Royal Botanic Gardens Cranbourne

Another quick trip to the beach and a lone trip back, provided another opportunity to visit another place on my Melbourne to do list (sorry, I don't really have one!), the Royal Botanic Gardens at Cranbourne.

There are several parts to the gardens and I wanted to visit the formal 'gardens' that look spectacular in the pictures I've seen.

From the visitor centre you are immediately struck by the Red Sand garden.

There's alot of water in these gardens, this arid zone is surrounded by them. The sculpture at the front is meant to echo this.

The garden is full of beautiful plants, organised and arranged, as you would expect of a Botanic garden, and there were just enough flowers in bloom to enable quite a few pictures to be taken.

 And I always like leaves and bark.

There are alot of structures in this garden and they give the very formal quality to an Australian garden, not usually what you associate with the plants of Australia. It is a little strange, but it is still a young garden, as they grow, the different elements should blend and soften. It is very impressive and there is plenty to explore in this small part of the whole gardens.

I have been here many years ago, before all this was established. A wonderful bush walking track provided a pleasant afternoon, as I remember. That is still there and there are wetlands as well. Definitely worth another day.

PS I saw a gorgeous little bandicoot there!

Sample, sample, sample...

It took an aweful lot of sampling, but finally I got there! Here is the scarf that started with me all over the place, finally settling on moss stitch:

It is worth sampling till your bored with it!

If you know anyone that would love this scarf, it's already in my Etsy shop!

On an excursion

I've just arrived back from a morning spent visiting the Victorian Wool Processors, where they scour and clean wool commercially, THEIR stash is 6000 bales!

Anyway, the lovely Marion Wheatland from Fancy Spinning a Yarn organised the trip to Laverton with members of her various spinning groups to see how it's done commercially. It was an amazing trip, numbers are just huge from the amount of water they use, to the number of bales processed and everything in between.

We saw the bales arrive and being stacked ready for processing.

They're opened up, washed, dried, crushed (to remove vegetable matter!) washed again, blown into big bins, then checked and baled up again!

And, there were lots of interesting facts, such as how much vegetable matter is in the fleece....but didn't we all know that! Just seeing it in bulk really brings it home!

With a few bags of fleece to give away, as well, they were very generous with their knowledge and time and it was very appreciated.

McClelland Sculpture Park & Gallery

Thanks to the need for an electrician at Phillip Island, I ended up staying an extra night. So, what to do? I sheepishly admit, that I've never been to the McClelland Sculpture Park and Gallery. It was time to remedy this deficiency in my artistic educatiion.

It was so worth it!

The permanent collection, in the glorious sunshine, numbers 101 sculptures. Currently, they have the McClelland Sculpture survey & award for 2012. There are also two exhibitions in the indoor galleries: Janet Laurence with 'The Alchemical Garden of Desire' and John Gollings with 'Aftermath: landscape photographs' from Blach Saturday. Both are worth having a look at.

In particular, I was impressed and amazed by the photographs by John Gollings. With a video of him talking about how and why these photographs were taken, adding to the impact of the photographs, it made for compelling viewing. They were both powerful, as you would expect from the subject matter, and also, more surprisingly, beautiful.

Taken from the air, via helicopter, many took on an abstract look and others strangely anthropomorphic. My immediate response was to decide to take close-up pictures of the sculptures I saw, out of context, and see what would happen.

Here they are:

Well, some of them.

It was a fun day, and I will be back to see the permanent sculptures....there WAS alot to see!

Oh, and by the way, the McClelland Spinners and Weavers meet there...green with envy!

Finally......

Maybe Moss stitch is the stitch for the multi-coloured yarn from First Editions.....

Have been trying for ages! Now to sort out the shape of the scarf.....

Experimental Spinning Christmas tree

For over 10 years now, the first Saturday of the Month has been Experimental Spinning. I haven't tired of playing with spinning and enjoying the company of fellow experimenters. Over that time there has developed a number of traditions. Christmas is a prime example.

We've fairly recently started celebrating our Christmas meeting with a fibre sandwich, and to keep up the interest, we've decided on a theme for each year, this year it's the Christmas tree.  Think tree, decorations and tinsel!

 First was a layer of green, followed by brown, just a little, for the tree trunk. Then we loaded on the tinsel, silver and silk. In the middle, it's kept in check and is a surprise when you spin it. Then layers of red and green fibre, all added up to an amazing fibre sandwich. And very Christmas tree like.

I still have to contemplate how I'm going to spin it. Split it up, card it together or just go with the flow.....or maybe a bit of each?

'ACE" - 2012 Diploma of Visual Arts graduate exhibition

I've been 'slightly' distracted over the recent weeks with my graduate exhibition, finishing off work, displaying it properly for assessment, taking it down and mounting it for the exhibition and generally revelling in the relative 'freedom'! I have actually finished my Diploma of Visual Arts from the CAE (now part of Box Hill Tafe) and I've majored in sculpture.

Majoring in sculpture was always the plan and I'm glad my plans have not come unstuck! It's been a really valuable year and I'm pleased with the body of work that I've created, along with the ongoing ideas that it has generated. Mila Faranov inspired us, pushed us, encouraged us and all the good things and some of the bad, a good teacher should do.

I ended up completing four pieces of work and all are exhibited along with the 30 odd fellow graduating students, most of whom are painters with only a few of us either sculptors or printmakers. The exhibition is 'ACE' and it's still on at the SmartArtz gallery in South Melbourne. It's on till Saturday. I've been taking friends in and am really pleased with the response. (AND I've sold some of the works!)

The theme for my work is 'Abode', inspired by birds and thier amazing nest building skills and structures. I'm trying to explore ideas around making, building our homes, and recycling materials that are no longer useful.

The four works are:

Empty Nests: spun paper, copper wire, made into 'abodes' using a basketry technique, sitting on cross-sections of trees from our garden, kindly cut up by Tony at A.A.Timbers in Eltham.

High Rise: crocheted video tape (thanks Catherine), oh, and I DON'T need any more!and cellophane leftovers from Reverse Art Truck.

Palace: handknit nylon wire and a bit of brass wire, mounted on a perspex mirror with lights.

Prefab: nylon wire woven on a weave-it loom, these 'abodes' are then manipulated and woven with bits of thread. I am in awe of the next building skills of birds, after attempting these!

And now it's on to the future! I've applied to Craft Victoria for an exhibition based around these works and am waiting to hear the result of my application, expected in the next couple of weeks. There are so few places available, I'm keeping my fingers crossed. This will determine, one way of the other, what I do next year.