Soosie Jobson

Felt & Polymer Clay Artist

Facing West reflects my 40 year love affair with my chosen home: Western Australia. This love combined with my making obsession has produced more than 40 works in embellished felt and polymer clay inspired by my life experiences whilst living and working in remote and rural areas of our vast state. From the tropics of the Kimberley, the red dirt of the western deserts, the golden patchwork of the wheatbelt and down to the tall timbers of the southwest each work has a story.

The first time heading north it doesn’t take long to be out of urbanity and into the open where you can see the horizon is flat and the sky is enormous sky. It is easy to think it is a land of nothingness. But on further reflection you realise that that vastness is a macro palette of textures and colours that change with the rising and setting of the sun. Technology like Google Earth has given us a new way to view our environments – a macro view, which is reflected in the dreaming stories of our First Nations people.

The second realisation is that the emptiness is filled with the micro – small plants and animals. Plants bloom, flower, seed and die in unpredictable repeating cycles. Animals hide waiting for the cool of night. Even in the most hostile of conditions, like that of a hyper saline lake, life survives as microscopic Rotifers.

Heading south gives you the opposite impression – it is still vast but the emptiness is replaced by a density of forests in overwhelming green and all dominated by the wild and unpredictable coastline. And still, it is on the macro and micro scale, enormous trees and tiny flowers.

Processes

Wet felting is the process of manipulating unspun wool fibres into a textile. I creature raised surfaces using layers of other textiles and fibres to produce textures as the base of the object or hanging. Then bead and stitch for additional layering and texturizing.

Materials

Merino wool, silk fabric, silk fibres & threads, papers & yarns, embroidery threads, Japanese glass beads