Living Treasure

When I was in Melbourne I had the privelege of seeing Marian Hosking's exhibition at Craft Victoria.



Marian Hosking has been named one of Australia's Living Treasures, an award celebrating Australia's senior craft practitioners. The work in this exhibition explores the secretive variety and diversity of the forests of Gippsland. Some of these quiet pieces look as though they are cast, silver fragments of the leaf litter and forest floor.



Hosking's use of the matted and intertwined fragments of leaf litter carries us into larger environmental concerns. This theme is illuminated in the major piece of the exhibition called the "Tall Tree Project". This consists of a piece of silver tape that Hosking's cast around the circumference of a giant gum tree. Following this tape through it's gentle twists and turns around a wave shaped table is really like taking a journey. This connects the viewer to the making process in a form of a walking meditation. As you walk around the piece your eye is drawn in to the detail in the silver casting. The beauty of the texture, the lustre and sensuality of the piece draw you further through the gallery and draws your mind into an understanding of the physical process of the making.







This in turn brings insight into the majesty of this huge tree. So Hosking juxtaposes jewellery, intimate, delicate, and human with nature ancient, strong and imperiled.

Champagne Launch

shadow bowl

Over the last month I have been in the studio every spare moment making work for Seldengill's exciting Melbourne launch of "The Magnolia Project". A couple of years ago I met Graham Selden the director of recruitment firm Seldengill. Graham has been a patron of the arts for many years and has commissioned pieces from me for special events, and he generously offered his boardroom as a venue for a "Champagne launch " of my new work. I was very excited about this wonderful opportunity to meet Graham's friends and introduce my work to a whole new bunch of people. Business and art can be of great benefit to one another and in supporting artists by holding intimate events Graham and Seldengill offer more than just the chance to sell work as it is very difficult for artists and business people to meet in the natural order of the world.

The night was cold but clear, the champagne was cold and bubbly and I was cold and nervous! But the work looked beautiful and Graham had found a huge bunch of magnolia branches to grace his table.





The boardroom doors were shut and tied with a red ribbon as friends and patrons milled around the foyer and then... I cut the ribbon in my best Lady Mayoral manner and "The Magnolia Project" was launched!


Graham looking extremely dapper and me looking like a rabbit caught in the headlights!

pollinators

"knitted bowl" made by Lucie Rie


Oh the weather outside is frightful,
But the fire is so delightful,
And since we've no place to go,
Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!

It's not snowing (seeing as I live in the subtropics) but it is darned cold. Our house is full of warm, woolly knitted things made by my Mum.

It's funny in the sub-tropics that the cold weather brings plants to life, once again the magnolia's are flowering. What do these blossoms achieve flowering in mid-winter? In their natural homelands they would be flowering in spring and attracting pollinators. In thousands of years I wonder if some evolutionary change will occur in these imported Magnolia's where they will form a relationship with some native pollinator that flies around in the subtropical winter. Maybe they will develop a relationship with humans and the humans of the future will be pressed into unwitting service of the flowers.

hot off the press

I have just finished a book project. You can see "Shannon Garson Porcelain"
here.



If you click on through the book you can see a preview of the inside pages.

Blurb is a website which allows you to create your own books from your photo files.

This is great resource for artists.