Meet ‘Les Grandes Dames’ - the artists of Creating Connections – Anna Prussing, Catherine Croucher, Gael O‘Donnell, Jill Bowman, Katherine Morrison, Marilyn Daly and Philippa Doyle.
2 - 3pm
Saturday 29 March
Gallery
Please join Les Grandes Dames on a facilitated tour of the Creating Connections exhibition. They will discuss their own work and describe some of the techniques they used to make these textiles.
Artist’s Biographies
Anna Prussing
Anna Prussing has Scottish, German and English ancestry. She was born in Nelson in 1948 and now lives in Whitby with her partner Larry. Stitching is in her blood, beginning as a pre-schooler with her milliner grandmother, with blocks on the treadle sewing machine so she could reach the pedal, going on to support university study making wedding dresses for many Wellington brides.
Three years in a commune on Great Barrier Island introduced her to spinning and weaving, leading to a ten-year full time weaving career, exhibiting at several leading New Zealand craft galleries and overseas. A back injury interrupted the weaving but led her to learn to quilt. Her primary interest lies in crosses and intersections, layering colour and playing with figure and ground.
Over the last forty years her quilts have explored her connection with family and the land under her feet. She has exhibited them at several major galleries in New Zealand, America and Birmingham, winning numerous awards.
Jill Bowman
Jill Bowman started quilting more than 30 years ago, initially working from traditional patterns. She quickly moved to designing her own pieces, experimenting with techniques, dyeing her own colourful fabrics, and incorporating hand stitching.
Jill grew up in Nelson, and the warm sunny days encouraged an outdoor lifestyle - daily swims at the beach, walks in the bush, and tramps in the nearby national parks. That love of the environment has continued since she moved to Wellington and the local beaches, birds spilling over from Zealandia and the nearby native bush have inspired much of her work.
Jill finished work as a researcher four years ago to focus on her art. After completing an on-line course with inspirational English textile artist Claire Benn, she started working with earth pigments mixed with soya milk to paint linen, finishing the art with hand stitch. It’s more sustainable than using fibre reactive dyes on cotton, and is ideal for capturing the moods and textures of the environment.
Jill’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. When she’s not creating art, Jill is usually walking her dog or chasing a plastic ball around a pickleball court.
Marilyn Daly
Marilyn Daly is a maker from a background of embroidery, sewing, knitting and crochet who has found great satisfaction and artistic expression in quiltmaking.
Three years of studying embroidery in the early 1980’s with Diana Parkes introduced her to quiltmaking.
Growing up in the exceptional landscape of Central Otago has deeply influenced her work, as has the art of many quilt makers such as the African American women of Gees Bend, painters and indigenous textile artists. These include Hotere, McCahon, Rothko and Sean Scully,whose work she finds exceptionally moving.
Philippa Doyle
Philippa Doyle lives in Te Ahumairangi, Whanganui-a Tara with her family. She is a textile artist, an adoptee, an active volunteer for Good Bitches Bake and a recovering public servant.
Philippa uses textiles as a tangible way of making unseen and fleeting moments visible and enduring, and stamping her views on the world. She focuses on ways of marking both the small and the big events of life – all significant in their own way. She has been working on her craft/art for over 50 years, working predominately in quilts and stitched works.
Gael O’Donnell
Gael O’Donnell was born in Upper Hutt and now lives in Carterton. She has been surrounded by textiles all her life.
This quote from by Georgia O’Keefe sums up the way she approaches her work - “I found I could say things with colour and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way – things I had no words for.”
Using the medium of fabric as her paint box she explores colours and shapes in an improvisational and spontaneous way. This use of textiles also pays tribute to the long line of needlewomen she is descended from, and the connection she feels with them when working on her quilts.
Many of her quilts have been exhibited in New Zealand and overseas.
Catherine Croucher
Catherine Croucher makes quilts, mostly using second-hand cotton clothing. Her op-shop sourced stash also contains fabric inherited from her mother and other departed friends. Her work has been influenced by African-American quilting practices, featuring informal geometry, asymmetry and improvisation.
She enjoys executing challenging patterns (eight-pointed stars in particular), cutting with scissors by eye without rulers, or using only rough templates. Recently Catherine has been using text as a visual element, treating the quilt surface as a page. Words float on or wrestle with the patchwork layer to which they are applied.
Always a keen cyclist, Catherine has recently acquired an e-bike, which makes parking at op-shops a lot simpler. She has an MA in English and a Bachelor of Visual Arts (Weltec).
Katherine Morrison
Katherine Morrison is a 68 year old self taught textile artist and has been creating art for the last 40 years. Her practice consists of repurposing old woollen blankets and other textiles into quilts, clothes and sculptures, adding embroidery to turn them into cohesive installations.
Transforming old cloth (with its atavistic qualities) into new narratives is her passion. Her concepts vary but are mostly of a human essence. Katherine’s body of work for “Connections” is inspired by “ Te Waka Hourua”.
She has exhibited widely in Aotearoa and overseas in group and solo shows. Katherine has also been a finalist in The Norsewear Art Awards and Wellington Art review several times.
Creating Connections
Saturday 29 March – 25 April
When we work together, we call ourselves Les Grandes Dames – a whimsical expression of the many years of art practice we collectively share.
We are eight artists with varied creative practices who came together because of our shared interest in textiles. We all wanted to develop as artists, and honest but encouraging critique from other group members has allowed us all to progress our work in varied ways.
Featured Artists:
Anna Hicks, Anna Prussing, Catherine Croucher, Gael O‘Donnell, Jill Bowman, Katherine Morrison, Marilyn Daly and Philippa Doyle.
