progress on a wednesday morning!

Until early September, we will be hosting casual drop in mornings, where we can get together and make pieces for The Great Gallery Garden. They are on Wednesdays here at the Arts Centre from 10 - 12noon and I will even make a cup of tea or plunger of coffee for you if you need a bit of a re-charge!

Here's some of our progress...

We also have some small creatures beginning to inhabit the space (little caterpillars, bees etc!) and are steadily progressing towards the quanitity which will be required to make an impact in the gallery space come September!

One of our knitters has shared some great links to recent crafty projects both locally and internationally. Something which ran at CraftACT Knit 1 Blog 1 and Outdoor knits at The New Dowse  a fun outdoor/evening installation in Lower Hutt, New Zealand.

Next post I will show you some of the inspiration we found at the Alice Springs Beanie Festival, in June.

crafty inspiration and our first workshop making garden elements

The inspiration for our Great Gallery Garden in September, has come from a variety of sources. 

The Knitted Garden in Griffith, first piqued our interest as a wonderful, community project by a group called The Natty Knitters. They started with events such as World Wide Knit in Public Day and The ABC's Wrap with Love Knit - In, and as you see by the photos on their blog, they worked for months and months to eventually produce enough items to create their delightful Knitted Garden installed in the Griffith Regional Art Gallery, NSW.

Almost more impressive than the variety of pieces, were the number of participants - a staggering 138! Granted these included some of the administrative and installation asssistants, but even so - a large number, and indicative of the level of support and involvement required to pull off such an ambitious project. 

The Knitted Garden is now touring the nation...keep an eye out for it at your local regional gallery! These types of projects are so engaging, inclusive and exciting, they are springing up all over the place...like mushrooms!  Ephemera in The Mist in North Queensland, and Yarning Our Country at Gloucester, NSW are just two similar projects.

More generally, inspiration has been found at one of our local supply stores, the Woolshed@Manuka and on the many yarn-bombing websites, and creative spaces like Etsy and pinterest

this one from LunasCrafts (on Etsy)

and this one from GraceG2

eye popping installation ideas from pinterest, below

While the actual technicalities, logistics and design of the Great Gallery Garden installation continue to develop organically (ha!), we have gotten down to the serious business of the actual making. Our first workshop in making yarn flowers was held yesterday, hosted by Tuggeranong Arts Centre and lead by local knitter extraordinaire, Alexandra Davey from the Woolshed @ Manuka.

 

Here are some of the results -

and some of the delightful things arriving by post and in progress, from people making all over the country!

flowers at top, by Rosalin, webs below by Malinda.

An open knitting/crochet group will now meet at the Arts Centre on wednesday mornings 10am - 12 noon, to continue working towards the Great Gallery Garden. What a nice way to spend a few hours!

FloriART...or "how to grow art at Tuggeranong"

Welcome to our brand new blog, where you can stay updated on the progress of our major gallery project for this year - FloriART.

First a background to the project, and then a bit more description about each of the aspects of it!

FloriART grew from ideas tossed around a staff meeting - an event to celebrate Spring, host our own Floriade style extravaganza, and something which allowed our audience to easily participate and share in our enthusiasm! Our director also requested a grass covered chair...more on the progress of that later!

FloriART will be a spring celebration across the entire Arts Centre featuring exhibitions, outdoor installations of ephemeral sculptures, a collaborative project in the gallery and a series of spring-themed workshops. Our aims are to connect with our local audience and engage with them through opportunties to learn, make and  view art. We are interested in presenting unexpected artforms in both the gallery and its surrounds, and will be organising some really exciting installations that surprise and delight!

here are some of the plans -

• a garden of sculpted flowers, made from recycled PET bottles installed on the Arts Centres lake front lawns.
• ephemeral sculptures and installations by local artists.
• workshops in knitting and crocheting flowers and leaves, making flowers from PET bottles, unusual fresh flower arrangments and quirky gardens
• a collaborative installation in the gallery - The Great Gallery Garden
• spring themed painting, collage and photography
• A spring "craft-ernoon" - an opportunity to BYO craft project, socialise and meet guest crafter Alexandra Davey from The Woolshed at Manuka over afternoon tea.

The exhibitions run from 13 September - 5 October, but our workshops start from 13 June.