Billee, Rachelle and Cleo works June July 2008

Rachelles work 'Skins' aka Kiri created for Suzanne TAMAKI workshop during Matariki week June 16-20

Front and back views..

we have been busy!

A quick newsy update on events since the Kapiti Visual Arts summer school for those who think we have packed up and left town! Not.


6 months have passed since working with India Flint. Students have yeilded a great crop of work from Billee, Rachelle and Cleo in particular. I would love to see what the others have been up to...

These three have been busy performing amazing feats with plants and pots and fabrics. As I am the lucky one who gets to see it all I had better share!


Raw natural fibres transformed into articles of desirable dyed works on mannequins and forms that defy the concrete in favour of the abstract expressions of beauty. We have shared it all with the new students and created a bit of a permanent dye pot area in the room for students to carry on with.

Competitions in local and national Wearable arts, campus events and workshops have been held to extend the skills and knowledge gained.

Here are some of the textile pieces.......

Botanical Alchemy Gallery - Whitireia Summer School

Memory space and other things

How to say goodbye to new friends and old friends.

Not sure what I'm feeling more - Pleased for those who took part and leapt in to the week or sad that its over..the displays, first up best dressed walls.
Then disassembled studios, onto the next thing.... but stop;
look at the destinations we've all arrived at in 7 days of creation.

The spaces people have inhabited to make work has been precious, fleeting and now visibly tangible, a series of experiences, caught up in time. Bonds made, diaries worked on, dialogued, lingering still.

What to do next time we set up for a week of intensive good times? will let others have their say.... add or subtract- keep the Mussels and MOMO!

It all felt good enough to wrap up and take home. Or leave behind for a corner in the garage. Next time...

Did I miss the shopping, the ice creams, the beach,the garden,the books? No.

Miniature shibori studies on textiles and a great deal more led by India, flowing lines of life drawing...agreeably demonstrated by Bodhi, the painted colour of the sky and beach much to learn from Michael, the gaze of natural Kapiti summer light on silver cuttlefish casting with Hanne,Owen's prehistoric tools for present day bone digs - the respite after the day has been spent...

Planning to meet again in a few days,weeks and months,

looking forward to more seasonal adventures in this space.

SOMETHING TO GLOW ABOUT

Day 4, Thursday.

More good Kapiti weather, more colour, more movement around the campus as student revellers get closer to their hearts content.

Dye pots still brimming with plants and deep lush smells on the boil. In between each trip to gather mementoes with India we return to squeeze the summer out and keep it on cloth with added mordant. Stretches of drying fabric designs waft happily in the breeze, waving to passersby on the deck.

Bodhis Life Drawing class has a great energy, reflective, constantly demanding more of themselves through practice and patience. I've attended work out gym sessions like this!

Michael's landscape painters have moved out of the classroom most of the week with newly found corners of the campus lifted up for painterly investigation. Their works up on display on Friday to reveal the weeks harvest.

Hanne's jewellery room is alive with expectation, using delicate cuttlefish casts that have been shared with the dyers for more shibori experiments. Everyone's work unfolds. Like excavation, but gently digging at what's underneath the cuttlefish.

Owen's carving group quietly beavering away, their intense concentration on netsuke figurines fallen away with the most lyrical music surrounding them like a soft blanket all week. More treaures winding their way to the surface....soon to be revealed.

Dinner out at Mussel Boys again who we have now adopted as our fab food of choice and great company. Then onto more Kapiti sights in Owen's surburban glow worm grotto. If you want to see stars under the stars and have a spikey foot massage for free then its a must do.

Visual arts has had a great kick start to 2008

At days end

Wednesday 23 January,

Teresa our Kapiti campus librarian is not only having a great time in Hanne Eriksen Mapp's jewellery class but also finds time to very kindly extend her hospitality to the summer schoolers in her very beautiful house and garden at Peka Peka near our Lindale campus.

What a lovely retreat after a days end.

To be able to come together, for tea, as a larger community of artists and share thoughts on mutual interest and develop friendships is just so natural in this setting, thanks Teresa and Ashley.

India notices the eucalypt trees on their section ripe for the picking for seasonal colour harvesting tomorrow.... hmmm.

By the way have you seen her awe inspiring leaf print kimono!

Kapiti Summer School Days 2,3.

Another day in paradise with our visiting botanical alchemist India Flint.

A few more students today make us a total of 15 on our first field trip.

The textile students regroup early to meet new members, gather notes, find a strip of silk to collect our physical objects, fallen leaves and branches, visual notes for colour that day and instructions for the design journey ahead.

Monday 21 Jan - Anniversary Day - We set off into the Nikau Reserve near Lindale. Under the canopy of ferns we are guided by our instincts and the unusual visual markers to remember the journey by as points of reference. Mapping the week has never been more fun!

Treated to a rich visual range of growth, layers and layers of biosystems, its hard to not stop continually to take photos and just capture it all!

Back to the classroom and into the vats of dyes, can't wait, it really does get you in the mode for testing and dipping samples. India has more natural dye and mordant mixes brewing and chances to explore the reactions of silk protein, plant life, Kapiti water, temperature, resist techniques and some pressure. By mid afternoon the classroom is a boiler room of concoctions! flagging the eletrical elements for a moment we partake of some Kapiti Fig and Honey ice cream, oh bliss and more silk and wool parcels to unwrap. Frozen flowers yield more tasty colour.

The pots are filled to capacity with all sorts of harakeke, onion skin, pohutakawa, nails and shibori wraps and the rest of the campus are beginning to wonder if we are throwing spells. Smaller dishes hold experimental mixtures. More pre loved garments submerged in eco coloured dyes to come back from their first life more beautiful and lustrous than ever.

Catching up quick on Tuesday, fast as I can the detour back to Porirua temporarily delays me. Then into town to Global Fabrics and Erica to purchase more silks for ongoing testing and sampling of yet more reactions to enlarge the scope of the exercise.

Heard Sir Edmund's funeral service on the radio and hearing his family talk of his character and enduring values makes today even more special.

So much to dye so little time... More help from India - how to, where to, what to, why to??