Wearable Art in Warwick, the Sunshine Coast, and Townsville.

What a year it has been for Wearable Art, even though I am about to miss the biggest show of all, the World of WearableArt. I stopped entering in 2019 to pursue other avenues of textile art, which has been the right decision for me, although it hasn't stopped me from being involved in it in other ways. In July I exhibited five of my previous works at Warwick Wearable Art Awards during the Jumpers and Jazz in July Festival.  Here's me being a fool on stage as we officially open up the stage of mannequins.

We stayed at a B&B with Alpacas and Highland Cows - just gorgeous!

Then in August we had a great night up at the Australian Wearable Art Festival (AWAF), where I got to catch up with several contacts from around the country and overseas. It was our second time there, and it did not disappoint. I was a guest of AWAF as I was representing TEXTILE Fibre Forum Magazine, and also awarded four prizes of publication of an artist profile in the magazine

This delightful beastie Dear Babushka won the show along with the audiences' hearts. I had seen it back stage and had been quite intrigued - never did I expect it to be the absolute explosion of colourful delight that it was! Congratulations to Isabelle Cameron and her model Stephanie Saal for bringing this joy to the stage.

All the below photos are by Colin McLellan:

This was an intriguing work - Perfectly Tarnished made by Rae Saheli and Rhiannon Thomas and spectacularly modelled by Naomi Capon. It features aluminium textured with a shotgun - I was lucky enough to be gifted a brooch made of it!

Obviously the colour of Galina Mahaleva's Into the Wilderness was very appealing to a pink freak like me, and although it looked little more than a handful of wired shapes backstage, it literally sprang to life when worn, creating the most beautiful shapes and movement.

Snow Queen was an intriguing work by Maria Leoni, with photographic prints on organza and velvet, a beautiful colour palette, and powerfully modelled.

Oooooh, and this was amazing - Koi, by Madison Griinke-Visser - the resin headpiece replicating the flow of water was just stunning. Second photo pinched from Instagram, original by Tanya Marriot Photography.

Oh, just one last one from this event - Recurvata, made by Karen Lynch using Ponytail Palm fronds - amazing. She said she was inspired by Iris van Herpen, and I can see the reference - she nailed it. Photo by Colin McLellan.

There will be an article about the show in the December TEXTILE magazine, and the four artist profiles will be in the next one after that.

At the end of August it was off to Townsville to the unknown quantity that was Wearable Art Creatives (WAC) at the POSE Festival, part of the North Australian Festival of Arts. Thanks to the Australian Government's Regional Arts Fund administered by Flying Arts Alliance, Christina Papadimitriou, the founder, was able to ship up a container of my wearable art works to be included in the performance, and some in the associated exhibition at Pinnacles Art Gallery afterwards, as well as myself. See photos of all the works here for now - soon to be uploaded to the WAC site.

In the Julia Rose photo work

Rob Doumas did an amazing job wearing Cordycephila!

The performance was of a higher standard than I had imagined, and my fears of having my work not shown at its best were unfounded. However, I have had that experience before, with my easygoing attitude leading to less than desirable outcomes. I might have come over as a bit precious to begin with, but I soon discovered that both I and my works were being treated with respect.

I was also engaged to speak about wearable art to students, some of whom were already making marvellous creations. Teacher Kirsten Walsh is absolutely wonderful in encoraging their explorations. Here we are deep in conversation at the Exhibition Opening (photo Townsville City Galleries).

Coccinelle, BioLumina, myself, Freyja, and Christina Papadimitriou

In Kirsten's classroom in some wearable art!

During the installation of the exhibition, having decided it was to hard to try and put Spike on a mannequin, we looked at the alcove next to my other works and thought - what if we just pile him up here like an actual fungus? I absolutely loved seeing my work in this new formation - this is where not being too precious and being willing to experiment can lead to good things!

The morning after the opening I had a public artist talk at the gallery, followed by a mini-workshop on Concept Development for Wearable Art. I had been rehearsing with my slides all week, my biggest fear being that I would go too quickly and run out of material. Well, turns out I could probably take all day and still have more to share!(photos Townsville City Galleries).

Public Artist Talk

Concept Development Workshop

It has been a great to have such a positive teaching experience - it has not been something I have been overly fond of in the past. To have influenced people and enabled them towards creating is a real pleasure.

Alison McDonald

Thomas Papadimitriou

It was a wonderful week in Townsville, and everyone was really so lovely wherever I went. Many thanks to Christina for working so hard to make it all happen, and for chauferring me around, as did her charming son Thomas, and fellow artist Alison McDonald.

Studio Samples

It’s nearly the end of the week already and I still haven’t caught up with what I did last weekend. I finally spent some time in the studio, after clearing the decks of other tasks, and quite literally, clearing off the tables. I’ve picked up work on a piece I started before I left – it was good to have the foundations already laid.

                                                    Yes, that IS the 'cleared off' table!

Having done some samples of paper lamination the previous week, I had a play with stitching on those.

I was keen to try the material I had bought from a florist wholesaler, hoping it was the same as the Lutrador we tried in our workshop - I was pretty happy with how it reacted to the heat gun after it was painted and stitched. Not quite the same, but pretty good.

Next I wanted to try some layering, so put together this selection topped with some crusty burnt lace.

The next sample was paired with organza, which is when I discovered it was the reverse that gave the effect I wanted. Classic. A perfect example of why we play.

So I tried it again, trapping some other fabrics in between. I was very happy with how the already distorted satin material seemed to be enclosed by the organza layer.

Then yesterday and today I started on the actual piece - first step was a lot of stitching around edges and cutting out. Today I got to work out the placement of all the pieces and where the colour splashes are to be - I just slapped on some acrylic to mark the spots where the fabric layers will be placed.

                                        It's good to be back creating with all these new ideas.

Paper lamination on fabric

Definitely nothing to do with paper in plastic pockets being heated in a machine, laminating paper onto fabric is basically glueing it on to fabric in order to get an image. I've had this book for years but somehow it's one of those things that never really made sense to me - until my recent workshop with Alysn Midgelow-Marsden. 

We didn't use this particular technique of attaching paper, we stitched it on to fabric then washed it away, leaving texture. I guess it gave me the confidence to give this a try.

Workshop sample

Although I've been manipulating some of my photos from my recent trip in Photoshop to get some crazy colours, I found an image from King Island I had previously been working on - a smashed sea urchin shell. I printed it out on my home computer - I'm guessing that's an inkjet printer? Apparently using rubbishy photocopy paper is the way to go, so I had that covered.

Following the instructions closely, I laid the paper print side up on my printing area, then pinned a fine polyester organza over it. 

Next I placed a screen over it, and squeegeed through acrylic paint medium so it wet through the organza and the paper. After drying flat for 10 minutes, I hung it up to dry in the sun, then heat set it with an iron.

After that it was a soak in a lukewarm bath for 10 minutes, then I was able to start rubbing and scraping away the back half of the paper - it almost splits into two - leaving the front half with the image attached to the fabric. When it was dry again I ironed it to get rid of the worst of the wrinkles.

Although the vivid colour has been lost, I'm calling this a successful process sample. I guess you could call it a bit of a dodgy brothers digital print to fabric technique! I am wondering how a print-out done at Officeworks will fare in comparison - I might try that next. This is a way of creating a background to begin stitching into - the beginnings of 'complex cloth'.