Exhibition of Drawings, Sculpture, Hand-Woven and Embroidered Works. Franklin Community Gallery - Next door to the Library and Steel Gallery, Pukekohe.

 

To everyone who is interested in fibre-art. I would like to invite you to come and see my new exhibition. Join me at the opening for morning tea and cup-cakes and help me to celebrate my 50th birthday with good company, art and fibre.

Retrospective Works

These two weavings were two of the first tapestry weavings I ever sold. I remember both of these tapestries had a 3 dimensional quality about them as the advice I received on the warp count was a bit high for the weight of the weft I was planning to use, and my weaving skills were still very much being worked on! The result of this combination of novice beginnings meant that the darker areas which were of a thicker quality yarn, spread the warp slightly as I wove it, creating a puffed out effect around the eye area. As an artist it is often strange to think of these earlier attempts at creating art-works being bought in the first place yet alone still being enjoyed by the purchaser, however I do hope they are still in existence purely for the fact that it is part of the record of tapestry weaving in New Zealand. as there are so few of us involved with this specific weaving genre.

Looking back at these images now, I still like the theme but do not so much like the darkness they now appear to conjure up for me. So I am going to have a go at re-doing them by playing around in a different/faster medium to see if I can come up with a lighter feeling image. There are also separate elements within each weaving that I really do like so I have decided to weave a therapy scroll, a long narrow width of weaving that can incorporate different fragments of ideas, colours and designs.
 

 

  

Freda Brierley -Machine Embroidery

On The Edge   48x38cm

This image is the work of textile artist Freda Brierley whose work I saw in an exhibition with Aillie Snow at NorthArt Gallery on the North Shore in 2002. I found her art a  wonderful inspiration of subtle and somewhat dark images, and recognized it as a possible medium I might one day want to explore. I have played around with sewing images onto stiffened organza with reasonable success in the past.

The need for me to experiment further with machine and hand embroidery has now arisen again because of illness. As my hands have limited movement at the moment I am being very selective about how I spend my time on the loom, and machine embroidery gives me the opportunity to make pictorial works off-loom.

I have an exhibition of these new works as well as a retrospective selection of older drawings and tapestry weavings that will be on show at the Franklin Steel Gallery, in the small Community Gallery space. You are invited to join me for morning tea on Saturday 11th June, 10.30am, where I will be discussing the work on display, share where I glean my inspiration for my art, and talk about the technical side of producing my images.

Five small framed works measure approx. 6x6cm

I bought these five small framed Freda Brierley works which I selected from about 30, possibly more (if my memory serves me well) which she was selling at the time her exhibition was running. I am so very pleased that I bit the bullet and did. 

Often it is these smaller more affordable works that give you a very real and tangible connection with the artist. Although these are usually not as complicated or meaningful as larger pieces, they are still enticing and charming to have if you are a collector of fbre art, and purchasing these always helps the artist re-coup some of the expense involved in putting on an exhibition. It is this mutual benefit of inter-play between the artist and the viewer that really makes an exhibition successful and enduring, long after the exhibits have left the gallery.