Textiles & Tapestry - Community Project

Three years and one month - that's the duration of time it's taken to complete the Whangarei Community Tapestry and on Sunday the 22nd May we held a "Cutting Off" Ceremony at The Bach Art Gallery and shop. You can see more photos of the Cutting Off Ceremony on the Whangarei Community Tapestry blog

 The Ceremonial Scissors

Marilyn Rea-Menzies (right), from Hamilton was asked to help with the Cutting Off and preparation for hanging. Marilyn has been commissioned to make many tapestries all over New Zealand over the years. Some are in public spaces and many are in private homes. 

Agnes Hauptli (on left) is a weaver from the Far North. Agnes is a self-taught weaver who started to play around on a rigid heddle loom in 1992. Today she works from a purpose built workshop that houses several looms, from 8shaft countermarch to 16 and 32 shaft compu dobby, a huge 16 shaft drawloom and a TC-1 Jacquard loom.

The first cut - Beverly/s children were invited to do the honours!

I was chief photographer for the night a- you can read all about it HERE.  I'm planning on turning the blog into a book and have been researching how to go about doing that.

~o0o~

The Grand Unveiling will be held at The Forum North at 10:00am on Saturday 11th of June 2016

 The loom is looking very empty now....

....ready for the next project!

Time: 4 hours (22 May)

Resource #2 Colour Basics

It's been a busy and stressful week or so but I have managed to get some art done over the weekend and then again this afternoon. I have been trying to photograph my work but doing that sort of thing in the evening is NOT the best time because of the flash. I need to be patient and wait until tomorrow now.

On Saturday I worked on some tonal exercises. I started off experimenting with charcoal but found it too messy for my liking, so switch to using pencil (2B and 4B) I didn't enjoy the shapes with straight lines as much as the curved shapes for some reason. I've yet to complete two of the tonal exercises. 

 (photo to come)

Today I worked on the Drawing for all Your Worth line/tone doodling exercise.

Drawing for all your Worth #1

Exercise 8 - line/tone, doodling

I've played around with the pastels...allowing the colours to 

dictate movement and form..and really enjoyed doing this.

 (Time: 45 minutes)

Then I worked on the Colour Basics #1 Exercises 

I had two attempts with the colour wheel....

Exercise 1: Colour Wheel

I really struggled with blending the paints with a paint brush 

so I resorted to using my fingers...much easier and a lot more fun!!

Exercise 2: Primary and Secodary colours blended with white

 Here I have used my fingers to blend red and yellow
to make orange, with white..

..and blue and yellow to make green, with
 white

and blue and red with white.

Then I experimented with mixing the primary colours together (to make secondary colours) and blended those with black...

Greens/yellow with black...

and finally black and white...to make shades of grey.

Exercise 3: Cut/tear a small hole in a piece of paper and place it over a colour in a picture from a magazine. I've used a photo from our local newspaper.

..a close up picture!

(Time: 3 hours, 15th Aug 2012)