The Treasury workshop at Zeally and Cliff, Torquay.

Tassel making at The Treasury workshop!

In a little beach town called Torquay lives a gorgeous little workshop named Zeally and Cliff. I recently delivered a full-day workshop here and had a delightful day with the ladies who came to learn how to fix and re-create their old jewellery.

Here’s what some of the students had to say about the workshop:

“I learnt some great skills and Emma is a very lovely, relaxed and patient tutor and was generous in sharing her skills. A warm and cosy room” Sarah, Jan Juc.

“Thought [it was] fantastic from start to finish, great, thoroughly enjoyed the day. Emma explained things really well…. it was great to be shown and then do it myself. I was also inspired by what everybody else was making.” Deb, Parkdale.

Zeally and Cliff was a beautiful place to teach; the workshop room was sunny and open, and our host Kathryn is one of the loveliest people you’ll meet. If you’re in the area, I recommend checking them out!

Do Re Me + The Treasury jewellery workshop

If you haven’t yet heard of Do Re Me it’s time to get with the program. The Craft Cubed festival program that is! Do Re Me has created a festival within a festival; ‘Share the Love’ is a celebration of all things crafty with a host of fantastic workshops and creative happenings.

Last Saturday I hosted a bumper four-hour edition of The Treasury at Do Re Me headquarters in Elsternwick. Incorporating a shop and a workshop area, visiting Do Re Me on a grey winter’s afternoon is like walking into a rosewater-frosted cupcake that has just come out of the oven – all warm and tasty, and filled with sweetness and light!

Workshopping designs using old jewellery

These gorgeous pendants were made by an 11 year old who had carefully selected each trinket to represent the person who was to receive the necklace as a gift!

How the Light Gets In – A collaborative exhibition of contemporary jewellery

Artists from L to R: Nicholas Jones, Ellie Mücke, Kate Tucker

I’ve collaborated with a collection of Melbourne’s most talented artists to bring together this exhibition. Each artist began with a pair of earrings and a necklace designed by me. Together we worked to re-imagine them, incorporating their skills, aesthetics and materials to articulate and illuminate new ideas, new feelings and new perspectives.

Participating artists: Clare James, Nicholas Jones, Chaco Kato, Ellie Mücke, Tai Snaith, Kate Tucker, Beck Wheeler.

 When: Opening 6-8pm, Tue 7 Aug 2012
Where: e.g. etal,167 Flinders Lane,Melbourne

Exhibition runs 6-18 Aug 2012

The Treasury at the Sustainable Living Festival

The Treasury will be giving three free workshops at the Sustainable Living Festival this Saturday!

We’ll be putting on a taster for those interested in fixing, tweeking or re-imagining their old jewellery.

Workshops will be running from 3 to 6pm at ‘Under the Gums’, Birrarung Marr.

For more information check out the Sustainable Living Festival guide or email SLF to make a booking.

Kicking off  this Friday is also the Melbourne Bikefest.

As a lover of art and culture, who uses a bike to just generally ‘get around’, I’m pretty excited about the festival program this year.  Of particular interest is the Bikefest Bike Runway which will be showcasing local designers and fashionistas alongside their wheels of steel.

See you there!

Arty repairs and free fixes!

I stumbled across this guy as I was Googling The Repair Workshops to make sure we were at the top of the list (don’t judge me), and oh how I smiled for the joys of being alive and finding kindred spirits over the other side of the world!

Repair by Roland Roos

Roland Roos embarked on a two-year long project (2008-2010) where he fixed things in the public sphere.

“Each repair is intended to restore a particular detail to its pre-damaged state. Before and after the repair a photograph is taken of the unsolicited assignment. The photo taken before the repair is the only existing document of the damaged objects and thus becomes a unicum. All of these unicum photos are on sale for 320CHF each which is the average amount of money that is spent for one repair.”

Jan Vormann is another artist worthy of my ‘smile and sigh’ award for awesomeness – he spent three years travelling the world fixing crumbling walls and monuments with Lego.

Jan Vormann's repair work

Jan says “My work draws attention to the smallest parts of our cities that are falling apart because of the brightness of the Lego.”

I also came across Juliana Santacruz Herrera who has taken it upon herself to fix the sidewalks of Paris with brightly coloured coiled fabric – these are so beautiful and so exciting, I think the blog I found it on sums it up quite nicely; I’m Jealous of Juliana Santacruz Herrera!

Juliana Santacruz Herrera's Repaired Sidewalks of Paris

On a more practical level (though far less beautiful) are these free bike repair stations set up in Cambridge as part of a program to encourage more people to ride bikes. I’d like to see the City of Melbourne set some of these up next to the Melbourne Bike Share stations around Melbourne – anyone agree?!

Free Bike Repair Stations in Cambridge

The Repair Workshops featured in Green Magazine!

I’m so excited to anounce that Green Magazine (one of my favourite mags!) has profiled our project The Repair Workshops in this month’s issue.

This is also a great time to remind you to register your items to be repaired by our amazing collaborators over the weekend of  the 30th and 31st of July.

Speaking of collaborators, here we are!

Photo byJo Duck

Four weeks to go until the project and there’s a lot of work still to be done. We’ve been making regular visits to Vinnies and the Brotherhood to sift through their skips and  pick out the exciting bits (stuff otherwise destined to landfill) to use in our closed workshops in the week leading up to our big weekend. The fixed and re-imagined pieces made during this closed collaboration will then be on display and sold in a live auction with all proceeds going to the good people at Environment Victoria. I must say the insight i’ve gained through these visits to the opshops has really opened my eyes to what I perceive to be a very large waste problem, with the charities coping the full brunt of it. Each week they are forced to spend an average of $400 dealing with the removal of other people’s junk. I think its safe to say that most people have good intentions when dropping off stuff to charities – they think “this kettle just needs a bit of a clean and it’ll come up great” or “This table is a classic, all it needs is a fixed leg” – but unfortunately this line of thinking leads to the donated item having to be sent straight to landfill, as the charities don’t have the space, the people-power, the time or the tools/means to store, clean or fix everything that they get donated. As a natural born hoarder, and as someone who can see the beauty in almost anything, seeing all this amazing stuff go to landfill just kills me. As I said, the problem is LARGE and feeds into even bigger issues of over-consumption and they way we are geared towards a largely throw-away society, but we CAN be part of the solution. We can start by thinking twice about what we are giving away to charity and why. If you wouldn’t offer it to your best friend, then the charity probably doesn’t want it either. WASH things before you drop them off, fix the things you can and ALWAYS drop them off within business hours because as soon as they’re rained on they’re usually ruined.

Fhewf, I better leave it there, I have things to fix – and there’s only four weeks to go……

The Treasury on Fringe Lane Channel 31

Some time during the middle of last year, a lovely lady named Christina Laria got in touch with me to ask if she could do a short documentary on The Treasury. I had my reservations as, The Treasury was still in its infancy, but in the end I thought ‘why not?’, its not every day you get an offer like  this. And what a lovely thing it is to see this version of The Treasury suspended in time. We’ve come a long way since then, but I’ll hope you’ll enjoying watching this version of The Treasury jewellery fixing workshops as they were in 2010.

The Repair Workshops – Get Involved!

Wow, things are moving so quickly with The Repair Workshops – I feel like it was just yesterday I was dreaming of the possibility of putting on a massive, all-in version of The Treasury. And here it is, we’ve booked our venue, we’ve set the dates, we’ve got an amazing group of artists and technicians collaborating with us, and we’re now ready for you to REGISTER your broken items to bring along and get fixed!     –    My how time flies!

The Repair Workshops – A two-day open exploration into the idea of ‘repair’, inviting the public to bring along broken items to fix and re-create into something useful and possibly wonderful. Come and see us on the 30th and 31st of July at Donkey Wheel House, as part of the State of Design Festival 2011.

Black Finch presents a new collection of work by Emma Grace

Black Finch presents a new collection of work by Emma Grace

3rd – 17th December 2008
Opening 2nd December, 6 – 9 pm
110 High Street Northcote, 3070
Melbourne, Australia.

Photography by Jo Duck

Collection: EgSquared

COLLECTION
EgSquared

The ‘Square series’ retails at:
GeorgieLove

Autumn Brooch
recycled materials