Studio Pieces

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Craft ACT Gallery One: 29 March to 29 April 2007

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Contemporary craft in the ACT is a diverse and vibrant sector. The ACT and surrounding district is home to a large number of successful craft and design practitioners with international and national reputations. What inspires these artists and where do their ideas come from? It is these questions that Craft ACT curator, Jas Hugonnet, poses in the exhibition Studio Pieces.

The Craft ACT Accredited Professional Members (APM) were invited to participate in this group exhibition inviting the curator Jas Hugonnet to select a work for the show. A regular visitor to artist's studios, Hugonnet finds delight in seeing objects in artist's studios that are totally different from their exhibition work, for example, Elizabeth Kelly, a glass artist at the Australian National Capital Artists studios in Mitchell has been creating an ongoing installation by collecting toy trucks and displaying them on an existing pile of gravel.

Studio Pieces is an exhibition of objects selected from the studios of the APM's. These objects are sometimes found and at other times constructed in what would be described as a sketching manner. The exhibition aims to present a collection of objects that inspire object makers.

Anita McIntyre

I am a collector of natural objects, rocks, shells, seeds, twigs etc all gathered from my journeys. Sometimes these objects are bagged and catalogued with place and time; most times they accumulate in my house and studio, kept near for observation and inspiration. The obsessive nature of this type of collecting reflects a desire to have and hold beautiful objects that nature produces, form, pattern, colour, texture are all the elements that catch the eye. Sometimes I will use these bits and pieces to create texture in soft clay to remind me of a place and the journey, otherwise they are just there to inspire me, not to replicate but to try to capture the essence and beauty that nature has created.

Travel to other countries presents a problem for the obsessive collector as often our Customs Office will confiscate a treasured piece; however I do have bits of weathered glass from a beach on the Sea of Japan, pebbles from New Zealand, Canada and the USA. Often I will forget where I collected a particular piece and sometimes colleagues and friends will give me treasures they have collected. The Barnacle that Jason has selected for this exhibition, was given to me by Janet DeBoos she collected it on her travels sailing to South America and it comes from the coast of Chili .I have had it for some years now and it never fails to inspire me, its fragility and strength reminds me of porcelain clay both in texture and composition. The amazing complex structure of the barnacle that is made of simple pod like units continues to inform my own work when I think of repeating simple forms with repetitive pattern. The incredible soft pink colour reminiscent of the evening light on the Tannimi Desert or a million sunsets, the subtlety of that colour wash on the surface of the barnacle is quite beautiful and always inspiring.

Annie Trevillian

JOHNNYISMS

My father Jack (Johnny) Nilsson Trevillian loved his 50cm square lightweight concrete pavers. They covered ¾ of the yard space. To Dad that was gardening. In 2001 at age 80 he constructed these objects from items he found in his yard and shed to help him move the pavers for weeding and realigning. All done from the seat of his motorised scooter. By the time he had weeded to the end of the yard it was time to start again.

My dad used his recycled tools to work with new technology (lightweight concrete pavers). In my textile designs I work with found objects and images from the 1950s, which I manipulate into new designs using Photoshop.

In both dad's work and mine there is that strong aussie tradition of recycling and making do – using what is available around you to create new objects.

Jonathan Baskett

I travel to Mexico regularly working with glass factories, an opportunity that is rare in Mexico City.

Last June I was lucky to get some time away from the factory. I travelled to Oaxaca, a beautiful colonial city south of Mexico City famous for its local produce such as coffee, cacao and chiles. Oaxaca is also famous for it's ‘alebrijes' unique hand crafted wood carvings originally created as toys for children, but now recognised as an art form in their own right. When I saw these two alebrijes in the shop I warmed to them immediately, I couldn't stop laughing - so Mexican, that unique sense of humour, I mean why wouldn't a zebra be playing the horn, and a lizard singing into a microphone in Mexico?

Christopher Robertson

Leaves feature very strongly in any culture as a root source of visual and metaphorical language. A good botanist will have a specialised knowledge of nomenclature to systematically describe a shape or type of a given leaf and these words for example lanceolate and ovoid. Eucalyptus leaves are infinitely richer in language than our poor collective cultural memory of one or two types. I'm particularly interested in the diversity and the linguistic characteristics of line and form as though they have some profound quality like a particular type of sound of a composer or as though they have the aesthetic hand of an individual artist.

Craig Harris

Japanese Brocade
Designed by Minako Ishibashi, made by Craig Harris

The object has several meanings and reflects my design practice. Origami was the first structured craft that I got into. I was taught Japanese from an early age the words and characters looked and sounded so interesting to a young mind. Like English I struggled with the language and written work. One day our teacher said our school was partaking in making a thousand cranes for peace. I was handy at making paper planes and thought excellent no more talking or writing. So I continued to make the biggest and then the smallest cranes and just kept making them. Besides always taking things apart and putting them back together origami was the first thing that indicated a life in craft, art or design.

A few years lapsed and I was off to Uni I struggled during first year looking back I probably should have failed. Anyway from second year I became more interested in a place called Japan. The place was more than a funny looking language and paper cranes.

During my masters the main background of my work was connection, modular forms and minimalism. The circle and six sided forms kept being repeated in my work.

Since moving to Canberra I have gotten back into my old friend origami. Being in Canberra without a workshop or a job paper was pretty cheap, so origami was a way of creating things. The first time I attempted to make the Japanese Brocade it worked, I was trying to impress my now wife's mother so everything was on the line. Since then I kind of got obsessed with it and all other origami has been forgotten. I make the brocade all the time as gifts for people usually to say thank you.

I still make them on a regular basis and am now making a series of lights from the same form.

I can't really sum this object up as one basic meaning. I am not totally sure why I like it so much, is it because it is a modular form made up of six separate squares of paper? or is it because it is harder to make and looks better than a crane? or is it because I make these things as a way of doodling whilst I think about making or designing stuff?

Janet DeBoos

Sometimes I find myself seduced by easy beauty, but a part of me rejects this as too simple; too easy. I found these slippers in a market in a town to the south of Beijing.

They are made for 'lotus feet'- the bound feet that were a sign of aristocracy in imperial China. The feet were bound from an early age, causing gross deformation and pain for the subjects, as well as persistent infections from the wounds caused by growing toenails that penetrated the flesh of the sole.

And then this gross travesty of human beauty was clothed in exquisitely embroidered silk slippers such as these. The soles are not worn as these women could hardly walk.

Artificial ideals of beauty always have the seeds of corruption sown within them.

I have a tendency- perhaps a 'default' setting- that leans towards conventional ideas of beauty when I am making my ceramics. By consciously 'deforming' each piece I am forced to reassess its potential beauty. This is more difficult, but means that I am constantly having to develop an acceptance of what the clay wants to do, rather than what I want it to do. I keep the slippers as a reminder that true beauty is found in things as they are, rather than as we wish them to be.

Rozlyn de Bussey

LIFE ON THE SHELF

It stands on my shelf
With its open jaws
Anticipating the scrunch of paper on paper.
Click click is the sound of the Koala stapler.

It doesn't function as a light globe.
Won't write like a pen.
Can't fix the plumbing and isn't handy sweeping floors.
This Koala stands and waits to staple.
That's what it does.

The Koala's form is timeless
With its geometric design.
It stands and waits to staple.
Click click and scrunch.
That's what it does.
The Koala always staples right.

A stapler knows not right from wrong.
Its cause is to staple.
Standing like a work of art to catch the eye of passersby.
The Koala stands and waits to staple.
Click click and scrunch.
That's what it does.
It exists to staple.

If I could ask my streamlined stapler
About its streamlined life,
My stapler would smile that big wide smile.
The Koala would reply.

Here I stand a form to see.
There is nothing to dislike.
An industrial machine. My lines are clean.
Patience is my key.
It's worth the wait to hear that click on any piece of paper.

A Koala always staples right.
I will never miss a staple.
I wait and watch.
Click, click and scrunch.
I exist to staple.

With grateful acknowledgment to Rusty Daily.

Dianne Firth

The stone
I collect stones. I prefer river stones.

Sometimes they look very ordinary but they always have a quality that makes them good to hold - like this one. When wet it glistens, its smoothness invites touch and its weight deceives.

River stones carry so much meaning. They are travellers that reflect the trials and tribulations of the journey. Their origins may be easy to determine and are referenced in their colour, texture and fine-grained structure. However, their journeys are often complex and involve human as well as natural forces.

I usually bring back a small stone from my travels to keep in my garden. Stones have become a recurring motif in my art work.

Ruth Hingston

Rusty buckle

Found: on the woodline near Widgiemooltha in the eastern goldfields of Western Australia in 2000.

In the 1900s the woodlines were narrow gauge rail lines that were laid in a radius out from Kalgoorlie and Coolgardie into the surrounding bush. Teams of men worked and camped beside the woodlines, cutting and transporting the wood back to power the gold mines' operations.

When a team of woodcutters had finished clear felling an extensive area along the rail line, the tracks would be lifted up and relaid in a new direction. Ultimately all the trees around Kalgoorlie were cut down creating a barren red dusty landscape by the early 20th century.

Today the woodlines are shrouded in regrowth and only accessible by 4WD.

Connection to my work:
Finding small objects, such as buttons and buckles, on the ground as I walk through the Australian bush, are an inspirational source for my research and work on houses and garments. These objects speak to me about the lives of the people who inhabited and responded to this environment, through their choice of shelter and clothing.

Jennifer Robertson

The banksia cone comes from the south west area of Western Australia, famous for a wide variety of banksias. This is Banksia Grandis, or aptly named Bull Banksia. We lived for ten years in Fremantle and used to travel to the south west for our family summer camping holidays.

The cone is fairly unusual in form and markings, and I have been inspired to make a variety of textile works from observing and assimilating its nature, visual language and context.

Elizabeth Kelly

How many trucks does a girl need?

For a number of years my art practice has investigated toys and the creative nature of play. I have collected toys for the last 25 years often in series that could last a number of years before their chosen purpose becomes apparent.

I enjoy these found Tonka trucks and related earth moving machinery as their material nature harks to a previous era of 20th century metal toys no longer produced and now rusty and misshapen, discarded from former use.

In grouping these objects the sphere of potential action is exponentionaly greater, thus the dialogue occurring creates a narrative quite comical given their scale and shift of context, and as yet I do not have enough!

Joy McDonald

People who live with me have long got used to my arriving home from my early morning walks with more feathers to add to my collection. It has even been suggested that because most of them are blue that I was a Bower bird in a past life and on another occasion that I resemble the species whose eggs I collect from the pen in my back yard. (I always maintain that they are highly intelligent in a way that some humans could never appreciate.)

Whatever the reason I find these fragile objects a source of marvel, their streamlined shapes ideally suited, each to a specific part of a bird's anatomy; their very colouration, patterning and size alters depending on the function and exposure it receives. Each feather is perfectly placed to keep a bird air borne and when need be camouflaged in its natural surroundings.

It pains me to see clumps of them on somebody's verge, when one of these creatures has met its demise through an ecological imbalance of nature between the teeth of another species. The good thing is I don't come across this as often on my walks as I used to. Most of the time it's a single feather, self contained, shed and left there for someone like me to stop and look at its clean perfect form.

Irresistible.

Paull McKee

Tobacco Tins

The tins remind me of old fellas keeping there war medals safe in them out the back in the shed or full of old screws or bits and pieces that might come in handy someday. I think of them as containers of memories and meanings for men of a particular generation. It's sort of a sad story really that men's memories, ordinary men, get to live inside such small places hidden out in the shed. But also a good story in that we get to see something about feelings and masculinity that at times can remain hidden.

They evoke ideas and memories and fit into the knife edge between sentimentality and nostalgia where I love to work.

Megan Munro

I bought this basket from a stall at "Meet The Makers" which was a part of Floriade about 10 years ago. The young guy who sold it to me lived on the North Coast somewhere near Lismore. He explained to me that he had had to obtain a special licence to collect the vine that the basket is made from – watervine. He made his baskets from the vine when they were freshly collected and green. He would then boil the whole completed object to get rid of bugs etc. He was excited to sell the basket to me because I don't think he'd sold much. I paid some measly amount for it, maybe $80, which at the time was a lot because I was a student living off $270 a fortnight.

Baskets and basketry have had a big impact on my work. It was baskets and the idea of working around and building on previous layers or coiling that has given me many ideas in my work. I used this concept in my graduation work in 1996 and more recently in my crochet works where I basically work in a crochet technique that builds upon previous rows. It's a bit different than just starting the next row because it's hard to determine where one row ends and another one begins.

So I can thank this basket as an early and continued inspiration to my work.

I can't remember how I came across this piece. It has been part of my life in Australia for over thirty years. Did I find it on a beach? - on reflection it may be a piece of coral - or was it a gift? It is unsettling not to know, a symbol of disconnection, and what was its story before it came to me?

Its value for me has been in its structure. Those vein like strands remind me of the leadlines in stained glass, holding 'holes' of light, which formed part of my original tertiary studies and continue to intrigue me. I recall the huge impact of Ludvig Shaffrath's work on his visit to the Canberra School of Art in the 1980's - his ability to give the structure lines a life of their own. Interdependency between pane and holding line, encircled form and 'the space between' creates its own dynamic.

Nancy Tingey

This interplay between tension and openness crops up in my recent work on trapped fibres and nets. I play with contrast between the flow through form - freedom, escape -and the grid which contains and supports this energy.

Kaye Pemberton

DRIFTWOOD OR HANDTOOLS?

In my ceramic practice I am constantly evaluating my work in relation to form and function. I am continually assessing how a piece feels in my hand when in use, whether it is physically well balanced, and whether it is engaging, pleasing or challenging to my eye.

I collected these driftwood pieces from beaches in New Zealand in 2004. I was attracted to them because of their simple organic forms and because of their potential to evolve into something more.

They may have been tools before they were transformed by the ocean. They could become tools for an obscure function. They could perhaps become handles for tools of yet to be determined function. They could inform a group of forms I have yet to throw on my potter's wheel. I like the potential of having them on my shelf. The creative thoughts they initiate are limitless.

Martine Peters

In my professional practice I have enjoyed the challenges presented to me in the construction of textiles. My skill, as a weaver, requires a sense of order and the inventive care for repetitive structure and process. Creating a woven piece takes time, the intricate nature of the grain interweaving with itself, creating a 3 dimensional texture is to me inspiring

From my partner I was given the Huon Pine; one of the most unique timbers, an incredibly slow growing tree, containing many special properties. I admire this piece in my studio, it is a reminder to me that things take time to grow and be. At times when I may be disheartened I see this ancient timber and it serves as an inspiration to me, that gentle reminder that things take time- to nurture and hold something close to you, let it grow and form in its own way, it is precious…

Linda Rice

As a teenager, I was completely enthralled in the world of popular romance fiction, in particular Historic Romance. The Wind Rose (1983) by Mary Mayer Holmes was one such novel that I like many readers of romance fiction around the world have felt a deep emotional connection too. I was intrigued, fascinated and at times in tears, at the age of 14 by this romantic saga of Jason, the Yankee sea captain and the "beautiful, black-haired, green-eyed Mary Kathleen" as together they fight off pirates, survive separation and defy death. For many years my teenage addiction has stayed with me in the form of a treasured collection of about 30 books all dated and numbered in order of reading. However in later life, I began to explore this fascination and question my relationship to romance fiction by creating autobiographic work in the last two years that deals with my ambiguous connection to and understanding of, popular romance fiction.

Holmes, Mary Mayer, (1983), The Wind Rose, The American Library, New York, America: back cover.

Luna Ryan

This palm seed I spotted down the NSW South Coast, in the garden of friends who collect seeds from all over Australia. They kindly gave it to me to use in my practice.

Seed, that which nature prepares for the reproduction and conservation of the species; the mature fertilized ovule in flowering plants; the male fertilizing fluid, the semen; that from which anything springs; a first principle; an original; principle of production; progeny; offspring; generation. (Nuttalls Standard Dictionary)

I am fascinated by the ‘labyrinth' type outer appearance of this particular seed but more important by the transformative qualities of seeds in general.

I have copied the outer appearance of the seed and have featured it in some of my works, sometimes it may represent food and its harvesting, other times it is the symbol of the way one might operate in life through the sowing of seeds in the form of stories, suggestions, hints, attitudes and smiles.

Christa Sanders

I have always liked recycling; this object came from one of my much loved antique shop searches for useful or beautiful things. The bird in the shape of a jug could describe both my aspirations and my limitations.

Birds are one of those connections to nature, easily accessible in my own garden, that give a realisation of being part of an awe inspiring system. But my garden is dying, birds visiting are starving and thirsty, the natural balance is so disturbed it affects not only economic forecasts; it affects the spirit of nature I draw from

Flying is something I associate with imagination. An uplifting experience, an opportunity to see the world from a different view point. Borders and boundaries overcome easily. But my object is also grounded in a jug form. A reminder perhaps that any fanciful flight of my imagination is also bound to several aspects of my every day existence, perhaps to some limitations, not in a negative way, since I see natural limitations in living in a natural world.

Lucie Verhelst

Yellow Paper Pear

It must have been in the early seventies, coming home from a restaurant with my family. Sitting in the back of our car I was playing with the little surprise toy that had come with my dessert, nudged into my ice cream. This concertina paper plaything on a stick could fold up, unfold and it would change shape by flipping it over repeatedly. I was absolutely taken by it and played with it for days on end. Nowadays these gadgets are still given out with kid's desserts, but I have never seen any like that one since.

This yellow pear I bought here in Canberra a few years ago, when I was working on pieces that were related to those Dutch paper toys.

John Heaney

The CRADLE of VENUS

Wadding is the stuffing, usually refractory fire clay used to separate pots from shelves and each other. Unless recycled several; kilos are often thrown away after each firing. Wood firers often push the wadding into a scallop or other sea shell so as to leave shell like markings on the pot. This detritus has the elegant line of the shell, fissures caused by the process, and an interesting texture from the material and firing. It is the inspiration for a work in progress, The Cradle of Venus. A series of bowls exploring both the form and material texture of these fascinating objects.

Judi Elliott

My Man on the bicycle lives his days and nights in my studio roaming around my houses (my work) His presence is a constant reminder of the need for colour and whimsy in my work. I must admit that I do collect toys, especially old tin toys and collections of houses, largish, small and tiny. They inspire me to be creative, stay young and enjoy life.

Robert Foster

Fresh out from art-school, I set off on my first pilgrimage overseas, (1987) initial stop Japan. Well what can I say, what beauty and mastery of nature, what distillation of knowledge and tradition. What I discovered there continues to live on in my own work as a metalsmith. One thing that really set me on fire was seeing Samurai swords and their related paraphernalia. So when I returned to Australia I researched the process, which resulted in making a mere wage from the sale of knifes for a year or so.

Then in 1999 I was asked by the Powerhouse Museum to be 1 of 3 "ambassadors" to go to Japan as part of an exchange exhibition of craft, 53 craftspeople. My work represented in the exhibition was Silver-smithing pieces not blades! But while there I was taken to meet one of the few sword-smiths in the country, I watched him work and when I left he gave me this chunk of steel, called Tarma, which I see as being good karma!

This Rock means a lot to me; it has potency and comes from the only furnace left in Japan that makes this precious stuff. Made from heating iron ore with charcoal, its metallurgical qualities are unlike any other, as unlike other steels it never becomes molten. No surprise that it can make such beautiful and ferocious weapons.

What really pleases me about the Rock is that it highlights my fascination with the nature of materials and process. Taking raw materials and processing them through to finished objects. Retracing ancient footsteps and not taking the material or process for granted, it's about giving it the respect that it deserves.