A network of quiet country roads radiates out from the township of Cygnet, dotted here and there by dozens of artists’ studios hidden in these rolling green hills. The large number of creatives in Cygnet – weavers, painters, blacksmiths, jewellers, photographers, woodworkers, boat builders, guitar makers – give the town its reputation as an artistic hub.
While they are usually private work spaces, for one weekend each year these studios open their doors to the public, forming an art trail that brings thousands of people to the region. Since it began in 2015, the Handmade in Cygnet festival has become a remarkable success, offering access to professional and amateur artists, large and small enterprises.
The festival is the brainchild of local weaver Vicki Taiwo who, with friend and local gallery manager Ginger Nutt, convinced almost 40 resident artists to participate in the first Handmade. Since then the event has attracted increasing numbers of visitors each year, with a mixture of Tasmanian and interstate enthusiasts peeking into the heart of the Cygnet art scene.
This popularity lends a festive atmosphere to the town over the Handmade weekend, with local cafes doing a roaring trade and footpaths in the main street bustling with pedestrians as they nip in and out of exhibiting venues. However, most of the studios are away from the town centre, encouraging visitors to grab an event map, plan an art trail personalised to their own interests, and explore the area.
“[Handmade] is about the spirit of Cygnet and about meeting other people, making connections and new friends,” says Taiwo. “It’s a really happy event. It’s built the confidence of people in themselves as artists.”
Many of the artists involved echo these sentiments. Leanne Devereaux sank into a deep depression after losing her hearing in 2000 and relied on her art to recover. An Adult Education class reignited a childhood passion for drawing and allowed her to believe that she could create something beautiful.
Over the next ten years Devereaux gradually rebuilt her confidence as an artist, eventually being accepted to the University of Tasmania School of Fine Arts. The degree took her seven years to complete, overcoming difficulties her ongoing medical issues posed to full participation in classes. Now, she has come full circle and teaches drawing in Cygnet.
Sitting in her sunny living room, the walls crowded with framed and colourful pieces, Devereaux seems stronger and more cheerful than her earlier self. “I know that art helped me through some very dark times,” she says. “It still helps me to understand myself and the world around me. I’m using art to take back control of my life.”
A love of wildlife means that much of her work focuses on the natural world. The fine detail woven into each piece “honours the world that we live in and just how beautiful and fragile it is”.
By participating in Handmade, Devereaux hopes to inspire others. She has been involved every year since it started “so that I can talk about art and my love for it, the joy it gives me, sharing what I do”.
“If I can capture one person, influence one person, motivate one person to appreciate [nature], they can go away and make their own art so that it raises awareness of what we can lose so easily.”
. . .
For many of the artists involved in the festival, sharing this love of their craft is their principal reason for participating.
“We’re people that create things for the joy of it, not for the kudos or money,” says Devereaux. “If you get too tied up in the money, the creative side loses its way.”
Guitar maker Jack Binny agrees. “If I could sell half a dozen [guitars] a year I’ll be happy.”
Binny has been involved in Handmade since the first year and says that he looks forward to sharing his craft with each visitor that comes through his door. He estimates that perhaps a third are “musician type people” but the rest are simply curious about the craft.
While he has been making guitars for only four years, Binny has always played with timber. “Even as a young boy, I remember pulling my mum and dad’s grandfather clock apart just to see what was going on with the timberwork inside it. I was interested in the mechanism itself too but quickly got bored of that and was fascinated by the timber.
“When I went to high school, the very first week I did the woodworking course and I thought ‘ah! I’ve found it’. I knew from that minute on I’d be working with timber for the rest of my life.”
On the day I visit his studio, Binny’s enthusiasm for his craft is clear. He moves between several unfinished instruments laid out in pieces on the large workbenches, pointing out the colours and texture of the raw timber.
Binny explains that each guitar sounds different, depending on the type of wood and design. These inherent differences mean that he can make each guitar unique to its owner and their personality.
“It’s the process that I love,” Binny says, “sourcing the timbers even. There’s a story for nearly all the timber.”
He uses only Tasmanian timber and sources it as locally as possible, including blackwood grown on his own property. A friend involved in the milling world gifted him a large amount of King Billy pine salvaged decades earlier from a flooded lake. A stack of blackwood cleared from a Huon paddock and originally destined for burning was donated by a farmer aware of its beauty and value.
. . .
This enthusiasm for the unique also features in festival organiser Vicki Taiwo’s own work. The experienced weaver tries to “go straight to the source and finding people who are doing interesting things”.
This started when Taiwo witnessed the indigo dyers of Kano while living in Nigeria 40 years ago. She learnt how to make and apply these natural dyes and still uses the technique for one-off special pieces. Since then, Taiwo has learnt from the techniques and cultures of traditional weavers all over the world.
Every year for 30 years she returned to a small Balinese village to master the craft of double icat (pronounced ee-cat), a process that Taiwo describes as, “The most complicated weaving in the world. It takes five years to complete one piece.” She is currently working with raw silk sourced from a village in India (“It’s quite rough and not what most people imagine as silk. Whatever the silkworm eats is the colour of the silk it produces – beautiful browns and golds”) and has tried her hand at secouri weaving, a Japanese technique using ripped-up old clothing. A 100-year-old farmer’s jacket made from blue and white cotton kimono hangs in her hallway and showcases the beauty and durability of this technique.
Taiwo started weaving when “by chance I saw somebody’s loom and I was so fascinated that I begged her for lessons. I had to work when my daughters were young but I was weaving whenever I could. Then, when the girls grew up I started weaving more and now I’m weaving all the time.”
This includes the Cygnet Tartan, which was launched at Handmade 2018. “It took a couple of years to do it as everything – every line on it – has to mean something,” she says. “You have to account for the story in it.”
The mix of blue, green and black in the design of the tartan tells of Bruni D’Entrecasteaux exploring the channel later named in his honour, the black swans in Cygnet Bay, and the blue skies and green eucalyptus of the region.
These themes are also incorporated into a dress that Taiwo created with designer Sabrina Evans – wide lapels like an admiral’s coat, and a swan’s neck, body, wings and tail in the high neckline and puckers at the back. The pair entered the piece in the 2018 Australian Sheep and Wool Show in Bendigo (the biggest event of its kind in the world) and won second prize.
Despite weaving 40m of the tartan, Taiwo sold it all within two days of its launch. Now she is working with the master weaver at Waverly Mills in Launceston to dye and weave the next batch, which will be ready in time for Handmade 2019.
When asked if many others are taking up weaving, Taiwo is matter-of-fact. “No,” she says. “I think we’re a dying lot.” This may be part of her motivation to organise Handmade in Cygnet and encourage the work of all artists.
“We don’t want to exclude the little endeavours sitting at home working on their own,” she says. “We don’t want it purely professional, as those smaller artists bring something special.”
Handmade in Cygnet will be held Easter weekend 2021. See www.facebook.com/HandmadeinCygnet for more information.
Photographers Leanne Devereaux, Ginger Nutt and Grace Heathcote
Grace Heathcote is a Tasmanian freelance writer. After a childhood spent exploring the forests and beaches of Tasmania, she left the island in 2007 to study, work, and travel through Australia and overseas. The charm of Tasmania lured her home in 2014 and has continued to weave its magic for her ever since.