Ballarat Fibre Arts Conference

I have just returned from a very creative couple of weeks in Ballarat and Melbourne, Victoria.
I was very fortunate to receive a grant from the Sunshine Coast Regional Council and the Queensand Government to help me with my expenses to go to the annual Ballarat Fibre Arts Conference.

 I attended Dorothy Caldwell's class - "MARK MAKING -A BOOK". What a fantastic experience - experimenting, developing ideas, sharing methods and philosophies, looking at other cultures and allowing myself to free up without restraints. Six days of hands on workshops and then artists' slides, demonstrations, talks, and exhibitions in the evenings. The last day was dedicated to a huge exhibition of finished work from the 300 participants and an artists bazaar selling all sorts of wonderful hand made creations.

In the classroom.

A simple mark making exercise.

 Blind folded stitching.

Noela blindfolded.

Bold mark making exercise.

Wax resist, batik, discharge dying exercises.

MARK MAKING ON PAPER... my results...

Ink on paper towelling,

...back of paper towelling.

Left handed 'jabbing' with fine liner,

...same with a 'brush pen'.

Playing with stencils,

and a smoky candle,

...and poking holes with a nail,

a candle flame and an incense stick.

Pages torn to size and assembled into a book,

... with fabric ties woven through 5 hole pamphlet stitch binding.

My small sample book with easy and effective 5 hole pamphlet stitch binding, with woven feature, coral beads and linen threads.

Class samples.

There is more to come from the workshop, including mark making on fabric. I'll save that for the next post.

THANK YOU VERY MUCH TO THE SUNSHINE COAST COUNCIL [RADF GRANT] FOR GIVING ME THIS OPPORTUNITY.

Another finished project - a Fabric Book in a Box

As I mentioned weeks ago, I have been consolidating some of my life drawings into books. The first one to be finished is a fabric book, ready for the 'challenge' at the ATASDA meeting in Brisbane on Saturday.

For the challenge, we were given a cardboard box to do anything with - I chose to merely cover it and use it to store my book.

The fabric is teadyed cotton. The feature on the top is beach driftwood with beach weathered glass. I made it up as I went along [can't you tell?].

I've used the same fabric to cover the book and simple 'Japanese stab' binding for the spine. The brass booby bit in the top right corner is a cufflink I found at a local 'car boot' sale.

The pages are scraps from life drawings I did on calico many years ago. Some of the calico has been deliberately stained with mould [easy to do here in the rainy Maleny summer].

I have also used shellac, acrylic paints and a variety of marking pens.

Some of the pages are randomly stiffened with glue.

..and here I've played with T shirt transferring film ironed onto calico.

ANOTHER FINISHED PROJECT

I am starting to really love my 'down time'. It has taken a month, but I am really in to it now. I have just finished a work which I started in a Glen Skein workshop in 2007. I have called it 'Time Peace'. It started out as an homage to the important women in my life, but has evolved to be a literal and figurative reference to time - past, present and future, especially the desire to 'live in the moment' with love.

        tiny books       crystal ball     antique watch parts

The fabulous array of old watch parts were sent to me by friends Carla and Richard who are keen Clock club members. They found a big box of old stuff at an antique clock market and thought of me. Lovely friends!!

I have even included secret compartments - what fun.

Postcard from Paris

I have just finished my 'Postcard from Paris' book which I started at the end of December. I have so many half finished projects hanging over my head that I lack motivation to start new work. So here it is - I used a sloppy version of coptic binding - not really my thing - too fiddly, but I'm OK with the result. I copied both sides of the post card, laminated both cards and used them as covers.  I won't be going into professional book making, but it's fun for a bit of a change.

ANOTHER BOOK?

What to do with a gorgeous assortment of old nail polishes [not including the ones still in the cupboard which have now gone hard]?

Well - why not tear up another sheet of heavy weight water colour paper, slop some printer ink over the surface, then start random doodling with the nail polish? This is just the start - I will have to now make sense of the doodling and add some thematic structure. Left brain stuff is not my forte.

....and it is STILL RAINING....

I have emptied my frog bucket [which sits on my deck and was made by Cathy Lawley], three times in the last 10 days.

'POSTCARD FROM PARIS' continues

I need more pages for my book. Because I usually make things up as I go along, I often find myself in this predicament. I have some lovely rusted paper which I made in an Adele Outteridge workshop. This will be great as a basis for my pages but as I am using my printer to transfer the images, I'm a bit wary of what the rust may do to my printer....hmmmm, so I guess I need to go wash the paper with soap and water then dry it and iron it flat again. Yes, I have 'joined' pieces together with tissue paper to make them long enough for my book. Somehow the book pages ended up 30cm long, and the rusted bits are only about 26cm. Just as well [or maybe this is why] I am into wabisabi.

PERMISSION TO USE PHOTOS

I have also been waiting for my daughter to contact me regarding using some of her photos in this book. I have exhausted the possibilities with the postcard image, so I want to add a few other pics from Paris. I am scanning my old slides from the 80's but I have very few interesting pics from Paris. As well as the prohibitive cost of taking slides, I was into 'recording the sights accurately' in those days, and 'arty' shots were a real luxury. I am super proud of Eliza for taking lots of 'arty' shots [some just for my benefit]. She thinks she is not arty, but I beg to differ. Take a look at these....

Arc de Triumph

Glass Pyramid at the Louvre

the Seine?

and the stairwell inside the Arc de Triumph.

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY ISSUES

This is a bit of a 'hot potato' in the art world. The legal eagles who know our predicament have set guidelines for us and those who buy/copy/learn from us, but unfortunately enforcement is expensive and impractical. Just look at the 'McDonalds' battles. Who wants to go there?

If someone takes a photo, the intellectual property rights remain with that person unless he/she gives permission for the photos to be used. The pics may or may not be used for commercial gain, but the photographer needs to know the intent of the 'user'. The 'user' should then acknowledge the photographer if photos are used. This is especially important if the photographer uses photos as part of his/her arts business. Otherwise it is just plain good manners to do so. The same applies to photos of art works [paintings, quilts etc] but usually galleries or exhibition curators have an appropriate clause built into their contracts.

The really tricky issue comes with workshops. I have had to face this problem many times as I often teach at the large 'summer school' style conferences in Australia. Students will often copy tutor's styles and even specific art works. This is the nature of learning and teaching. However, the work made in workshops should NOT be offerred for sale and if it is exhibited [which I believe is also a bit dodgy], then the tutor should be given credit for teaching the techniques. Ideally, the student will leave the workshop with new ideas to incorporate into his/her own work. The work may be seen as being INFLUENCED by the tutor, but not looking like it was MADE by the tutor. I had a situation where a student produced work very similar to mine, even used the same framing style, AND exhibited in the same gallery as me!! In my early career, I was making fabulous 'up market' personalised hand appliqued and painted windcheaters for a ski resort. A couple of years later, the same design appeared as a screen print in all the local shops. Thank goodness I could laugh about it then as I had moved on to other creative things.

It's all a bit of a grey area, but I believe that tutors should state their personal beliefs at the start of classes, students should respect the tutor's skills, knowledge and experience by not profiteering from same, and galleries and institutions should support and encourage their artists and not 'rip them off'. Yes, I'm an optimist and can be very naive at times!!

Getting back to my 'Postcards from Paris' book, I won't sell this one, because the photos are not mine, and  it's very special [and as I have said, I am new to bookmaking and it will probably not be up to scratch technically]. I may use it as a general teaching aid, or may even exhibit it [NFS], but I will make sure that I credit Eliza's photos, probably by hand writing somewhere on the prints. Maybe I'll even give it to Eliza if she likes it.

This is not the end of the story, because what do I do about the original post card image? The card was paid for, there is no copyright logo [not that that means much], and the photographer, who is credited on the card, died in 1994. I am using an art work [photo] which is not mine though I am changing and distorting it to suit my own style of artistic expression. Is this ethical? If the photographer was still alive and I was producing multiples of the book [ie hundreds] I may feel morally obliged to ask his permission, or give him a cut of the profits. The legal eagles say that if you change the design in even a small way, you are not breaching copright, so legally I'd be OK, but I'm not sure how I'd feel morally. Maybe I'll just credit the photographer in text somewhere as this will add to the 'story' anyway, and then just go and bury my head in the sand.

What do other artists think about this issue? I'd love to get some feedback.