ARTY EMBROIDERY
Street art with a difference
Street art is not all about paint daubed, sprayed or splattered on walls. There is also large-scale embroidery.
Artist Katie Shand has found a place for her unusual, colourful work on the fence and gate at the back of the Community Arts Centre.
“The four pieces took 118 hours,” says Katie. She created the work at home to achieve the detail, then attached it.
It was Ellen Young, coordinator of the Town Centre Rejuvenation Project who suggested Katie might like to get funding through Creative Communities and do the embroidery.
“That got approved maybe five months ago and I’ve been working on it ever since,” says Katie. Cable ties attach it to the fence and gate.
She first took up embroidery at school in Auckland then picked it up again a few years ago.
“It’s very good active meditation,” she says. “It takes so long and takes so much attention that you forget whatever you were worrying about. It’s a lot of focus.”
Katie has used a synthetic macrame thread — it’s hard wearing and weatherproof.
“The hardest thing was getting the materials in, because it’s such a specific thing that I need. It has to get shipped from America. Every time I ran out of a colour I’d have to wait two weeks to get a new lot shipped in. It’s been a labour of love.”
Katie recently completed a Certificate of Graphic Design at UCOL and will be taking a photography course at the Palmerston North campus.
“I do smaller [embroidery] pieces and hoops, plate-sized, and I do jackets and stuff and sell them at Article. Embroidery is my thing. I like to modernise it: it’s considered traditional and women’s work so it’s nice to put a new spin on it and make it more attractive to younger generations.”
In this outdoor work Katie aimed to visually communicate the connection between nature and people, with emphasis on the Whanganui River.
“I used the quote ‘The river flows from the mountains to the sea; I am the river, the river is me’ as inspiration. This piece follows a natural flow from trees, through to woman, whose hair flows to form the river, and finally on to the side panel featuring flowers as the life the river nourishes. I added a literal golden thread in the three primary pieces to suggest a flow and interconnectedness between them, as well as the interconnection of nature with mankind.”
Find Katie under “away with the fairies” online, or her Facebook page: awaywiththefairiesnz.