The new Davernator. See davernator.blogspot for the archive
The Australia Council for the Arts have published their latest “on-line audience engagement research” at the website Connect Arts. It’s all about using the internet and social media to connect with your online audience (marketing). It’s mainly aimed at Arts Organisations (note capital letters) but it’s got some really great information which is relevant to us lowly makers too.
And, they’re holding a few industry forums to “discuss how to make the most of online opportunities, and overcome the barriers to change.” Unfortunately it’s a bit late for those of you in Sydney and Brisbane and the Melbourne one is tonight (at the Wheeler Centre) but here’s plenty of notice for Hobart, Adelaide, Perth and Canberra.
I will be teaching a sublimation printing workshop at Square Peg Studios. in Sydney in September.
And if I wasn’t helping Emma Grace with her Treasury workshop for Craft Cubed, I’d be attending that liquid enamel workshop. I’ve seen the stuff that Melissa Cameron has been doing with liquid enamel and I wanna have a go!
Anyway, the blurb says…
Sublimation printing is a very simple technique of transferring dye to plastic using heat. In this class, Electronic files of images and photos will be printed and then transferred to a variety of flat media, including acrylic and plastic coated sheet metal. This class is suitable for experienced makers as well as non-makers and a variety of techniques will be taught to then create items of jewellery from the printed material.And there are already a couple of bookings so get in quick!!
You may, or may not, know that my time at Carlow House is coming to an end. So sad. Although perhaps not as sad as it could have been had they left the building the #@*% alone.
I could never have left this…
beautiful old foyer
However, I will find it much easier to leave this…
ugly new urinal... I mean foyer
So, after SIXTEEN YEARS of sharing this wonderful studio space….
With these wonderful people…
And looking at this fantastic view…
… we’re gonna be leaving. And as part of Craft Victoria’s Craft Cubed festival, you can come and visit our studio for the last time. (details at that link)
Oh! And yes. We will be holding a garage sale!
There will be old stock going very cheap, stashes of materials that we don’t want to have to pack up and there may even be some old tools and equipment.
I’ll post images of some of the things you may expect to find as I gradually sort through sixteen years of stuff.
Put the date in your diaries: Saturday 20th August, 10am – 5pm, 8th Floor, 289 Flinders Lane (on the corner of Elizabeth Street), Melbourne.
(wipes a tear from her eye)
I have a new stockist!
The wonderful Michelle Jank talked me up to the guys at Elle Boutique in WA and they now have a selection of the Rocks earrings in their store.
Go visit if you’re in the area.
Elle Boutique
56 Weld St
Nedlands WA 6009
medium ruby star rocks earrings
large double aqua rocks earrings
I have a few blogs which I regularly read to look for images to use in my collages. I regularly follow Animalarium and I’m always impressed by the way the author is able to find so many different images to suit the theme of each post. I don’t often download from this site as the images often aren’t in the public domain, but it’s such eye candy I get excited when I see updates in my blog reader..
A recent post introduced me to the work of Holly Ward Bimba and I wanted to share it with y’all. It’s beautiful!
Here are a few of my favourites
Black Swan and Water Lily Bog
Swarm of Empresses
And this would be my favourite…
Migration
And… She has an Etsy Store! Anyone feel like buying me a gratuitous present? Anyone?… Anyone?…
It’s so sad to say goodbye.
But it can make you happy when you can grab a bargain!
Hurry in for huge discounts on fabulous jewellery (including Anna Davern’s stuff).
Saturday is the last day for this wonderful store in Crossley St.
Melbourne will miss you.
But wait! There’s an online store in the works. Yay!
I love Alice Euphemia!
Not only have they inspired a rush on Rocks earrings from their store, they also get them on the ears of people who frequent red carpets!
Clare Stewart
Clare Stewart – director of the Sydney Film Festival at the opening night.
And here she is again…
Clare Stewart and Cate Blanchett
As you know, I do a lot of saw piercing. I’ve always just done it on my normal peg and I never bother turning it over to the flat side. It’s always worked for me.
Until now, that is.
Look what my mate Darren Harvey made for me…
bench peg love
That’s my beloved crusty old peg on the left and my beautiful new saw piercing peg on the right. It can swivel out of the way when I’m not using it.
I love it.
Note all the drill holes in the old peg. I do all my drilling using my flexi drive. I recently recieved an invitation to take part in an on-line jewellery course and one of the selling points was to learn why “dremel tools should not be used for drilling into metal”
Why? I don’t know why? I’m tempted to do the course to find out why. Anyone else know why? are dremel tools different from flexi tools? If you’re not supposed to drill, why do they make drill bits for the flexi and sell them at jewellery supply shops?
Confused of Melbourne.
And don’t forget to go and visit Darren’s website. His work is ACE!
The lovely Mel Young and Lauren Simeoni have an ongoing collaboration making jewellery from particular found objects. They decided to spread the found object love and sent parcels of plastic bits to a collection of Australian jewellers and said “here’s some stuff. make something!” And they’ve organised to exhibit the results at Velvet da Vinci in San Fransisco!
Lucky me got invited to take part.
I didn’t get a good photo of all the materials when they first arrived but my immediate response to my collection was to want to cut it all up (my piercing saw is my favourite tool after all!). I was particularly drawn to the onion as I wanted to play with slicing it and trying to represent the layers found in a “natural” onion.
My first experiments were fun but my natural inclination when working is to build a narrative so I kept thinking that they looked like someone else had made them.
unnatural onion
Fortuntely we’re also able to make work inspired by the bag of materials so here we go…
onion David
The onion makes a conspicuous reappearance in the David brooches (you can just see the little onion cut out of metal in the top left), but it is also present in the layers and layering of the construction of the brooches.
Onion David
More to come…
I attended a fantastic workshop yesterday at the ISS (International Specialised Skills Institute) about using social media to promote my business. It was run by the fantastic Shelli Whitehurst and was totally inspirational. So inspirational that I dusted the cobwebs off my twitter account and have taken to tweeting with gusto. Find me @annadavern.
It was promoted through Craft Victoria