Fibre arts group hosts workshops

In Love Cape Palliser by Lisa Calls

FIBRE Arts New Zealand will host their annual week-long workshops in Whanganui from Sunday, April 23 until Friday, April 28.

Organiser Julz Coffey says this will be the seventh year and each year the group has used classroom facilities at Whanganui Girls College to hold workshops on various fibre arts media.

"This year we will be hosting seven international tutors, two of whom currently live in New Zealand but continue to teach overseas," she says.

There are 78 participants booked to come from all over New Zealand from Waipu in Northland to Queenstown, Otago and all places in between.

Tutor Anne Kelly is a UK based textile artist, tutor and author. She trained as a fine artist and became involved in art textiles through her teaching. She makes densely embroidered and layered collages in cloth, using the natural world and her local environment as inspiration. She has work in private and public collections in the UK and abroad. She is co-author of Connected Cloth, published in 2013, and Textile Nature, which was published last year.

Canadian Donna Watson is a mixed media painter and collage artist with 35 years experience.

Her works have been accepted into numerous juried national and international exhibitions and she has received many awards. Her works have been widely published in art magazines like American Artist and The Artist's Magazine.

Kathryn Harmer Fox is a professional artist who uses fibre as her predominant medium, she has spent decades drawing and painting using thread and fabric.

Her work has been exhibited all over the world, including Japan, America, France and the UK. She has won many awards and recently received the Grand Prix in the Reflections competition hosted by European Patchwork Meeting in France.

Liz Constable left her home of Manchester at age 22 to begin a new adventure in New Zealand. Always creative one way or another, she morphed into a book artist in 2000.

Christine Atkins is a West Australian artist working with fibre, metal, wood and found objects. With a current focus on the natural world, Atkins creates works that combine botanical correctness, imagination and serious to the playful.

Exhibiting nationally and internationally, her work has been recognised with several art prizes including the Waterhouse Natural History Art Prize. Her work can be seen in art collections and publications both within Australia and internationally.

Artist, author and international instructor Patricia Baldwin Seggebruch is known worldwide for her impact in the medium of encaustic through her dynamic teaching, far reaching inspiration and four books published in the techniques and materials that have made this medium so popular.

Lisa Call creates bold geometric contemporary textile paintings composed of her richly coloured hand-dyed fabric.

Her work is abstract but draws elements from many places, her love of the colour and geological forms of the southwest United States, the patterns and repetition of the landscape permeate her work. Lisa teaches and exhibits internationally and currently divides her time between the Kapiti Coast of New Zealand and her country of birth, the US.

An exhibition of the tutors and students' work will be on display at the Whanganui Girls College performing arts centre, Anzac Parade on Friday, April 28 between 5.30pm and 7.30pm.

There are a few places left on Chris Atkins and Lisa Calls' workshops. For inquiries contact Julz Coffey at Fibre Arts NZ on (06) 3435655 or 021-2928833.