Whanganui Artists Open Studios Article from the Chronicle

Complimentary: Leonie Sharp (left) and Carmen Simmonds are combining their works in one studio for this years' Artists Open Studios. Photo / Photo / Tracey Grant 140311wctgopen Studios02

Fellow artists, friends and collaborators Carmen Simmonds and Leonie Sharp will be showing their works off under the same roof this year.

The pair have collaborated on works in the past, including making a wearable glass, feather, wire and wood dress. With both of them having studios on the outskirts of town, it was more convenient this year to hold their open studios together, they say.

The pair will be showing their works in Simmonds' "Glencarichan Studio", on Blueskin Road.

Sharp said they loved each others' work, and it was complimentary, sharing a "colonial" theme. But their work was also very different, so they were never in competition with each other.

Simmonds said she studied a Bachelor of Fine Arts at Whanganui UCOL, where she got the opportunity to try a little of everything, before being "seduced" by glass.

If you have a go, you get really addicted, she said.

Simmonds said she liked to make glass that looked like fabric, using real materials as her mould.

"It's like sewing and dress making, except in glass."

Her works included the popular and collectable "lolly frocks", kewpie doll dresses, and doily dresses all made out of multicoloured glass.

She would be taking registrations of interest for a glass making class during the open studios, she said.

Sharp's work includes three different lines, her swatches, woven kites and her whakapapa series, based on traditional Maori weaving methods.

Sharp said she was lucky to learn traditional weaving from a family in Wairoa eight years ago, and had "gone off in tangents" from there.

The swatches, were a "flight of fancy", incorporating the colour and texture of feathers into a small swatch, reminiscent of traditional weaving.

She likened them to a fabric swatch a designer would show to a client. In the whakapapa series, Sharp said she was interested in the concept of lineage and the question of "how much Maori" a person was.

People weren't "just" Maori or Chinese, most people were mixed, and she wanted to show all of those parts, she said.

She was looking for mixed race Maori "muses" to create a weaving from, incorporating pieces of their lineage with iconic materials to create a picture of the layers that made up who they are. The final works would go on display at an exhibition.