2025 | Craft + Design Daily Creative Challenge

The Craft + Design Canberra Daily Creative Challenge is designed to redefine what creativity is.  Now in its 4th year the Challenge explores the theme of Rewilding, a call to return to untamed creativity, embrace imperfection, and connect with the raw, natural forces that shape both art and life.   Participants receive daily word prompts related to the theme of Rewilding via email throughout July, create a response using any creative technique and post an image to Instagram.

As CEO of Craft + Design Canberra I created this project several years ago as a means of connecting our community and sharing the benefits of daily creative practice with wider audiences, these benefits include improved wellbeing and cognitive function, productivity and self confidence.

I am participating in the Challenge to be part of this rich connecting experience and reignite my creative energy in the winter months. I am not eligible for the prizes, simply participating to be part of our wonderful community.

For this year’s Challenge I hope to ‘Rewild’ my creative practice by using a handmade process that is wildly different to my digital images, a contemporary jewellery technique of crocheting with copper wire.

Crocheting with wire is slow and repetitive and forces me to be present in the now. It is a quiet protest against the speed of contemporary living and the destruction it wreaks. A ‘Rewilding’ antidote to the mayhem, and a seed of alternate approaches to living and repairing our world.

For the 2025 Challenge my aim is to crochet sections of one long piece and or/ fragments that will all combine to create a one piece at the conclusion of the Challenge. This may be wearble ‘jewellery’ or a wall installation. I will let the process dictate the outcome.

1 July | INFINITE. Today I started by creating a digital image as a way of processing my ideas about the word prompt, Infinite. I found myself thinking about infinite reflections and and visualised them as optical black and white tunnels on an infinite circle. I translated this into a silver and black tube. I added reflective circular beads to create infinite reflections and inserted marbles into the them to create rhythm and enhance reflections. Glass and metal in concert. I am surprised by the result - it is entirely a product of process that I could not have imagined without the journey.

2 July WATER. With my evolving crochet form I sought to represent water as a vital resource, precious and rare gem. I selected a deep sapphire coloured marble, reminiscent of a perfectly spherical water drop, its surface evoking the stillness and mystery of a secluded pool, an inviting space of reflection and immersion. By leaving part of the marble uncovered I reveal its richness and draw attention to the contrast between the glass and the deep blue wire that cradles it. This wire acts as a metaphor for support and care, holding and nurturing the marble as we must hold and nurture our access to clean water. The work is a meditation on gratitude for the privilege of clean, life sustaining water and a reminder of its fragility and value.