Reflections of the Sydney Opera House

Artist's Statement

While in Australia recently, I fell absolutely and totally in love with the Sydney Opera House.  

I dragged my poor husband onto boats, through gardens, up a bridge, across a harbour, into a train station, onto a roof top, and to a zoo ... just so that I could view and photograph it from all angles!

Of all the views captured with my camera, I love this iconic view of the sails of the Opera House best.  The sails are traced from an enlarged copy of one of my own photographs.  To me, this view captures the grandeur of the structure, as it reflects over and over in the waters of Sydney Harbour, and in the hearts and minds of visitors from all corners of the world.

There is the most amazing and positive energy under the sails of this UNESCO World Heritage site and I never tired of viewing or visiting it.  For me, it needed to be incorporated into a quilt that I could wrap myself up in.

With this quilt I have attempted to capture how stunning the Sydney Opera House is.

The ‘water’ is my own hand dyed indigo fabric.  The ‘sails’ are from fabric designed by Australian, Shauna Scicluna.  Jorn Utzon, the designer of the Opera House said that his design was inspired by the ‘simple act of peeling an orange’, so the orange fabric colour seemed perfect.