2013 Shannon Hunter

Shannon Hunter

Tamborine, Queensland, Australia.

Mother Earth is all things to me, from vast landscape panoramas  to the delicate beauty of microscopic  mosses.  When I was young, my Girl Guide leaders favourite motto was "Look Far, Look Wide" and over the decades, these simple four words have given the greatest of pleasures, and wonderful inspiration for my creative pieces. My freeform sleeveless vest depicts the beauty of the area in which I live; the intense and vivid blues of Queensland Autumn skies; the ancient volcanic cones of my beloved Scenic Rim, their grey green shadows stretching across the caldera floor; vast plains of grain and ripe sugar cane, golden brown and green in the sun, dotted here and there with trees; lush grasslands climbing the slopes of Mt Tamborine and at the top, the cool, shadowed rainforest and streams, with intricate and  beautiful lichens and fungi forms sheltering under logs, between tree roots and in the damp spaces on the forest floor.  The garment is loose fit, longline for warmth, sleeveless for ease of movement, created from many fibres drawn from Mother Earth; fine merino, alpaca, silk, linen, cotton, bamboo, metallics, manmade, handspun wools, fastened with a single wooden toggle at centre front. It wraps round you, warm and soft and comforting and is a one off, original  garment to wear and love for a lifetime.