interior landscapes

I haven't posted for way too long. Since my last post I have moved house and studio and been caught up in all the domesticity that a new house requires. I have also been applying for exhibitions and getting images together for my Pablo Fanque exhibition catalogue. It seems like the administration to support the making is endless at the moment!

I have made some pink things though... these brooches are called 'Interior Landscapes'. I have started making neckpieces in this style also.

As you can see I have been having a truly rope-tastic time!

bench activity

Here is a bench shot showing some of the lovely big hollow balls I made for a great big neckpiece I completed about two months ago, it's a work in progress shot and also shows some French knitting I was doing at the time. The French knitted pieces haven't been photographed yet, which is a bit slack. Whilst I was making them I was watching the film Gangs of New York which is a bit gory, in true Scorcese fashion. Thus, the French knitted neckpieces are a bit intestinal... seems I am a bit infatuated with the intestine at the moment!

You might have seen an earlier post where I was having fun taking pictures through the first couple of balls I made and deciding that I needed to wait till the cooler weather to finish making the neckpiece due to studio hotness. Anyway the balls are about 8cm at their largest diameter and I made them using thread dipped in PVA glue and then wrapping the thread around balloons and pegging them on my washing line to dry. It was super messy and lots of fun! To complete the neckpiece, the balls have been strung on some rope I made from the thread, my first (and not last!) use of the thread rope as a stringing device. I am about to embark on a series of ropy neckpieces to match the brooches I have been making... I haven't photographed these yet either!

The picture also gives a bit of an idea as to how much thread is left, something I am getting asked quite a lot at the moment. I REALLY regret not measuring its girth before I started! I reckon I might be about half way now... it's going to start getting precious fairly soon! I love how when you work with found objects, or non-precious things they become ever so precious once the supply is limited. I remember Mark Vaarwerk saying this about the plastic bags he uses so beautifully in his work - that when he started using this material it seemed an unending resource, but now the bags are becoming more scarce. I love that he is immortalising them in his work. 

gut instinct

This brooch is called gut instinct. It is being shown in the exhibition Refashioning the Fashion which opened last night at Object gallery The exhibition has been curated by the amazing Debbie Pryor and it is at once edgy, confronting and beyond fabulous. The other exhibitors are: Tiffany Parbs, Julia de Ville, Leah Heiss, Alice Lang, Gabby O'Connor & Chelsea Gough

 I feel extremely privileged to have been included in this illustrious line up. 

in her garden of red delights...

You might remember me posting about the ritual of the Sunday Bridal Swarovski count a while back. In one of life's most delightful ironies, one of my coral brooches was recently purchased by a bride to wear on her wedding day - I am beyond delighted and absolutely proud as punch that someone would want to wear one of my pieces on such a special day! 

The piece was a little like this recently made one which is called In her garden of red delights

The bride wore it around her neck on a red velvet ribbon...

making too much!

At the moment I am definitely making faster than I can blog! 

Here are some of the things I have made in the past few months...

A bangle to match the freshly named tumbleweed brooches. I am still plugging away at the matching neckpiece!

A ring

winter brooches

I was inspired by the pink intestinal brooch below to create these brooches for the upcoming Studio 20/17 exhibition titled winter brooches... It promsies to be a beautiful exhibition and I am very excited to have been asked to exhibit. It was also a great excuse to play with some other colours!

I think this is my favourite so far...

a brooch for Mary Douglas

Any one who has known me, my strange socio/cultural fascinations and my work for a while would know that it was really only a matter of time before I made a hairy piece celebrating matter out of place...  

This was very much a collaborative work with the studio assistant.

meet my studio assistant

This is Mansize. She is my beloved, helpful studio assistant.

Usually she performs more sedentary, yet extremely important tasks such as keeping my seat warm, observation, listening and providing silent, non-committal feedback and praise.

However when I was making rope recently she couldn't help herself and joined in... 

it's not easy being green...

A while ago I posted about some green stuff I had been making...

 

Well, it has just finished its showcase appearances at A&E Metal Merchants and the Powerhouse Museum shop and is now having a stop over at my house before being installed at the fantastic gaffa gallery for the group exhibition make_do which opens next Thursday night (8 May). I am very excited about make_do and looking forward to seeing what everyone has made... there are 23 fantastic artists in the exhibition whose practices span painting, ceramics, textiles, jewellery, multimedia, drawing, photography, graphic design and 

installation... 

Some of my favourite people in the whole world are in this exhibition. We have forged lasting connections and friendships after having been work colleagues at one time or another at Object and this show is a great way to get together. This is the second year we have had a show together - last year the exhibition was called make do. So exciting! 

Update: The exhibition is UNREAL I am so proud to be a part of it! Click here to see some pictures from the opening taken by photographer extraordinaire Joe Wijangco.

                                                                           

Love to Liana

I have to say an enormous thank you to Liana Kabel for the beautiful post on her blog a few weeks ago. I found it quite overwhelming to be the subject of such a lovely post as Liana has been a bit of a hero of mine for a while now. It was Liana and Anna Davern, who quite apart from being two of the loveliest ladies I know and absolutely fantastic jewellers, inspired me to start this blog. 

I love this brooch by Anna Davern, it is called Sad... 

pink rope

Finally I have made some pink thread rope... it's fantastic in an Olivia Newton John 'let's get physical' kind of a way and also kind of kinky looking as I guess only pink rope can be (especially when it has silver jump rings threaded through it - thanks to Debbie for pointing out the kink factor!!!). I have a few plans for it - one is to make some decorative rope knot pieces. It has also become a great way to solve the threading problem for some of the other pieces I have made/am half way through. 

Big thanks to the superbly lovely Mark Vaarwerk for the terrific string making lesson at the fantastic workshop he ran for the Adelaide JMGA Conference in January. 

busy, busy...

I haven't posted for a little while, but I haven't been idle, in fact it has been full pink steam ahead the past few weeks - I have completed eight new pieces and am working on three bigger pieces as well. Unfortunately the weather has been crappy the past few weeks and I haven't been able to take any decent photos of the new work, sunlight is my special photography friend! So here is a picture of my (messy) bench taken a couple of weeks ago with some work in progress. There is a bangle to the left, two half made brooches, the start of the dodgy dots neckpiece (see post below) and the ball of thread - as you can see - there's still lots to go. I should have measured its girth before I started, but by eye, I think I might be about 30% of the way through it...

these dots are driving me dotty!!!

I promised to post everything good and bad - I have been lucky for the past little while and things have been going my way. Until this
It is a neckpiece with little pink sticky dots stuck to it like beads. It's kind of cute. But the damn dots don't stay stuck - not even long enough for me to take a picture...

Swarovski embellishment - three from five!

There is a bit of a story behind this brooch and a confession... Story first, confession later.

I have an ongoing and impossible to explain fascination with the Swarovski crystal embellisment count as mentioned by the weddings reporter in the Sunday Telegraph. I turn to the weddings page of the newspaper as first port of call and count how many of the gowns are 'embellished with Swarovski crystals' and that's all I read on the page. Each week the count is different, but there has only been one week in recent memory that has been Swarovski embellishment-free. Why the fascination? Perhaps it is a fascination with the pervasiveness of the brand, but other than that, impossible to explain! Even funnier, is that my partner has gotten in on the act and will now check and call out the Swarovski count on his way through the paper to the sports pages. I like a bit of sparkle now and then (who doesn't), but don't get into crystals and I am no Muriel, I have never really been into the wedding thing, I love going to them of course and make a fair few wedding rings, but the whole traditional sparkly dress confection thing has never been a dream. I recently became engaged however - which is a wonderful and beautiful thing and I look forward to our simple wedding, whenever it may be and to sewing a Swarovski crystal into the hem of my frock to honor our funny Sunday ritual!

So this brooch is an homage to the Swarovski crystal and the wedding writer from the Sunday Tele. Now for the confession. I bought the Swarovski crystal beads for the brooch and broke my rules... I just couldn't resist!!! The pink thread and wax series of brooches, with all its candy coloured feminine allusions was making a siren call for some Swarovski intervention. The result is quite interesting, the hard angularity of the crystal beads make a strange companion for the softness of the wax and thread - the crystals are a sharp imposition rather than a natural inclusion in the terrain of the piece.

the dot net

Exciting news - My website is all live!
Hugest thanks to the enormously clever and patient Martin Ford for designing and building such a fabulous site and making this dream a reality!
Have a look... www.melindayoung.net

like a bird on the wire...

I have a bit of a bird issue - blame falls squarely on the shoulders of watching Hitchcock's The Birds at an open air cinema for this mild phobia. Anyway, I am trying to get over it - so here is a sweet little brooch with a pink birdie on a branch made from pink thread soaked in wax. I really find that I have an uneasy relationship with the little bird above, it is cute, but it is kind of creepy at the same time. It, and its little friends below, are cast from a cake decorating mould that caught my eye in the window of a cake supplies shop whilst wandering through the wilds of Camperdown, what possessed me to walk in and make a random cake icing mould purchase on the way to buy a blow up bed at the camping supplies store will remain a mystery... so I have had the mould for a while and eventually last year I got around to making some waxes from it, with the idea to cast silver birds and turn them into brooches. I cast the silver birds ages ago and they are still tweeting plaintively from my bench to be made into jewellery (in the to-do basket), and I kept some pink waxes as well... the waxes are far more appealing to me than the silver versions - perhaps it is the colour, but more likely the weight I suspect - as they are feather light. So I have made a few brooches with the pink thread and the little pink birds. Below is a bird in a nest with its partner bringing more nesting material.

pink thready balls

I know I said earlier that I wasn't going to take any more pictures on my red tray. But I couldn't resist this one! The colour has done something totally strange and is well beyond my limited photoshop abilities to correct, although I had fun trying all the different filters.

This is a pink thread and wax ball and part of a neckpiece I am working on as well as a series of little brooches. They really bring the thread to the fore with the NYC Pink wax used more as a binder and detail than the main body of the piece. Images of the neckpiece when it is complete... could be a few weeks, the balls take ages to make, and I keep dripping sizzling hot wax on my fingers. The sizzle really helps the wax to seep right through the ball of thread though. Ah, suffering for one's art (ahem!) My finger are becoming increasingly teflon coated as this project continues.

Below are two of the brooches I have made from the balls. I have been wearing one of these and it's great fun!

A Parure for Louise Bourgeois has some adventures

Finally I am posting the other pieces made as part of the Rubies and Pearls for Louise Bourgeois Parure. I should have posted them at the end of last year when I made them, but they have been away on holidays with the JMGA NSW Profile exhibition. Firstly to Adelaide at the National Wine Centre for the JMGA Conference and then in Sydney at Horus and Deloris Gallery. I was extremely fortunate not only to have been selected to be a part of such a beautiful exhibition, but also to have my work chosen by Horus and Deloris to use for the exhibition publicity and invitation. Then to really top it all off I won the Established Artist award attached to the exhibition. I am still astounded... but so extremely moved that my work was selected out of such an outstanding exhibition for this inaugural award. I was speechless at the opening when the award was given and it still hasn't really sunk in.

I would like to take the opportunity here to thank the huge team of dedicated volunteers from JMGA NSW who organised and made this exhibition possible including Jane Bowring, Jane Reynolds, Brenda Factor, JMGA NSW Chair Karin Findeis, Valerie Odewahn, Alice & Amelia Whish, Erin Keys, Sue Lorraine and Catherine Truman. In a volunatry organisation it is all about the sums of everyone's parts - so thank you to everyone who was involved in Profile 2008. Thanks too to the judges Margaret West and Tracey Clement and Margaret and Caz at Horus and Deloris for their support. Congratulations to Bridget Kennedy who won the emerging award and to Bridie Lander and Karin Jacobsen who were Highly Commended in the Established and Emerging categories respectively.

The Rubies and Pearls for Louise Bourgeois Parure comprised the neckpiece posted earlier:


A brooch:


Earrings: And a ring which I will add images of soon... they didn't come out very well!

innards

It has taken me a while and several conversations with people to get up the courage to post the images of my insides that originally inspired the pink wax work - thanks to Debbie, Bridie, Lisa, A mi and others for their encouragement! Of course, now I have decided to do it, I can't find them anywhere (I know I put them somewhere really safe), so I am substituting for now with a similar image I found on the internet.
I have always been fascinated by the notion of the abject - the research I did for my Honors and Masters studies was entirely focused on investigating the abject (specifically in relation to cleanliness and femininity). I started with the manner in which a single hair on a bar of soap can be such a potent marker of abjection and this was my springboard into an investigation of the surrounding ideas and theory. One of my favourite books is called 'The Anatomy of Disgust' (an excellent cultural history of the idea of 'disgusting' things over the ages by William Miller). So when after laparoscopic surgery last year I went for a follow up visit to the surgeon and was given snapshots of my innards - imagine my surprise when my stomach turned and turned and turned. Being confronted with one's own interior landscape is a weird and wonderful thing. It is at once disgusting, yet beautiful and fascinating and there is a strange sense of both ownership and disposession, connection and dislocation. Seeing pictures of my insides subconsciously inspired the pink wax work without a doubt, although it has taken me a while to realise it. In fact I have come to realise that this whole project is something of a result of the experience as I couldn't leave home for a while and was looking around for things to make - and there was the pink thread!
The image below is of a brooch which directly refers to the images. In the spirit of the work I did for my academic research, made from soap (there are some images of these works in the slideshow attached to an ealier post), this brooch incorporates scent in the form of candle wax.

There is something disturbingly hairy (abject?) about the way the thread works on this piece and the rubies peek out from its crevices.