Old School (2012)
It’s Never Too Late to Mend Exhibition – Incinerator Gallery

Bringing the technique of fence stitching into a gallery context, ‘Old School’ is a homage to the embroidery designers of the 19th and early 20th Centuries. ‘Old School’ is a reference to the little understood history of political craft. ‘Old School’ pays tribute to remix culture and those who seek to keep knowledge free.

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The mother as an artist. Disbanding the myth of the artistic sanctuary and a space to create.

Two and a half hours of embroidery, feeding, changing, entertaining, and cuddling.

Photography: Marcus Salvagno
Editing: Karl Fitzgerald
Music: Line of Flight – Revolution Void

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This piece was created for “It’s Never Too Late to Mend”.

The Making and Baking.. was born out of a desire to contribute to the conversation about the value of handmade.  All too often purveyors of handmade goods find themselves having to justify their prices in the face of mass production of consumerables.  Comparing a uniquely designed, handmade piece of clothing against a one of thousands, sweat shop produced item shouldn’t even happen, yet it does. And far too often makers are left to defend their ‘high’ prices, when the reality is that the mass producers should be the ones explaining their prices. This Is Handmade is a brilliant video project which works with this idea.

The Making and Baking.. was also inspired by observations of gender within the arts. As a mother and an artist I rarely have the luxury of uninterrupted creative time, I share my creative space with small children and I have to manage gallery time with childcare.  These are not really issues that phase me as my children are my muses and are very much a part of my practice. What interests me is the different status that artists attract due to their family status. Certainly my experience and observation of group shows is that it’s the single guys who get the most time and attention paid to their art.

Luckily for me, my practice tends to attract similarly radical curators and art workers so my colleagues have always been open to supporting my children being present and part of my art. However, I know this is not reflective of the art world as a whole.  Hopefully this piece will plant some seeds for people to think about the way they value art workers as parents.

Thanks again to Marcus, Karl, Hannah, Jose and the kids for helping put this piece together, arohanui xx

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Ahoy me hearties! Land pirates straight ahead!

Oh to be a speculator.

It must be such a great life buying up blocks of land, sitting on them for a few years watching the community grow and the infrastructure develop, then when the time is right, flip them off for some easy capital gains. Even better when the land isn’t in your suburb so you can externalize the problems that vacant land creates like weeds, rubbish, vandalism and housing affordability pressures. Even better when the council has a rates system that charges on land and buildings so the blocks around yours with houses and businesses on them have to pay more than you do.

Well, just ’cause the council thinks it’s ok for all these pirates to be sailing around our hood, looting the bounty created by our communities, doesn’t mean the Melbourne Revolutionary Craft Circle does.

We’re sick of looking at these blocks. We want a re-imagining of how we use land in Maribyrnong. We want to address housing, sprawl, waste, food security, transport, health, community gardening and play.  In our separate lives we work on these projects but are daily undermined by the pirates.  We want the people of Maribyrnong to join with us in starting the conversation about the blight on our suburbs that is vacant land and what the Council plans on doing about it.

Currently, they don’t see it as a problem.

So, we ask the question “What else could go here?”  We are surrounded in blank canvases and we call on all citizens to spend some time thinking about what better ways we can use this land. Let’s keep animals, let’s grow food, let’s grow trees, let’s build parks!

Have you an idea? Put it on your closest fence tonight! Or get some chalk and write your ideas on the footpath! Use your imagination people, our communities are in our hands.

Love + rage

MRCC

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I’m excited to be a part of this exhibition opening tomorrow night!

My Bikes Not Bombs doiley will be there amongst the most amazing collection of doiley inspired art you have ever seen. I’ve had a sneak peek and there’s some truly wonderful creations.

Hope to see you there!

Gleaners Inc
2 Ballarat Street
Brunswick

Friday March 16th
5.30-7.30pm

Exhibition dates: 16th March to 13th April

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Every now and then you stumble across something and think ‘gee, I’d totally tattoo that on myself’.  Well, this year I had one of those moments and went with it.

I’ve always thought I’d wait until I was at least 30 before I got a tattoo. I had that gut instinct that if I did something like that before then I’d most probably end up regretting it. I was a fickle young thing.

So for the last couple of years I have seriously contemplated a couple of ideas. I did get very close to a cross stitch design. Figured I needed to stitch it up before embarking on actual ink. And after I had done that, decided it would be a bit big for what I wanted.

I’m a collector of old craft. Either finished pieces or the things people use to make with. I have lots of old needle cases and needle books. Tons of old needles, wool winders, thimbles, you get my drift. A couple of months ago I bought this simply gorgeous antique souvenir sewing kit. It didn’t take long for me to realise that THIS was what was going on me forever.

Click here to see the other images of the box. It is such a delightful object, I am going to treasure it for a very long time!

I’m the kind of person that believes in the importance of signs. It’s crucial to remind yourself of the messages you hold true. Some people hang stuff on the wall, pin things to their office cubicles, embroider samplers, paint on footpaths. I have a small affirmation stuck on the inside of my wardrobe door, I have pictures on my walls, and a vast collection of button badges I can pop out for the right moment.

It’s Never Too Late To Mend, is very much a motto for me. I apply it to craft, politics, our lovely planet, my relationships and communities. And now I proudly wear my motto on my arm to help me keep on track for the rest of my life.

A massive thanks to Matt Gordon who was working out of Down to Earth Tattoos for his beautiful work. He was so much fun to hang out with!

And another massive thanks to Mark Burban for the great pic. I did some really great work with Mark and will be revealing more on that project soon!

Now, get mending!

xxx

rayna

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It’s hard to believe, since it’s been so busy around here, but it’s been a year since a bunch of wonderful people came to our house and blitzed our garden. You can read about that day here and here. I like to tell people that was the day our house became our home, and it truly was.

So one amazing year onwards and our family has been loving the fresh goodness almost every day since.  We’ve eaten tomatoes, potatoes, garlic, zucchini, beans, peas, eggplants, spring onions, rhubarb, warrigal greens (bush spinach), figs, chillis, peppers, cabbage, broccoli, broccolini, cauliflower, a big range of herbs and of course, fresh eggs. And we’ve shared all of our bounty with our friends, family and neighbours.

The last month has been super busy as we get the garden ready to pump out the summer goodness. Lots of soil prep, planting seeds and seedlings, building climbing frames and of course weeding!

We’ve put in two more garden beds since the blitz. The corrugated iron one we won from the awesome crew at VEG at this years SLF. Currently growing the last cauli, a broccoli I’m saving for seed, onions, watermelon, pumpkin, cress and some flowers. The wooden one was a great find from Reverse Art Truck and is housing some eggplants, radish and spring onions.

This was the bed we built on blitz day and has just been topped with soil and compost for the summer growth. I planted it out yesterday and today and it contains tomatoes, corn, radish, spring onion, beans, zucchini, cucumber, lettuce and cress. Might pop a couple of strawberry runners in there too if there’s room.  I also had the help of my lovely friend Emily to build the climbing frame out of sticks pruned from trees around the garden. Use what you have!

This garden is humming along! I built a bamboo climbing frame and there’s capsicum, eggplant, beans, tomatoes, potatoes, strawberries, cucumber and broccoli in there now.

This is a wee bed my dad built. It’s my favourite as it’s a little show garden. But it doesn’t get a huge amount of light so it’s tricky. But I have an artichoke, garlic, eggplants and flowers in there. Oh and a rogue dill plant..

Here’s a fun little upcycling experiment I’m trying out. I found an old shopping trolley on the side of the road with no wheels.  So I pulled it home and turned it into a spud garden. When you grow potatoes, your supposed to let the shoots come up and then cover them with soil. If you repeat that process a couple of times, the plant sends out more shoots with more spuds. So I’ve been doing this in here, adding about 20cm of soil each time. When the top dies off, I can just tip it all out and let the kids find all the potatoes!  It’s working pretty well so far.

The food forest in the chook run is going great. We have bush spinach, rhubarb, strawberries, yukon, caped gooseberry and calendula growing in there. And also a lemon, a lemonade, an olive and a couple of feijoa trees cruising along. Our very own orchard!

I don’t spend much time in the front gardens any more so I’ve aimed to plant stuff that’s as low maintenance as possible. There’s a plum, a fig and an olive tree. As well as sunflowers, zucchini, tomatoes, squash and some flowers and herbs.

The one garden that’s not coming along as well as we would’ve hoped is the nature strip. We probably put in too many grasses and not enough ground cover. So we’re hoping to get some more of them in soon.  But with all the rain, the plants that are there and growing nicely and some of the grasses have started spreading from seed. So it should fill up soon.  The tree in there is an ornamental pear, and I’m hoping to do some guerilla grafting next year and get it fruiting

So we are now growing: artichoke, garlic, tomatoes, potatoes, zucchini, chilli, capsicum, cucumber, eggplant, radish, spring onions, onions, lettuce, beans, corn, broccoli, watermelon, pumpkin, strawberries, bush spinach, rhubarb, lemon, lemonade, mandarin, olives, feijoa, fig, plum, lemon balm, rosemary, oregano, lemon thyme, mint, chives, garlic chives, spinach, thai basil, nasturtium, cornflower, sunflowers, cress and chickens and kids!

Oh and I bought the bloke a homebrew kit for his birthday and gocco printed a bunch of labels designed by one of his best friends. So we’ve got that going on too!

Whew.

We’re hosting christmas this year so I’m aiming for a 80% homegrown meal. It’s gonna be a fun one!

We’ve got more plans for next year including building a shade over a courtyard, putting in a swale and planting more fruit trees.

Thanks again to all the amazing people who came to our blitz, and all my friends who’ve been helping through the year. Words can’t explain how much I love my garden.

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We have a big fence around our community garden where we have our Permaculture Playgroup and it does serve a useful purpose, it keeps the little kids in and almost keeps the big bored night time naughty kids out, almost..  Over the last year and a bit I’ve been coordinating little projects to help beautify our fence and to make it function a bit better.

I started with a moving mural on the south side of the garden to act as a bit of a wind break. We keep adding to it with our scraps and it looks great, especially when you enter the park from the south side and you get the best view of it.  We have two main winds, a westerly and a southerly. When it comes form the west, the strips of fabric flap and wave in the wind, looking really pretty. When it comes from the south the fabric gets pushed flat against the fence and helps keep the wind from heading straight at the kids in the sandpit.

All the fabric is attached using a basic latch hook rug style technique. Is there a name for this type of knot, anyone?

We’ve also been weaving little hearts a la outdoorknit along one little part of the fence. It’s a spot visible from the playground and the shops across the road and whilst they serve no functional purpose, they make the garden look so friendly and inviting despite the great hunka fence around it!

Not fence related but still lovely was the bunting we made last year with bumble bees gocco’d on some of the flags. Along with the streamers fluttering around the garden it gives the place a truly festive atmosphere!

Next up was the infamous bra bug gardens. They didn’t hold up too well in the weather. You definitely need to use a padded bra! The one I used was black and it’s faded quite a lot, so I recommend if anyone makes any of these you go over board with the decorations. One of the ones I made collapsed and the other one was doing ok but then the potting shed got moved in front of it so I’m not sure how it’s doing now..

But I’ve taken the same theory and expanded on it! I went to Reverse Art Truck aka heaven, a while back and amongst my treasures, Iscored a pile of industrial cardboard cotton spools. We decorated the outsides of them by spray painting a base layer and then sticking some lace on and spraying again with a contrasting colour then peeling the lace off. Instant pretty patterns!

We filled the spools with a layer of toy stuffing (cause I had some dirty stuff lying around) but you could use straw mulch or anything. just something to plug the hole at the bottom of the spool. Then we filled them with dirt and stuck a little baby succulent in each one.

Some of the spools were tied to the fence, some were stuck in the branches of the vine that grows on that part of the fence. We chose to do it there so when the vine covers itself in leaves over the summer months, it’ll provide some shade for the plants, and then they get the sunshine in summer!

The bright colours on the spools also went beautifully with a craft project we did a couple of weeks ago which also ended up on the fence.

Next step is to experiment with what we can grow in them. I started with the easiest but keen to hear any suggestions for food plants that might like minimal amounts of soil and water and plenty of sunlight. Yeah, I know..

Next project plan is to experiment with fence weaving techniques, so til then, happy fence arrrting

xx

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You are cordially invited to the final event of my residency at the awesomely lovely Iramoo Community Centre. As part of the Show Us Your Arts day, I will be presenting the work ‘WE are Wyndham Vale’ to the community centre.

Following the unveiling, I’ll be holding a FREE coiled weaving workshop. Come along and learn the basic technique of the ancient art of coiled weaving with some unusual materials and a few radical applications. The workshop will be held in the community centre kitchen and there will be ample supplies of tea and cake. Naturally. You can RSVP here. Places are very limited so please call the centre or email me to book your spot.

There will be a heap of other artistic activities happening around the centre on the day. The flyer is below. Be sure to call the centre to book any of the events you are interested in.

A big thanks to the Iramoo Community Centre and the Wyndham City Council for supporting this event.

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It’s been a bit quiet around here as I’ve been very busy stitching!

For those of you who have been following the progress of the WE are Wyndham Vale project, the photos in this post are all progress shots for you to check out. Submissions closed last week and there was some truly visionary ideas contributed to the project.  I can just imagine all of the ideas coming to life and Wyndham Vale becoming  a truly sustainable and vibrant community!

I am in the throes of stitching now and I invite anyone who wants to join in to come down to Iramoo and get involved. I’ll be there in the kitchen stitching for the following sessions next week:
Monday (25th Jul), Wednesday (27th), Thursday (28th), Monday (1st Aug) from 11.30-2.30.

If you have always wanting to learn embroidery, come along and I will give you a lesson. Or if you’ve been stitching since birth, and everyone in between, come along and stitch your favourite part of the map. All materials are provided.  We’ll be hanging in the kitchen stitching, drinking tea, and eating cake! If you haven’t been there before and want to come along the Iramoo community centre is at 84 Honour Avenue, Wyndham Vale.

I have a date for the unveiling too. Stay tuned for news on that another exciting workshop!

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Another day of exploring and this time instead of staying on the freeway the whole way down, I jumped off at Laverton and took the back roads down to Wyndham Vale. I really wanted to check out the fringes of the city and see if it was all different or similar to around Wyndham Vale.  What really struck me was the total saturation of franchise stores.  Aside from a medical centre and a vet, I didn’t see a single independent store. No milk bars, nothing.

This made me really quite sad.  Partly because it demonstrated just how intensely packaged and contrived corporate property developments are. But mostly because it means that there are no locals who can or want to start their own local independent business.  Whether this is a result of corporate plans, council regulations or lack of economic incentive, I think it is one of the side effects of urban sprawl that should be discussed more.

xxxxx

I dropped into the studio to drop off some stuff and to say Hi! to Harry.  Harry is awesome, I’ll introduce you to him sometime soon.

And then I went for a wander along the creek.  Aside from taking advantage of the studio space I have been given, I really want to take advantage of the natural space.  As a mother of three young children it’s very rare for me to have time to myself, especially during daylight hours.  And as an only child, it has been quite a struggle to get used to.  So as one of the aims of my residency I want to try and walk along Lollipop Creek or the Werribee River at least once a week.

I staunchly believe that an essential part of the creative process, no matter what you do, is rambly thinking time.  It’s like doodling with your brain.

Well it sounds nice in theory.  When you have small kids this sort of time doesn’t happen very often.  Especially when one of your children is four. And NEVER stops talking. Ever.

Virginia Woolf spoke about a woman having a room of her own.  And it is absolutely true. However, I have discovered with my own craft practice that my room is often in my mind.  I can have a physical space to make no problems, it’s creating the mental space that is the tricky part.  So making space for a walk along the creek might seem like a trivial use of time.

After my walk today I went for a bit more of an explore of the fringes of town and I checked out the great BMX track the local kids have built.  It’s clearly been used for a while and I just adored the old chair that was lovingly (don’t tell them I said that) dragged to the top of the hill.  I could totally imagine the tricks you had to pull to get to sit in it.

It was a blimmin great spot to check out the plains from. Dunno if you know this but Wyndham Vale has minor cult status due to it being the set for the first of the Mad Max films. Wyndham Vale is apparently known as Mad Max Country (although I’m yet to find someone who actually calls it that).  I’m sad to think this BMX track, and these gorgeous plains will be the victim of a massive new development.  Hopefully the track at least lasts a while longer.

Next step was the local Salvos where I found a fantastic piece of needlework.  It’s an illustrated alphabet stitched with wool on a rug canvas. It’s going to look great in the kids room. Although I reckon it might even get a stint in the lounge.  I also popped in to check out the Cultural Centre and it was brilliant to meet the staff in there.  I totally fell in love with these birds!

They’re peregrine falcons, a male and a female and I did ask who made them but neglected to write it down. I’ll find out.  They were originally made as puppets and if you attach poles to them they can ‘fly’. Just brilliant. I love clever people.

Last stop was a detour to the Craft Circle on the off chance that it might be open and it was!  I’ve heard so much about this fabulous shop from friends who frequent it.  And I’ve been meaning to drop in for ages.

It was simply lovely to have some quiet time admiring all the handmade and hand dyed yarns and felts and the gorgeous range of handmade fabric and wooden toys.  I had a great chat with the woman who runs the store and picked up a couple of sweet felted treats for the kids.  Visiting a gorgeous local independent store, what a great antidote to the franchise fantasy I started my journey with!

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