ConnieLene – KnitDesigner

It looks like it was a bear pit at one time where I expect people could stand around it and view the bears at “play”. Now it contains various animal sculptures as well as a naked young woman in high heeled shoes, long evening gloves. She has long dark hair and is sitting with a sleeping giraffe. On the same level is a small portable clothes line – very odd indeed.

The pit is just outside the old walls of Maastricht and it a lovely walk. Lovely textures, colours, old buildings, fortress, a statue of D’Artagnon and much much more.

There is also the statue of a bear which looks like it is getting up or maybe it is going to sit down – and you can sit with the bear and talk to it. I’ve not seen any children there – but I could imagine children doing just that.

“Gumbo Ya-Ya” is a New Orleans Creole colloquialism that means “A Little Bit of Everything”. Melanie FerDon collaborated with ConnieLene Johnston and Trina Garratt in an exibition at The Quarry – Yvonne Rusk Gallery in Whangarei, New Zealand.

Excerpt from Leader newspaper

Mardi Gras, colour and the hidden is the focus of The Yvonne Rust Gallery’s Gumbo Ya Ya (a bit of everything) exhibition on now.
Melanie FerDon, Trina Garratt and Connie Johnston curate the multimedia exhibition.
Melanie FerDon is American-born, but has been in New Zealand since 1982 and is now in her final year of a Bachelor of Fine Arts at Whitecliffe College of Art and Design. She is a contemporary painter of human figures in dark, rich colours on large canvases.

Danish-born artist Connie Johnston is a textile-wearable artist working mainly with natural fibres. Over the past 30 years she has had her designs, which have been included in many exhibitions and competitions, selling worldwide.

Trina Garratt is New Zealand-born and has studied at the Cut Above Academy, where she specialised in special effects make-up, and Whitecliffe College of Art and Design, where she has also exhibited. She has been the special effects artist for the Auckland War Memorial Museum for the “Whodunnit” exhibition as well as numerous short films and the popular television series Xena Warrior Princess.

There are three large paintings, four sculptures, and eight sweaters and a magnificent cloak in the exhibition which runs until Thursday.