She Looked Up and Forever Became Part of the Façade

Artist Statement

The historic campus which is presently occupied by Newcastle Art School is comprised of three separate buildings. There is the original Newcastle Technical College dating from 1894 in the Federation Romanesque style, the 1895 Federation Anglo-Dutch Trades Hall building and the new extension built in 1989.

Besides the extravagant ornamentation of the buildings, I am fascinated by characteristics of some of the surfaces. Notably, the shallow relief designs in the terracotta tiles, the examples of stencil decoration on the walls and the accidental fingerprints and calico impressions found on some of the bricks. These are all akin to elements of the printmaking process. The buildings also feature elaborate, highly ornate carvings of Australian flora and fauna rendered into the stone and not unlike the process used in linocut.

“She Looked Up and Forever Became Part of the Façade” is an homage to this building and a way of connecting intimately to the place where I work.