Deb Symes

Artists Statement: To those who know me the Sunraysia community I have been a seamstress over the past 30 years. In my fashion design drawings and photography, I imagined making works fit for an avant-garde renaissance revival. I am greatly influenced by 1950 to 70’s film stars such as Audrey Hepburn from the elegant black and whites to the vivid and glamorous colour combinations and stylised sets of Grace Kelly and Elizabeth Taylor. Milton H. Greene was the most renowned celebrity photographer of most movie stars, musicians and artists particularly for his romantic sexy atmospheres of the ideal perfect lives from ‘Rags to Riches’. Best known for his auto-biography entitled Of Women and Their Experiences, which was Norma Jeane story of Marilyn Munroe which she called My Story.

 In between studying for my Fine Arts Degree, majoring in Photography. I was sewing ball gowns for all my friends and their friends as a second income after graduating, working in a Bridal Boutique. Wedding dresses and bridesmaids came easily, then juggling my three beautiful children and gaining my Graduate Diploma of Education at the same time.

My love for sewing was very clear to me at a very early age, sitting at my mother’s feet counting the buttons from the reused coffee tin, whilst she was tread ling on the her old ornate singer sewing machine, making clothes for us, as children which they did in those days. My inspirations for garment construction and fashion design blossomed in my teenage years. Not much has changed to date, only that my artwork and sewing are combined with my passion for landscape watercolour painting and now experimenting with felting, hand dyed pieces of artwork which I hope to have the opportunity to exhibit in the middle of next year at the Art Vault.    

My current work which is displayed in Shugg Group encompasses three different but related bodies of work: fashion design, fashion photography, and fine art, depicting a Vanitas in a three dimensional  sculptural installation defining the lace doily with the hand dyed fine silk fabric.