Graduation Work

At the conclusion of three years study I am now about to graduate with a Bachelor of Fine Art. These are some of the works I will present for my graduation show which opens on Wednesday the 23rd of November at RMIT, Melbourne. I am very excited to have completed my BA and I have learned a great deal about myself and my work over these years. Returning to study has been an amazing journey that has enlivened and stimulated me and I am so thankful for the support that I get from a very patient Partner while I have been studying.

I am pleased with the final outcomes of my work for 2016 and proud of what I have achieved for the last three years…now on to Honours year for 2017!

BRUMBY

CONSTRAINT

SACRIFICE

FADE FROM MEMORY

UPON REFLECTION

size reference of works

detail of stitching

BROOCHES

FIBULA

SHOWPONY

LIGHT HORSE

MORE MAJORUM

OLD BOOTS

CELTIC CALM

REMEMBRANCE

PENDANTS

KELPIE / waterhorse

CAPTURED

LARIAT

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Here is another one that I have not shown on here but this was actually one of my favourite works of this year. Based on a project as part of my course work this brooch was made in response to a piece of text chosen by me. I decided to work with the poem, Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost.

NOTHING GOLD CAN STAY
Robert Frost

Nature’s first green is gold, 
Her hardest hue to hold. 
Her early leaf’s a flower; 
But only so an hour. 
Then leaf subsides to leaf. 
So Eden sank to grief, 
So dawn goes down to day. 
Nothing gold can stay.

 

It is made with Sterling Silver, clay rock*, 24K gold leaf and stainless steel pin. I gently faceted the soft rock and left a natural edge to keep the shape. The gold leaf is gilded onto the back only and is designed to rub away when worn, as might the entire brooch. This captures the notions of change and paradox that is so strong within the poem. To wear it is to alter it; but it is made to be worn…but that will destroy it.

*this clay rock is a soft chalky type that is all about my place here in Kinglake amongst the red clay dirt that makes up the subsoil. These clay rocks come in this yellow ochre colour and a red ochre colour too. It is the sort that you can draw on concrete with- perhaps you did when you were a child?

brooch for me

I forgot to add this! Part of my coursework for Uni at the start of this last semester included a project to sort of test out ideas that we might want to further develop. I really enjoyed making this and it came together in a sort of round about way. It really is about me, my memories and as you can see, my love of horses. I didn’t pursue this line of making for my graduation work, however I did keep horses as a central theme.

Included in this brooch are many different materials; an enameled centre piece that serves as a memento of my first pony, Mathford Blue Velvet and is backed with shoe leather from an old Blundstone boot; the frosted black beads are akin to a Victorian Memento Mori and reminiscent of the black spots on my little Palouse pony; a faceted quartz that I cut myself and some moonstone that symbolises my travel and work with horses overseas; a swap card which is the same as one of the ones I remember having as a child- I had lots of swap cards, mostly horses and a few dogs and cats! ; in the ceramic dish is a written history of my life with horses in brief done with a silverpoint method and coated in nanotechnology spray-on glass; and the pin fittings on the back have a hint of scroll-work such as the leatherwork detailing you might see on a saddle.

Getting close to Graduation!

I have been super busy, as always at this time of year, but especially so as I am graduating from my BA of Fine Art soon! Very exciting! I don’t think I am quite done yet though and I am planning to carry on with Honours next year.

Here is a sneak peek at some of the things I am working on for my final pieces. A little change to the usual work I make, but I am so in love with the process and I am so happy to incorporate my love of horses into my work for this little collection. These are some of the brooches  I am making and I am still in process. There will be more. And some pendants. And possibly some earrings! Plus I am coiling some larger pieces for vessels that are a little bit divine.

When I was outside photographing these, with our handy overcast day for the perfect light, a curious little onlooker came over to see what I was doing.

For those who are curious, ‘More Majorum’ is the motto of the 8th Light Horse regiment, of which my Great Grand Father belonged  and means, ‘Of Our Ancestors’.

new entry

I have finished my entry for the art4apes exhibition this year. I have chosen to make a similar little brooch to the one I donated to the Cooee! Toolangi Forest Calling exhibition earlier this year. I have used a bi-metal of sterling silver and shibuichi to create some nice colour detailing and of course the little glass Leadbeater’s possums steal the show!

Let’s see how this entry goes in the competition…I might still have time to finish one more piece to go in!

Glassblowing at Healesville!

Such a great weekend! I went out to Healesville a couple of weeks ago to do a weekend class in glass blowing with- Healesville Glass Blowing Studio. I have wanted to do this class for a couple of years would you believe, but they get booked out so quickly that I have never quite made it in. Too much thinking about it and not enough getting on the phone and booking!

Tim led us throughout the day with great patience and clear instructions, which made it such a great day and working as a team we all took turns at each station to assist each other. I am just going to put up the pictures, because I will just be repeating myself about how brilliant it was and how great this class was! If you have ever wanted to try it, just ring them and book in!

Me ( and Tim) making my vase…

And finally, here are all of my finished goodies!! Did I say how much fun I had this particular weekend?

Slainte!

Some work for David Attenborough

This project was a character study where we were required to create a series of work for a particular character- living or dead, fictional or real. I could hardly go past my favourite person ever – Sir David Attenborough.

To start with the work had to be about nature, obviously. It absolutely had to be made with recycled, natural and sustainable  materials. I wanted it to to educational, to prompt discussion and make a bit of a statement. And it had to be something he could wear.

I decided to make this work in ceramic with recycled silver backing parts. I researched into plastics and melting temperatures in order to reuse some of the household plastic we accumulate. A bit of a statement about the evils of plastics.

I carved some moulds for pouring the clay slip onto. Feathers, fur and scales and created the blanks to play with. My intention was to cut a piece of the ceramic disc away and replace it with a plastic section to represent the hand of Man wiping away the natural elements. Rather than cutting away a section though I have covered a portion of the detail as the plastic component is melted over the top. I have included in the series some pieces that don’t have plastic incorporated onto the surface as they are as a reference to the fragments we have left of certain species in the wild. They have been coloured in greys, white and black as a reference to the old images we see of animals such as our Thylacine, who are already extinct by the hand of man, or the lack of positive preventative action.

Each of the pieces are held by recycled sterling silver claws and have a clip type setting on the back which enables them to be worn on a jacket breast pocket or on the top edge of a thicker jersey or something.

This feels like the start of a bigger series. These can be prototypes perhaps. I have loved working with the ceramic and I have really enjoyed making something that resonates with my own sense of being.

images have been taken on chapters of David Attenborough’s book Life on Earth (1979) 

3Dprinting

Well, the final project for my 3D printing class is all wrapped up and I am pretty pleased with the results. I feel like I have a good understanding of the Rhino program now- well sort of… I am really hanging out for the printing to be done with recycled plastic as I am not such a big fan of producing more and more plastic to fill up the planet. Having said that I did choose a final piece that is a record of my family and as such will be great if it can last for years to come as a little part of the family history.

These first images are of the samples that I had printed. I have used the SLS nylon as my chosen printing as I like the clean white starting point and it shows up the detail nicely. I had it done at 3Dprint-au (which is actually in NZ) and they were great. Really nice prints for what I wanted and good service too. I created files for the ball-in-ball links, and the two others that were printed separately and click together. Very happy with the results as they all worked just as I had hoped! I had one mistake in the chain sample where two of the links intersected, but I have fixed the file now, ready for next time.

This is the final project and it is a collection of  some of the types of jobs that are recorded in the family tree. Of the jobs recorded we had 6 teachers and 11 farmers with plenty of the women in the family being recorded as ‘mother’ or ‘farmers wife’, although a few of them were teachers, administration assistants and sewing machinists too.

I set them all  in frames and coloured them as such to emulate old family photos. From the top near my Grandmas Mother of Pearl beads and reading left to right we have: Silversmith/ Tinsmith  and a Prospector (gold digger); Carter (transport and goods) and an Embroidery hoop to represent the mothers; A slouch hat with the Anzac badge and a farm scene with the rolling green hills of Ireland; H.Bruestedt’s shop in Stanley and Sheep (lots of sheep!); typewriter for my Nana as the admin. assistant and a sewing machine for my Grandma complete with her favourite colour- purple!; Then the bottom row has three teachers in a row, books for Gumpy, mortarboard hat for Mum and a Blackboard for Dad and then there is Grandpa’s green truck and a wood saw.

I have tied it all together with horse hair which is partly about me and partly that horses played such an important role in the lives of so many of my family’s lives. I presented it alongside some of our family photos.

glass explorations

 

I had so much fun with this research project and have explored working with glass a little more. I had thought that the glass blowing was a little beyond the equipment that I had, but on a small scale I seem to have been able to get some great results. The research project was titled- GESTURE: the Prosody of Glass. Here is the Abstract I wrote…

My intention for this research is to engage in jewellery making techniques using glass    as the focus material to explore the notion of movement, whether actual or perceived, and through form and the use of multiple componentry I want to investigate sound generation initiated by body movement. The sound qualities of glass may be implemented through simple movement or require an interaction. By exploiting the attributes, strengths and unique composition of glass I hope to create a glass jewellery object which can be worn or handled on its own and without the necessity of a protective frame or casing.

I chose to make a whistle for the  final piece, as a way of incorporating the form, sound and material qualities of the glass. Unfortunately the whistle has a wonky wiffle and doesn’t really make too much of a sound…more work to be done there. The little bird whistle certainly looks the part though!

These are drippy experiments that I was playing with…

These glass ‘scales’ are part of an idea I have been imagining for some time now and I am pretty sure you will see a bit more of these in the not too distant future.

And the glass chain is something I adore. Again, you may see more of this soon. I have experimented with this previously as you can see in the picture further below from a project in 2013. I think that the glass chain, aside from sounding heavenly, has some interesting applications that I’d like to explore with the work coming up for the graduate exhibition.

The glass and metal chain from 2014.

fungi

I love this time of year when my garden explodes with fungi! These pictures of the little champions are from my place and a few from an early morning visit to Wombelano Falls here in the Kinglake National Park. One of my assessment tasks at Uni is a time based project that I chose to record the birdsounds and take a reading from fungi collected at my place. All of those spore prints on the wooden panels are from different fungi in my garden…and there are even more! I love them!

Here is the work I made for my Capture, Translate and Synthesise Class…

video  and sound to accompany jewellery pieces.

Early morning birdsounds.

Various soundscapes of the Australian Bush. Some in complete bushland isolation at Wombelano Falls to my kitchen window and through to the Wattle Glen train station.

Jewellery pieces made on site in the bush using materials all sourced from the bush itself.

A variety of fungus. Wire grass. Tea tree wood.

To be planted upon completion to re-join the cycle.

I carry it with me

I live in the Australian bush. The town I live in is surrounded by National Park on all sides. I travel into the heart of Melbourne for Uni and I see and hear traces of my Australian bush there too. The sounds of my bushland home are deafened by cars, trains and trams, the bustle of people and general noise.

You hear it though. When you stop and listen. When you wake up early enough. When you go out into the bush. When you stand at the train station. When you wait for a bus. When you go to the shops.

To some, the Australian bush is somewhere ‘out there’… perhaps in the wilderness. But it isn’t only. It is also in the parks and gardens of the Central Business District of Melbourne. It is at the train stations along the way. It is on the nature strips  in the suburban landscape.

Birds, frogs, possums, bats, crickets and more. Fungus, flowers, trees, shrubs and even weeds.

With this work I hope to present some wearable pieces that can carry a physical trace. To capture a momentary part of the yearly cycle with the fungus spores and the daily morning birdsong recordings from five different locations. To represent my Australian bush in a tangible and tactile way.