Another Workshop

Tomorrow I am off to conduct a half-day workshop in Masterton. For 27 years I taught regular workshops around my local area, and also in just about every where in New Zealand. I felt very privileged to be able to do this, and thoroughly enjoyed the exchange of ideas and meeting such lovely people.

About five years ago I decided to devote more time to my own art work which, as you can imagine had become very truncated with teaching and other involvements. I decided to make a clean break and politely declined all requests for teaching.

However, having now lived several decades, life has taught me that things are not as black and white as we thought or think they should be. Last year I agreed to take a workshop with local senior school students while my solo exhibition was on in Upper Hutt. This went well and it was great to be involved with a younger generation and their fresh ideas. What did surprise me however was how much preparation it took for this short workshop! In the past when preparation was on-going this time seemed to get absorbed into the overall scheme of things.

I am repeating this workshop tomorrow and once again I feel I have been organising and gathering together stuff all week! I am of course looking forward to tomorrow and sharing my skills with an enthusiastic bunch.

Think I have everything sorted here, but there is also a list of last minute things....

Dye painted on to a silk screen which at this stage looks a bit fuzzy. I will demonstrate screening this on to a soda ash soaked fabric tomorrow. Will show the result next blog.

Autumn Footprints

I have now completed my Autumn Footprints piece. Apart from getting two small brass eyelets at the top of each piece that is. Although I can 'do' eyelets, some do go wonky so I am going to take these pieces to a local canvas goods maker for a quality job.

I am rather pleased with this diptych. If you recall they use left-over pieces of cloth from previous projects. This presented restrictions which I may not have considered if I had more cloth available. I like the narrowness. I decided to go with the fact that one piece was shorter, and I like this too.

This project reminded me that tailors used to call their left-over scraps 'cabbage'. If they were very clever they could make another garment from these pieces and therefore claim more profit. This was not my intention but any irregular pieces of discarded cloth will now get more consideration than in the past.

2010 ©Diana Parkes, AUTUMN FOOTPRINTS, dye and pigment on silk, size (overall) 107cm x 27cm /42" x 10".


These pieces are lined with a red silk.