Author: RJ

Inspiring words from theorist, artist, poet and author Ruskin, who once said “…give me some mud off a city crossing,…ochre out of a gravel pit..a little whitening and some coal dust and I will paint you a luminous picture if you give me time to gradate my mud and subdue my dust…” This is a journal about grass roots in inspiration, the act of making things and the heritage behind experience. It is about contibutions from the worlds of art, textiles, architecture, design, fashion, literature that surround us.

The author of this blog is an artist in the fields of textiles. Her background and work encompass drawing, painting, print-making, fashion, interiors and illustration.Blog on art, design, architecture, textiles, fashion.

Costly Grace

Costly Grace

Reading Dietrich Bonheoffer’s The Cost of Discipleship and I am struck with the magnitude of horror that was experienced by so many thinkers and artists during WWII; and the subsequent outpouring within their work. Bonheoffer’s writings and poetry offer a great insight.

 

Tina Kalivas multiculture’s aesthete

Tina Kalivas multiculture’s aesthete

Tina Kalivas an ethnic rock chick of Australian fashion. Her inspirations are often drawn from ethnic textiles, different cultures and music – at once very raw and playful,…

 

Dion Lee at the Sydney Opera House

Dion Lee at the Sydney Opera House

This young Australian designer, yet again, created quite a stir at May’s RAFW in his SS2010/11 showing; this time on the atrium steps of the iconic Sydney Opera House.

 

Milford Sound

Milford Sound

A recent discussion with both a former coastguard and an army parachutist (who jumps regularly for recreation) had me thinking about the sky, and flying through it. If I could chose a spot to fly over in the near future it would have to be Milford Sound in New Zealand’s South Island.

 

Kantha: Embroidered Quilts of Bengal

Kantha: Embroidered Quilts of Bengal

There is the quality of life springing from these works, which are created using myriad tiny coloured stitches that play upon a plain ground cloth; which is typically white.

 

Connecting to internals; Whitney Biennial 2010

Connecting to internals; Whitney Biennial 2010

The drawing crawls across the wall, as the visualisation builds, the linework is slightly schizophrenic; here focusing and ruminating for a while; there lacing loosely over unknown matter. And all the while the paper accommodates as required.

 

Bargello textiles: reductionism

Bargello textiles: reductionism

Simplicity of form in this fragment, …references a paring down of motifs to their geometric basics. That idea has proliferated in textile patterning not just since the 1920’s (Bauhaus and Art Deco), but certainly from the ‘Biedermeier’ era…

 

Bargello textiles: red brocade

Bargello textiles: red brocade

Florentine textile collections, the National Museum of the Bargello, Florence.

 

Spider Orchid?: NY Botanical Gardens

Spider Orchid?: NY Botanical Gardens

it reminds me of the critically-endangered ‘Spider Orchid’, a species of orchid native to Australian

 

Slipper Orchid: NY Botanical Gardens

Slipper Orchid: NY Botanical Gardens

The foliage around these orchids is rich, damp and green. Moss forests, waxy, waving leaves and miniature, curling fern-tendrils allude to a vast miniature world ready to be explored.