work in progress – Stefanie Robinson

Another year ends…

A regular end of year ritual of mine is to flick through my diary and remind myself what it is I did for the year, before writing the new dates and appointments into the next diary.

Yes am still using a physical paper diary. I see the benefit of the digital diary but I am attached to the physical page turning, the hand scrolled entries and maybe even the regular panic about having lost it for a few days!

This is what the list looked like…
(The entry with the circle was a long weekend we took to NZ to see my folks in February)

What I did in 2017…
I continued my causal/part time work at the City of Whittlesea as an Arts Project Coordinator. This year we invited the schools to create art work for the Community Festival around the idea of Weaving Community. The response was fantastic…

After Community Festival we rolled into Knowing You Knowing Me, a community dance project partnered between Ausdance Victoria and The City Of Whittlesea, funded by Creative Victoria.
This is an 18-month project where we are connecting community in the growth suburbs within the City of Whittlesea, through dance workshops and community events. It’s slowly gaining momentum and is already having exciting results. This will continue into 2018 and finish with the Inaugural Annual Dance Affair coming to town…very exciting. My role is project manger/coordinator.

I continued my relationship with Polyglot Theatre this year: starting with being called in to replace an injured performer at the art centre in Tangle in January, and ending with two creative developments. In Our Hands is a collaboration between the Tjpani Desert Weavers, Form (WA), and Polyglot Theatre. I was invited into the second stage of a three-stage development, traveling to the weavers’ home in Warakuna where we spent two weeks with them, camping , weaving, drinking tea, sharing culture. This was the most incredible experience that I can’t to justice to in this quick summary. Then in November, we all went to Perth and completed the development with a showing in the Goods Shed Gallery. What we have created together is an interactive play space built around and with the weavers…. hopefully in 2018 we will be able to reveal the work!

The other development is a part of the generators project that Artistic Director Sue Giles has launched, where Polyglot supports, nurtures, helps to develop work by its core artists. Mischa Long had imagined a magical work called Light Pickers, a light and sound installation for under-5s. It’s very beautiful and once again an honour to be a part of the development…

And finally with Polyglot, I returned to Warringa Park Primary to create with the students, alongside Mischa Long and Ash Hughes, a tunnel and installation of vines and cocoons. Four weeks of crazy fun! We went back in December to install the work outside for their end of year concert and the fabulous Steph Ohara added a soundscape, also created with the students.

As well as these regular employments…
I was commissioned to created an endangered species lantern for the Werribee Open Range Zoo’s Wild Nights in Winter… this year the Orange-Bellied Parrot.

I hung nests in the Windows of Lupino Bar and Restaurant for the Craft Cubed Window Walk, and in the Civic Building at Knox City Council for their Immerse Festival.

I spent April in a shipping container in Footscray as apart of the Artbox residency, developing the Stories of Clay and Rope and inviting community to drop in and make their own nests.

And I returned to Lismore in June to mange the Lismore Lantern Parade, which this year felt all the more important after the massive flooding events in March which saw three metres of water pour into the CBD. Watch it here!

Throughout 2017 I continued my clay journey, developing glazes with Neville French at SoCa…That has been very exciting. I love the work that I have been making.

I started with magnesium glazes and developing a colour palette, shifted to shino glazes then we finished the year with celadon glazes, which I love.

Small Bowl

Landscape Vessel

I finished the year taking my ceramics to a few Christmas markets, which was a great experience and very successful. All of which is very inspiring for continuing into the new year….

And finally…

I was asked to Work with Mel Smith as a visual designer on her solo show Spas Motive, with the provocation of working with her to include her artwork into the dance work she is making. This will have a development showing in February and it’s my first task for the new year…

Oh and I turned 50!

(Phew…!!)

A sketch

I am currently working towards an installation in August at Rubicon Gallery.

I have a vision for a wall of clay nests
I hung up the few that I had in my Studio last week

I think its going to work!
Now to make the next 50 – 70 …

Lantern Season is over…for this year

Since returning from the Bird Lab Residency is Sweden I have been deep in lantern land.

First the Lismore Lantern Parade
This year we celebrated the 20th anniversary of this fabulous event.

and then

INTO THE LIGHT – Cycles of Change.
This was the 4th year for INTO THE LIGHT, which started in response to the 2009 Black Saturday fires. Each year we have reflected on the process of healing and with a group of local artists,designed an event in response to where the community is at now.

It is a very special event. I feel privileged to be part of it
This years video is still in process but here are the last 2 years.

Between Land and Sky
The Unfolding Story

And now that lantern season is over
I have time to return to my studio.

This started with a shift from studio 2.14 which has been my home for the last 2 years to Studio 2.26 across the hall. (At River Studios in West Melbourne which is run my City of Melbourne’s Creative Spaces program)

A chance to dust of the dust and re look at everything that i have gathered or done or thought about doing. I now have a wooden floor, 2 white walls and a square space rather than a rectangle.

So i sat in it today
and stared at all the projects
started, played with , begun, thought about
and waiting
waiting
waiting
for me to start, return to , finish, begin , complete, start,
remember

So many threads and ideas
how do they inter link?
Do they inter link?

Is it all one creative journey ?

Or separate threads heading in opposite directions?

Questions

always questions.

So I picked up some clay (my newest thread)
and blocked out the questions
and let my fingers play

some of my Bird Lab work….

here’s a few images of the works i have finished in the first 15 days of this residency………

1 day untill the open studio here in Harlosa….!!

something …..

I have been playing with a few new ideas here at Bird Lab.

Layers of paper and frayed fabric.

I’m not quite sure about them yet….

Whether I need to do something else…
(another layer? shellac?)

or
well
something else….

Maybe they would be better on a light box or
in a lantern so you can see the textures of the paper…

there is
something about them i like.. a lot
and something about them isn’t quite right yet…..

(the photos don’t show very well the different textures in the paper back ground… but also a lot of the texture has been lost in the gluing process…)

rope

When I was coming to Harlosa i was asked if i wanted anything… I asked for rope as this is a material i have been using in Melbourne and sometimes it’s not so easy to find…

I have been a bit over whelmed by the response …rope has been delivered to my door, big thick chunky worn rope.

Its taken me a while to approach the rope, partly because other materials have taken my attention, and partially because my head has been full of what i would do with it in Melbourne… so i have been thinking that i need to wait for the response to emerge from this place that i am in now.

Firstly I worked with the white rope
and this appeared…
in response to seeing the Pendulum Tit nest…

Today i bring it inside the thick brown rope
and start to pull it apart.

It’s interesting to see the parts it is made up of.
4 thick stands and a thinner stand also made up of 3 parts that have been twisted together.

It is thick with dirt, dust and oil. It holds a story of work.
It is rugged and strong, like an old farmer who has spent his life in the fields …..
I think i will have lunch before i start……..

Bird Lab begins

Well here i am in Harlosa Sweden…..

Today was spent on a bike riding from bird sanctuary to bird sanctuary via the military training base that acts as a reserve when there isn’t target practice happening…. (Ate breakfast yesterday to the gentle sound of guns firing!!)

Apparently the tanks have played an important environmental task…digging up the earth which brings the insects and flowers to the surface…. so now that they don’t use tanks the military go in with tractors to purposely dig up the land…..

I have become very interested in the sounds that surround me… and have been recording via my IPhone the different calls. This maybe a little to do with the lack of extreme zoom on my camera so i am unable to capture the images I want… But also I love the way birds fill the air with music….

The willow trees here are very very old… and they have been maintained by harsh pruning that create lines of tall cropped trunks through the landscape.

We saw a stork nesting on top of one… and below one of the tree’s was a pile of willow…so i have found some materials to begin the first nest/basket…..

Willow Tree Pruned

Forest

is an installation of nests and Textured Paper Drops

that i am currently building in the Little Red Train at CERES Environment Part in
East Brunswick , Melbourne.

This installation has evolved out of 4 years of gentle development that started in the Solo Residency I undertook at Victoria University.

I thought it was going to be a dance piece
a textural poem that moved through the seasons telling a story of a tree and the bird woman who weaves nests…..

but it seems it is an installation.
the tree is woven through the space and will be echoed in the paper drops,
the bird woman it seems is me,

I still hope to make movement for it and create a performance in the Forest.

When i look back through my books, my ideas about fragility, weaving, nests, seasons, growth and death all have accumulated in this work

It’s exciting to see and feel this.
The art has taken me on its journey..
and .my first solo exhibition.

I am having so much fun at the moment weaving the roof of the train in cane.
The weaving started as a mechanism to hang the paper and nests from, but it has taken over and become a thing in its self, and slowly the train transforms….

i am looking forward to beginning to hang the paper and the nests……

I would like to do this again……
in another gallery…
in another city…..
on another country……

the meditation of doing

Today my head is full of
how to

why to

what to

who to do it with

why

how

what

why

and this continues
as the energy waxes and wanes

and

confidence grows and dissipates
with every success and failure

and

i finally sit
pick up the needle and rope
and start

sewing tight stitches
tighter than usual
neat precise stitches
that turn a rope found
into a nest bound

and to each stitch is attached one of these thoughts and questions

and i find
some of the whys disappear as i remember why
and
some of the hows get answered

and others possibly pruned
although i’m yet to draw the knife across them

but mostly the angst settles
the teeth stop grinding
the mind stops whirling

and sometimes

my mind
simply goes blank
as my hands do the work
and it all becomes peaceful
and i remember why
and some of the hows get answered…………………..

reconnecting

How quickly a couple of months can go by

a crazy time filled with work, lanterns, children, paper and cello-tape

A time when personal projects/ my practice has been put on hold and the studio gathers dust and i lose track of what it was that i was doing and why i was doing it.

But….. my work is creative, and i am earning a living from it and quite possibly this too is “My Practice”

and
as October turns from empty
a space i was relishing as a time to return to ‘My Practice’

into overwhelming
as i try once again to pack all of the wonderful offers into my diary
and once again i surrender the idea of studio time….

I do take the time to be thankful for the full diary,
and to reflect on what it means to work as an artist
and the compromises that entails…….
but i wonder (with a longing) how and when i return to that other project
The one that requires me to say no to income

and how i maintain the energy and focus to “do everything”……..
and if i really mean it when i say “never again” to doing events……

So
what have i been doing??………….

A Cecil st Fundraiser….. downstairs

A Paper Planet …. in Sydney

A community lantern parade
(12 schools + community groups etc….) in Whittlesea

A sticky maze……. in Newman
(that’s in the North of Western Australia…a mining town in the out back…. ok i know this needs its own update…..actually they all do but ……)

which brings that 10 weeks to a beautiful close

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