WEAVER, Kelly Leonard, has been crafting on and off for decades, and traces the threads her life work back to one serendipitous encounter while studying at art college in the 1970s.
“When I was a teenager at art college, I just happened to meet the right person as a weaving teacher,” she said.
“At this time studying was free under [Gough] Whitlam, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to afford it.”
The right person was Marcella Hempel, a German master weaver who emigrated to Australia in the 1950s.
A student of one of the Bauhaus school’s most esteemed designers, Hempel bought with her a formidable design lineage and technical yet philosophical approach to weaving that she imparted on Leonard.
“I was lucky to meet her at Riverina College of Advanced Education, now Charles Sturt University,” she said.
“At the time there were only three people in our workshop, taking weaving as a major. So we had her undivided attention.”
Hempel’s influence extended beyond technique.
“She imparted a philosophy of weaving, which is really like a philosophy of life,” Leonard said.
Leonard said learning from a student of Bauhaus meant that her lineage now traces back to the Bauhaus movement too.
“As I get older I recognise the value for that,” she said.
Her interest in weaving and it’s origin, has led her to take part in residencies across the globe.
In Laos, Leonard learned from locals who made silk.
“I did a residency in 2007 in Laos to a silk farm in this really remote region,” she said.
“I spent some time on natural dye, silk production, looking after silkworms, chopping up mulberry leaves.”
Back home in Broken Hill, she exhibited work in last year’s Pro Hart Exhibition at the City Art Gallery that used bell wire.
“The weaving I made from Broken Hill bell wire,” she said.
“Which is used in explosive underground in the mines. I did a smaller version of that that went to the State Parliament exhibition in Sydney.”
Though she’s taken breaks from weaving over the years to pursue a career as a chef, she’s packed up her enormous loom and brought it with her wherever she’s moved.
“I moved around a lot for study or work,” she said.“But where I’ve gone I’ve packed up the loom and taken it with me.”
During last year’s power outages Leonard said using such an old medium to make art became a blessing.
“I was completely self-sufficient, because I’m using equipment that doesn’t require electricity,” she said.
Though she now spends her time split between jewellery and scarf making, she said she has a lifelong fascination with materials and structure that continues to inform her practice.
“The interest in materials and structure, whatever the art form is, that’s always really attractive to me,” she said.
“Whether it’s weaving, or more recently, jewellery.”
