Textile Foyer Gallery

Some of my graduating body of work is on display at the Australian National University textile foyer Gallery. Feel free to go and check it out!

Gypsy Thief garments

Salon hang of drawings and prints

Fabric lengths: 100% silk dupion (left) and modal (right)

Fabric Lengths: Moon and Stars repeat pattern on modal(left) and Geometric repeat pattern on cheesecloth (right).

Detail of Moon and stars repeat pattern. The text is an excerpt from the Jeanette Wintersone novel “Sexing the Cherry” and it reads: ….’And then it was fully dark and she could see nothing to remind her of the night before, except the stars.’

Feather Jewellery

Making jewellery is fun!  Lately I have been reading about tribal adornment which has inspired this lot of jewellery I have made. I particularly like the point of view of the some Native American tribes: that feathers carry the medicine of the beautiful birds from which they belong.

Drawings

Here are some drawings I have been working on as part of my honours project. I have been looking stories, mostly folk tales but also some contemporary literature, about women and animals. Stories I have found particularly inspiring feature women who wear parts of animals, for example: feathers in their hair, and in doing so take on the characteristics of the animal. I have been looking particularly at animals of flight, such as birds and insects because I like the metaphor of flight.

One example of this is a Nordic folk tale about a woman called Freya. Freya is the daughter of time and she is so beautiful that men instantly fall in love with her. Her husband accuses her of sleeping with another man and decides he wants to kill her, so she fashions herself a cloak out of feathers and flies away. It is said that as Freya flew over the country side she would sprinkle from her cloak morning dew and summer sunshine.

There are many other examples of folk tales and contemporary literature I have been looking at that have also acted as inspiration for my drawings. If anyone has any similar such stories they would like to share it would be warmly welcomed!

Gypsy Thief Photo Shoot

Here are some photographs of my recent work taken by the amazing Miss Bohie Palecek. They will be used to make a 2011 catalogue that will be going towards my new brand ‘Gypsy Thief’ (ode to Mr Leonard Cohen).

Screen Printed Fabric – 100% Silk Dupion

Hand made leather bag featuring geometric emroidered panel.

My Boots

Butterfly Drawing

Screen printed vintage silk chiffon shirt and dream catcher

Screen printed vintage denim shirt and hand made feather necklace

Screen printed shirt – detail

Poncho made from recycled scarf

Screen printed 100% cotton back velvet

Screen Printed 100% silk velvet

Hand embroidered ribbon.

Screen printed vintage scarf.

Sample Printing

Finally it is that time of year where I have transfered some of my drawings to screen and started sampling what kind of fabrics I would like to print on. I have mostly been printing on silks and velvet: unfortunately these two fabrics are notoriously hard to photograph, I  not sure that the images I have included really do them much justi I have included the original sepia ink drawing for my large geometric repeat pattern, just to show the process of the original artwork and then how I translate that into repeat.

Here is the original drawing.

This is my repeat design form the drawing. This print is on silk dupion.

Some of my samples folded on my desk…

Detail of the same print on olive green dupion.

Blue on blue.

Velvet sample. This picture really doesn’t do it any justice.

Velvet detail.

Another detail of the velvet.

My messy desk in the studio…

Hand Drawn Designs

Here are some drawings I have been working on for screen print designs. I have thinking alot about animals lately, mainly horses and insects. Alot of these drawings are inspired by song lyrics or passages from books. I recently read Sexing the Cherry by Jeanette Winterson, and I was really taken by the passage describing Fortunata (one of the twelve dancing princesses). For some reason it made me think alot about insects again, which initiated this series of drawings. I have included some of the text to help with the imagery. The rest are just scans from my sketch book.