The art of wildflower walks: Understanding place through creative practice

It’s a sheer delight to share the publication of the journal article “The art of wildflower walks: Understanding place through creative practice” co-authored with Dr Sue Davis.

The article, published in the International Journal of Education Through Art, shares the embodied experience of walking and creative enquiry as means of informing and stimulating art and design processes and practices.

Stuart, M. & Davis, S. (2023), The art of wildflower walks: Understanding place through creative practice, International Journal of Education through Art, 19:2, pp. 213–21, https://doi.org/10.1386/eta_00127_3

Abstract:

Art and design processes and practices can inform and stimulate knowledge building in powerful ways. Artist/designer Marni Stuart and artist/curator Susan Davis have employed creative practice to inform their own seeing and knowing of the natural spaces that surround them in South East Queensland, Australia. Through art and design practice they seek to share ways for others to ‘see’, appreciate and value these natural habitats and wildflower heritage.

Colour wheel

I absolutely LOVED the idea of a personal colour wheel suggested by Lisa Solomon in her interview for Windowsill Chats.

I was a bit lost today, and the memory of this popped into my head and it immediately reignited my energy.

The idea is that you make a colour wheel out of all of your favourite colours. Your favourite red, your favourite green… so when I got into it I instantly hit a snag. What if I have 3 favourite greens and no favourite purples?

Well it’s my wheel and I can do what I want, so 3 greens it is!

Then there was one spot remaining. I knew it logically should be a purple, but I hadn’t included my favorite spring yellow, so it went in instead. Because, you know, my rules.

a desk featuring a lot of colour pens and a circle coloured in different colours

RMIT PhD Milestone 2 (half way)

Over the weekend I flew to Melbourne to deliver my second milestone for my PhD research through RMIT university.

This milestone marks the halfway point of my research. For this I submitted a summary of the work I’ve completed so far and delivered a presentation to a panel with a question and answer session.

After three years (part time) of work, it is wonderful to know that I passed the milestone. And I’m really excited to see where the research heads to from here.

Photograph by Thom Stuart. Kathleen McArthur Reserve, Post-fire

Walking-with: A study of the use of walking, noticing, observing, and drawing as method, in the creation of botanical as place in design and the unearthing of the notion of walking-with, through the lenses of phenomenology and ecofeminism.

ABSTRACT

This practice-based research explores the act of walking, noticing, observing, and drawing as method in the creation of botanicals in design through the lenses of phenomenology and ecofeminism.

Through this research a series of bushwalks alone or accompanied by artists, makers and researchers tred the path of inquiry through the habitat of the Wallum coastal heathland in Southern Queensland and Northern New South Wales. These walks have informed depictions of botanicals endemic to this habitat for a surface patterning practice.

In doing so this research asks the question; how has observation and walking as method been explored in my surface patterning practice to contribute to the notion of walking-with, a method of walking alongside others in real or imagined spaces, as a means of informing, examining, and sharing experience.