the pointy end of the stick

Things are tootling along here, towards the pointy end of the stick.

While all of the individuals are crocheting, knitting, felting and wrapping items for the post, I have been fine tuning the installation plans, timing and looking after some of the promotion for the event.

As with all great projects, there is a lot more to the successful delivery of it than the actual making of the work! I have had plenty of occasions to be grateful for the creativity and interest of so many people - there have been proposals for some yarn bombing or guerilla knitting activity, more parcels arriving in the post with beautiful and quirky contributions to the garden, and also an exciting side project.

We have been approached by Sonia, a Masters student who is studying Visual Culture Research, and more specifically the uses and re-interpretations of public space. She's into guerilla gardening, yarn bombing and all sorts of other great "aesthetic interventions".

Our FloriART project was of interest to her because of our aims to connect with our local community, to re-energise the spaces outside of the Centre (which are public and recreational but also sometimes uninspiring) and our mission to engage and entertain participants and audiences. Through our installations, yarn bombing and gallery garden we hope offer whimsy and to instill a sense of ownership. As well as producing a short film, which will be a fantastic documentation of the otherwise ephemeral project, Sonia is writing about her experiences with us on her blog

On my part, there has been lots of prep work - getting stuff out ( a sample above), looking, thinking of ways to group, attach and display. I have been entertaining the ideas of branches, large spheres, and covered plinths.

With such a variety of disparate objects, the challenge is to get the whole installation looking impressive, with a big impact and WOW factor in the gallery, whilst avoiding the cluttered, confused look and allowing visitors to see the flowers, leaves and creatures up as close as possible.

My thinking at this stage is to present three parts of the garden - floor based, wall based and plinth based. Some of the objects received already show a predeliction to one or other of those. My golden rule will be to group items by colour, as I feel we can achieve the most impact this way. This is my natural way of working anyway, and one of my favourite things is varying shades of the same colour. I will always remember a very disparaging remark about my work from a lecturer when I was at art school, saying "you are really just a colourist".

I think I'm ok with that.

Below are some more of the contributions...

 these were made from recycled felt ( a scarf!) and needle felted centres.

this guy above (by Inta), and this wonderful tree below, from the Macarthur Knitters, in NSW.

these ones from Helen and Cerri.

 

So much to do, and so little time to write about it!

Next post I will outline some of the other exciting things happening here alongside The Great Gallery Garden!