Australasian Quilt Convention 2013: Tidbits

I still have some photos from Australia that I haven’t shared with you. Here are some tidbits; enjoy!

I absolutely loved the Australian currency, which is so colorful and intricate! Their coins are beautiful, too, and feature many native animals, including emu, platypus, kangaroo, echidna, and more.

Can’t remember where in Melbourne I took this shot, but don't you love this painted post?

An Australian mailbox. This may be an old style; I love it!

The light was wonderful on these flowers. Not sure what they are. 

This is the main entrance to the show. Every day, mobs of people gathered in this space waiting to get in to the exhibits and vendors.

 

These are the main front doors to the Royal Exhibition building. They must have been 20 feet tall or more. Absolutely stunning.

Here are the two people largely responsible for putting together the show: Gary and Judy Newman of Expertise Events. Always professional, always smiling, always helpful. An all-round class act. Many thanks to both of you!

I took about a million photos of the Royal Exhibition Building. I was simply in love with it. Here’s  the beautiful domed ceiling:

Old meets new – this shot shows the Royal Exhibition Building reflected and fragmented in the windows of the ultra-modern Melbourne Museum:
 

Two hundred for tea! This is a shot of the teacups lined up for morning tea and coffee, which was offered to students and teachers for free – along with biscuits (cookies) in the morning and afternoon. Lovely!
 

From the second floor, where the classrooms were, we had a great view of the exhibition and vendor space below:

The food was delectable. Especially the desserts!

 

Students got in early on Thursday and Friday so that they could take advantage of less crowded shopping, as they had fewer hours on the floor. Here are students purchasing goods from Cecile Whatman’s booth, Unique Stitching. Cecile carries a wide variety of products for art quilting and mixed media.

Brenda McCullough, Promotional Co-Ordinator - Home Sewing Machines at Brother International Australia, and her staff were an invaluable help in my thread sketching classroom, which was supplied with Brother Innovis 210 machines. I was so impressed with their machines and their customer service. Thanks, Brenda!

Australian fabric and pattern designer Leesa Chandler had a booth for her store, Chandlers Cottage, at the Convention. She has designed several fabric collections for  RJR Fabrics (Under the Australian Sun, Under the Australian Sun 2, and Under the Australian Sun - Classic Collection). All feature native Australian flowers:

One of my students, Debbie Cox, generously brought me a yard as a souvenir, and told me the names of all of the flowers.

Suzanne Gummow (wearing a white shirt, at the back of the photo) leads a group through the SAlt exhibition. SAlt stands for South Australian living textiles.

 

SAlt is a group of five fiber artists – Francie Mewet, Suzanne Gummow, Julie Haddrick, Sarah Bell Smith, and Judi Bushby – the exhibition showed their work in groupings. It was very fun to see how each artist interpreted the theme. There was some very impressive work in this exhibition. 

The exhibition hall was a fabulous place to exhibit quilts, with wonderful natural lighting, and a wonderful airy, spacious feeling.

 A view of the vendor area from the second floor (where my classroom was):

The floor was busy! Saturday was probably the most crowded day.

Judy Coates Perez was demonstrating her techniques in a booth, when she wasn’t teaching. If you want to see more photos of Melbourne and AQC, check out her blog!

Reece Scannell makes and sells unique fabrics, including shot cottons, with very high thread count (about 66 threads per square inch), that have a wonderful sheen and hand. I absolutely loved them, and purchased a printed panel featuring Australian native plants, and a skirt with panels of the same fabric.

This is Brenda Gael Smith (below), a fiber artist who was at AQC to teach and promote the Twelve by Twelve International Art Quilt Challenge. If you don’t know about this project by the “Twelves,” you are missing something really fun!

Two of the Twelves, Brenda and Kirsten Duncan (Kirsten is shown below, standing next to Brenda), give a tour of the exhibition:

I’ll have one more post, coming soon, that will include photos of some of my students with their work.

Bigeye Tuna

The latest fish for my new piece, “We All Swim Together,” is a Bigeye Tuna. It is a beautiful and very large fish. On my piece, it is about 21" long; in real life, it can be more than 8 feet long!

Bigeye Tuna
Latin Name: Thunnus obesus
Habitat: Found worldwide in open waters of temperate and tropical oceans.
Depth: usually above 1650 feet
98" and 400 pounds
Notes: The Bigeye can live up to 12 years; the average is 7-8 years. They are one of the species that is very threatened by overfishing, and are also susceptible to purse seine fishing by man-made fish aggregation devices such as open ocean buoys. About half of the Bigeye caught are captured in this way. Many juvenile fish are caught in these devices before they reach breeding age, adding to the problem. Greenpeace International added the Bigeye to its seafood red list in 2010. The U.S. and some island nations have had treaties regulating and setting fishing quotas on bigeye.

In Hawaii, the Bigeye is one of two species (the other is Yellowfin Tuna) known as ‘ahi. They are prized in Asia for sashimi. 

Bigeye tuna sometimes have high levels of mercury, making them unsafe to eat. Pregnant women are warned not to consume too much tuna for this reason. 

John Dory

I got another fish painted tonight; I’m on a roll! This is the latest fish for my new piece, “We All Swim Together.” It is a John Dory, and I painted it tonight because it was the same colors as the Streaked Spinefoot I painted earlier today. The paints were all mixed up, and I figured I better use them before they dried out and were wasted.

John Dory
Latin Name: Zeus faber
Habitat: Found worldwide in warm seas, mostly in coastal areas.
Depth: 15-1200 feet
16" and 4-7 pounds
Notes: In the Mediterranean, it is called a “Saint Peter’s Fish” because of a tale of St. Peter pulling a golden coin out of its mouth. (And the circle on the fish is reminiscent of a coin.) Wikipedia notes: “In New Zealand, Māori know it as kuparu, and on the East Coast of the North Island, they gave some to Captain James Cook on his first voyage to New Zealand in 1769.” 

Also on Wikipedia: “Various explanations are given of the origin of the name. It may be an arbitrary or jocular variation of dory (itself from the French dorée, gilded), or perhaps an allusion to John Dory, the hero of an old ballad. Others suggest that ‘John’ derives from the French jaune, yellow. The novel An Antarctic Mystery by Jules Verne gives another account, which has some popularity but is probably fanciful: “The legendary etymology of this piscatorial designation is Janitore, the 'door-keeper,' in allusion to St. Peter, who brought a fish said to be of that species, to Jesus at his command.” (St. Peter is said to be keeper of the gates of Heaven, hence "door-keeper".) Considering that the other known names for the John Dory are the "St. Pierre", or "Peter's Fish", as referenced above, this seems the most likely etymological origin, and may also explain why dories were often referred to as Peter Boats (Saint Peter being the patron saint of fishermen). A related legend says that the dark spot on the fish's flank is St. Peter's thumbprint.”

 

Here is “We All Swim Together” so far: 

Streaked Spinefoot

I am continuing to work on my new piece, “We All Swim Together,” as I can fit in the time to sketch and paint. The latest little swimmer is a Streaked Spinefoot. It is lovely hues of copper, gold and taupe. Some Streaked Spinefoot have more yellow on them than the type I painted.

Streaked Spinefoot
Latin Name: Siganus javus
Habitat: Pacific Ocean, from the Phillippines, Malasia, New Guinea, New Caledonia and Australia in the south; and in the Persian Gulf to India and south China in the east.
Depth: 50-66 feet
12-22" and 1-5 pounds
Notes: This species has venomous glands on the fins of their spines. 
 

“Rituals” Exhibition at Open European Quilt Championship

My friend Lya took these photographs of the Dinner at Eight Artists’ “Rituals” exhibition displayed at the Open European Quilt Championship this weekend, May 3-5, in Veldhoven, the Netherlands. (Lya was my wonderful hostess, and arranged my teaching tour in the Netherlands last spring.)

The Open European Quilt Championship featured exhibitions from traditional and art quilters from Belgium, the Netherlands, United Kingdom, Israel, Australia, Italy, France, Switzerland and the United States.  

This is my piece in the exhibition, “I See the Moon.” You can read more about it on my website here. 

All photos courtesy of Lya Geven. Thank you!

Lya also sent me this link to a short video of some of the pomp and pagentry of the coronation of King Willem Alexander and his queen, Maxima. Willem’s mother, Queen Beatrix, abdicated the throne last week so that her son could take over. The Netherlands has a constitutional monarchy, which means that the country’s constitution defines the powers and limitations of the monarchs. Beautiful garments, flowers, buildings and music; enjoy!

It’s back to the fish

Yellow-Eye Rockfish (sketch by SBK)

It’s back to the fish for me! (For those of you just popping in, I’ve been working on a new piece that will be covered with fish.) On my long flights to and from Australia this month, I had lots of time to sketch more fish. Here they are. I’m hoping to do some painting in the next few days, and will post when I do. I also have several more posts on my Australia trip coming up.

Danube Sturgeon (sketch by SBK)

Giant Guitarfish (sketch by SBK)

Greasy Grouper (sketch by SBK)

Piper Gurnard (sketch by SBK)

Sydney Skate (sketch by SBK)

Thresher Shark (sketch by SBK)

I will leave you with a few good fish quotes:

“Many men go fishing all of their lives
without knowing that it is not fish they are after.” – Henry David Thoreau

“Ten percent of the big fish still remain.
There are still some blue whales.
There are still some krill in Antarctica.
There are a few oysters in Chesapeake Bay.
Half the coral reefs are still in pretty good shape,
a jeweled belt around the middle of the planet.
There's still time, but not a lot, to turn things around.”
– Sylvia Earle  

Melbourne trees

I was very interested in the Australian trees, and wished I had a botanist to take me around the city! I had never seen many of the tree species, and could not identify them without doing some research. According to the City of Mebourne website, there are “more than 25,000 native trees and 25,000 exotic (non-native trees) in streets and parks around the municipality.” 

I took many photos of the trees in Carleton Gardens that line the sidewalk leading to the Royal Exhibition Building (see photo above). They had leaves like our southern Magnolia, and the bark and shapes of the lower trunks and buttress roots reminded me of elephants! They are actually Moreton Bay Fig (Ficus macrophylla) trees, a large evergreen banyan tree native to the eastern Australian coast. It can reach 200 feet tall.

The gum trees were especially intriguing. “Gum” is a common name for eucalyptus trees. The name comes from the fact that the trees ooze lots of sap if they are cut. They are not related to the Sweet Gum tree found in the U.S. or the Black Gum. Nearly all gum trees are native to Australia. they are the primary food of koalas. 

Most Americans know about gum trees from the 1932 song by Marion Sinclair (composed for a competition held by the Victorian Girl Guides):

Kookaburra sits on the old gum tree,
Merry merry king of the bush is he.
Laugh, Kookaburra, laugh, Kookaburra,
Gay your life must be!

Kookaburra sits on the old gum tree,
Eating all the gum drops he can see.
Stop Kookaburra, stop Kookaburra
Save some there for me!

Kookaburra sits on the old gum tree,
Counting all the monkeys he can see.
Laugh Kookaburra, laugh Kookaburra
That's not a monkey, that's me!

The are in the family Myrtaceae (Myrtle) and in three genera within this family: Eucalyptus, Angophora and Corymbia. Oil from the leaves is used in many medications, including Vicks salve and coughdrops. 

The Blue Gum can grow to 230 feet tall! I think this is the variety I saw when riding back to Melbourne from the Healsville Sanctuary. They were so huge that they looked wrong or artificial to my eye.

 

I'm not sure what species this is, but it is some sort of gum. The bark was very smooth and creamy white, and the leaves a beautiful silver green. It was just outside my hotel room. This photo shows the buds, with one flower emerging:

 

The photo below shows the gum tree in bloom. If you look toward the lower right, you can see one bloom that is pushing off its little cap from the bud!

  

Once the bloom is spent, the base of the bloom remains as the little shreds of the flower fall out:

It hardens and turns into a pod:

Here is another interesting tree I found in St. Kilda. Its flowers were similar to the ones mentioned in a previous post (whose spent blooms looked like corn cobs), but it was on a taller tree (about 10' tall). This is the bud:

 

This is the bloom:

After the bloom is spent, it dries out and turns a darker tan color. And then it dries out more and turns into a seed pod:

The seed pod has little slits in it to release the seeds: