Ready-a-Gocco

The Cat Rabbit exhibit
Outré Gallery

     I don't often go into the city, but when I do... I cannot pass up an opportunity to visit Outré Gallery. Today was just one of those days. Cat Rabbit had an exhibit at Outré and being that it was the last day, with daughter in hand, I took a proton pill, put on my helmet and battled the traffic.

    It was worth dealing with infrastructure just to visit Outré. It has been my cultural Mecca for close to twenty years. Many of my favourite artists are represented by this gallery. And Cat Rabbit is one of those artists.

    Cat Rabbit's playful exhibit is something of an ode to gocco – a now defunct home based Japanese screen printing system, which ironically is very popular amongst the artists and crafters that I like to follow.

    In Cat's very own Cat Rabbity way she takes mundane, everyday items and makes them fun by turning them into little felt crafted pieces. This is simple and genius! And I love it! Naturally I couldn't leave without picking up a limited edition Gocco: Play Date book. Now I will never forget this exhibit-exhibit.

    Thanks Cat! Can hardly wait to see what you create next.

    To find out more about the very sweet Cat Rabbit simply go to –

www.catrabbit.com.au

The Cat Rabbit exhibit
Outré Gallery

The Cat Rabbit exhibit
Outré Gallery

Cat Rabbit & Sausage Dogs

    Today I took the girls for a train ride into the city. It was a beautiful day for it, and I wouldn't even let a squished banana [gross!] mar the day. We visited NGV to say hello to Cat Rabbit in the Great Hall [I just love saying that – Great Hall], who was running a workshop: Dog Mechanics with Soft Stories. The girls sat down and made their own paper sausage dogs and got to admire a hilarious and colourful sausage dog factory which was designed and built by Cat Rabbit and Isobel Knowles.

© Melissa Gaggiano

    This was followed by a roam into the NGV atelier, which housed the Viktor & Rolf for Kids event. The girls sat down and made their own fashion art using a variety of paper materials, staples and a hole puncher. I couldn't help myself! I had to sit down and join the fun. I made a hat that would have made Isabella Blow rather proud. Gwen proudly wore the hat for me and paraded it for the rest of our city trip. Perhaps I missed my calling as a milliner.

     Before heading off to eat lunch [prepared Vegemite and peanut butter sandwiches] I chose a kids fashion activity book from the Viktor & Rolf souvenir shop. On the train ride home I read some of the book to the girls. Going to have some rainy day fun with the girls doing the activities in this book.

© Melissa Gaggiano

    I look forward to returning to NGV to visit the main Viktor & Rolf exhibit.

    The Cat Rabbit workshop will continue to Thursday this week. If you're going to be in the city with the kids and looking for free fun NGV is a great place to go. The paper crafting is good, quiet fun, and the sausage factory on display is worth a good long stare. If you can't make it you can check out this video of the factory.

Cat Rabbit Appreciation Hour

© Cat Rabbit

    For those who have been following this blog you will know that I took the family to the latest Cat Rabbit exhibit at Tinning Street Presents.

© Cat Rabbit

    The Cat Rabbit experience has had a massive influence in our lives the past few years. As a doll maker my own technical skills improve from studying the work of other textile artists such as Cat. More than that, I am able to share that passion with my kids, who in turn are inspired and want to make things for themselves. It's a wonderful little craft revolution that is taking place in my home.

© Cat Rabbit

    Once I bought a copy of Owl Know How, a book by Cat Rabbit and Isobel Knowles, which came with a pattern for making a basic Cat Rabbit designed owl. So sometime today, my youngest is going to make her little owl.

    My eldest wrote a little something about the Cat Rabbit excursion…

© Gwen

    

Keeping Cat Rabbit In Mind

Cat Rabbit: Kept in Mind
Tinning Street Presents exhibit

    Today I took the family to Tinning Street Presents gallery to check out Cat Rabbit's textile exhibit Kept in Mind. It was a long trip for us, coming far from the other side of the city, and most definitely worth the hike.

    Cat Rabbit created a variety of art dolls, wall pieces and charms reminiscent of things from her past - books, breakfasts, trips to Japan. There are familiar elements with her work, such as the cat dolls. Cat Rabbit has a real life cat who is both parts companion and muse, so his face appears in much of her work.

    The peach people are a relatively new development in Cat Rabbit's doll making and are constructed with a combination of hand stitched felt and needle felting. Cat Rabbit has branched out into needle felting this past year, and this works very well with her sculpting the faces. The peach faces look like a coloured illustration as a result.

    The art dolls are not complete without clothes and accessories. I love the fact that she thinks of the small details. None of us are complete without our bags and wallets filled with stuff that make up our lives, and the same goes for her big-little animal people.

For more information about Cat Rabbit you can find her here or on Facebook.

Cat Rabbit: Kept in Mind
Tinning Street Presents exhibit

Cat Rabbit: Kept in Mind
Tinning Street Presents exhibit

Cat Rabbit: Kept in Mind
Tinning Street Presents exhibit

Cat Rabbit: Kept in Mind
Tinning Street Presents exhibit

Cat Rabbit: Kept in Mind
Tinning Street Presents exhibit

Cat Rabbit: Kept in Mind
Tinning Street Presents exhibit

Cat Rabbit: Kept in Mind
Tinning Street Presents exhibit

Cat Rabbit: Kept in Mind
Tinning Street Presents exhibit

Cat Rabbit: Kept in Mind
Tinning Street Presents exhibit

Hiné Mizushima

    A couple of weekend's ago I took the kids for a train ride into the city. We stopped off a magic shop, Outre Gallery, Macca's run, and finished up with a wander round an exhibition at the City Library.

    The exhibition 'Playful', as curated by Sophia Cai was celebrating National Youth Week, and incorporated the work of many wonderful artists. This included two personal favourites of mine - Evie Barrow and Cat Rabbit. I also came to fall in love with the art of Hiné Mizushima.

    Hiné made these cute little octopi sitting atop replica pez dispensers. After a little research, I found Hiné's online site and I am in honest raptures over the sweetness and intricate detail of her work. By the look of things she is all kinds of creative.

© Hiné Mizushima

Check out Hiné Mizushima:
www.hinemizushima.com
www.etsy.com/shop/hine
society6.com/hine

Too Much For Turtle & Gwen

    On a true Autumn night the family took a train into the city. We attended the book launch of Too Much For Turtle - a book by Cat Rabbit and Isobel Knowles. We met the creative duo at Captains of Industry. It was all so exciting getting to meet them, but I just wanted to invite them home for a coffee, biscuit and a chat.

    By the way Too Much For Turtle is not the first collaboration between Cat and Isobel. Their first book is Owl Know How, which I've been reading to my girls for a couple of years now. We love that book. But I digress… because tonight is about shy turtles.

    Speaking of shy turtles, Gwen wanted to talk with Cat and Isobel, but when it came time for it she went all shy and couldn't talk or even look at them. I had to be her thought translator. 

    I took the opportunity to photograph the characters and sets used in Too Much For Turtle . It was brilliant getting up close and seeing what went into the production of this book. Check out photos from the family journey and the book launch...

    Looking forward to buying Too Much For Turtle in a short while.

Fab Finds 5

And now for my fab finds. Take it away... Fab Finds.


    Cat Rabbit, one of my favourite Australian artisans, last year collaborated with Isobel Knowles to create a sausage dog installation. It is a gorgeous design which will immediately make you go 'Awwwww! Cute' and 'Oh my god! I'm never eating a sausage for the rest of existence'. For those of us who missed the original installation we have this sweet video to enjoy...


    This is something of an oldie. It is such a brilliantly useful share, so that is exactly what I am going to do. Share. Another one of my favourite crafty bloggers, Jennie [A Little Vintage Doll, makes unique dolls via a combination of paint, hand and machine sewing. What makes her machine sewing so unique is her drawing style. You see Jennie is able to make her sewing machine stitch in an organic, doodly hand drawn way. A while back Jennie provided an instruction guide on her blog on just how to do this. Click here to find out more on this one. Drawing with a sewing machine! I'm telling you, it is up there with unicorns and rainbow lamas.

© Jennie - A Little Vintage Doll

    I don't own a smartphone or a pad so was a little disappointed [Please! No tears. Really, I'll survive] in not being able to get in on the instagram trend. Coz wow! Instagramers get to have fun with their quick snaps by adding creative filters. Wanting to have a little fun of my own without buying a mobile phone I went searching for a program that would allow me to use these fun filters from the comfort of my computer. I didn't have far to look because the first product in my search that came up was Pixlr-o-matic. This is a visually fun package, easy to use and gives you the choice to use online or even download [for free]. I am going to make good use of Pixlr-o-matic during those blah moments.

Melissa Gaggiano Photography + Pixlr-o-matic = fun fun fun

What Am I Up To?

No time to talk. Just so many things I want to do before I go to bed. But I did want to show you what I am working on this week. I am making an owl, following a pattern that comes with the Owl Know How picture book. The picture book was a project put together by Cat Rabbit and Isobel Knowles. I love this book. It is so sweet and my eldest loves hearing me read it to her.

Photography by Melissa Gaggiano.