Weaving Stories of Boodja

Makuru, the season with the coldest and wettest conditions… was living up to its Noongar name. The wind and rain made us all glad to be indoors again for our 10^th Weaving Stories of Boodja workshop, Exploring Shape & Screen Printing.

The children excitedly entered the room to gaze upon the colourful, textured, lichen-like prints that were made in the previous workshop.

They were then prompted to select an image of native fauna that they liked the shape of. Next, they were instructed to cut out the silhouette of the animal or insect they selected and cut out a habitat or a playful patterned surround.

The children carefully drew or traced images of native flora, cut them out, and arranged them to create their compositions. One by one they lined up to start the screen printing magic!

For almost all the children, it was their first experience with screen printing. Sighs of wonderment and exclamations of surprise were heard throughout process… with each pull of paint on the screen and the lifting of the screen from the paper to reveal many amazing, carefully created master pieces!

Here are some of the wonderful artworks created below.

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We have reached the halfway point in our programme and encourage you to reflect on our exploration so far. From way back in early March – Bunuru, with our Journey Sticks, Sun Prints, Branch Weaving and Leaf Mono Printing with our first guest artist, Francesco Geronazzo. In April – Djeran, we Connected with Boodja and Wardandi Elder Viviane Brockman, Wardandi Custodian Mitchella Hutchins and guest land artist Elaine Clocherty to create our giant Tawny Frogmouth in the Cowaramup Community Garden. Then we got colourful and creative doing fun Bird Collages whilst learning about our native birds with Peta Lierich from Nature Conservation Margaret River. The month of May, which is still Djeran, saw us exploring Patterns in Nature and making imprints with things foraged from the bush, then Weaving insects with Paper and creating Textures in Nature with salt and rice. It is quite an amazing body of work the children have accumulated so far. You can take a look back in our Blog Archive on our website for more musings on our journey thus far.

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Weaving Stories of Boodja is taking a break for the rest of Makuru and winter school holidays to chase the sun further north. See you all back in Djilba – August, with some more fun, and probably messy, creative workshops.

Much love, Cara & Michelle xx