CEDAR PREST GALLERY: Kensington, in the City of Adelaide, South Australia
Cedar Prest loves the Australian bush; so much so that she's decided to live in it, within the confines of her family home in suburban Kensington.
"So how does your house here reflect your philosophy about art and life?"
"Uhmm, I think I am very much a nature person and I like very much the Australian bush and this is like bringing the bush into your own home".
"And so these are all gum trees?"
"They're all real gum trees and they support the mezzanine floor".
For Cedar, art is not just something you admire from a distance, it's part of everyday life, from the sculptured staircase made of red gum, to the absolute essentials of life.
"Look at your bath here, how have you done this?"
"This is a glass mosaic. This is the kind of thing I'm teaching. It doesn't look like the normal kind of mosaic, but it's made of German opal glass made on a backing".
And all of this and the adjoining teaching studio is proof of what you can do with an 1840's Baptist Church and a good deal of imagination. It's here that Cedar Prest combines her passions - teaching and the visual arts. She's carved out a national reputation for glass work and it's appropriate that much of her work is done here because so much of it has found its way into much larger churches like St Peters Cathedral.
St. Peters Cathedral was one of her biggest commissions along with the foyer of Sydney's International Airport but when she's not creatively manipulating light in some of our most prominent buildings, she's in here with fellow teacher Ros passing on the basics to anyone prepared to learn.
"Forget what it is and start looking here and there. What are the negative shapes? What are they, and by drawing those negative shapes they get the bottom of the jar and the kettle".
"But by negative shapes you mean just sort of like the shapes that you can't actually see?"
"Yer, and by doing that, what happens is people's observations grow, 'cos they say that learning to draw isn't learning to draw, it's learning to see".
For Lilly the process has begun - of seeing the world in a different way, like a child seeing things for the first time.
"By looking at the negative shape and the positive shape, it's a way of correcting one shape against the other. So it's like a huge jigsaw puzzle really and if you get the pieces that fit properly, you end up with a drawing".
At the old Church Studio, the creatively young-at-heart progress at their own speed from drawing to life art classes or mosaic and stained glass work.
"I spent a couple of sessions putting a design together, you probably can't see it, but it's about lillies. It's sort of my theme. So I drew them together and now I'm cutting the glass out".
"And where do you go from there, after the glass?"
"After the glass it gets put together and grouted, a bit like tiling".
"It's a mosaic table top".
And there are few more qualified than Cedar Prest to teach aspiring artists about the special qualities of glass. For her, stained-glass is an integral part of architecture with her designs shaping light in various settings to create a suitable atmosphere. The philosophy here is all about chipping away at our own artistic insecurities, many of which cut deep into the creative soul.
"I think we very much have five senses and a lot of them we don't use very much. And our schooling tends to emphasise written skills and mathematical skills. But the visual and the musical skills I always feel are treated like they're optional extras instead of real parts of real people when they're taught it. What I like about this work and all my community work is that we help to empower people to get back something they had when they were younger of what they got frightened of developing. And a lot of people get a lot of joy out of finding these skills later in life".
To enrol for an introductory course at the Old Church Studio in Maesbury Street, Kensington contact Cedar Prest on 8331-9400. If you have any further questions please email info@postcards.sa.com.au
