ANOTHER YEAR DOWN THE TRACK ....

I’m still living my Residency dream!

Some unfinished projects have been completed, but others are still waiting patiently in the wings for their turn to come.

SCHOOL GARLANDS

First up, I forgot to include this in last year’s blog entry ...

St Joseph's School

Laurine Field, the art teacher at St Joseph's Primary School at Kangaroo Point had admired the Swishy Swathes that decorated the shelter sheds during my residency.

In July 2013 she asked me to help the children create a floral installation to decorate their library.
I brought yarns, fabrics and templates for flowers and leaves and Laurine provided felts and various other bits and pieces.
Progressively throughout the day each class spent an hour in the library, and the children created the most amazing flowers, leaves and insects (some very realistic, others more imaginative). I was really impressed with their creativity and how much they managed to achieve in a single day!

Holy Family School

In August last year I was invited to conduct a similar activity for the children in the Outside School Hours Centre at Holy Family at Indooroopilly.

In only a couple of hours we managed to make a lot of floral bunting to decorate their room.

FLOWERS OF FRIENDSHIP HANGINGS

I finally found time to send an email thank you to the contributors, although unfortunately I don't have current contact details for everyone. So if you know someone who didn’t receive my email, please ask  them to get in touch with me, so I can add them to my list.

The Book

In 2013 I made a book about this “Flowers of Friendship” project which describes the project from its initial beginnings, through the construction process to its culmination. It has photos of each flower and the names of all the contributors.
This year I have re-designed this so it can be printed commercially. The images of the flower squares aren’t as large as in the hand-bound book, because it would have stretched to too many pages!
In this version there is one hanging per page, but the book still has all the contributors’ names. I am selling copies for $13 if you know anyone who wants one.

The Hangings

These were displayed at the Quilt and Craft Fair in Brisbane in October.

I had a display panel beside the hangings describing the creation of the hangings, the names of the contributors, and promoting the book for sale.













I really enjoyed talking about them to interested visitors each day, and there were hundreds of favourable comments from members of the public.

Judy Hall (owner of Punch With Judy) mentioned them on her blog.
Click here to read the entry on 15 October.





Jenny Woodward did the Friday ABC TV weather report in front of the hangings.

In 2015 they will be on display at Bribie Community Arts Centre. I’m delivering them there on 13th January, and they’ll be on display until the end of the month.
Later in 2015 they will hopefully hang in the Embroiders Guild building in Fortitude Valley for a few months.

After that their fate is in the lap of the gods, or rather it will be determined by the influential movers and shakers in Brisbane. I am still hoping to donate them a prominent, readily-accessible venue where they can be on permanent display so that all the contributors as well as members of the public can see them.

FLOWER POWER

In 2013 I made a small quilt using the left-over fabric and flowers from the Tropical Profusion garment that had been created for the Catwalk Botanique fashion parade during my residency.
This is one of the quilts in the 2014 Queensland Quilters ‘State of the Art’ exhibition which has been touring throughout Queensland during this year.
As part of this tour, they were on display at the Craft Fair in October, and by coincidence my quilt was on the wall directly opposite my flower hangings, which was really nice (shown here top centre surrounded by three other gorgeous creations).

JAPANESE GARDEN REVERIES BOOK

During this year I have made more of my limited-edition hand-bound books to sell.
These incorporate haiku poetry composed by my sister Alison Horsley and photographs from the Japanese Garden at Mt Coot-tha.
In these books I printed my scanned calligraphy on one page with the relevant photograph behind a cut-out mount on the adjacent page.

I have now made a copy of this book to be printed commercially.
For this I used the Photoshop program to change my black lettering into variegated colours to add extra interest.
Now that the hard work is done, this is a much more time-friendly option for making these books available for sale.

TREE DECORATING

During the residency I conducted several activities under the Shaving Brush Tree near the entrance to the gardens. Each year it is decorated it for Christmas, and visitors to the gardens are invited to participate in this Tree Dressing Ceremony.

In early spring each year the Shaving Brush tree (Pseudobombax ellipticium) is covered in beautiful flowers which have silky rose-pink stamens topped with yellow pollen, but by December it has no flowers, has lost its leaves and is looking quite bare.

I was invited to help with the 2014 public activity, and we clothed the tree in pom-pom flowers to accompany its new reddish-leaved regrowth. Visitors to the gardens also wrote their hopes for the New Year on leaves and tied them to the tree.

Well, that's it for another year ... and there is still much to be achieved in 2015!

• finding a permanent home for the Flowers of Friendship hangings
• creating a version of the water dragon book to be printed commercially
• finishing the Nature in Focus book
• completing my Residency Record for the Gardens
• and more besides!

Thanks for reading!