who I am, why it is here, what it is about, how it developed and where you can find things
Firstly let me introduce myself. My name is Sharon Boggon, I have signed my email correspondence 'sharon b' for years now so, as my personal website grew it went by the title of sharon b. This site has developed since it first went online at the start of 1996 and in July 2004 I registered inaminuteago.com
For all that I have been online for a considerable time now I find these "about me" sections incredibly difficult to write! Numerous email exchanges in response to site visitors and the process of creating and maintaining a personal website has influenced my life and work in many ways. I am hoping that the information below which is a mix of personal and professional material you should be able to gain a sense of who I am and what I do.
Stitch collection: step by step instructions for hand embroidery
A
popular area of the site is an online stitch
collection. This area of the site provides step by step instructions on how to sew various
hand embroidery stitches. I have classified stitches as to thier difficulty
and also cross indexed the stitches for people who know stitches by other
names will find them. Hopefully readers will find this Stitch Guide useful.
A blog on textiles and my interests in hand embroidery
In
January of 2004 I started a blog under
the title In a Minute Ago... I started it as a place to keep track of the
numerous sites I discovered while online and it has grown from there.
In late 2008 I transfered the blog to Pin Tangle and it now covers contemporary and historical textiles, hand embroidery, quilting, and crazy quilting, fiber arts, paper arts, and book arts. It also performs a "what's new" function as I write about what is happening to this site, and document various art projects. It is a place to keep in touch with people I know both online and off.
Projects: Wisdom of the Ages:
One
of my past projects is titled "Wisdom
of the Ages" I am asked the public to respond to the question:
What lesson have you learnt in life?
With this project I aimed to create a snap shot of common sense or popular wisdom. The idea was to simply to share some of the lessons in life and hopefully people will take pleasure in reading and responding to it.
This project is no longer active but archived here
Mintracks!
I also kept another blog Mindtracks which is a blog on network literacy, Web design, and tracks my interests in various areas of the visual arts. I also use this blog to provide links to various online resources for my students in courses run at the Computer Art Studio at the School of Art, which is part of the Australian National University.
About the artwork published online:
This
site was originally produced in order to display some of my work but fast
became a major aspect of my work. I am an artist who is interested in the
connections between textiles and digital technology. I am interested not
so much in what the technology can do but how people are using the technology.
Here is a page which lists the projects I
have been involved in.
An online gallery houses the Shareware Project, Abbreviations, Craft is Dead Long Live Craft, Playing False and Samplers and Sampling. There is also an article on samplers titled A Brief History of Embroidery Samplers associated with this part of the archive which I might revive one day when in the mood. Please note that these projects were archived as they stood at the time of publication. I have an extended page which covers the ideas that drive my work and an artist statement.
Crazy quilting and embroidery projects online:
This
area of the site is for all those quilters who are interested in crazy
quilting, on various discussion lists I subscribe to. Firstly most people
are interested in my stitch collection but many will find the diagrams
of embellished seam treatments useful too. One section is a crazy quilt
titled "I dropped the button box" which
is actually a Y2K quilt. As a quilt it has 2001 different bits in it. At
the time my definition of bits was either a different fabric, lace, braid,
charm, buttons or ribbon. I was a bit short on the number, 2001 different
bits is much harder to have on hand than I realised but my button collection
saved the day!
The other section has grown out of a promises made on the crazy quilting discussion list to put up more crazy quilting eye candy. So here I publish images of projects done and a few of the round robbins I have taken part in. At the moment it also houses a few blocks from my next crazy quilt. Currently I am working of quilt of 8 inch blocks which currently is called the 8 inch block quilt because I haven't named it yet!
I live in Canberra Australia in one of the suburbs that was hit by the firestorm on January 18 2003. "Safe as Houses" is a small crazy quilt I made in response to the fires. It is divided into 4 strips. The first represents the day of the fires, the second is the debris of houses the day after. In the weeks afterwards we had a false autumn as stressed trees dropped their leaves this is the third section.The last section represents the mounds of wood chip produced as what was left of the burnt forest was felled. There are a few images from the many films I exposed during that period.
I also have some images of embroidery samples I have stitched. Details of many of these I have used to illustrate the stitch collection. Some are simply 'doodle cloths' others are designed as samplers.
Teaching Crazy quilting and Contemporary embroidery
I also offer classes on crazy quilting and contemporary embroidery. Information about online workshops and classes offered can also be found on this site.
National Crazy Quilt Retreat Can-bra
The First National Crazy Quilt Retreat was held here in Canberra in October 2004. Attendees were invited to decorate a bra in order to raise funds for Breast cancer research. Can-bra photographs taken by Melody Lord are here. Some were bras made for fun while others made statements. All celebrated health and life.
From those who attended the First National Crazy Quilt retreat we collected tips and tricks that members use while Crazy Quilting. These are published here for all people interested in Crazy Quilting and for those members of the Southerncross Crazies email discussion list that could not attend the retreat.
All that Jazz
Another charity project on this site is the All that jazz crazy quilts which was a fundraiser for survivors of the Katrina hurricane disaster. The aim was to produce a crazy quilts which were auctioned on Ebay in the United States. A total of $1,503.57 was raised.
Photos online:
I live in Canberra Australia in one of the suburbs that was hit by the firestorm on January 18 2003. Afterwards I spent a few hours each day taking photos of the devastation around me. I took hundreds of photos in the months afterwards and since I am not a photographer could not make sense of why I had to walk and walk and walk the district every day. One morning I realised that this activity was me trying to make sense of the experience and there is simply no way to make sense of the tragedy. Four people died a horrible death, nearly 500 houses were lost, 2000 gardens were lost, a forest with its wild life was lost and Canberra was changed forever. With the exception of family snap shots of our own garden recovering. I haven’t taken a photo in the district since that morning.
These are a few images from the many films I exposed during that period. There was a painful exquisite beauty in some of the textures discovered on those mornings. Sometimes pain is not what was lost but what remains. Images of peoples burnt out houses I have not put online as I felt that each home has its own story and placing them online was an invasion of their lives at a time when residents of Weston Creek were trying to recover from horror.
Digital Images:
These are simply some digital images I have produced using Photoshop. These do not fit into the other main areas of my work but are online for anyone to enjoy.
Other teaching Work:
I
teach part time at the School
of Art which is part of the Australian National University as part of
the Computer
Arts Studio.
In 2004 I was part of the editorial team for a weblog on new media going under the title of Underthesun.
This project which is no longer active was a collaborative blog with a focus on precursors and contemporary developments in both the theory and practice of digital arts, New Media Art forms and web genres. Underthesun was produced and hosted by the Faculty of Arts at the Australian National University.
For those who want it this is where you will find my CV online.
If you have problems viewing the images on this site:
A small percentage of my visitors cannot see the images displayed. They see the page but only placeholder icons ie little crosses when the page was viewed. This is due to protection feature called "Privacy Control" in firewall and security which pictures being viewed.You need to change these settings. Nortons software explains how to change this here Other security software apparently have similar settings and you can add my web site in to a list of "trusted" sites. So all I can do is suggest that you 'trust' me.
Disclosure:
I am an Amazon associate which means if you click on a link and decide to purchase the book I receive a small commission. I also display adverts in order to offset the cost of hosting this site. If you investigate them I receive a small commission. The books featured throughout the site I have selected because I use them all as references and highly recommend them if you are interested in hand embroidery or crazy quilting
Finally..
Over the years my site has won a number of awards – so here are the badges.
I hope that this document supplies the information that you need and that this
mix of stuff goes a little towards introducing who I am to you. Email me if
you have any further questions at sharon dot boggon at gmail dot com.
Do enjoy yourself and thanks for visiting!
