“Bush Banksia” CollectionMy New Hand Printed Tea Towel DesignFabric LengthsMarie-Therese Wisniowski

Preamble
On this blog spot there are posts that center on my “Wearable Art” (e.g. scarves, digital or analogue created fabric lengths etc.) For your convenience I have listed these posts below.
A Selection of My Scarves
Leaves Transformed: A New Collection of My Digitally Designed Fabrics
My New Silk Rayon Velvet Scarves@Purple Noon Art And Sculpture Gallery
My Fabric Lengths@QSDS
My Fabric Collection:"Oh, Oh Marilyn and Mona!"@Spoonflower
2013 Australian Craft Awards – Finalist
My Scarves@2014 Scarf Festival: "Urban Artscape" Pashminas
My New Scarves and Fabric Lengths
New Range of Silk Neckties - Karma and Akash
AIVA: My New Hand Dyed and Hand Printed Fabric Design
New Colorways For My 'Cultural Graffiti' Fabrics
Byzantine Glow: A New Collection of My Digitally Designed Fabrics
Wall Flower: A New Collection of My Digitally Designed Fabrics
Ink Fern - A New Collection of My Digitally Designed Fabrics
Celebratory Fireworks
My New Silk ArtCloth Scarves
New ‘Unique State’ Silk ArtCloth Scarves
UBIRR - My New Hand Dyed & Printed Fabric Design
Renaissance Man - My New Hand Dyed & Printed Fabric Design
Banksia - My New Hand Dyed and Hand Printed Fabric Design
Ginkgo Love - My New Hand Dyed and Hand Printed Fabric Design
Garden Delights I & II - My New Hand Dyed and Hand Printed Fabric Design
Wallflower III - My New Hand Dyed and Hand Printed Fabric Design
Rainforest Beauty - Collection My New Hand Dyed and Hand Printed Fabric Design
Spring & Autumn Flurry Collection
 - My New Hand Dyed and Hand Printed Fabric Design
La Volute Collection - My New Hand Dyed and Hand Printed Fabric Design
Urban Butterfly - My New Hand Printed Fabric Design
Acanthus Dream - My New Hand Printed Fabric Design
“Cascading Acanthus” - My New Hand Dyed and Hand Printed Fabric Design
My New Hand Dyed and Hand Printed 'Rainforest Beauty' Pashmina Wraps Collection
My ArtCloth Tea Towels: A New Collection of Digitally Designed Products
Through the Land it Roared . . . ArtCloth Shawl
My New Hand Dyed and Hand Printed ‘Urban Codes - Series 1’ Collection
Urban Moonlight - My Post Graffiti Doily
My New Hand Printed Fabric Design - "Morocco" ArtCloth
‘Vine Glow’
“Bush Banksia’s” Collection"

If you like any of my artworks in the above links, please email me at - Marie-Therese - for pricing and for other enquiries.

Introduction
The genus Banksia
There are 173 Banksia species, and all but one occurs naturally only in Australia. Banksias were named after Sir Joseph Banks (1743-1820) who in 1770 was the first European to collect specimens of these plants.

Where They Occur
South-Western Australia contains the greatest diversity of banksias, with 60 species recorded. They are also an important part of the flora of Australia's Eastern coast. Few banksias are found in the arid regions of Australia or in the rainforests of the Eastern coast.

There are no species that are common to Eastern and Western Australia except Tropical Banksia, Banksia dentata, which occurs across northern Australia, in Papua New Guinea, Irian Jaya and the Aru Islands.

Banksia Flowers and Fruits
The flower heads are made up of hundreds (sometimes thousands) of tiny individual flowers grouped together in pairs. The color of the flower heads usually ranges from yellow to red. Many species flower during autumn and winter. The fruit of a banksia (called follicles) is hard and woody and are often grouped together to resemble cones (which they are not, since "true" cones are produced only by conifers). The fruits protect the seeds from foraging animals and from fire. In many species the fruits will not open until they have been burnt or completely dried out [1].

Heavy producers of nectar, the banksia is a vital part of the food chain in the Australian bush. They are an important food source for all sorts of nectarivorous animals, including birds, bats, rats, possums, stingless bees and a host of invertebrates. Furthermore, they are of economic importance to Australia's nursery and cut flower industries. However these plants are threatened by a number of processes including land clearing, frequent burning and disease, and a number of species are now rare and endangered [2].

“Bush Banksia’s” - Concept and Processes
My new, contemporary tea towel design collection, “Bush Banksia’s”, is based on one of Australia’s truly unique flowering native plant species, the Banksia. Inspired by the Australian bush, Australian artists such as Margaret Preston and writers/illustrators such as May Gibbs, brought their own fresh, truly unique aesthetic of the Banksia genus to the world. Here, banksia images have been created to capture a modern, timeless, and unique design aesthetic.

The “Bush Banksia’s” Collection comes in in two color ways - one featuring red accents, the second featuring green accents.

Using time-honored hand printing processes, natural white, pure linen tea towels were screen printed with muted background Banksia images. Metallic black banksia images were screen printed in the central section with smaller banksia’s screen printed in the accent color on the left and right. Branches of cascading ‘pods’ were overprinted with a black glaze on the left and right. The final layer of floating branches were overprinted in the accent color in the central section of the tea towel design. The accent colors give a strong visual contrast to the monochromatic base layers.

The “Bush Banksia’s” Tea Towel Collection can be designed using variations of the above color ways to create a truly unique and individual statement.

These uniquely crafted tea towels are perfect for lint free drying of dishes and add an individual and colorful statement to your kitchen decor. The tea towels measure 50 cm wide x 70 cm high and are screen printed onto natural white, eco-friendly, pure linen fabric. The hems are folded and topstitched, and a white hang tab is included on the back of the tea towel. The tea towels soften and become more absorbent with use.

If you would like to purchase or order any of my “Bush Banksia’s” Tea Towels please email me at - Marie-Therese - for pricing and any other information. They would make a lovely gift!

“Bush Banksia” Collection

Title and Description: “Bush Banksia Tea Towel Collection" in red, and green color ways (partial view).
Technique and Material: Screen printed employing glazes, transparent, opaque, and metallic pigments on pure linen.
Size: 50 cm wide x 70 cm high.

Title and Description: “Bush Banksia’s” Tea Towel Collection in red color way (full view).
Technique and Material: Screen printed employing glazes, transparent, opaque, and metallic pigments on pure linen.
Size: 50 cm wide x 70 cm high.

Title and Description: “Bush Banksia’s” Tea Towel Collection in green color way (full view).
Technique and Material: Screen printed employing glazes, transparent, opaque, and metallic pigments on pure linen..
Size: 50 cm wide x 70 cm high.

Title and Description: “Bush Banksia’s” Tea Towel Collection in red color way (detail view).

Title and Description: “Bush Banksia’s” Tea Towel Collection in green color way (detail view).

References:
[1] Based on an Australian National Botanic Gardens leaflet prepared by Rod Harvey in 1995 - see https://www.anbg.gov.au/banksia/index.html.
[2] Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banksia.

Pure Evil - Street Art [1]Artist ProfileMarie-Therese Wisniowski

Pure Evil - Street Art [1]
To understand a bit about Pure Evil (real name: Charles Uzzell-Edwards), it is illuminating to know he is a descendant of Sir Thomas More, the English statesman who wrote the controversial work Utopia (1516) and who was later beheaded by King Henry VIII.

Sir Thomas More (7 February 1478 – 6 July 1535).

With this background (Sir Thomas was later canonized) it is perhaps only natural that Pure Evil should explore the darker side of the wreckage of utopian dreams and the myth of the Apocalypse, a belief in the life-changing event that brings history with all of its conflicts to an end.

Apocalypse is a literary genre in which a supernatural being reveals cosmic mysteries or the future to a human intermediary.

In 1990 Pure Evil left the ruins of Thatcher's Britian for a new life in California, where he became a designer for influential street wear clothing label Anarchic Adjustment, producing clothes and screen printing T-shirt graphics. He also became involved in the electronic music scene in San Francisco, eventually ending up a recording artist for ambient record label FAX. After ten years in California, influenced heavily by West Coast graffiti artists,Twist and Reminisce, he returned to London, picked up a spray can and started painting weird fanged Pure Evi bunny rabbits everywhere. Pure Evil fell in with the people behind Banksy's Santa's Ghetto and started producing dark new prints and artwork in a tiny shed in the Black Mountains of Wales.

Pure Evil, Tagger Scrum. (Screen print, 2010).

Pure Evil, Why Am I Me And Not You. (Letterpress, 2011).

Pure Evil, Bunny Fingers. (Spray paint and gold leaf on antique children's book page, 2013/2014).

Pure Evil, Is What I See? (Letterpress - screenprint produced for Wings of Desire, secret Cinema Event, 2011).

Pure Evil, Man's Ruin (Two-color screenprint, 2011).

Pure Evil, Darth Typewriter (Three color screenprint, 2012).

Pure Evil, Pearly King in Highgate Cemetry (Six-color screenprint, 2012).

After moving back to London, he dubuted his first Pure Evil solo show and from the success of that, opened up the Pure Evil Gallery in a Dickensian old shop and basement in Shoreditch in the East End of London in 2007. As an artist, over the past five years Pure Evil has exhibited in China, Russia, Mongolia, Brazil, the USA and all over Europe, and as an 'accidental gallerist' he has produced more than fifty exhibitions with emerging and established artist at the gallery and internationally.

Pure Evil, Richard Burton's Nightmare. (Spray paint and stencil on canvas, 2013).

Pure Evil, Untitled. (Double exposure screenprint, five layers, 2013).

J.F.K.'s Nightmare. (Two color screenprint, 2012).

Prince Philip's Nightmare. (Four-color screen print, 2013).

Pure Evil produces a monthly radio show and regularly gives workshops and participates in lectures about street art.

Reference:
[1] M. Smith and A. Cook, People of Print, Thames & Hudson, London (2017).

Modern Australian Tapestries [1]Australian Tapestry WorkshopArt EssayMarie-Therese Wisniowski

Preamble
For your convenience I have listed below other posts on tapestries:
The Australian Tapestry Workshop
The Australian Tapestry Workshop (1976 – 1985)
The Australian Tapestry Workshop (1986 – 1995)
The Australian Tapestry Workshop (1996 - 2004)
Tapestry Creations of the 1980s
Tapestries from the USA
Modern Australian Tapestries

Introduction by Patrick McCaughey[1]
Tapestries fall between the fine-arts and the decorative arts. It has played a time-honoured role with regard to architecture, humanising and ameliorating the living spaces of buildings both public and private. It has furnished, decorated and enriched architecture by its natural warmth and medium, its 'give' compared to marble, stone, brick, glass or steel.

Yet tapestry is more than just furniture, more than an additive to architecture. It depends on the quality of its conception as well as the excellence of its craft for its aesthethic merit. And its conception arises out of pictorial tradition. Tapestry cannot easily divorce itself from the pictorial tradition and survive as an important art.

The difficulty the medium has faced at different stages of its history is how to translate effectively certain kinds of pictorial conceptions into decorative objects. The more the pictorial conceptions depended on creating powerful illustrations of human action and feelings, the less certain and convincing the tapestry looked. The more the pictorial conception leant towards the creation of rhythms, patterns and emblems, the more effective the role of tapestry in adding to and merging the conception and tradition which feeds it.

Hence, the new role or at least the new possibilities for tapestry now. The modern pictorial tradition has in general depended less on illustration and more on finding ways of making decoration lively, interesting and substantial. Thus, some of the central concerns of modern painting are readily translatable into tapestry. Indeed, the decorative character of tapestry as a medium can stablize, make tangible some of the more fugitive qualities of modern painting. In many ways painting remains embarrassed with artistic decoration.

It constantly feels that it should somehow be more decorative. Tapestry bears no such grudge against the world and that's its strength as a medium. By accepting the decorative, tapestry wins for itself a special role and claim for itself as a medium because decoration is an inalienable part of pictorial art.

Art has a right to console as well as a duty to change and decorative supplies that right. What gives substance to the decorative supplies that right. What gives substance to the decorative, what stops it from becoming trival, is the medium taspestry makes its appeal to the hand as well as to the eye, to the sense of touch as well as sight, it invites the senses as well as the mind to delight.

The outside building of the Australian Tapestry Workshop, 262-266 Park Street, South Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

Inside the work space of the Australian Tapestry Workshop.

Modern Australian Tapestries

Artist: Adam Pyett.
Title and Year: Intergalactic (1999).
Size: 25 cm (length) x 25.5 cm (wide).
Weaver: Merill Dumbrell.

Artist: Euan Heng.
Title and Year: Hat Trick (1999).
Size: 19.5 cm (length) x 26.5 cm (wide).
Weaver: Katia Takla.

Artist: Euan Heng.
Title and Year: Head Study (1999).
Size: 24.5 cm (length) x 22.0 cm (wide).
Weaver: Merill Dumbrell.

Artist: Bruno Leti.
Title and Year: TNL 29 (1999).
Size: 12 cm (length) x 10 cm (wide).
Weaver: Cheryl Thorton.

Artist: Yvonne Boag.
Title and Year: Ginza (1999).
Size: 18.5 cm (length) x 24 cm (wide).
Weaver: Claudia Lo Priore.

Artist: Yvonne Boag.
Title and Year: Untitled (1999).
Size: 18.5 cm (length) x 24 cm (wide).
Weaver: Merill Dumbrell.

Artist: Craig Barrett.
Title and Year: Ochre Gate (1999).
Size: 24 cm (length) x 26 cm (wide).
Weaver: Irene Creedon.

Artist: Bob Jenyns.
Title and Year: Untitled (1999).
Size: 20.5 cm (length) x 13.5 cm (wide).
Weaver: Caroline Tully.

Artist: Bob Jenyns.
Title and Year: Untitled (1999).
Size: 19.5 cm (length) x 13.0 cm (wide).
Weaver: Caroline Tully.

Artist: Adam Pyett.
Title and Year: Untitled (1999).
Size: 17.5 cm (length) x 17.5 cm (wide).
Weaver: Merill Dumbrell.

Artist: Craig Barrett.
Title and Year: Red Tree (1999).
Size: 28 cm (length) x 19 cm (wide).
Weaver: Irja West.

Reference:
[1] Patrick MecCaughey, Modern Australian Tapestries, Edited by S. Walker, The Beagle Press, (1999).
[2] Modern Australian Tapestries, Edited by S. Walker, The Beagle Press, (1999).