A Busy Winter/Spring Creating

Winter and early Spring have been very wet here in the Adelaide Hills, which means I have been getting lots of basketry projects underway and completed. Starting with a commission of a very large circular light fitting of grapevine woven on steel frame.

(W 134cm H 50cm) I’m now waiting to see it fitted once the house is built.

Grapevine Light fitting

Before the real wet moved in the winter workshops where very successful in inspiring students to the possibilities of natural fibre basketry techniques.

Happy Basket Makers

Once the workshops concluded I was able to start the other major project of creating works for my exhibition at theHahndorf Academy which will be from February 18^th to March 19 2017.This exhibition opportunity was a prize for my work ‘It all starts with a Seed’ at the 2016 Heysen sculpture Biennial.

On top of the World

As the exhibition space is large I’ve made some large  pieces as well as some to hang as well as some large platters/baskets. I have also remade my ‘seeds’ as the originals where firstly exhibited outside for nearly 6 months and then exhibited on my veggie garden fence as this was their designed use.

'It all Starts with a seed 2'

Working almost full time on these projects has been an interesting experience. At first I  was overwhelmed by the thought of creating enough pieces but as I sat weaving away new ideas came rushing out so much so that only materials and time will limit the flow.What I have learnt is that I really like creating a series of related objects. A few years ago I set myself the challenge to make as many different rib baskets as I could in a year – ‘the basket tree’ Then with ‘It all starts with a seed’ I challenged myself to make a range of seed shapes using a range of techniques and materials. This I really enjoyed doing so this winter for the exhibition I set out to make another set of ‘seeds’ some similar and some very different .A set of leaf forms also have emerged from a mix of sticks and leaves.

Storm Basket

I’ve also discovered ,out of all the basketry techniques I've used ,rib construction is by far my favorite .It is extremely versatile , can be manipulated into a wide variety of forms , it suits the materials that grow here and my desire to weave rather than stitch.

Now the sun has come out it’s time to get back to my real job of managing the orchards and start the big cleanup of fallen trees caused by the storms. Basketry then gets relegated to a couple of afternoons a week.

With most projects finished my next challenge is finding places to store them til the exhibition in February.