Not the Night Before: Free Grant Writing Course

January 15, 2021 by Anthea Boesenberg Leave a Comment

Working on a grant application for your creative project? Does the thought of applying for funding feel overwhelming or confusing? Want some top tips and regular reminders to help you get your application in on time and looking good?

The City of Ryde is running a six-week email-based grant writing e-course designed to be your virtual accountability buddy and help you take your applications to the next level! Once or twice a week you’ll receive an email with some general advice, links to some of our favourite resources and a reminder about upcoming deadlines.

Topics will include:

Finding funding
Getting organised
Grant writing
Budget writing
Diversifying your income
Requesting letters of support
Selecting and preparing artistic support material

KEY INFORMATION

Sign up here by 18 Jan 2021 to be included.

This course will be delivered as 10 emails sent out between 19 January and 24 Feb 2021.

It has been timed to support applications for project funding rounds with Australia Council and Create NSW closing in early March 2021.

However, the skills and tips in this course will be applicable for a wide range of creative grant applications.

WHO IS THIS PROGRAM FOR?

This program is suited to artists and creatives that have a project and are thinking about applying for funding. It might also be interesting to people who are looking to develop their grasp of the grant writing process and want to understand what would be involved in putting together an application.

I’M KEEN BUT I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHO OFFERS GRANTS

You can find out more about funding opportunities for artists and creatives here.

DISCLAIMER

This program will provide general advice only and link out to third-party references. We suggest you always call the funding body directly to ask questions in relation to your individual grant application.

PROFESSIONAL SKILLS FOR CREATIVES

This workshop is part of a series of free professionally run workshops teaching business and professional skills to creatives in the City of Ryde. These workshops are an opportunity to get expert advice and meet other local creatives.

You can see the full program at ryde.nsw.gov.au/Community/Arts-and-Culture/Professional-Skills-for-Creatives

Save Our Studios at Griffith University.

November 10, 2020 by Anthea Boesenberg Leave a Comment

What’s about to unfold at Queensland College of Art in Brisbane.

Griffith University is planning to “withdraw” all printmaking courses from its offerings from Jan 2021 as a part of its response to the Coronavirus pandemic. This is despite the viability of the print program even in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. By withdrawing these courses Griffith is able to declare all resources (staff and equipment) associated with the delivery of them “surplus to requirements”. Printmaking is one of four studios on the chopping block. Jewellery & Small Objects, Documentary Photo Practice and Commercial Photography are the other three. While the university is reducing its staff numbers by 8.3%, the losses in Fine Art and Photography will equate to a minimum loss of 45% of the teaching and technical staff. QCA staff were ambushed by the proposal and the rational for choosing Print, Jewellery & Small Objects studios remains obscured. Having been advised of these plans on Monday the 2nd of November we now have three weeks to respond.

As the last dedicated Printmaking program in QLD the detrimental impact on the printmaking and artists book communities here will be irretrievable, especially in the current tertiary education environment. The opportunity for emerging and established artists from these communities to develop the conceptual strength of their print practice together with the technical proficiency they need will be lost to Brisbane and Qld.

This is a repeat of what unfolded at James Cook University as Anneke Silver has shared in a post on the community facebook page established to build a response to Griffiths planned cuts. QCA print studios offer, Relief, Letterpress, Intaglio, Lithography, Silkscreening, Papermaking, artists books and many associated digital processes such as laser engraving.

QCA staff are planning our response. The Printmaking and broader art communities (student and public) have mobilised and are planning their response, see below.

An invitation – a call to action to prevent what Shasha Grishin has described as

1 damage to the whole structure of arts education in Australia,
2 an enormous blow to printmaking and artists books practice in Australia,
3 the irretrievable loss of the historical and successful Print(making) studios at QCA, the most important institutional printmaking workshop north of Sydney.

If you will – please;

sign the petition addressed to Griffith University council requesting this proposal be abandonded. – http://chng.it/L4NhmZnynR

Vale Robyn Waghorn

October 22, 2020 by Anthea Boesenberg 1 Comment

Laura Stark writes about the recent passing of Robyn Waghorn.

I have known Robyn for many years, living close by and belonging to a number of printmaking groups, we often shared rides to go to meetings. I admired her sense of purpose, the certainty and consistency with which she approached her work. She was a very private person but also generous and empathetic. Her artist’s statements were brief, bared back to essentials, unwavering in the certainty of her vision. She was always restrained and not given to self promotion.
In 2016 we had a joint exhibition at the Hazelhurst Arts Centre. Ruth Burgess opened the exhibition and in her beautifully expressed opening speech she referred to a comment on Robyn’s work made by Sasha Grishin, that it ‘was noted for a tragic dimension and a sense of loss and absence’.
She then went on to say ‘Using the subject of the Australian bushfires as the origins of her work, Robyn found that while flame is necessary for some species for regrowth, hope is expressed by the white lines and spaces symbolising regeneration and healing, (so much in keeping with Robyn’s own life as a nursing sister).’
Robyn qualified for an Honours degree in printmaking at the SCA. Her studies led her to the use of rich black relief prints. The sense of space these produced found its way into diverse books and images to become the central fugue in her work, tearing apart the conventional view of landscape.

We worked together on a print for the Sydney Printmakers exhibition ‘Collaboration’ in 2005, which, when I last saw it, was hanging in her home. I’m proud to have had the opportunity to have had that close contact with her and that, in that work, our mark making will always be linked.

Laura Stark Oct. 2020

Robyn Waghorn

Thea Weiss: Creative Responses to the Holocaust.

October 8, 2020 by Anthea Boesenberg Leave a Comment

The film Creative Responses to the Holocaust by Sarita Gold has been selected For several film awards and has been successful. The film features Thea Weiss’ 96 year old mother in law Lotte’s story of her internment in Auschwitz for 2.5 years, and Thea’s artistic response to it. You can watch the film on Thea’s website, here.

There will be an online presentation from the Sydney Jewish Museum at 7pm on Sunday 1st November in which Thea will talk about her role with the producer/director of the film, Sarita Gold, as well as the film being shown. https://sydneyjewishmuseum.com.au/shop/webinars/public/my-two-lives/

The Overwintering Project + PCA Membership

May 18, 2020 by Anthea Boesenberg Leave a Comment

Learn Something New Every Day #2 : Art21

March 28, 2020 by Anthea Boesenberg 1 Comment

Ellen Gallagher working on hand colouring a print.

Art21 is a celebrated global leader in presenting thought-provoking and sophisticated content about contemporary art, and the go-to place to learn first-hand from the artists of our time. A nonprofit organization, Art21’s mission is to inspire a more creative world through the works and words of contemporary artists.

Art21 provides unparalleled access to the artist’s voice to diverse audiences around the world, using the power of digital media to introduce millions of people to contemporary art and artists. For over two decades, Art21 has changed the paradigm for teaching and learning about the creative process.

In addition to its Peabody Award-winning PBS-broadcast television series Art in the Twenty-First Century, Art21 produces the digital film series New York Close Up and Extended Play; and special artist projects including the Peabody Award-winning feature William Kentridge: Anything Is Possible. Art21 also creates educational resources and professional development programs; annual public programming; an online publication featuring guest contributors; and a comprehensive website at Art21.org.

https://art21.org/watch/

Learn Something New Every Day.

March 26, 2020 by Anthea Boesenberg Leave a Comment

Louise Bourgeois
He Disappeared into Complete Silence

Louise Bourgeois
Les Trois Fees

Google Arts and Culture has virtual tours of galleries and exhibitions all over the world, as well as fascinating information about all kinds of things. If you are trapped at home and looking for something to do, you can travel virtually to MOMA in New York, or the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, or many other arts related sites, each with a range of information, images, classes and activities.

Go here to access the site, or you can download it from the App Store. Here is a link to the Collections.

Stopping Time: Material Prints 3000BCE to Now

February 15, 2020 by Anthea Boesenberg Leave a Comment

Material Prints 3000 BCE to Now at Newcastle Art Gallery.

29 February – 10 May 2020

14 days from now

10am to 5pm Tuesday to Sunday, 7 days during school holidays

STOPPING TIME: Material Prints 3000 BCE to Now expands on the definition of printmaking by bringing works of art together in thematic clusters, regardless of their period or place of production, collapsing the temporal distances between them and emphasising the dual power of material prints to embed or carry time and to stop time as we engage with them.

The exhibition extends well beyond the usual point of origin for printmaking in the fifteenth century when Johannes Gutenberg (1400-1468) invented the movable type printing press, to the perceived decline of printed imagery with the development of digital photography at the end of the twentieth century.

From ancient Mesopotamian images pressed in clay from cylinder seals to contemporary 3-D printing this exhibition positions traditional prints as part of a much larger constellation of printmaking. The timeless encounter with material prints can be described as “aesthetic time” (Keith Moxey Visual Time: The Image in History) but when artists attempt the synthetic transfer of ideas into matter and image it is more a process of collective cultural imagining and technological revelation rather than aestheticism.

Featuring key works of art from the Newcastle Art Gallery collection, STOPPING TIME also includes works of art from the Griffith University Art Museum along with several private collections and recent works of art by contemporary artists including Ali Bezer, Blair Coffey, Ryan Presley and Pamela See.

John COBURN
The 6th Day: God created Man 1977
screenprint on paper, edition 34/50
52.0 x 72.0cm
Purchased with assistance from the Visual Arts Board, Australia Council 1978
Newcastle Art Gallery collection
Courtesy the artist’s estate

Vale Bernhardine Mueller by Karen Ball and Denise Scholz Wulfing

February 13, 2020 by Anthea Boesenberg 6 Comments

Vale Bernhardine Mueller

To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

Bernhardine Mueller, who passed away in December 2019, is fondly remembered by the printmaking community as an inspirational artist, generous teacher, colleague and dear friend. She had the ability to inspire and nurture creativity in others while pursuing her own artistic journey. Each of her students received individual attention and art colleagues knew she was always available as a friendly, supportive listener. Bernhardine was a friend to so many people in numerous printmaking areas.

Bernhardine established the printmaking studio at Ku Ring Gai Art Centre and Lane Cove Centre House and taught at both for many years. As one of her students at KAC in 1990, I(Karen)was immediately enveloped in the warm, friendly atmosphere she created. Many of those students became lifelong friends of Bernhardine. She was very involved in Lane Cove Art Society winning many awards from there and other competitions for her prints, miniatures and artist books.

Bernhardine also held numerous workshops throughout NSW and Queensland, in particular Gunnedah and Mitchell School of Arts, Bathurst. These workshops introduced students to printmaking and became the foundation for burgeoning art careers. For many years Bernhardine enjoyed a creative partnership with teachers and secondary school students in the art studios at Masada College, one of whom was chosen for HSC Art Express exhibition.

As a long term member of Sydney Printmakers, Bernhardine instigated and participated in many exhibitions. She always welcomed and supported new members. Similarly, Bernhardine was a long time, loved member of The Australian Society of Miniature Art. Her dedication to printmaking endured even as she became increasingly unwell. Bernhardine curated an exhibition at Orange Regional Gallery in 2018 with a group of fellow printmaker colleagues connected by their use of Richard Swinburne’s etching presses. She continued to show her work in Sydney Printmakers and other group shows into 2019.

Bernhardine was a printmakers’ printmaker. Experimenting with the technique, over printing with multiple blocks, reprinting the same plate many times in different colours, collaging, cropping, hand-colouring, for ever on the search for the best result for that particular print. Her wit, humour and purposeful use of mixed metaphors for dramatic effect were very funny. This humour and love of words came out in her miniature etchings, playing on words, sayings and gently poking fun at people, society and art.

Bernhardine shared a love of Australian flora and fauna with me (Denise). This constant source of inspiration, in particular a love of birds, meant we exchanged sightings on Brush Turkey behaviour, Currawong antics, Magpie carols and the amazing character of the White Winged Choughs at her beloved son Michael’s place in the Capertee Valley.

It was an honour to know Bernhardine. Her life was full and creative but she always had time for her many friends. She seemed to know when someone needed encouragement or some words of wisdom. We will miss her but her light will shine on through all those she inspired.

Material Prints 3000 BCE to Now at Newcastle Art Gallery.

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