G'day viewers, my name is Graeme
Stevenson and I'd like to invite you to come on a journey of creativity
and learning and adventure through the series Colour In Your Life.
There's an Artist in every family throughout the world and
lots of times there's an Artist deep down inside all of us as well.
So grab your kids, your brothers, your sisters, your aunties, uncles
and mums and dads, and come and see how some of the best
Artists in Australia do what they do. (Music Plays) We're in the beautiful city of Sydney this show to
see an amazing artist so come along and enjoy the incredible talent that Sydney has to offer. Well g'day viewers, and welcome
back to Colour In Your Life. We are at the studio of a young lady
called Meredith Woolnough. Meredith, thank you for being on the show. Hi, happy to be here. Great to be here. As you can see in the
background here,there are some amazing I mean, I call them ‘material sculptures’, and that’s the way that I would describe them. But Meredith actually works in textiles and itís quite
extraordinary with what she does with them. Also has a Bachelor's degree
with first class Honors in Arts, which is pretty cool. So she's
got letters behind her name by the way, and also you're a
master of teaching as well? Mmmhmm, yep. So you're not only talented,
good looking, but you're smart as well? You're making me blush Graeme. (Laughing) That's ok. But what
we're going to do, is we're going to spend the day with Meredith on
how she actually puts these structures together. And she does
it on a sewing machine, and uses materials, and thread, and
actually uses materials that actually dissolve. Can you just describe
to me how all this goes about? Ok. So the fabric that I work on is this stuff. Obviously,
this is a lot of it. It's a water-soluble fabric. It was originally invented by the medical industry. They used it as the bags that they
would wash the surgical equipment in, so when they had contaminated
implements, it would go inside these bags, and be sent
off to be sanitized and then the bags would just dissolve and no one
would have to touch the waste. Like all good inventions it comes from
the military or the medical industry. But then obviously this had
lots of other applications, so now it's been pushed out into the
textiles world. And it's sold in sewing shops as a basic stabilizer,
but then I'm using it as basically my base fabric. So I don't embroider onto cloth;
this is my cloth and then it's later removed. It's amazing. And I can see by the influence of a lot of
your work, you're obviously very much into nature, but like me, very much into the
mathematics of nature as well. Yeah. I don't pretend to be good at maths;
you know, art and maths, water and oil [Laughing] Yeah. But I think itís naturally intrinsically
involved in all of us. And obviously itís so big in nature. You know,
we were talking earlier about the Golden Mean, Fibonacci sequence,
and they come up in things like the Nautilus without even
trying, and yeah, that's definitely part of it. I donít even know if itís
a conscious decision or not. It's wonderful, but you've
obviously developed You've said that this isn't something that's
yours, but I think that you've developed this to an extent, I mean, as we go through and we screen
up a lot more of Meredithís work as we go along. I have never seen, when I first saw Meredithís work I just was
absolutely astounded, cause it really is art and sculpture and material and it's difficult to describe.
It doesn't really fit into a genre by any means, it's something that you've
really come up with yourself. Yeah, it's hard to classify. I think any
work or artwork that's based in textiles, it's really easy to put
into that textiles or craft bracket rather than Art, but textiles is a fabulous medium,
itís used in so many things, and I think it's really exciting. And maybe it's exciting because it's not
seen that much in the broader art work. Yes. It's amazing, and as I've said, you dive, you go
swimming, you look at the stuff under the water. You know, you've got this absolutely fabulous I mean, if you look around Meredith's studio, there's
little bits and pieces of animals and shells, and sponges. There's stuff everywhere, which is just great.
But we're going to go through the process today. You're going to show us how you do
one of these Really, it's only a small one. Mmmhmm, yep. It takes a long time to do. Yeah, and you sort of and as you've said before,
you're fairly limited by the size that you can actually create because
of the sewing machine too. Yes, yes. But a lot of these, as you can see, they're
quite three dimensional in their aspects. And she uses all sorts of things to create these, but lets start from the beginning, and tell us how you
go about actually putting one of these together, and then we're going to go through the
process of how Meredith does this today. Ok. Ok, so, to start off, I've got
my water-soluble fabric. Yeah. It's normally a lot neater rolled than this. And where would you buy this from? I buy this in bulk, and so buy tens of meters at a time,
and I also buy a really long length of it. But you can get this
just from a sewing shop. Oh ok. Generally in smaller, more manageable sizes.
People use it forlace making and things like that. So, this is just a standard embroidery hoop.
You need a hoop because otherwise it's just going to So thatís where it came from. get chewed up by the
machine when you sew. You need to keep it nice and tight.
So, I stretch this out as best I can. It's like a lightweight interfacing,
if anyone's familiar with that. And if I feel any sort of spongy
bits I'll just give it an extra tug. Just pull it through IF you tug too much it will tear. Like, it will tear quite easily.
And if it breaks, well, you'll deal with that when I think you've got enough there just to
sort of go back and do it again. Yeah. We can mistakes. Ahhh what the hell. So that's going to be what we can work on.
So make sure this is not wrinkled or anything like that. And I can draw onto this. You have to be very careful what you draw with. Some pens will dissolve the fabric because they're
very wet, and you want to draw lightly. But you've got to be careful, cause if you
do draw onto this, when you dissolve it, it might come across
onto your work. Experiment. Ok. So you've got a tightener there. Do you tighten that up at all? If it needs it. Itís pretty snug. But as if Iím sewing a big piece,
with many sections, the piece will become thicker, cause it's got the embroidery
on it, and I might need to adjust it. So what type of pen do you use to do this thing?
And who makes it? And whatís it all about? I just use a basic artline pen. Oh, ok. So, you know, they're pretty good, just a basic felt tip,
because they're not very wet and they're very fine. So I can just very lightly draw on it
and itís not going to soak through too much. As far as your designs are concerned,
I know you're working off nature, you know, things like Mandelbrot
fractals, but we wonít go into the mathematics about it. But it is quite fascinating.
But a lot of this is just free hand? Do you do stencils at all? Occasionally I'll sometimes draw up
things so I will draw up big designs. Oh there you go, ok. Draw up big designs.
So for example the leaf, I've drawn it first. Oh wow look at that. That's fabulous. And plan from there.
There's my nautilus. Oh ok. Ok. So I can sort of figure that out. So, you know, I do sketch things
and I do keep sketchbooks of art ideas and things like that. It's what you've gotta do. Another point being as well, how do you get that, if you've got
the stencil, onto this? What do you do to get it on there? How would it work? You can see through it. Oh, there you go. So you can just trace it straight on. That was easy wasn't it? We like the easy things. From there, what are we going to draw onto
this one? Have we got one ready? Well, we can draw straight onto this, or Iíve got
one where I have drawn it up already. Cool, ok. Just to save time. I've just drawn up a basic coral design.
It probably doesn't look like very much at the moment. This is one that I've just sketched up, just to make it easier So this is just using the pen using an artline pen. It's just a
basic coral design that I've just drawn from my head, obviously to fit this space. For today Iím going to be limited by
the shape of my hoop, and help that to influence the design. So, we are going to sew. That's the best way to put it.
And you use different is it polyester threads that you use? Yeah, it is a polyester. And, also, I was quite surprised when you brought this out.
Itís a little bit like a colour chart for thread isnít it? Yeah it's lots of fun. But it's amazing. It's a beautiful chart on its own,
but you can see all the lusters in the threads themselves. Yeah, they're good. Polyester is obviously a very strong fiber,
and you need something that's going to be strong. You also, for longevity, need
something thatís going to be colour fast and not going to degrade
like a natural fiber would over time. Polyester is not going anywhere. Ok. And, the sewing machine. What type of sewing machine
do you use and why are you using that sewing machine? I use a Bernina. Itís basically
the best brand for your basic home-style machines before
you move on to industrial machines. All the parts are metal, it lasts a long time, and also,
itís smooth when it sews, which is really important for me cause I run the machine very hard and fast. And the one thing that you
obviously do need to do with this would be to make sure that those
threads are quite bound together. Yeah, itís really important, because if you could
imagine, I'm not using a base fabric at all. The base fabric is going to disappear.
So if all my stitches arenít linked together, when I dissolve it the whole thing is going to fall apart
and itís just going to turn back into threads. So, you've got to make sure that everything's connected
and there's no holes, and all that sort of stuff. So has that actually happened to you before? Occasionally. Or occasionally I'll forget to go back
over a piece and I'll dissolve it and then I'll realize there's a bit that I haven't done or
you know, you learn from your mistakes though. Ok, well, from there we're going to go
You've already sketched one up. Weíll go to the sewing machine
and actually see how this is done. Cool. Sounds cool. I've just got it set up. I've actually got
different colours on the top and the bottom. Oh ok. The reason for that is, you know, these are basically
my paints but they only come in one colour. So if I want to have variations I can blend them together
when I sew. So I've got it just set up in a way so that it's just the needle going up and down. It's not on anything
fancy or anything like that. I'm drawing with this machine. Oh ok. So Iíve as we know got it all stretched up.
I always bring my threads up to the top, cause these threads will
get all knotted if you don't. And do you keep holding those
threads at all? Or do you let them go? What I'll do is Ií'l just sew a little bit, and then I'll
snip them off. And then they're out of the way. Oh ok. I'll just start drawing;
it might get a bit noisy. That's ok. Fire away. I'll only do a little bit, so you can see. Well as you can see, Meredith has only
just partially completed this section. And it's just amazing how she follows the little
red lines and gets all the patterns done. But because of the beauty of TV and that this young lady is
incredibly well prepared, what Meredith has done for us, because it takes quite a long time to do this, at least a
day or so's work to actually sew that like thatÖ What she's done for us is that
she's actually prepared one. And as you can see, completely
finished and cut out of the frame itself. Now, there's a really special technique that
happens now, which I've never seen before and which I think will be quite fascinating,
you get rid of this material don't you? Yeah. Itís actually very very easy. Tell us how thatís done. Basically I would normally do this under running water,
but so we don't have to shoot in the bathroom, I figured this would be much more TV friendly.
So, it needs to be warm water, so I've just boiled the jug. And I'll just get that quite warm. So, basically,
it'll be there and then it won't be there. So Iíll just put it in a little bit, and you can see straight away it just kind of disappears.
It turns into like a gooey,gluey substance. So Iíll just kind of move this about in here. That's amazing. If I don't wash it out enough, there will be a little bit of residue
fabric there, but I don't want to wash it out completely, because it actually kind of turns into a bit of a
stiffening glue that will give it a bit of shape. It's just amazing. It just disappeared that quickly. Yeah, it's just gone. Here one minute, gone the next.
Now as you can see I'm not particularly gentle with them. And now this is quite wet. There's a bit of
colour that has come out, but that's not from the thread, that's from the pen that
I used to draw it with. So now all I do I just use
some baking paper, so that I don't make a huge mess of the bench.
And I'll just lay this down and basically blot off the excess water. So once I'm happy
with what I've taken off, some pieces I'll let to go really sculptural, and crunch them
up to give them some extra shape. This piece though, because itís wanting to curl, and I want it
to be quite a defined shape to begin with, I'll actually press it flat. And to do that Iíll just double layer my
paper towel, my greaseproof paper sorry. I'll make sure it's all nice
and flat, as best I can. This bit's a little bit fiddly if it's a really fine
design it just want this to do its own thing. Do you want me to hold that there? Yeah. That'd be good. Sure. I'll put that down. It's really annoying once you press something
and then you find that bit that's folded over, and it doesn't like to be
wet again once it's dissolved. So once that's done,my very high tech
pressing implement; a big heavy book Michelangelo. Yes, very inspirational. I just
sort of pop that on and press that. Ok, from there, we're going to go
to the mounting process. Mmmhmm. And you've already got one that's huge.
It's just enormous. It's a beautiful leaf. Yeah. So this is I'm really kind of fascinated with leaves,
and the internal structures of leaves at the moment, so I've done a slightly larger one today. And I really quite like this when
it's floppy, but we need to mount it. So I've just prepared this board.
It's just fabriano paper stuck to foam core, to give it some stability. And once I figure out
which way I want it, which I could spend hours doing, its just a matter of mounting it on.
Now when its flat, it kind of loses a lot of its whatever makes it special. So I always
like to mount them so they It's off a bit I just use standard pins. These are just rustless pins;
rustless so that they're last for a very long time. I need my pliers. I need my thimble. And now, basically
these pins I'm just going to push through at places where I know it's going
to be needed to be lifted up. So once I'm happy with however
many I've got, I'll go around and push each one down so that they're
flush, and tightly pressed in. And you've really gotta, I'd say, have quite clean hands cause
they're so refined and everything you do is so precise. I've found I can't wear nail polish. If I do,
I'll get colourful little blobs on the paper, and you've gotta be really
careful with the paper. It will pick up every little oil from your hand. So now I need to
basically push them all up again, and I just gentlyÖ Just push Oh look at that! Yeah, and it'll just sort of pop up. How bout that. And there it is, just floating. Yeah. It's just magnificent. Now it's not going to stay there on its own. Eventually, you know,
it'd probably it might sag, so I space them out. And I've just got my little container of these are just like little glass rods, like beads. So with
these, what I'm going to do is I'm now going to pull all of these out, and
unwind that half of the leaf. I was going to say, you wouldn't do it all, cause it
would just sorta tend to flop wouldn't it? Yeah. If there are pieces that aren't
this dense I might do it one at a time. And then I just sort of go
along, threading these on to the pins and then poking them back through in
exactly the same holes that they were in before. So you only wanted it just up that high? Yeah, with this one I'm going to keep it quite close because it's
so dense. And I really want the pins and the spaces to not be noticeable. I just want it to look like it's floating, but not
really be aware of it. So I'll do this on one side and then I'll do it for the rest of it.
It was attached to itself Ok, so now I've got all my beads in,
I'm just going to go and push all these down, and just with a pair of
pliers, Iím just going to carefully bend the pins around,
so that theyíre not poking out. Ok. And then, once I've bent the pins around I'll just
stick them in place with a little bit of tape. I'll hold that for you. Yeah, thanks. Means it
won't stab me, or my framer. And it just sort of holds everything
into place then as well doesn't it? Yeah, it'll hold it all into place, and that takes a little bit of time,
and then after that it's just a process of painting in the pins so that you canít see them. Just push them down. That's amazing. It'll just sit off just enough that in different kinds of light,
you'll get shadows that get cast, and I sometimes think the
shadows are just as important. There's another one that you've got here as well that I'd
just like to look at, which is the nautilus shell. And this is just going through, once again another process,
obviously all those pins have been nailed down. Yes, they're all out of the way. But this one, I really love this. Now describe
to me how you actually make the nautilus shell. And as you can see the other varying shadows that come across this, what Meredith has done is
actually pinned these in to a shape, but how did you actually get this
initial curve in there as well? With this piece, I basically
shaped it around some padding, to give it more shape and
structure to get that shape pattern. Sometimes I'll, say this is just a
little piece I started playing with. So this is just a ball and it started
off as a flat piece, like a net shape, then when I dissolved it
I molded it around the ball and let it dry like that. So this one
I'll probably just stitch together to make it keep that shape.
But with this one yeah, it had that space and instead of using spaces I've just
pinned it directly on to the board this time. You also do your work in resin as well. Mmm, yeah. Unfortunately we didn't
have time to do that today. No. Let's have a look at what you've got. Do you want the framed work as well? The framed one? Yeah, that'd be great. Sure. Bring that one over. I feel like a game show host. And then [laughing] And then
a couple of your resin pieces. Yep. And as you can see, these are just beautiful as well. This is
obviously material but she has embed it inÖ is it acrylic resins? Epoxy resins. Epoxy resins. And you obviously sell these You do
the trade shows,the galleries as well? A number of galleries. And you're becoming quite successful,
and it's fairly understandable why. The work and the finish that Meredith
puts in She's an extremely meticulous artist; there is no other way
to put it. And I think that they are so well presented and just beautiful, beautiful pieces.
Your work is very reasonably priced as well I think, for the amount of effort you
put into it, it is quite amazing. Well another fabulous day spent
with a very very talented young lady. Meredith, thank you so
much for being on the show. Thank you. It's just been amazing. And I absolutely think that what
she does is extraordinary. Just calculated, refined, the presentation is just wonderful.
You have a website, what would that be? It's www.meredithwoolnough.com.au. We will also have Meredith's work
on the Colour In Your Life website, as our series obviously starts
to spread across the planet, which is pretty great. So if you want to come in and see her
work as well there, you can go to colourinyourlife.com.au. Some great things coming up,
remember our workshops. If you want to be involved in the Colour In
Your Life workshops with all these talented people, hopefully Meredith will be involved in some of
these as we go along as well. Come in and see us in the website and we'll take it from there.
But, as I always say, remember Make sure you put some colour in your life! Weíll see you next time guys. Bye
