Lunch Time Talks

Lunch time talks.

Enjoy home made soup and a roll

at the Design Centre Launceston,

 listening to just a few of

Tasmania’s talented textile artisans.

Cost $10 Inc Soup, roll and Guest speaker.

Limited seats. Bookings please call - 0418317774

Monday June 4^th

12pm

Di McPherson.

Di is a trained visual artist and teacher who has taught in this area. She now works with natural dyes, mainly on silk fabrics often using shibori techniques. In recent years her activities have included giving workshops and presentations overseas at a number of international natural dye symposia and was an official guest artist at the 2009 Bothwell Spin-in. Di is Vice President of the Handweavers Spinners and Dyers Guild of Tasmania.

Wednesday June 6^th

12pm

Mae Finlayson

Contemporary stitch imaginer, Mae Finlayson, is a contemporary textile artist calling Australia home once more. Swapping her native Melbourne for the bright lights of London 15 years ago, she received her Bachelor of Arts with Honours in Fine Art Textiles from Goldsmiths College – University of London, and completed her studies with a Masters in Constructed Textiles at The Royal College of Art.

“While still at college and for a time after graduating, I worked for the genius hat makers Bernstock/Spiers who designed the topless straw hat that Kylie Minogue wore on her first ever album cover. After college I had my own clothing label for a while and also made costumes and one off fashion pieces for exhibitions and ad campaigns,” Mae said.

“One of the best jobs I had was helping to develop a vintage fabric and print archive that we exhibited and sold at international textile trade fairs such as Premiere Vision in Paris and Direction in New York.

“Although I LOVE fashion, an equally huge passion for me is creating art works that combine print and stitch and weave and knit - and during 2008 and 2009, before returning home to Melbourne, I had two solo exhibitions and began teaching creative stitched textiles.

“I'm lucky enough to have craft skills that people want to learn and even luckier that I love teaching them. I am currently teaching textiles at the School of Visual and Performing Arts at the Academy of Arts in Inveresk, Launceston.”

Mae’s art work has been featured in International Textiles magazine and showcased on renowned fabric forecasting site WGSN, Mae uses drawing and print, colour and texture to create visually striking ‘craft with concept’.

Thursday 7^th June

12pm

Garry Clark

http://www.garyclarkedesigns.com/gary.html

Originally a designer I am now known as much for dexterity with the needle. Being a male in a female dominated world has been a great advantage. The stereotype being broken enables one to look freshly at the subject without rules. The line of design and colour are different from a male perspective, evident from the work of such male designers as William Morris and McIntosh. I believe that embroidery is a legitimate form of art and is much underrated, and that the medium of needle and thread has endless possibilities for the artist. Embroidery is seasoning to the eyes, adding colour, tone, and texture to plain base fabrics. An ancient art with a colourful history.  It re-invents its self, changes from nation to nation, from century to century. Embroidery can serve to embellish the practical or stand on its own merit as piece of art for the viewer’s enjoyment.

Friday 8^th June

12pm

Aukje Boonstra

http://aukjeboonstra.webs.com/

Aukje works with some really different textiles. She is a Textile Artist & Tutor based on the NW Coast of Tasmania. Most of the time Aukje works with 2nd hand materials. That is a real challenge to make something of beauty out of other peoples discard. Aukje is often given things, with the words: you can do something with that.

We know you will enjoy having lunch with her and hearing about her work.

Wednesday 20^th June

12pm

Michael Kay

Textile practice, an anachronism of necessity.

Institutional learning, community of practice, ‘hand stitch’ as a path to enlightenment and what to do about the dyeing fairy that lives in my dye pots.

Michael studied classical music at the Victorian College of the Arts before being invited to the Principal Percussion role with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra. Disappearing into the Tasmania wilderness for nearly 20 years Michael built a stone house, milked cows, made cheese, grew food and got too far behind the rest of society to bother catching up. An interst in weaving turned into a passion and led to study at TAFE with Robyn Glade-Wright and a Batchelor of Contemporary Arts, Honours from the University of Tasmania. Michael has been head of the TAFE/Polytechnic textile studio since 2003 and ran the University textile studio in Launceston for 2 years in 2005/2006. Michael teaches across all areas of textiles but his own work specialises in production weaving, tapestry and dyeing.

29^th June

12pm

Wendy Nash

Wendy works as an art therapist at the Launceston General Hospital and runs her own

practice engaging with people in creative health pursuits.  She also conducts workshops in her own studio on the Tamar River.  Wendy also works with aboriginal communities on Flinders Island and cape Barren Island. 

"My work with others involves - Art, Art as Therapy, and Art Therapy, offering rich grounds for discovery, creativity, healing and growth.  And the language of Textiles continues be a valuable tool for inviting a sense of coming back to self and shifting towards wholeness."   

In recent years Wendy has developed her Art Therapy practice, travelling to the US to study mandalas and the role colours and symbols play in our everyday lives, drawing from what is known plusour own unconscious and universal knowings.   The term Mandala is from Sanskrit 3,000 years old, meaning Wholeness.  The language and knowledge of Mandalas offers us much enrichment as shown in the studies of 

Carl Jung, Buddhist Traditions and many others.  The Mandala has much to offer design, health, creativepursuits, delight and mapping life balance to mention a few.

"I consider myself a Straitswoman, having grown up on King Island surrounded by ocean which hooked into my senses at a very early age in all its moods, and suggestions of ancient memories and timelessness.  It was here at a young age I first began to explore colours, symbols, ideas and mark making.   I discovered storm cast seaweeds could yield quite an array of colours that read differently to land dyes. The ocean calls many of us in mysterious ways, and this is certainly the case for me, with many stories still to be told through various arts mediums and expressions."

Wendy had a solo Oceanic exhibition at Handmark Gallery in Hobart.

During her presentation Wendy will offer a simple Mandala exercise.