside in the sculpture garden, enjoying the wonderful autumn weather.  There were quite a few students there, drawing, using their laptops and generally looking as if it was an ideal class to be in.

Well, that's annoying

Yesterday, after our visit to Heide, my friend and I came home and I showed her how to do free motion sewing. It was a fun afternoon and I had got out some of my samples to show her different uses and techniques. I haven't done a lot of it but I do have a few bits and pieces.






I found some half finished work that I realised I would like to finish. All of the above samples were done in classes and so I had tried to design my own piece but life interfered and I hadn't finished it.

So today I got out the machine, ready to have a play but first I was going to whip up some napkins for another friend, using New York themed fabric that we bought at The City Quilter in New York. So I had to change the foot. That was when I discovered that the shank has fallen too low and I couldn't put the new foot on - how annoying!




Of course the repair shop is not open on a Sunday, so I will take it in tomorrow. Fortunately I had another small sewing machine, useful for taking to classes. It doesn't do free motion but I have been able to play around with the napkins, so it hasn't been a totally unproductive day. It is getting hot now and so staying indoors is the preference. I'll have to try to whip up the enthusiasm for the free motion work another time.

Cubism and Australian Art

My friend and I visited the Heide Museum of Modern Art today to see the Cubism and Australian Art exhibition. It ranged from the beginning of the 20th century to the present time. It was interesting to see some art that was around in my childhood and youth. We could see strong correlations to the work and some of the fabrics we remember being available at the time. There was some amazing work there, and some that we wondered why anyone would have bought it, let alone keep for a long time.
One of the art works that I especially liked was a DVD and sound show. It showed fragmented visions of people moving, as if seen through distorted glass. Unfortunately I can't remember the artist but I recommend going to see it if you are in the area.
One artist whose work I particularly liked was Godfrey Miller. (I did not find many links with images of his work, sorry.)
I hadn't heard of him before but I loved the work. I loved the way the scenes had been broken down into very small shapes but that the overall image was clear. I am slowly discovering that I like cubism, or some aspects of it. I have not had an extensive art education and it is a whole new world for me. Many of the movement names do not resonate with me but I find that I like particular artists. I have been having a very good education this year, with my opportunities to see so much museum quality art.
The course I am doing has had me looking at art for inspiration and it is an area that I have not studied or been exposed to very much in the past. I am still learning my own tastes.
It is always an adventure to go to an art exhibition as I do not have many preconceived ideas about what I will be seeing. I have been to quite a few exhibitions recently but that is not normal for me. I am going to try to go to more in the future. I am also trying to work through Walking in this World by Julia Cameron, and one of the artist's dates I am trying to give myself on a fairly regular basis is to go to some exhibitions and gallery shows. So this week I have succeeded.