botanical and textile happenings

I've been drawing. Without realising it I've been absorbing the garden and the summer weather resulting in the production of botanical sketches. Which then morphed into a set of three botanical cards printed on post consumer recycled card stock.

And this morning I was able to hear and meet Clara Vuletich speak at Harvest Workroom. Clara's the designer in residence this week at Harvest (visiting Melbourne from London) where she's focusing on the idea of 'local cloth'. She showed us the ideas that she's worked through over the week in both visual and verbal forms. We were also able to hear her talk about her interest in social innovation in textile design. Really fascinating and inspiring stuff! Clara's blog 'love & thrift' can be found here. Enjoy the rest of your stay Clara and thanks Harvest for a fab session!

GOMA & the drawing room

In my travels north I visited the Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) in Brisbane to see the Matisse exhibition. The show is a large collection of his drawings and prints and while I'm impressed that such an extensive exhibition has made it all the way to Australia, I wasn't all that fussed with it. Maybe I'm not such a Matisse fan?

BUT the best thing by far about going to GOMA to see the Matisse show is the Drawing Room at the end of the exhibition. It's amazing and very beautiful. The clip above gives you an idea of what they've done at GOMA to encourage people to sit down and draw after seeing Matisse's work. Both pen and paper and digital formats were on offer for people to draw with. And there was even a model lounging on a gorgeous sofa for life drawing. Everyone was loving it! It was incredibly inspiring to see so many people in the Drawing Room sitting down and, well, drawing. Kudos to GOMA for organising this.

And if you want to interact with the technology from the Drawing Room at home just click here. You can email it to a friend afterwards if you like.

So maybe just skip through the show if you're not much a Matisse fan like me and hop on into the Drawing Room for some drawing and inspiration and a few moments of real beauty.

2012

The succulent flowers in the back garden are in bloom again. Some have even started drying out and fading to pink (from orange).

The new year is here and I'm feeling quiet. I'm resting, reading, gardening and playing lots of spelltower. I also just did a huge driving trip up north totaling 4ooo kms. That's a of lot of music listening and singing time!

So 2012, year of the dragon. What do you have install for us all. Eh?