AGM
On the 28th of October, The HEIA Annual General Meeting was hosted at Beltana House, the home and studio of Adelaide’s very own Textile Artist, Cheryl Bridgart. Our members were in awe of her beautiful studio/house, -once a stable but now a beautiful collective gallery. From eclectic furnishings with rainbows and zebra print to classical farm machinery from their family farm, we were delighted to be welcomed with morning tea, followed by fresh platters of a Mediterranean lunch and then treated to some decadent European patisserie treats for dessert!
Cheryl’s incredible canvases with millions of stitches, creating colourful narratives of creative expression about nature, portraits and dreams kept us all wondering, with thousands of hours poured into this gallery alone, how does she get it all done?!
Cheryl began sewing at age 5, is self-taught, and in her youth sewed all her clothes, especially for going out dancing with friends. Even now she only wears her own clothing, drafts her own patterns and sells her wearable art and has exhibited across Australia and the world since 2010. Prior to that she was a Visual Arts Teacher at St Andrew’s Primary school for ten years.
Cheryl was incredibly generous, sharing with us all her techniques and styles, as she believes there is no point hiding her secrets as she is always moving on to new techniques and styles and adapting to new technology and where textiles is going next – a valuable point indeed!
Cheryl makes a point in showing us that she never sketches on the fabric first (preferably 10 ounce canvas or denim) but instead draws her ideas on a separate page, usually a recording of her dreams which she then brings to life. She then begins to sew, free-motion without a hoop and literally sketches out her design with a light coloured thread to begin, and then –just like real sketching, when she is happy with her lines and shapes she then goes back over them and darkens them, cementing her design darker, with shading and various colours. Cheryl also advises against using adhesive interfacings or any fabric glue as unfortunately with time, all glues begin to rot the fabric underneath. So instead she sews her interfacing to the garment lapels, in true couture style.
We thank Cheryl and her husband for their generosity in being such gracious hosts, and for inspiring us to remember to invest in inquiry through play with our students, where experimentation and learning through questioning can bring about some great creative discoveries.
Our AGM provided the opportunity for new nominees to join the Executive Committee. We would like to thank Execs Fern and Carole for all their contributions, as they step back for 2018 due to other commitments.
We thank our continuing Exec Members: Narelle, Denise, Robyn, Samantha, Sarah, Belinda. We hope our continued mission to support and empower Home Economists goes from strength to strength and look forward to meeting more future members, teacher graduates and home economists along our journey.
We would also like to welcome another HEIA SA Patron, Julie Taylor, for her dedicated years of contribution to HEIA members and Home Economics Teachers.
BELINDA’S HEIA QUEENSLAND CONFERENCE REPORT
Our newest executive member, Belinda Zanello (graduate Home Ec teacher of 2017) was granted sponsorship this year to attend the HEIA(Q) conference at the Brisbane Convention Centre in August this year.
Belinda eagerly extracted as much information from the conference as possible, recommending the App ‘Notability’ to record audio from each session, but also take photos and written/typed notes from the slideshows.
Belinda attended three workshops: ‘Aligning Assessment: Do you have the evidence?’, ‘Fostering Critical Thinkers’ and ‘Critical Inquirers and ‘Decorating with Electroluminescent Wire’
The keynote speakers were Jane Caro (author & social commentator) and Dr Gie Liem (researcher & food sensory scientist). To see Belinda’s PowerPoint presentation including all the information and photos/videos, please check back on our HEIA SA website, under ‘resources’ in the coming weeks.
