2008 Feature Artist

Kareina Day

If you've spent time at community events on the NW Coast in the past few years, chances are you would be familiar with the artwork of Kareina Day even if you weren't aware of it. At an event have you ever seen a child's face painted so exquisitely that it made you gasp? If so, then that was probably Kareina's work.

That's how it all started really. Kareina Day learned the skill in Adelaide and in 1994 moved her family to the North West Coast of Tasmania to set up a small face painting business, where she perfected it. Her dream was to live creatively and bring her children up in a creative environment.

Kareina has since completed an Art, Craft & Design course at TAFE in Burnie and is just finishing a Contemporary Art degree at Uni.

Kareina processes everyday events through her artwork. When her daughter Pippin, was aged 16 she was bursting to get out of Tasmania and experience everything in the whole wide world. This intense family experience is the inspiration behind the exhibition "Dolly Makes a Dash for it".

It's about taking risks and breaking free of our mundane functional lives to go on grand adventures and live our dreams. It's about striking out on your own.

The dollies in this exhibition were once plain functional domestic clothes pegs that have evolved into dynamic dollies as they explore their native lands (the laundry) and take adventures further afield.

Kareina Day won the sculpture prize in the 2008 Eskley Art Awards for her piece "Proof" featuring mermaid artefacts. She won the Rialto Award at the Tas Art Exhibition in 2007 for a paper butterfly sculpture, entitled " Unrequited".

She was highly commended at Tas Art in 2005 and in 2003 won a print award for a linocut "Mary Nye" in Material Girl.

This whimsical exhibition is an amusing reminder of the great rewards that can be found, when we stop focussing on our functional needs to have some fun.

The "Dolly Makes a Dash for It" exhibition with be held at Creative Paper Tasmania throughout October 2008.