It has been a wee while since I tapped away at the keyboard and put some thoughts on 'paper' or more correctly - my website! A very busy few months preparing for my first small solo exhibition in New Zealand unless you count the Bay Of Plenty Open Studios earlier this year. I've participated in both small and large group exhibitions in New Zealand but no solo exhibition and in fact it has been six years since my last solo exhibition at Timeless Textiles Gallery in Newcastle, Australia(which incidently is being remedied by a solo exhibition in April 2025).
....A busy few months with a few highlights - the 2024 National Quilt Symposium being an unexpected highlight with taking out three awards for my three entries in Symposium.
This compiled image is of being handed the Merit Award in the Textile Art category for my Art Quilt Coastal Contours. Blue Sky Day and Forest Floor were my other two entries and both received awards in their categories. I feel very honoured to have had my work chosen for these awards as there were many other textile pieces and quilts that were beautiful and deserving. And grateful to the sponsors who contributed prizes - Aotearoa Quilters, Capital Quilters, and Aimees Homestead Quilts.
Back to the business of making an exhibition happen! Hours and hours of work go into planning, creating, and readying all the exhibition pieces. However, what I really love about a solo exhibition is that the viewer gets to see a body of work by one artist and perhaps gain a greater appreciation of that particular artist's view of the world or what is important to them. The following statement is basically what my exhibition is about:
“Nature Observed” is an exhibition of mixed media textile art that translates personal observations of nature, in both close-up and landscape form. Always looking to find the extraordinary in the ordinary, Lois likes the definition of ‘observed’ as noticing something and registering it as significant. Too often we don’t take the time to really see and observe the details around us; the unfurling leaf, the colour of the sky behind a Kowhai flower, the canopy of a tree, the sweeping vista of the beach, we may walk past and not register their significance.
In a weeks time I will have delivered my artworks into the hands of the gallery director at the Carlton Gallery and I cannot do any more! Well, for this exhibition anyway...I have many more ideas which will no doubt be shelved and used at a later date or for another purpose or for Nature Observed 2!
At the same time I am also working on a response piece for an exhibition at the Timeless Textiles Gallery, which needs to be posted to Australia next week. The exhibition is titled "Vastness" and textile artists associated with Timeless Textiles were invited to create a textile response to one of the Directors, Anne Kempton, watercolours relating to vastness. It is a really interesting way to work as a collaborative project. The Vastness exhibition is on from 8th January - 16th February 2025 - see the Timeless Textiles Gallery for more details.
There are a few other projects on the burner but I will save them for another blog and I will sign off by saying I hope you are able to visit my exhibition at the Carlton Gallery. The exhibition from the 11th November to the 1st December 2024, opening times are 9am - 4pm Monday to Friday and 10am - 2pm Saturday and Sunday. I will be popping in and out, I hope to see you!
Comentários