Artisans In The Park
Sydney Morning Herald
Thursday October 26, 2006
The Royal Botanic Gardens will be bursting with creativity as Sydney's craftiest artists exhibit their work.
Surrounded by a swarm of steel dragonflies, two metal parrots with huge wingspans and an abstract snail shape with steel flowers bursting out like a horn of plenty, sculptor Ulric Steiner stands outside a work shed filled with benches, vices and anvils. His steel creatures' eyes are made of glass, pearl and amethyst. There are bird of paradise (strelitzias) made of steel and a small flock of steel Japanese herons. Some sculptures are placed on sandstone blocks. An oxy torch has been used to heat the steel to refract sunlight as colour.A kookaburra laughs just as white-bearded Steiner pronounces the name of the town where he grew up - the French-speaking village of Cormoret in largely German-speaking Bern, the canton that leads Switzerland's watchmaking industry.As a young man, Steiner, who trained as an engineer, was determined to travel. He built himself an 11-metre steel ketch and spent four years sailing the world. He's fairly matter of fact about this, as though every young man builds a boat and gets on with circumnavigating the globe. He sailed from the Caribbean to Pittwater in 1976. Here, he met an Australian-born teacher, Anne, who was to become his wife, so he decided to stay.For 17 years he has made a full-time living as a sculptor and will be among those featured in the annual Artisans in the Gardens exhibition, which will be opened tomorrow night by Maggie Tabberer. The exhibition will run from Saturday until November 5 at the Royal Botanic Gardens' Lion Gate Lodge, off Mrs Macquaries Road.Steiner's stand-out piece is a pair of life-sized stainless-steel thylacines. One appears to be sniffing the other. Both have copper-plated backs. The artist had been moved when he saw 1933 footage of the last recorded Tasmanian tiger filmed at Hobart Zoo. "It's so sad, how clumsy we are," he says of the thylacine's end. "It's terrible that the last one was incarcerated like that."Steiner has become passionate about his adopted homeland's fauna. "We should promote the bilby instead of the Easter bunny," he says. Perhaps that will be Steiner's next piece. He is unlikely to go back to making French garden seats, which never sold as well.If Steiner's hard, polished steel sculptures represent the masculine artisan slaving away on his anvil, Robyn Kennedy's decorative and feminine collage art is something quite different.The Willoughby artist also will feature in Artisans in the Garden, exhibiting delicately patterned textiles she has bartered for in Rajasthani bazaars and other exotic markets. She combines hand-woven patterned cloth, including pieces from discarded Indian wedding dresses, with gold thread and feathers. "I like the idea that the material is old and worn and has been used in weddings and celebrations," Kennedy says. "There are stories behind the cloth."Her artistic career began in 1991 when the interior design company she was working for decided to clean up its samples library. Kennedy rescued the material from the rubbish and began making miniature artworks, progressing to bigger, Oriental-style pieces. Her use of tools is inventive, including metal plaque scrapers from the collection of her dentist husband, Gary.Kennedy says she has always had an eye for detail, "but I think it's human to be attracted to metallic and shiny things. I was always interested in interiors but I just fell into doing this."Kennedy conducts classes at home for small groups wanting to learn her techniques. She can be contacted about next year's courses at kennedyrj@bigpond.com.Entry into the Artisans in the Garden exhibition is free, with all works on sale. Tickets for the opening party tomorrow night, which runs from 6pm to 8pm, are available from the Friends of the Gardens' office, $30 members, $35 non-members. Phone 9231 8182 or see www.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/friends.
© 2006 Sydney Morning Herald