Thrive Youth Arts Festival at the Empire Theatre Toowoomba is one of my absolute favourite community events. There is such a beautiful mix of families gathering together together to engage in the arts for and with their children. Set amongst the backdrop that is the heritage Empire Theatre itself, with the sun shining and chatter of the kids the vibes are truly magical. 

This year it felt right bringing the BIRDS along for the ride as they accompanied the festival theme for 2024 beautifully. I truly love to create space for authentic uninhibited sensory exploration that is temporal mark making.  The process really does break down some of our personal barriers and struggles we may have with making art publicly, and privately. 

Watching people of all ages, genders, ethnicities and backgrounds happily pick up a piece of chalk and scratch some colour onto the pieces was awesome, if I am being honest. 
To accompany the BIRDS I also created (with the assistance of the one and only Aaron Stalling) a set of transparent easels. Created or more assembled from a series of repurposed found objects I loved the idea of peering through and double sided collaborative artworks. Using classic poster paint that was washed both thoroughly and not so thoroughly throughout the festival had a lot of our youngest artists heading straight to the surface. Having the easels at their eyeline was really important for me, often art is made and displayed for taller eyes, but throughout the festival I saw many small children run for the colourful panels with parents in chase only to discover what had caught their eye when they were immediately in front of it. 

The concentration of thought was visually noted on their faces as they worked their way around the panel. Depending on the space available they would make their own fresh designs or begin to place with colour mixing and layering adding to already existing painted areas. 

As always being amongst them and also watching everyone create together had my own mind ticking over new and other ways to facilitate community arts projects in the future.

When the team at Empire reached out and asked, 'hey would you be insterested in create a Spring design for our windows?' I was of course going to say yes! I love any opportunity to leave a splash of colour and being spring themed with a prompt, critters, insects was the obvious choice for me. 
The ever present and sometimes overlooked classic spring partner. I instantly thought about the joy that comes from bending down to inspect the colourful blooms only to discover a bee buzzing through the same patch. I've watched countless times someone bent over trying to capture the perfect photo of the quickly moving critter. 

I have such a love of drawing and painting insects, they lend so naturally to to colour blocking, patterns and compartmentising. All the things that make my brain tickle with joy when I am in the thick of the creative process. 

Painting pubically is also one of my favourite ways to connect with community, with many people stopping by to ask questions, cracks a joke or two (you missed a spot is always a classic) and to just stop for a moment and watch. 

I had many questions this time about my mark up process. I experienced a far amount of anxiety this time around, not because of my ability to actually draw or scale the objects but more so working with my body and not against it. With the weather warming up, the scale of the pieces and the need to hold my arm vertical for so long I was really mindful about my ability  to even finish the pieces with my chronic health condititions. Blood pooling and draining is a major consideration in my life so I needed a way to get the designs up quickly and accurately. A projector or doodle grid really wasn't going to work thanks to the surface being glass. And then thank you lightbulb moment, it's glass! I took my digital drawings I created on my tablet and turned them into budget posters, and thanks to the wonder that is an at home printer, tape and bluetac what would have taken twice the time was done in no time. Thanks technology. 

The windows will be on display till the first week of October, so please swing by grab a selfie and enjoy the colour! And why not pop into a show at the theatre!