Natural Dyes and Mordant Printing at Sturt

Sturt have just released their  Summer School 2015 workshop information and I will be teaching Natural Dyes and Mordant Printing on Fabric.  Places are filling fast so if you are interested now is the time to enrol!.  I always have such a good time at the Sturt Summer School - everybody is super friendly, the tutors are the top of their field, the Sturt staff are fantastic and the weather is usually lovely. I seem to attract a great group of students and we all end up having a fun yet productive time. I hope to see some of my students return for another great week of printing and experimenting.

While I was in the UK I went to loads of museums and galleries and one of the most interesting I went to was the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.  I am including a few images of some very old block printed  textiles which have been done with mordants and natural dyes.

Indian textile from Indonesia (1400). Block printed cotton with resist and mordant-dyed red.

Indian cotton textile traded to Egypt, block printed, painted mordant and resist.

Block Printing Workshop

As part of an upcoming residency at the Playing Field Studios in Canberra later this year, I will be giving a short community workshop on block printing on paper on Saturday, 6th September from 10-12.30pm.  The venue is great, and the price is super cheap ($2 !) but places are limited so book your place now.  The Playing Field Studio is located at 2 Kingsley Street, (Cnr Barry Drive), diagonally across the road from the Drill Hall and next to the Canberra Dance Theatre and the Food Co-op.

Selection of my block-printed works using hand-cut blocks 

Asialink Residency Talk

I will be giving a short talk about my 2013 Asialink residency at Rimbun Dahan tomorrow night.  Please see the details below.

almost Wrapped-Up!

Today is the final day of our POD pop-up shop in the Lonsdale Street Traders. Its a chilly Sunday here in Canberra, but the atmosphere in the LST is buzzing! The hip crowd are here having brunch, lunch and browsing the eclectic shops, so if you're not doing much get out of the house and get your circulation going where it's all happening.