Dreamlines #5: Allagai Waves – Part One

The Golden Textures Contemporary Art Quilt Exhibition opened on Saturday, 23 February at the Central Goldfields Art Gallery in Maryborough, Victoria and continues until 7 April 2013.  This juried exhibition features works by 16 Australian textile artists and includes Dreamlines #5: Allagai Waves.  Subscribers to  Serendipity Studio Newsletter No 11* were given a special preview and now I am pleased to share it with all of you.  This is part 1 of a two-part post about the evolution of this piece. (Also see Part Two of the Evolution of Allagai Waves.)
This latest work in my Dreamlines series is inspired by the view from my studio over Allagai Bay (“place of snakes” in the local language). For this piece, I experimented with a horizontal format to reflect the waves and the ever changing colours and patterns created on the water by the wind, currents and passing clouds.
I am wary of entering exhibitions or challenges that do not otherwise fit within the body of work that I am endeavouring to create.  Golden Textures is a juried exhibition but it does not have an overarching theme.  Thus I was free to submit any of my concept designs in my expression of interest in May 2012.

I already had a stack of blues, turquoises and seam foam greens prepared for an ocean inspired work:

Then, after I found out that my concept design had been accepted, I dyed some more to get a broader range of values:

To their credit, the organisers of this exhibition provided 8 months, a generous period of time, for artists to create and deliver their works.  With my teaching and guest artist commitments in 2012, I deferred starting this project until November.  I also decided to use Harvest** time-keeping software to more accurately record the time spent on this project.

As I have mentioned before, I rarely sketch out a design in advance, preferring to let the work develop on the design wall.  Here are some work in progress shots.  You will see that one of my early strips, the grey/blue and deep blue/green, did not stay in the design for long as I decided to limit myself to clearer hues.

One of the challenges of this piece, was working in the horizontal format at this scale (150cm+ wide).  After piecing, the strips were too heavy to “stick” to the Blockbutler design wall by themselves.  Attaching with pins added further weight and the top right corner of the design wall keeps dropping down.  Reverting, temporarily, to a vertical format helped but you can see that the design wall kept misbehaving.
This work may be ocean-inspired, but 3D waves were not part of the vision.  Some sections had to be unpicked, re-pieced and generally coaxed into submission so that the work would sit flat against the wall.

According to my records, it took me approximately 42 hours to complete the piecing of this work. Come back tomorrow for the quilting installment – Part Two of the Evolution of Allagai Waves.

* I invite you to sign up to the Serendipity Studio Newsletter.  All current and new subscribers go into a draw to win a special set of Twelve by Twelve Colourplay postcards.

**Harvest is powerful online time recording software that can be used on your computer desk top or mobile device.  The free version allows up to two “projects”, each with unlimited subtasks and provision for annotations for individual time entries.  What’s more, there are excellent report functions so you can easily pinpoint how long you have spent on particular tasks.