Michele Grimston
Visual Artist (Textiles)
LGA of ACT - Ngunnawal/Ngambri Country
Michele Grimston is a visual artist living and working on Ngunnawal/Ngambri country in Canberra. Michele works predominantly with textile practices, including embroidery, tapestry and sewing. She is interested in exploring ways that investing our time, attention and care in things can create objects of great meaning and enable a state of being that allows us to foster a greater level of intimacy with ourselves, others and the world. This draws on established traditions of communal making where the act of creating together opens up spaces for deep listening and community connection, building stories that shape culture through the process of creativity.
Michele holds a Bachelor of Visual Arts (Honours) and a Masters in Community Cultural Development. She has led many community arts projects at schools and with community groups in Western Australia and Canberra and has been employed in arts education and community cultural development roles for arts centres and local governments as well as pursuing her personal artistic practice.
For Project Alchemy, Michele undertook a three-week residency at The Hive at Margaret Hendry School in Canberra, exploring ways of working that promote rest and care for both the artists and participants. This included working on her own textile practice, as well as drop in meditative embroidery experiences and community stitching workshops.
Workshops
Dreamspace (VI)
Artist Michele Grimston invited participants into an open space for creativity, reflection, and restoration. Dream Space provided an opportunity to work gently and creatively alongside others—allowing time to step away from distractions and the infinite stimulation of a busy world to engage deeply in the creative process for a period of time.
Participants were encouraged to use this time sitting with others to support their connection to their own creative energy through whatever processes and mediums worked best for them. All levels of experience were warmly welcomed—there was no need to consider oneself an artist or craftsperson to participate. In fact, no artistic experience was required at all.
Emotional Repair Café
Emotional Repair Café was a full day creative experience that invited people to take some time and space out of the chaos of daily life.
Participants had the opportunity to rest and physically process some of their feelings by engaging in gentle textile practices that connected them to their bodies and emotional experiences.
They were invited to bring along a piece of textile that was meaningful but no longer functional—a threadbare sheet, an old shirt, or a favorite dress that was much loved but no longer fit. Throughout the day, they were guided through a process of deconstructing this object and transforming it into a small vessel using twining and stitching techniques.
This shared experience of creation and transformation fostered a meditative space to simply be and sit with whatever arose. The simplicity of the processes and the personal significance of the materials helped facilitate this. The physical act of deconstruction and creation provided a container for participants to be present with themselves and others in the space.
There was no financial cost to participate in this experience; however, places were limited. Because of this, participants were asked to complete a short expression of interest process to affirm their commitment to attending.
