Dawn Whitehand: Visual Artist
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Call for Entries – The Earthen Centre
Fossil
I am curating a ceramic exhibition to be held at Backspace Gallery in April 2014. The exhibition is open to artists living and/or working in the Central Highlands region of Victoria.
Below are the details and a link to download an entry form:
Calling for entries to the curated exhibition The Earthen Centre: Clay Perspectives of Central Victoria to be held at Backspace Gallery, Ballarat from 1-20th April 2014.
Curated by Dr Dawn Whitehand the exhibition will explore the diverse range of ceramic works produced by artists living within central Victoria that draw their inspiration from the fact that they live and breathe in a regional environment.
All forms of ceramics are encouraged including sculptural, functional and conceptual works.
Both established and emerging ceramic artists are encouraged to apply.
Entries due: 14th February 2014.
Please download a form here EXPRESSION OF INTEREST The Earthen Centre
or email me for an entry form ceramic_art@iprimus.com.au
**Central Highlands region includes the Pyrenees, Hepburn, Moorabool and Golden Plains shires, the Rural City of Ararat and the City of Ballarat.
Christmassy Themes in my Etsy Shop
So I have just realised Christmas is 14 days away!! Yikes…
That means if you would like to order from my Etsy shop you need to do so as soon as possible to ensure pre Christmas delivery.
As well as my usual handmade and unique jewellery and tableware products, I have also added some Christmassy items to the jewellery and cards sections of the shop. The handmade earrings are in Christmas colours and the cards are hand painted on gift card stock, which includes an envelope and a protective cover.
So give a unique and individual gift this Christmas and support handmade 🙂 MERRY CHRISTMAS!
Christmas colours seed bead jewellery
Christmas colours upcycled button earrings
Hand Painted Christmas Card
Want to Give Handmade this Christmas?
This post may be a little late, but I have been ssooo busy creating stock for the ‘makers’ hubs I am participating in this year for Christmas!
If you are in Ballarat or surrounds, or if you feel like a country drive, you can visit me – and other makers – at two locations this week.
I am participating in the Pop Up Collective at Backspace Gallery in Alfred Deakin Place this coming weekend, Friday- Sunday, and I will also be selling tomorrow night (Thursday) 5-9 at the Makers Hub at Mitchell Harris Wines, where Sagria, gourmet pizzas and exclusive shopping will all be featured under the one roof!!
Now if you aren’t in the Ballarat area you can always visit my Etsy shop for unique handmade Christmas gifts, which if you order within the next week or so should be delivered before Christmas day ( hello Australia Post).
Can’t decide what you would like to give as a gift?? My Etsy store also accepts Etsy gift cards, which can be redeemed for anything in store!!
If jewellery or ceramics are not your style I also have handmade sculptural paper works at the Unicorn Lane Gallery on display till the 20th December, and available for sale. These delicate works would make beautiful and unique Christmas pressies for the art lover in your family or circle of friends.
So, I hope I have cleared up some Christmas shopping dilemmas…. and below are a selection of images available in the “Makers” hubs I am participating in…. ( the faceted bowls are exclusive and are not available on Etsy)
Latest Kiln Offerings…
These bowls are the latest offerings, courtesy of the kiln god, and are destined for the Pop Up Collective event at Backspace Gallery, Ballarat running from 29th November till the 8th December.
There will be feast of handmade local goodies to buy as Christmas pressies which is great for sustainability and eco friendliness.
I will also have my ceramic jewellery and Japanese inspired tableware available for purchase.
So if you are in or near Ballarat over the next week or so, “pop” in for some unique gifts that you will not find at Myer or Ikea or Target or well … you get the drift!! 🙂
People Are Actually Buying My Book!!
So, a little while ago I posted that my newly published book about Pit Firing Ceramics was available for pre-order from Amazon, and the Book Depository, and Barnes and Noble, and Fishpond (in Australia).
BUT, I wasn’t really expecting anyone to buy it so soon!!
Tonight I visited Amazon and it would appear some purchases have been made! I have no statistics, but anyone Amazon savy will be familiar with the information below the book listing links to other books purchased, which says
Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought
AND my book has this! Which means people have bought it! Doesnt it?? woohoo!!
Studio Days
I have spent the last few days in the studio making coffee cups based on the design of the bowls I have been recently making, and so far I am happy with the outcomes. These works are being made specifically for the Pop Up Collective at Backspace Gallery in Ballarat from the 29th December till the 9th December – just in time for Christmas pressies!
But don’t despair if you are not in Ballarat… I do take custom orders, through this blog or through my Etsy store – but get your order in quick for Christmas!
My ceramic jewellery and Asian inspired tableware will also be available at the gallery, and surplus stock will then also be available in my ETSY shop.
Stay tuned for the glazed results 🙂
New Exhibition: Sculptural Handmade Paper
Some of you may know that recently I have been making handmade paper and experimenting with adding lots of different inclusions to the basic paper pulp. I have been really happy with the results I’ve been achieving, and have had good responses from people to whom I have shown the completed papers. So when, a few months ago, an invitation for Expressions of Interest was put out for a local public art gallery where I live I submitted a proposal based on my handmade papers. The exhibition space is made up of several wall mounted perspex boxes, which I thought perfect to display the papers.
The gallery is in a laneway in Ballarat, and is part of council’s public art program. The laneway walls are fitted with the boxes which are locked and lit for 24/7 display – a great way to enliven otherwise dank laneways.
I was lucky enough to be successful in my proposal, and the exhibition was installed and opened on 7th November. This being a reasonably new medium for me I was really happy with the way the exhibition looked, and even sold a work on opening night! Hopefully that is an omen for the remainder of the exhibition.
SOLD – Textured Landscape: Eucalyptus Pulp and Jute
Even though this is a new medium it does tie in with the underlying environmental and organic themes of most of my work – so I am excited to be exploring a new way to communicate these ideas to a potentially wider audience.
The photos for this post were difficult to take given the narrowness of the laneway and the reflective surface of the perspex. So when the works are uninstalled – in six weeks – time, I will rephotograph the works when the perspex is removed, and put them in a new blog post.
So without further ado, here are some images of the installation of the show and the finished exhibition 🙂
Fresh from the Kiln…
Aahhhh… there’s nothing like holding some warm pots freshly unloaded from the kiln, especially on a chilly morning!
All these bowls are wheelthrown, glazed and fired to stoneware, making them oven safe, microwave safe and dishwasher safe.
I experimented with these forms a while ago and have since made more specifically for the Ballarat Pop Up Collective Christmas Sale to be held in Backspace Gallery from 29th November till the 8th December… so if you find yourself in the Ballarat area “pop” in for some unique handmade Christmas gifts.
I will also have my ceramic jewellery and Japanese inspired tableware available for purchase 🙂
Weekly Photo Challenge: Horizon
This weeks WordPress Photo Challenge got me thinking about my travel photos from Italy, as I have not posted for quite some time about these travels, I wondered if I had finished the Italy posts? I couldn’t really remember. So back I went through my posts, and found that I had not yet written a post about Florence. So this is a mini post about Florence combined with the photo challenge.
Since the theme is ‘horizon’ I will stay on topic, and only post images containing horizons… the rest of Florence will have to be featured in a future post.
The images are a combination of the skylines from the amazing Il Duomo and Santa Maria del Fiore in the centre of Florence, Ponte Vecchio, views from the Piazzale Michelangelo and the Piazza della Signoria.
Other images from my Italy travels which included Venice, Pisa, Verona, Rome, Naples and Pompeii can be viewed here, or by clicking the Travel category to the right of the page.
Enjoy 🙂
You can check out other Weekly Photo Challenge entries here: http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2013/10/25/weekly-photo-challenge-horizon/
Memories through Papermaking
Regular followers may know that I experimented with some papermaking some while back, and I was so pleased with the results that I have since applied for some exhibiting opportunities based on ‘sculptural’ paper concepts – and was lucky enough to land a solo exhibition at Unicorn Gallery in Ballarat, the closest town centre to where I live (yes, I am a country bumpkin!).
100% eucalyptus paper
My earlier experiments, which included using eucalyptus bark, leaves and twigs, resulted in some quite textural papers which were mini sculptures within themselves, embodying the landscape from which they came – and my proposal was based upon this concept: the ‘blurb’ :
Dawn Whitehand’s From the Landscape series features organic and found materials gleaned from her immediate natural environment which are combined with handmade paper to form sculptural narratives that reflect the colour and textures she is inspired by in her everyday art making process. These snapshots capture fleeting moments and memories of trace elements often overlooked in a busy goal orientated world. It is hoped such images anchor the viewer within their immediate environment, inviting them to contemplate the reality of their everyday lives.
So, my exhibition opens on the 8th November…yikes, I better start making stuff!
But, some history of the art space:
The Unicorn Gallery is a public art space, sponsored by the City of Ballarat, consisting of several perspex boxes of varying sizes mounted on a brick wall in Unicorn Lane. The project is part of an overall City Of Ballarat initiative to increase the contemporary profile of public art in Ballarat.
Ballarat has a long public art history, and more recently, facilitated by public arts officer Julie Collins, a large part of this has been the reinterpretation of Ballarat’s laneways. Ballarat was European settled as a Goldrush town, and therefore has an abundance of bluestone laneways (in need of reinvigoration). Over the past couple of years many of these laneways have been enlivened by public artworks, including Unicorn Lane.
An example of a previous exhibition at the Unicorn Gallery, which I reviewed, can be seen here, and a group exhibition I participated in can be viewed here.
Getting back to the point however, I have begun making sculptural paper for the space, and the beginnings of my process is here:
The above images show the paper in its wet stage… as it dries it will become lighter – more earthy rather than gray.
I am making more paper tomorrow with some different flowers and leaves, and I will also be boiling down some peanut shells to experiment with. I have not used peanut shells before to make paper so that should be interesting.
So, no guessing what my next blog post will be about??
Stay tuned 🙂
This work by Dawn Whitehand is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.