emeraldarts1's Profile

Bio

Em Stronach, artist, toy maker, art class teacher. 29 year old resident of Newcastle, Australia.

I began making Origami when I was ten. My family had a Japanese exchange student stay with us through the Rotary Exchange program. Her name was Mie. She told me the story of ‘Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes’, and showed me how to make them.

A few years ago I was diagnosed with an immune systemic response to wheat and gluten. Anaphylaxis. About six months ago a friend joked about my hopeless immune system then reminded me of Sadako’s story. I decided that I would make a thousand paper cranes myself, thereby psychosomatically healing myself... or at least getting a better immune system or some appeasement from the allergy gods.

Once I completed my thousand cranes I was at a bit of a loss as to what to do with them. I started suspending them from a giant paper clips on fishing line, using beads as spacers.

At first I sold these at my market stall, but I was more interested in engaging others in origami, so I began making kits containing everything needed to make a string of cranes, so that people could make them for themselves. For a bit of a diversion, I also developed a line of soft toys made from felt, based on my drawings, to fill up the rest of the stall.
I now run a fortnightly market stall. My dreams are evolving, I am no longer an admin assistant engaging in a very occasional hobby, but an artist who sells art and craft products to other creatives. I’m making the kits, for both origami strings of cranes and the plush toys, so that kids can make their own versions of my Creatures.

So much art these days is locked away in a cupboard somewhere, hung high up on a wall out of reach, priced way out of the budgets of normal aesthetes... I thought it was about time that someone made art that kids could afford (or at least art that was priced so reasonably that the pester power factor would work). So I imagine myself back in a time when there were fairies in the bottom of the garden and monsters under the bed and I make things that I would have loved back then.



Read my blog to see what's happening in the world of Emmeline:

www.emeraldarts.blogspot.com

Female, Born on June 7

Favorite Materials

Felt, velvet, microfibre, buttons, cotton, origami paper, foil, acrylic paint, tarzan glue, felt tip pens, posca