This is a bus shelter Julie Ryder produced for Domain 2007 in Canberra. The shelter was in Alinger ST civic, Julie and fellow artist Sara Freeman were interviewed on The Program. Here is a link to the interview, The Program . There are images and a link at the bottom of the page to the Audio interview. Julie is an amazing artist, a mentor and friend, as a textile artist she has an amazing affinity with colour and pattern.
Colour and pattern always inspires me, after so much white weaving colour is next on the loom.
Belinda
And textures of sea-creatures are always fun...
Anyways, I will be sure to blog more now - I promise!
I received this image from my friend Carly. Carly is a textile artist studying at RMIT Melbourne and working with fellow artists on animation and these are some of the caricatures Carly has made for the production. I just love the image and had to share it.
That is still my spinning wheel in the picture although poor 'Alice' doesn't get much use anymore, although I look at her everyday when I walk through my from door...
Within my processes I have borrowed ideas and methodologies of surrealists – most predominately that of 'the omnipotence of dream ... the disinterested play of thought' 1. My work is not entirely true to this ideal, as I constrain myself with boundaries and objectives at the outset of the construction of the work. I always reach a point where I stop thinking about what I am creating and let my subconscious take over. The making of the work is more like a day-dream – a little control in a fanciful world.
In my own dreaming, I experience recurring themes, which, when reduced to intent, can be related to desire, innocence and trickery, and growth. The patterns these themes create are not always identical but rather, are part of the distorted whole. I relate this to my weaving by using separate but similar recurring patterns within the structure of the fabric. The viewer who considers the patterns notices that the repetition occasionally diverges from the expected. Often when the pattern repeats, 
the shading and colours change. I enjoy this as a metaphor for subconscious musings.
Glowing colours and threads enhance the depth of the image and evoke the lusciousness of the mind's conceptual interior.
Simple elements inspire my intuitive responses when I make the collage work. I have an initial inspiration and then try not to think about the subject further, allowing nonsensical wanderings to articulate themselves in the work from the initial ideas of object, line and colour. This gives collages that rely on the surrealist ideas of unconscious play and are pleasurable in their spontaneity.
The viewers orientation is relaxed, and the viewer chooses what the subject and final meaning are.
The collages are pleasurable in their spontaneity and almost nonsensical wanderings from initial ideas of object, line or colour. I try not to think about subject more than that initial inspiration while making the work. The construction is able to rely more on the surrealist ideas of unconscious play. The viewer's orientation is intended to be a relaxed one; it is entirely the viewer's choice what the subject or final meaning is.
In constructing the series of scarves I wished to play more on the viewer's and wearer's idea of how a scarf should be. Instead of starting from this end point, I considered 'How would the
subconscious make a scarf?' The only constraining factor of a scarf is it's usability as something to be worn around the neck. So I decided to experiment with how not to make a scarf – cutting, pulling and distorting the fabric up to but not including the point of destruction – so long as it still functioned. It is up to the wearer how they are worn. The scarves are the functional articulation of the concepts I used to create the artworks.
As James Gleeson succinctly states “I've never accepted the external appearance of things as the whole truth. The world is much more elaborate than the nerves of our eye can tell us... " James Gleeson. So I encourage the viewer to consider the work inside their mind – stare at the pattern for five minutes. What does it evoke in your mind? Something, or nothing, that's ok.
Rachel from RMIT textiles, Rachel spent the week running from teaching duties to looking after us. Thank you rachel for all your help!
Weaving on the loom by one of RMIT students. I am not sure who but it is a very interesting piece. 
Cybil and Monique see what is going on in the shed.
This is Rocky my dog isn't he cute? he is lying beside me now as I am writing. Eyes to melt your heart. 
This is the joining of the old and new warp. Rachel said a little crab like machine does the work. I just love all the little knots.
My fabric sample (Friday) this took about Halp an hour to weave, with the help of Cybil winding bobbins for me.
Liz Williamson left and Pat Jones right
From left myself, Helen and Monique Van Nieuwland (from ANU textile deptment) 
Just think of a woven object with scrunch and texture ummmm!Cheers Belinda
Lines are one of the simplest marks you can make, and one of the most important design elements for a weaver. Since I have always enjoyed the math involved in weaving, I revel in the
relationships and spacial tension between lines and in turn threads. Weavers often learn to explore this through crammed and spaced warps where the warp threads are spaced at different widths apart.
For many years, the work of minimalist and conceptual artist Sol Lewitt (who sadly died earlier this month) has been an irresistible attraction for me. He used his conceptual ideas with prescribed methods for series of combinations of lines and colours. For his line drawings and prints he believed that the idea and formula were to be distinguished from the personalization of the work. He used a prescribed formula (eg Squares with a Different Line Direction in Each Half Square Series 1971.) and often had others produce or install the work.
"When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair.
The idea becomes a machine that makes the art.” —Sol LeWitt (Sol LeWitt, “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art,” Artforum 5, no. 10 (June 1967), pp. 79–83, reprinted in Gary Garrels, ed., Sol LeWitt: A Retrospective (exh. cat.), 2000, p. 369.)
His mechanical and removed ideas are easily relatable to weaving. The prescibed actions of planning the cloth which should, if proper notation is kept, be repeatable by anyone who understands the notation (this, of course applies mainly to production weaving, not hand manipulated work); the simplicity of the action of threading a loom; the consideration of colour, line and placement.
gardens
weave room
my studio space and new loom (just after it was assembled) - AVL compudobby 24 shaft triple back beam
about how your (or my) subconscious mind works in a dream state - so there are recurring themes, patterns, and everyday objects distorted and placed out of a normal reference point. I also love using stitching as a drawing tool, I think it harks back to a previous minimalism obsession. Can you spot the sprite bottle?
This is my favorite production scarf - 'Crinkle Scarf' in rayon and wool. It comes in whatever rayon colours I think of while I'm winding the warp, and I dye the wool after weaving so no two are ever the same. They make me happy and giggly - the rayon has so much light energy it just flutters around.
