Coming up with unique challenge ideas for a group can be – well – challenging!
Too big and it becomes a burden… too collaborative and people get worried and some deviate from the plan… so it needed to be FUN, SMALL, FAST, EASY and inclusive of a topic for everyone.

SQUARE:   To deal with the Portrait vs Landscape issue a square was chosen.
6″ x 6″     Size.  Small enough to accomplish, yet large enough to show techniques and topics.
TOPIC:  Colour .  The topic to suit everyone… .
DURATION:  Until we felt like stopping…
FREQUENCY:  Bi-Monthly originally… Changed to Monthly

The name ?!  I came up with SINCHIES... 6″ by 6″ and they are a cinch to make!  🙂
The name stuck.

We put colours in a bag and each month we randomly drew out two colours.  Only those 2 colours could be used in the piece, but ALL hues of the colour could be included.

Reddy Arts Textile Group is a definite mix of personalities, which is just the way we like it!  But the hardest part of the challenge was getting people to stick to the rules… which were really simple.  There weren’t any!  The problem..?. some people in the group needed more structure and were not comfortable with the randomness of the challenge, they needed to implement planned colour choices. This was actually irrelevant in the long term as all of the colour combinations would have been chosen. But the thought was that the end display would need to look cohesive and those participants who are less spontaneous felt that they had to be hung in order of being drawn out, they could not see that the challenge need not be hung in the order it was drawn out…But could in fact be re-ordered to suit a fluid display. 🙂   so, it morphed, as challenges oft do.. to become:

Two colours drawn out on the first month, then the 2nd colour drawn out was to be repeated in the next round and a new colour was drawn out.

example: blue/green  next month became   green/red  next month   red/blue

This actually resulted in more works of one colour being drawn out and repeated than may have happened spontaneously. We had to balance the colours up as the challenge progressed.  If we repeated the challenge I would place two colours on a piece of paper to then be randomly drawn, managing how many times the colour was represented in the challenge.  I think too, that less colours could be chosen.  Some were very similar.  EG:  Yellow and Orange and Brown, and Pink & Red.
As we could use the colour from pale hues to dark eg: if PINK was drawn out, baby pink to hot pink was acceptable. Then some of the hues like orange, would already be represented by the colour choice – yellow.

However, the end result was ASTOUNDING.

Some people followed a topic, we had leaves, country scenes, horses, abstract, weaving, hats, techniques and fruit to name a few.

It was a great little challenge lasting from 2012 to 2014 and hung at our exhibition in 2015. We decided to have 16 rounds of the challenge.  Some people did more but were not featured in the display.   The Strathpine Gallery in Brisbane Qld did a marvellous job of hanging it, using mounted squares of heavy cardstock, stuck to the wall.  The Sinchies where then pinned to taped to the cardstock.  The placement was random.  The gallery staff chose the placement blindly, with one member of the group making sure that the spread of artists was random, especially over the central “prime” viewing position, which were the middle rows around eye height.

To overcome the issue of each piece needing a title and statement card, we got a photo book printed.  Each artist had a double page spread and the photos of each of their works and explanations were included.  The format sometimes varied from page to page to suit each artists statements and works.  Viewers were able to peruse the book and it was mounted on a plinth next to the installation.

The artists of Reddy Arts Group L-R: Diane Flint, Kim Boland, Alex Stogdale, Kate Watson, Donna Davis, Jan Hutchinson, Helen Forrest, Brenda Wood (me) Seated L: Kay Haerland, Sue Duffy.

See more about each of the artists works in additional posts below or … look for sinchies!

Sinchies Round 1    Sinchies Round 2          Sinchies Round 3     Sinchies Round 4   Sinchies Round 5 – 9
Sinchies Round 10 – 16 

To see Brenda Wood’s works click here: