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Tuesday 16 October 2012

Rosalie Gascoigne


 


The Waverley Art Quilters have been studying Rosalie Gascoigne, an  artist who was born in New Zealand in 1917 and died in Canberra, Australia in 1999 of a heart attack. She was 82 when she died.

Rosalie Gascoigne
She married an astronomer, Ben Gascoigne and they lived at the isolated Mount Stromolo Space Centre in Canberra, Australia. Rosalie raised three children but was lonely and felt that she had nothing in common with the other women. After becoming adept at Ikebana (Japanese flower arranging), she started collecting scrap iron and wooden boxes and would pull them apart and rearrange them.
Text became very important to her work and she would use the text from the sides of packing crates and put them in a grid format that looked very similar to a pieced quilt. She also collected old lino and toys and rearranged them to form sculptures.

Rosalie Gascoigne's unusual work was discovered by the  National Gallery of Australia and she had her first exhibition at the age of 57. Her work represented Australia at the Venice Biennale in 1982 and she was awarded an Order of Australia in 1994 for her services to art, particularly sculpture.

After we have finished studying an artist we make an A3 sized quilt inspired by the artist. I decided to use black text on yellow fabric because a lot of her work looked that way.

I wanted to use TAP (Transfer Artist Paper) to apply the lettering to some yellow fabric but I only had one sheet left. I needed another sheet of lettering so I printed some words onto white printable fabric and had to paint it yellow. I had to reverse the lettering for the TAP paper. I got an assortment of yellow fabrics and used some Distress Ink to mark them and make them look a bit dirty.

Preparing for TAP Paper
 
 
Transferring the Text with TAP
I had trouble getting a really clear print using the TAP (Transfer Artist Paper), even though I used a hot, dry iron. It didn't matter for this because a messy, worn look suited the effect I wanted. I have used it before with greater success but I suspect my new iron doesn't get as hot as my previous iron.

After I had printed the lettering onto Printable fabric, I painted the white fabric with various yellow fabric paints. To get the lettering, I wrote words associated with art and quilting.
Painted, printable fabric


I cut all the prepared fabric into squares and rectangles and sewed them together in a grid format.

Here is my little tribute to Rosalie Gascoigne.
'Rosalie Gascoigne' ©2012 Linda Steele
That was our last official meeting of the Waverley Art Quilters for the year. Next month we are having our end of year dinner at a restaurant and we won't meet again until February 2013. It sounds like a long time but I bet the time goes quickly.

Bye for now,
Linda

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

What an interesting technique, and what a huge to get an incredible result. Well done, and I am sure the rest of 2012 will rush by - remember you have a wedding to attend!
Cathie

Anonymous said...

The word 'effort' was left out after 'huge'. Sorry.

Cathie

Linda Steele said...

Thanks Cathie, you are right, the wedding is next month and it will go so quickly.
Linda