A life-long love of classical music has inspired a design for this year’s World of Wearable Arts.
Carolyn Gibson played the cello from the age of 15, but she’s always loved classical music. Her favourite composers include Tchaikovsky and Brahms, whom she listened to while creating her piece.
Rock Me Amadeus, Carolyn Gibson, New Zealand Photo: 2019 WOW - World of WearableArt
Her love of the greats has been channelled into her WoW design Rock Me Amadeus, which appears in the open section of this year’s competition.
The design, which encompasses a cello made from malleable plastic and papier mâché, took seven months to complete. It also features 122 roses, incorporating 750 hand-cut and sewn petals.
As a milliner – hat maker – she started from the top down. “I started with the head piece first. That was the inspiration for the rest of the piece,” she says. “I envisaged it with a high baroque style wig.”
Although she wanted to enter the White category, she loves “glitz” and included diamantes which meant she was put into the Open category. The strings on the cello are made from pearls.
The only thing she didn’t make was the bow, which has come from a violin. Everything else on her design is handmade.
Designer Carolyn Gibson Photo: Supplied
Creating the cello was quite the task. She remembered back to her playing days and measured the approximate height of the cello from the ground up.
Then she cut the plastic out and moulded it into the cello shape, holding it all together with cable ties. The head of the cello is made from foam and papier mâché. It was then “painted and glued and sprinkled with sequins and glitter!”
Although Carolyn wasn’t a winner this year, she’s won twice before, in 2016 and 2017. Rock Me Amadeus was her third entry.
She thinks she’ll stick to creating beautiful artworks, rather than music. “I was in an orchestra, but I had to leave,” she says. “They wouldn’t let me stay because I couldn’t read music! I played by ear.”
Her work will continue to strut down the catwalk at WoW in Wellington until 13 October.
