Purple Pansy

One of my favourite things to make are quilted journal covers.  I use free-motion machine stitching to embellish the fabric and then make these into covers and then pop  a visual diary/journal/notebook inside.  I usually have a selection of sizes and varying colours and themes available.

Detail of Purple Pansy Journal Cover (Sold)

Forget-me-nots

In a previous post I said I would show you a picture of a piece of work which was woodfired at Liffey. This is it! It was impressed with forget-me-nots and as you can see, it picked up some lovely colours and effects. We have other woodfired pieces on display in the studio, which are for sale.

Forget-me-not Wall Plaque ($20)

Wood Firing at Liffey

Following hot (pardon the pun) on the heels of Woodfire Tasmania, local clay workers had a fantastic workshop at the home of Jilli & Ian Spencer in Liffey on Saturday.  We fired up two types of kilns which you can see on the photographs. 



Preparing the kiln - a layer of sawdust, rolled newspaper as
  wicks, then the clay pieces go in layers with all sorts of other
materials between to hopefully give some special effects.



For more pics, click on the link to Clay Connections and you'll see all the exciting things that happened to the tee-pee after we'd all left! 



This is called a teepee kiln, for obvious reasons! You'll be able to see
how it looks inside if you check out the pics on the Clay Connections link.



Many thanks to Jilli & Jill Eastley for their instruction and to Jilli & family for their warm hospitality (it was a bit nippy at Liffey but cosy indoors and by the kilns!).  It was a great fun day and I enjoyed catching up with some clay folk I hadn't seen for a little while. I had several pieces in both kilns so should be able to show you in a future blog how they came out.

Woodfire Tasmania 2011

Jacque here!  We had a huge international clay event here in Deloraine recently.  Neil Hoffman, local potter, organised the most wonderful 3 day event.  We had exhibitions in all of the galleries in town (we enjoyed having the works of Michael Steffan here at Bohemian Arts), presentations and demonstrations by international and national experts in ceramics and woodfiring, and a fun day out on location at Neil's pottery in Reedy Marsh for the 'Woodfire Challenge'.  Teams had to dig clay, make pieces, build a kiln, fire their pieces, cook food on the kiln and then serve it up on the vessel they'd made.  Well done to Neil and team for bringing such a world class event to town.  The woodfiring continues for me this coming Sunday when we're building kilns and firing at Liffey.  More of that next week!

First Post



Extended Family
Acrylic on canvas 60 x 60cm

 Well, here we go, continuing our voyage of discovery, this time on to the possibilities of cyberspace. We thought we'd start with a couple of photos of Jacque's latest art works.

The first is a rather cute acrylic painting of "babushka dolls" . They are from 3 different collections, including one loaned by a good friend. They certainly look very cheery, and brighten up a slightly gloomy corner of our studio. The price doesn't include delivery.




LS Lowry's Anne
Buff Raku 36cm tall

 The second photo is a clay sculpture based upon a portrait painted by L.S. Lowry in 1957 . The subject, Anne, is a bit of a mystery lady. For years people have been trying to work out who she is, or was. The consensus of opinion though, is that she was an imaginary friend. Interestingly, X-rays of a lot of his paintings have revealed more portraits of Anne, underneath his more typical industrial "matchstick men" works. The price doesn't include delivery. How much that will be varies depending upon where it is going, but for suburban Sydney or Melbourne, it would be about $35. Country mainland works out at around $45.