Where the work is going

My sculptural practice is evolving, and it's the part of my studio life I'm most excited about. I'm bringing everything I've learned across the disciplines into single pieces.

 

My current project is ballerinas — torsos and bodies built in ceramic, then dressed in op-shop clothing that I cut apart and remake into dancing costumes. Some have separate ceramic limbs, positioned into ballet poses. Very few artists have gone down this road, and I'm still finding out where it leads.

 

I don't work from reference photos. I squish my hands around a block of clay and stop when the clay tells me to stop.

It started with sandwich paper

I taught myself to draw when I was six, sketching the models in the Vogue dressmaking pattern books my mum bought, on sheets of sandwich paper. Then I moved to my grandmother's treadle sewing machine — which I still keep in my hallway as furniture.

 

At sixteen I left home to study design and work at Ahern's department store. Ahern's sponsored my competition entries on tours around Australia and displayed my graduating designs in the fabric department. I won a string of awards as a student and was named Dux of the Year.

 

After design school I became a high-end couture bridal designer under the label Allure Couture, winning awards for contemporary bridal design. Twenty years ago, at a bridal show, a groom-to-be told his partner my wedding gowns looked like nighties. Now just about every second wedding gown is a bias-cut satin slip.

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Cairns, and the pivot

When we moved to Queensland for my husband's work, the bridal sewing didn't follow — but the art did. I went from making $6,000 wedding gowns to people baulking at $15 for a hem. I adapted, or I didn't work.

 

Cairns turned out to have a serious art culture. I enter competitions constantly, and RADF grants from Cairns Regional Council and the Queensland Government have helped establish the practice.

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Paper Fashionistas

In 2019 I began drawing Fashion on the Field illustrations at the Cairns Cup Carnival. It has since grown to the Cairns Amateurs, Laura Races Rodeo, Charters Towers Amateurs, The Benson Hotel and the Brisbane Spring Carnival.

 

I still do this, and I still love it — hand-delivering an illustration and watching someone's face when they see themselves on paper. My followers named these drawings 'Paper Fashionistas', and the name stuck.

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Recognition

• 2025 — RADF grant, Language of Surfaces

• 2025 — Finalist, Melting Pot, Cairns Courthouse Gallery (Cairns Friendship Gardens, Angelica)

• 2025 — Temptation, Thresholds exhibition, NorthSite Gallery

• 2024 — Finalist, Cairns Art Gallery Annual (Shima)

• 2022 — Finalist and published artist, Per Tuckers Ceramic Competition

• 2020–21 — Top 10, Emerging Designer Awards, Millinery Awards

• 2019 — Millinery Awards, Flemington, Oaks Day

 

Across thirty years and several disciplines, roughly $30,500 in prize money and grants.

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