I Wanted to Bubble… In a time of uncertainty, art is the first thing people think we can put aside. Who’s spending money on a painting when they aren’t confident about the economy, or fear their job is in jeopardy? Who’s adding to the beauty of their home when no one is visiting? Who is …

This month’s SDA Book Club features a spotlight on the book The Story of the Bayeux Tapestry: Unravelling the Norman Conquest by David Musgrove & Michael Lewis. This new book from Thames & Hudson offers a definitive and fully illustrated guide to the Bayeux Tapestry, and the full history of the events leading up to …

Surface Design Association is excited to announce Looped & Knotted: Contemporary Basketry, our Spring 2021 edition of Surface Design Journal. This issue, developed in collaboration with the National Basketry Organization and Guest Editor Carol Eckert, explores all the different ways artists express enthusiasm for basketry – a tradition that spans the globe and takes many forms. …

Stepping out of their comfort zone and experiences with Japanese shibori, Yoshiko Iwamoto Wada and Ana Lisa Hedstrom, at Slow Fiber Studios, traverse Conversations with Cloth online series to Africa. As both artists and curators, they understand intimately, that compression-resist dye is a universal language and practice in many cultures worldwide. Shibori has become an …

My current artwork is about the isolation, monotony and chronic stress that has been brought on by the global pandemic. For me personally, the distortion of time has been both challenging and inspiring. The shape of days, weeks and months over this past year sometimes seemed to be condensed and at other times stretched out. …

This month’s addition to the SDA Book Club is Craft: An American History by Glenn Adamson and reviewed by contributing author, Faith Hagenhofer! Having just read a book that proposed Fibers as the window through which to view all progresses in Western Civilization, Craft: An American History, by Glenn Adamson, landed on my desk. In …

SDA member Wini “Akissi” McQueen’s art draws upon many approaches of surface design in her mixed media work that include dyeing, shibori, quilting, wax resist, and painting. Her recent retrospective, The Covering, at the Museum of Arts and Sciences in Macon, Georgia reflects her life long relationship with cotton. She uses cotton to connect the …

Between October and November 2019, I organised a series of embroidery workshops in the Eastern suburbs of Melbourne. This Community based project, Longing for Home, aims at acknowledging first generation Australian women through their creative work and social connection. Earlier in the year, the idea to produce a collective wearable artwork based on skill sharing, …

Every day I look forward to getting up and heading into the studio. Rain or shine, happy or sad, it’s a place of discovery, of bringing ideas to life, and of finding resilience when things don’t turn out as planned. My excitement is grounded in a love of process and its accompanying assurance that even …

The two worlds: the world before Covid and the world now. My creative training is in the areas of painting and weaving. At some point in my artistic career, more than forty years ago, the two merged and I began creating woven painted paper works. The process is a simple one:  paint two pieces of paper (I …