UpComing Exhibitions

Sometimes I wonder why I put myself through the angst of putting my mixed media into exhibitions because then I have to work to a deadline which isn’t all bad but with the extra work of Rob not being so well and unable to help a lot around the house sometimes I get a bit anxious. There are two exhibitions coming up, both the weekend of the 17 September. Our biennial Waitomo Society of Arts exhibition and I will need to help out with that one as well as exhibiting and the Waimarino one which a friend suggested I put something in. I am working on an installation of a kimono using glycerin preserved leaves over reclaimed cotton and under black net with free machine embroidery holding the layers together. All the leaves are from my garden and ones I preserved in a 50/50 mix of glycerin and water this Autumn. The leaves over the shoulders and down to chest height are small leaved maples followed by beech leaves, silver dollar gum, gingko and finally Liquid amber at the hemline . So the leaves start off quite small and get incrementally larger as they spill toward the hem. The inside is some taffeta I had left over from another project. I have used heat web to hold the leaves in place while stitching them. Even so some of them have moved a bit in the process. The sleeves will be more simple with just the cuffs having gingko leaves and the rest being free machined net over the cotton. I need to make a go of getting this complete but Rob has a biopsy this Tuesday and who knows what that might reveal.

I am considering adding another entry as well - perhaps one of my cheesecloth sculptures.

The Repair Shop

Have you ever watched the UK documentary programme, The Repair Shop? I am often blown away by the repairs made to vintage items in this programme. I have often had a go a mending broken stuff from the shop but I suddenly wondered if I could fix my Mum’s fine ceramic owl. This quite large ornament sat on the mantel for most of my childhood. When I was a teenager, Mom asked me to throw her a towel and when I did this, the edge of the towel caught the owl and it toppled down, smashing the corner of the base. When my Mum passed this special piece came to me and it as sat looking at me accusingly in my office ever since. Well today’s the day. I started with air dry clay and gradually built up the smashed base - the original fragments are long lost. I sanded and set about trying to match the colour in acrylic paints. I don’t think I did too badly. I still need to get some high gloss spray varnish to complete my task as the brush strokes of the high gloss medium as still apparent. I have documented my progress below. But I think my Mum would have been pleased to see the repair

Spring Backdrop Painting

I don’t do much painting these days but Bella had done the underpainting for this backdrop for a Spring window display. The weather here is NZ has been appalling and miserable so anything to hasten Spring feelings gets a tick. Kim asked me if I could do the fleshing out of the daffodils to give them a more 3 D look. The Triptych will go behind a number of items being displayed in the window. The stalks were a bit uneven so I just shaded them and concentrated on the floral explosion. The positioning of product at that lower level will partially camouflage the stems. I could have added more leaves but I didn’t want to totally cover Bella’s work. The painting was done between serving customers in the shop I will post a photo of the complete display when it is in place.

Waipa Arts Trail -Rotoorangi Pottery Collective

Here is a display of the Rotorangi Pottery groups offerings at the Waipa Arts Trail. There is a huge variety of styles here from handmade, flat sculptures and thrown work. Just beautiful. After dabbling in the Waitomo Society of Arts beginner pottery class earlier this year, I have a greater appreciation on these artifacts. I would love to do more in this sculptural artistic media but I am not disciplined enough to attend regular group meetings to utilise the kiln and specialist materials needed. Still lovely to look at and appreciate how talented the artists that made these are

Fibretron

Each year in the winter there is a retail extravaganza at Mystery Creek call Fibretron. It is an amalgam of commercial and small business who have connection to anything to do with fibre - fleece wool, dyes, knitting wool, fibre creating equipment like looms and spinning wheels. It is only on for one day and is so hugely attended that it is hard to make your way around in the hall. I often feel overwhelmed in these situations but I push through because there are often things there that are hard to find elsewhere and it gives me a better idea as to what is on the market. I was hoping to get a blending board or fleece but the price was very high so I came away without one. Instead I purchases some interesting fleece, 100% merino, a mix of young camel, silk, merino and alpaca and some corriedale fleece in four or five colours. All the fleeces wool was scoured and carded ready to do something with. Since my foray into wet felting, I was keen to get some more fleece so I could play around with it when I get time.

So out came my trusty old spinning wheel which hasn’t been out of its corner for a few years and away I went spinning. The muscle memory soon came back and I was away. When my children were young I spun, dyed and knitted all there woollens but that seems like a life time ago now. Now instead of aiming at even double knit wool I am trying to get a more textured approach for weaving on my little frame loom as I attempt to follow Kerri Hollingwoth (Take Two Arts) course. This is something I have been aiming toward for a while but have finally made to effort to do something toward it. I want to try needle felting as well. but that might need to wait till this course is done and my submission for its exhibition is in.

Waipa Arts Trail March 24 2026 - Cambridge Art Society

This stop included several artists, not all of whom were happy to have their work photographed. Work on display included prints, paintings in a range of styles and mediums and quilting.

For me the highlight of this stop was Elfinthings: a display of hand embroidery hoops that focused on negative space and added in exquisite and different details - for example, the lady in the mauve jacket below has a fine knitted jacket that is applied to the embroidery.

This year I have worked quite a bit on negative space and working in the round so not only the beautiful work but the concepts were of personal interest. I spoke to the maker and she tells me the fabric is cotton calico stitched with single thread stranded cotton . Below is a gallery of the pieces that really caught my eye. She works out of her living room and while she does not have a web page she does have more work shown on Facebook and Instagram.

As I was leaving the venue I was tempted to collect some of the wonderful Autumn fallen maple trees from in front of the building. A couple came along and asked me how I picked the ones I was collecting. I explained that I was a textile artist and these would provide me with art materials for work over the coming months. I explained some of my processes and they were quite amazed. I often think, because I am immersed so much in the world of natural processes that everyone knows about the various processes I use and it is always a surprise to find how little people do know or understand how I collect and process my art works.

Take Two Final Project for Lissa Hunter’s online Course

The Theme for this project was Let there be Light. This was originally a trial piece working with paper collage on a coiled place mat. I added teabags, some preserved leaves (preserved in a glycerine and water mix) and then used a white texture paste through a organic stencil. At that stage it looked terrible and I almost binned it. But then I decided to persevere and I painted it with some of my home made walnut ink. The change was dramatic. I continued to add the string with the copper twists and repainted with the ink. I was starting to get quite excited by this stage so I tidied up the edges by using pine needles around the perimeter. The black candle holder is part of an old belt that I coiled around and added beads in the middle. This was stitched on three quarter of the way round to that the battery operated candle could be inserted at the top.

The shield piece was then attached to an old vine from a Japanese honeysuckle that I had sprayed in my garden some time back. The birds bring these seeds in and they become quite rampant so I often have to look at getting rid of them. If I can use their vines in my art work, that is a bonus. To integrate the pieces I created a number of soft wire skeletons with a leaf shape at the end. The leaves are made from hand made paper using corn husks as the base.. These were then coiled onto the vine at the top.

The candle was collaged in a similar way to the placemat and bound in thin copper wire. For safety a battery operated candle was used.

Junk Artist Journal

With my diploma course complete and Rob still not well - in and out of hospital from coughing up blood post a chest infection - it has been difficult to focus on a new project, so I decided to have a go at an artist junk journal with collaged and textured pages. I will use this to print out and put the quotes on creativity that we put together as a group. I am not thinking too much about the placement of papers at this stage. Just getting the base sheet covered. The detail and embellishment will come later. At the moment it all looks a bit of a mess, but I am sure order will eventually come out of the chaos

It is taking a lot longer and making a bigger mess in my studio than I had anticipated but I finally think I have the pages don so I can concentrate on the covers and adding the bits and pieces of stencilling and stamping I want to add to the inside. I decided to make 3 signatures of 3 A4 pages each, folded in half that makes 6 ages per signature. That means both sides of the papers need to be collaged so 8 A4 pages in total. I thought it would free up my artistic style and would be something I could stop and start at will. I have been working on the pages for that last 4 days on and off. My studio looks more like a bomb site at the moment as I have so many bits and pieces saved over the years toward having a go at something like this. I found the paper towel iron blanket prints from eco dying are a wonderful addition to the collage materials. Now things are drying and maybe I will get to work on the covers etc on Monday. I have to work tomorrow so nothing much will get done then. Below are some progress photos and a shot of the mess in the studio

Working with Negative Space - Cheesecloth sculptures

Man with a Pipe

It’s been a while since I played around with cheesecloth sculptures following a course with Mary Pal from Canada. My husband is back in hospital so doing something like this that I can work at and then leave and come back to has been helpful. The cheesecloth is worked with diluted pva on a heavy plastic sheet , using a black and white image under the sheet to guide the structure. Once the forming is finished - only a little bit of cheesecloth is added at a time - the structure is left to cure (dry). It is then carefully lifted off the plastic sheet and stitched onto black felt (in this case). Working back to front with the darker pieces being the lighter pieces in the structure can be quite challenging.

Handmade Paper with Sweet Corn Husks

The husks from sweet corn make lovely textured hand made paper. From a waste material that is usually thrown away this can be an added bonus.

I loved the way the fibres are so visible in the paper. I was wanting this paper to make Paper covered wire leaves so I only made smallish sheets.

The process is pretty much the same for all handmade paper. Cut the husks into about 2 inch sections and boil with a small amount of caustic soda for about and hour and a half. Then using my craft dedicated blender, I wizzed the mix to a consistent fluid. I transferred this into a basin with some extra water and them scooped out the fibres on a papermaking screen.

Once the paper was full dried, I used gel medium to adhere small pieces of the paper on either side of the leaf skeletons I had made by twisting wire into a leaf shape. When the medium was dry I then trimmed the leaf close to the wire.

The Girl With the Tattoo Face or It’s All About Identity

Most of my eco dying has used a tradition potassium aluminium mordant on cotton with the use of Ferrous Sulphate as a modifier but ferrous sulphate itself can be used as a mordant to create prints that will have a bluish grey tone. If using white cotton, the substrate will be stained ecru.

In my exuberance to create these prints I overlooked a basic concept. To get clear leaf prints the bundle that is being steamed must not be too wet. I dipped my cotton sheeting into a weak solution of ferrous sulphate and hand wrung the fabric, laid it out on the table with a plastic drop sheet to prevent transfer of the prints , rolled the bundle and steamed for an hour and a half.

Even though some of the pieces were too wet they created wonderful textural pieces. One piece was obviously drier than the rest, or maybe it sat on the top layer in the steamer so did not get as much moisture. The image of the foliage is much more precise on that one. One piece ended up looking like it had eyes looking out at me and it was this piece I decided to take to the next xtep.

I had been browsing through a book by Jean Draper, a UK based textile artist and she had a few pages dedicated to replicating a tattoo face so I decided to take one piece and use the printing as a basis for the tattoo. I have titled this piece a Sense of Identity.

Coiling is a Slow Meditative Process

Take Two Art offered an online course with Lissa Hunter. Lissa is a well known coiling artist in the States who has taken coiling way past the basic process of making a basket into an altered art form. She is the producer of the 100 spoons exhibition shown above. In addition to that she has promoted the changing of the coiled surface by applying various surface techniques including collaged papers, paint and looping.

The process is slow and meticulous. Akin to weaving it anchors the maker in the present as the winding of the inner coil proceeds slowly to extend its form to a 3 D item.

I used a seagrass core which was probably a bit thin and a bit soft but the result was still OK. To shape the coil place the wound core slightly outside the previous row. To go straight have the coil exactly on top of the previous row and to move inward (like the neck of a bottle), place the coil slightly to the inside of the core. It will take several rows of coil to alter the shape as this needs to be done in a gradual manner. I found about 8-10 coils of the polyester waxed thread I was using around the seagrass and then I need to stich into the previous row. I tried to keep my stich downs neat and in line but there was some variances as I shaped the form.

This form will be the bottom of a reliquary that will have a lift off top.

Embellished felted balls

Felt balls are very easy to make and embellishing them is fun. Take a handful of clean wool staple - any colour and ball in your hand. Tie it in the bottom of a stocking or tied in an organza bag. The finished ball will be about one third smaller than your original piece. Simply throw the ball into the washing machine with your general wash. The natural felting ability of the wool will create the felt and the tied shape will give the desired firm.

Now you can adorn with beads or embroidery thread. It is fun to try exaggerated thread experiments like elongated buttonhole or chain stitch

Making printing paste from Botanical Dyes and Inks

Once the botanical inks have bee made from the dyes - inks are a more concentrated form of the dye, they can be thickened to create paste for screen printing, fabric painting or stamping. Most cellulose thickeners will work but I have used gum arabic in the examples below. The example above used a thermofax screen designed by Jane Dunnewold and elderberry thickened dye on 100% cotton bedsheet (recycled).

Below is a gingko leaf from a commercially made stencil. This used elderberry paste and a stubbing brush used in a vertical up and down motion to created the imprint

Are My Botanicals Light fast

This ingenious little cardboard wallet can be used to check if your botanical colours are light fast. A test sheet of the dyes you want to check is prepared on water colour paper. The dyes are named on the sheet for reference. Half of the test sheet is inserted into the pocket and the whole is left if bright sun for several days - the dashboard of a car parked in the sun in a good option. The wallet is simply made from packing cardboard folded over and taped along one long side and the two shorter sides. It needs to be short enough that the inserted test sheet is partially in the wallet and partially exposed to the sunlight

A Visit to an Eco Constructed House

One of the unexpected joys of the Wild Studio Retreat was a visit to the eco house on the property that Sarah Nicholson co -owns with the owners of the eco house. This house has been constructed of hay and lime with very thick walls and a central cool store in the middle of the house that keeps food fresh by constantly bringing in air from outside and redistributing air from the cool room to the outside. This central system divides the house into a number of specific partitions with walls that have been constructed to take in shelves and interesting textural elements. The photos below show more of the interior of the house.

In addition to main house there is a circular structure made the same way for cool storing winter vegetable. Squash and pumpkins are stored on elevated bamboo platforms to keep them away from pests. in much the same way as the Maori patika would have worked. Modern appliances have been incorporated into the house but the heating/cooling aspect of the house is structural and integral to the unit.

Wild Studio - Using Modifiers to Alter Initial Colours

Once the initial ink has been achieved the colour can be modified by the use of common household condiments such as baking soda or citric acid. If these are not int the pantry they can be easily sourced at the grocery store and used without fear of harm.

In the example above the ink source was placed in each circle and then the appropriate condiment added to modify the colour. Some changes like the citric acid modifier are quite dramatic

Wild Studio - Making inks from Botanicals

We visited Sarah’s impressive eco garden and saw the huge range of produce that they produce there. While there we gathered marigold flowers and dark purple dahlia flowers to make ink back at base.

When we returned to base we pulled the petals off the flowers and made two dye baths, one of yellow marigold and one of purple dahlia petals. We also peeled and cut up a number of avocado pits to make dye from.

One complete the individual pots were covered with boiling water and put to simmer on the open flame. They would be simmered for some time and the liquid would become infused with the botanical dye particles from the host.

Like the charcoal ink, before using the dyes was added so the dyes would sit on the surface of the paper rather than sinking in

The gallery above shows our gathering baskets, foraging in Sarah’s prodigious garde, The petals from the dahlia, petals from two shades of dahlia and marigolds waiting to be processed, covering the petals with hot water - because we were away from electricity this initial hot water was supplied via a hot water flask, The last image shows the cut up avacado pips with water added ready to simmer on the open fire

Wild Studio Day 1 - Foraging and making charcoal and pens

The process order was very carefully thought out. The first day we foraged for alder and willow slips to make charcoal from. These we packed into tins with close fitting lids and a hole in the top so excess steam could escape. The tins were then immersed in a dry brush fire and fired for about an hour before raking them out of the first and allowing to cool. We also used some small pieces of driftwood in a tin treated similarly so that these could be ground down to powder, whereas the charcoal sticks would be used to draw direct with.

While we waited for the charcoal to be created (fire without oxygen) we made some alder pens. I had tried making dip pens previously but not been very successful. I discovered you need to make a 45 ° cut about 2 cm from a node and then further refine the shape and cuts, removing the soft inner core.

The gallery photos below show the process. Gathered twigs, peeled, the peeled twigs stacked into upright tins so they cannot warp or move around too much, Into the fire to create the charcoal, the charcoal made from the driftwood to create ink. More twigs to make pens showing the angle of the initial cut so the node acts as an ink reservoir, grinding the driftwood charcoal pieces, sifting the charcoal to remove any lumps that would continue to be ground, adding gum arabic powder to make the ink smooth to write with, and then water. Making egg tempera where just the yolk is added to the charcoal not the membrane around the yolk. Egg tempera only keeps for a few days in ink form before it goes bad and smells but once dried on the paper it gives a lovely glossy finish. The last pictures in the gallery show examples of using the charcoal both as an ink with the dip pen and as a drawing medium. It can be smudged and create shadows and highlights like commercial charcoal. Smudge proof charcoal can be made by plunging a piece of charcoal into molten wax. It then becomes a crayon that is smudge proof and waterproof but cannot be manipulated for drawing in the same way that dry charcoal is. I have heard if you coat the paper with gesso you can then wipe away excess charcoal to create highlights but I have not tried this yet. The final image of the cicada is quick drawing using charcoal ink with the gum arabic added

A Retreat with Wild Studio

On the weekend of 20 February I joined a group of intrepid artists for a retreat at Kauaeranga Valley in the Coromandel.. The weekend was to be one of exploration of natural dyes and inks lead by Sarah Nichols and Emma Cowan of Wild Studio. The retreat was hosted at the farm of Sarah Fitzimons who led us in a daily mediation and gentle yoga. Most of the group stayed camping on site but I felt my poor old bones needed the support of a proper bed so I booked into Kauaerangi Vistas B &B which was just 5 minutes from the camping ground. It was a lovely peaceful repose with a private spa, homemade bread and plum jam and a welcoming host. I could join the group easily and could depart in the evening if I felt the day’s activities were taking their toll. I am anticipating surgery on my bowel so this small condescension to comfort meant I could still participate in everything fully. The track in was a bit of a wonder. At the end of the first part of the track there was a one way bridge which looked like it didn’t go anywhere but in fact took a very sharp right hand turn and then headed a bit further on, across the paddocks to the campsites.

The photos above show: The bridge to nowhere, the track in, Headquarters with the kitchen area to the right, Upmarket composting toilet, the first evening intro meeting with Sarah and Emma at the top right, Cars parked up away from the camping area, My private spa at the B& B - Kauaeranga Vistas, a comfortable bed to come back to.

It was a fun weekend and the first time I had felt I could leave Rob for the weekend since his sepsis operation and recuperation.