Summer school - so long ago

Well, I've finally made it back to Sydney after a great trip around the UK. I'll blog later on some of the exhibitions we visited.

The summer school seems so long ago but I thought I'd share some of my photos of our work with you all. It was lovely to see students again after 4 years and to meet new students now on the course.

We spent 2 days or so tutored by Janet Edmonds looking at repetitive shapes and the 3D objects created from them with a view to translating them into fabric forms.

My shape (here in cardboard) was inspired by a pen and ink drawing of gumnuts in my sketchbook. Repeated copies of this shape cut from cartridge paper were strung together to create a snake-like 3D form that created interesting shadows in a light box.

I didn't get to translate this into fabric in the time at Urchfont but I'm working on the same principles to reflect some lacy structures in vegetation designs that I've been creating in Module 1 (more later, hopefully).

This photo briefly shows the diversity of paper structures created in the workshop.

The rest of the school, about a day or so, was tutored by Sian looking at 3D structures based on lacy 'fabric' created from watersoluble fabric.

This piece of 'material' was dampened over a polystyrene ball, rinsing away sufficient stabiliser to reveal the lacy appearance but retaining sufficient to give structure to the form once dried.

This bowl is actually the second moulded form of the above 'material' since I found of course that I couldn't get it into my suitcase to bring home! I had to rewet and squash flat back into its sheet form and dry that way to ,then wet and reform in Aus - a little less solid but firm enough!

This photo shows everyone's structures in situ before they are are completely dry, along with their inspiring artwork from which the colour scheme and patterns were drawn.

How did your mask turn out, Jane?