Sculpture by the sea 2009

Last weekend I went to see "Sculpture by the Sea" the annual sculpture exhibition and competition held on the headland between Bondi Beach and Tamarama Beach in Sydney. The wind was fairly strong so we could watch many intrepid surfers tackling the waves at Bondi as we walked along the coastline.
This is Bondi (above) and Tamarama (below)

This exhibit reminded me of your work, Jane.

I did love these fat little bronze men mirrored below the plinths.

This one was made out of cut sections of plastic pipe arranged in a honeycomb pattern. It was in the path of the tide so was gradually being eroded away over the 2 weeks of the exhibition.

Horses seemed to be a popular inspiration this year - this one beautifully woven with amazing detail.

You can see more of the detail below.

This rather buxom beauty was made out of old car parts, particularly the door frames. You can tell the scale from my son beside it.

You couldn't escape the natural sculpture of the rocks themselves, but this last exhibit reminded me so much of summer school and Janet Edmonds' repetitive shapes. These knotted strands were about 5 or 6 feet in length and appeared to be made out of hundreds of discs of resin, about the size of your hand. They matched the stone colourings and hung swaying in the breeze - definitely my favourite for the day.

Red sky in the morning.....

As some of you might have read in your papers, we woke up on Wednesday to this in Sydney. Well, not exactly this view 'cos I live overlooking the bush, but just as orange a sight. I've never seen anything like it, very spooky indeed!

My camera was without battery of course so I couldn't get my own photos but it changed from this red to orange to yellow as the day went on. My son, never slow to spot an opportunity, chose to tell me that some schools were closed for the day but apart from endless red dust still everywhere, it wasn't too bad.

However, I decided to stay indoors for the day (what a great excuse) and get on with some sewing. After comments from Sian I've been playing around with my lacework trying to see how I can create a complete piece of "fabric" out of the shapes to use in my dress, or at least how big a piece is manageable. I got somewhat sidetracked of course and played intially with a scarf length piece of chiffon which evolved into this:

and then this clutch bag where the chiffon was directly sewn onto the black silk then remaining chiffon soldered out. I did some further outlines after to give more interest.

I did another scarf in purple using connecting swirls.

Now to get back to the patterns I should be working on..

More on my wearable

Started thinking a bit more about my idea for a wearable 3D item. I say 'wearable' because although I'm aiming for a dress we'll see how it develops and ends up. I looked at the red/green monoprint pattern and began to try ways of creating the effect while maintaining the lacy feel. This photo shows my planning board which is keeping me focussed.

I simplified the main green motif in a drawing then prepared it in green and red chiffons and organzas in various sizes, sewn on water soluble fabric then cut out by soldering. This will keep the translucency of the layers.

I placed the motifs onto a 'red' background and felt that more 'obvious' lacework was required so chose to sew the meandering green line of the pattern in an open green lace. I've tried a couple of further lace patterns below in pinks/reds create layers.

In this first idea the fabric will consist of two layers - 1 the motifs and lacework will be an entity of its own and 2 the under layer of reddish organza and chiffon. The under layer needs to have a bit more texture / pattern akin to the original monoprint but I don't want to detract from the upper lacework. I've only randomly tucked and pleated the organza then soldered slits in it to change the colour.

I've also looked at creating the pattern on one fabric where I've used painted Lutradur, resist embroidered then heat gunned away the rest. The linking 'vine' is a couched cord made from red organza. I like the lacy effect but it feels 'crusty' as you'd imagine after melting a polyester web so not sure if it's a suitable choice for a 'wearable'. The background dyed cotton has texture from dyed Saa bark but would need to be darker in colour.

The straps could be principally a braid perhaps with threaded motifs echoing those in the dress. The photo is a bit dark but I've tried a 5 stranded braid using machined cords in green and red and that seems to be a suitable width. I've tried the red motifs in different thicknesses with and without interfacing, and tried lacing them differently.

And with so much pattern I thought the bodice area should be fairly plain, perhaps rouched or pleated chiffon.

By the way, the dress is only partly coloured in - it's not as daring as it looks!

Towards an embroidered item

I prepared an A3 size piece of material (top left corner of Page 12A below) from fabric pieces overlaid with fine netting and free machine and cable stitching. Shapes (derived from the black and white bark lace drawing in chapter 11) were cut out and edged in fushia machine buttonhole stitch. These shapes were arranged in various compositions and temporarily sewn together to give the impressions of 3D items.

Page 12A:

Page 12B:
Another piece of material was prepared in a complementary colour scheme, the shape (UFO-like) taken from a monoprint design in chapter 11.
Various compositions are shown combining the two shapes in this page and the next (page 12C)


Page 12C:


Page 12D:
I took these compositions, scaled up and down, and suggested their use in various clothes and accessories eg. bags, hats, scarves, and earings.

Bold marks

Since I had some interesting papers already made I decided to look at those marks in closer detail for this section of design.

Page 11A (above):
The paper was decorated with sweeping broad brush strokes in acrylic paint on an inked background. I cropped two areas which had overlapping strokes and played around ending up with quite leafy looking border patterns and flowerlike motifs.


Page 11B:
I picked a square cropped area from a paper that had been monoprinted in several layers. The repeated shape gave endless designs but I've highlighted 3 above that again had a leafy theme of creepers and vines, etc. Since the original monoprint was made with pigmented gel medium, the reddish background (if you enlarge it) has a lot of interesting texture in it which I like.

Page 11C:

I also went back to some monoprints of Saa (mulberry) bark, cropped parts and played around in positive and negative designs. The laciness (if that's a word) really appealed to me and so I looked at that further.

Page 11D:

I looked at simplifying the cropped bark monoprint before replicating in a line drawing here.

I've then overlaid that image onto design 11.7 on page 11B using cellophane.