Saturday, August 27, 2011

It’s Been an Exciting Year
Annual Review

Marie-Therese Wisniowski

Preamble
For your convenience I have listed below the annual reviews that span the life of this blogspot.
It's Been An Exciting Year (2010/2011)
Another Cheer - Another Year (2011/2012)
Where Did The Year Go? (2012/2013)
The Year of the Horse (2013/2014)
Cold and Windy - But on the Dawn of Renewal (2014/2015)
A Time To Reflect - A Time To Select (2015/2016)
A Time to Remember (2016/2017)
To Be or Not to Be (2017/2018)
The Night Too Quickly Passes (2018/2019)
The Year of Living Dangerously (2019/2020)
Attempt The Impossible Since Failure Will Still Be Your Success (2020/2021)
A Year of Climate Extremes (2021/2022)
I Love A Sunburnt Country (2022/2023)


Its Been An Exciting Year
I started this blog spot one year ago (26th of August 2010) since I wanted to give a written expression to my art practice and moreover, I wanted to articulate what interested me in art. On the side bar you will find the aim of this blog spot namely:
“This blog will be dedicated to arousing world wide interest in: (a) using the medium of cloth to create a work of art; (b) promoting prints on paper; (c) exploring concepts that are the basis of my current artworks; (d) offering opinions on art issues.”

Celebration Fireworks 2 by Marie-Therese Wisniowski (My birthday ArtCloth - created on August 26th).
Technique: Multisperse Dye Sublimation technique using multiple batik resist layers - digitized.
Media: Disperse dyes on satin.

Of course there are millions of people blogging and Google captures a significant amount of content (part of its business model) by making it free. I have enjoyed blogging. However, sometimes things do go awry. For example, using our back links option, bots dumped links to product lines, commercial sites etc. Hence I had to remove the back links option to my posts, since it would have implied that I condone these links. Sometimes I have also erred and so on one occasion I was more than happy to acknowledge my error and to attribute a work.

DuChamp's Mona Lisa (L.H.O.O.Q.).

Why should I dare to think that others would even care to read any of my posts? This question never really occurred to me since I was doing it for other reasons – it was part of my art therapy. Blogging makes me consciously aware of my brush strokes and it assisted me in understanding why I am doing art in a particular manner (i.e. choice of medium, technique, and content). It is for me what a diary might be for a writer, albeit others get a glimpse of my inner-most art musings. I also needed to create an “internet” space for an exhibition – ArtCloth: Engaging New Visions – which I was the curator. Hence, on further rationalization and introspection criteria (a)-(d) were hatched in August of 2010. I am so grateful that my blog spot has resonated with some and so it has attracted regular viewers. Thanks!

Marie-Therese opening the ArtCloth: Engaging New Visions Exhibition at the Redcliffe City Art Gallery.
Photograph courtesy of Karen Tyler, Redcliffe City Art Gallery.
Photographed by Al Sim.

The blog spot has enabled me to be proactive in the support of great ArtCloth and art movements. To that end a number of posts have centred on Aboriginal ArtCloth and Australian Street Art - Post Graffiti ArtCloth. Both of these areas will be revisited in future posts.

Angkuna Kulyuru, Raiki Wara. Batik On Silk (Ernabella).

I was also able to take a breather on my ArtCloth work and take a sojourn with respect to my prints on paper. In some of my digital prints on paper I have digitally photographed my ArtCloth works and played them into the background of my digital prints on paper work.

Made To Order III by Marie-Therese Wisniowski. One in a series of four silk Screened prints on paper.

With the stats that Blogger provides (as well as Google Analytics) you can quickly become besotted with who is reading what, for how long, where in the world they are reading it, at what time and how often do they return etc. I keep most of the stats at arms length, since my site was not intended to be (nor ever will it be) a marketing tool. Sure it helps on that score – I would be in a state of denial not to acknowledge it. But that was never its intended purpose.

This is an informing post rather than a "how to do". The article, “Melding Landscapes”, has been published in the June 2011, No. 5 Issue of Down Under Textiles. It discusses my background, my textile art practice and philosophical approaches, plus the history of and technical information about my signature MultiSperse Dye Sublimation (MSDS) technique employing disperse dyes. The follow-on pages include images and artist statements for each of the ArtCloth works included.

Sometimes you get shocked at the stats outcomes. If any of you have studied your own blog stats you will not be surprised to read that what I thought was a great post (Margo Lewers) may never make it in the top ten and what I thought nobody would view (Time Dimension in Art) is the sixth most viewed post on my blog site.

Margo Lewers.

My most viewed post, by a country mile, is my student’s output from the In Pursuit Of ArtCloth: Improvisational Screen-Printing Workshop. The second most viewed is another workshop, Disperse Dye And Transfer Printing. I am deeply grateful that all my students allowed their work to be displayed on my blog spot. Moreover, I take pride in the fact that the international and Australian viewers sought my student’s output with keen relish. The blogosphere is a most democratic space!

Maz Beeston (a) – Multi color interfacing silk-screen print and mono print.

My blog spot contains a total of 51 posts thus far, 21 of which belong to the exhibition – ArtCloth: Engaging New Visions. Of these, Norma Starszakowna’s Razing/Raising Walls, Warsaw is the most viewed. You can look at her work again and again and just see in it something new that contributes to its concept. It is stunning piece of artwork. The rest of the ArtCloth contributions in that exhibition were also stunning. I have received a host of emails informing me that such-and-such was their favorite ArtCloth work in the exhibition. It does not surprise me that all of the artists in the exhibition had their followers. The exhibition itself had impact in Australia and what pleased me most, were the primary and secondary High School student's comments and essays of the work that was exhibited.

Norma Starszakowna, Razing/Raising Walls, Warsaw.

Of my own work, the most popular was – Flames Unfurling…Life Returning. Some how this post resonated with a lot of viewers. Perhaps it was due to coincidence; for example, it was “on air” when there was one world wide natural disaster after another and so perhaps viewers were searching for images to vent their fears, anxieties, and emotions.

Marie-Therese Wisniowski, Flames Unfurling (detailed view).

Obviously my blog spot is fairly eclectic (within the boundaries that I set) and so this is reflected in the top ten posts: two are workshops; two are contributions from my ArtCloth exhibition; two are art essays; two are from my MultiSperse Dye Sublimation artworks; two involve conferences/exhibitions. You cannot get a more even distribution across all of the art topics that were covered!

Confluence, 
2011 International Surface Design Association (SDA) Conference.

All in all, it has been a very exciting year! Thanks for your support. A little bit of art therapy has gone a long way!

2 comments:

Dorothy said...

I was interested to read of your years journey and feel encouraged as a new blogger. I have only put one post on my blog thinking who cares, but maybe will have to do more. Thankyou into your insight and trust your journey will continue yo give you joy and satisfaction.

Linda’s Textiles said...

Congratulations on your blog's first birthday Marie-Therese! Great idea to do a retrospective - very interesting to read.
Best wishes for the next year & beyond.