Grinning like a Cheshire Cat!!!

I had a comment from India Flint about this post where I gushed over her new book Eco Colour!! How cool is that - Hi India!!

Jeana and I were talking at the forum about how it's hard to think of the authors of all of those fabulous books that we pour over (see my library over there on the left) as "real people" and how amazing it would be to be in a class tought by someone who's work we'd admired in books. So imagine my suprise when I got home to see a comment from India.

Simarly I had another conversation (again at the forum) with another of the ladies who I'm exhibiting with at the moment who attended a class by June Dunnewold. She was telling me that one of our tutors from TAFE where we studied textiles, Tony Dyer also attended that class. Tony has works in the National Gallery of Victoria and the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney.

It seems that we never stop learning no matter how accomplished we might be.

I think it's also interesting that several artists whose work and books I admire also blog. Here are a couple...


India Flint (aka Tumbleweed) blogs at Not all those who wander are lost and Winterworks as well as being a team member for Tinctoria Australis and Window on White

Maggie Grey, author of whole list of books, blogs at Magstitch

Jane Dunnewold author of Complex Cloth and blogs at HeArtCloth Journal


Dale Rollerson, owner of the Thread Studio, teacher and author blogs at Downunderdale and Surface Tension Book


That's all that I can think of at the moment and I am sure that there are more that I haven't discovered yet. Have fun browsing these and let me know of others that I should add to my list.

Why blog?...

I haven't blogged for a while (really... you hadn't noticed?...) and was thinking last night about why/why not and what was the point of blogging

I don't remember why I stopped - wow my last post was November last year?!! - perhaps it was Christmas and I got wrapped up in life and friends, perhaps it was the creative "rut" that I stumbled into, I'm not exaclty sure. What I did realise was that blogging, even off topic, kept my eyes open and my mind active. What do I mean?...

I mean that that the creative "rut" that I fell into, swallowed me up and stopped me seeing and thinking creatively and by dropping off the face of blogger, that I had nothing pushing me. Re-reading that, it sounds very negative, but what I mean is that by posting on my blog daily (or almost daily) I look for things to write and doing that I look at what's around me, what's happening in my life and things that I've seen, read or heard and make note of this. In this way I find that I'm more creative, whether it be transferred to art or not.

Last weeken I submitted some peices for a group exhibition and the buzz I got from seeing people's reactions to my work when I picked my pieces up from the framers and at the gallery reminded me why I love what I do.

I AM good at it!!

Now back to the blogging... I struggled on creating these pieces. Initially I had lots of ideas, but as the date loomed closer I had nothing to show. I started something and became disheartened because it wasn't shapping up the way I had envisioned it... I tried something else and it didn't work... The number of times I complained "what's the point - I'm no good at this?" was just not funny. Obviously, eventually, I worked through this and ended up with 3 pieces that I am very pleased with.

Spurred on by the success of completed some work and the glow that I was feeling from the great feedback that I received I got in and started sorting out my studio and it's this that started me thinking. I have a box of pages and pictures and 'what-not' that I've collected with the intention of using them for 'something'. I stick these random images and ideas into a book that I can peruse when I need inspiration. I haven't added anything to my 'inspiration books' for quite some time and was sorting through this last night and the ideas were racing through my head.

I have lots of books on journals and journalling and have not yet succeeded at maintaining a journal. I'd love to keep an art journal an pour over the images of others journals with ideas that one day I WILL do this. Then I realised that my blog is a journal, and I that I HAVE maintained a journal - I'd just been very very slack with my journal this year (which is almost over!). I blog about ideas, thoughts and funny things I see. I blog about my art and I blog about my life. Blogging is my record. I do lots of 'thinking out loud' on my blog and find that in doing so ideas can evolve. I don't blog for anybody else. I blog for me. If others read my blog and even see fit to respond then that just adds another realm to my journal - it talks back!

Sooo what now? I BLOG!!!

I have made a September resolution, to get back into blogging and subsequently back into creativity! I won't vow to do it daily - that's just setting myself up to fail - but I will make a committment to blog more often in order to help me 'see more' of the world around me.

OK - That's enough deep and meaningfuls.