Taking tangling to a different scale was always going to be likely, (I have a history of ‘bigger’ projects), so have really enjoyed doing my own big scale tangling larger than a 9cm square tile, and organised collaborative events with lots of people adding to the giant canvas. Some commissions are for our local council’s street beautification projects, where artist can draw on street furniture to reduce the tagging and make our streetscape more creative. In Christchurch we had a burst of mural and street art happening after our 2011 earthquake, when new walls opened up for drawing on, and it has proved to be a springboard that has continued.
You can read more about these type of projects on Zentangle.com’s Blog where I was lucky enough to be featured in 2023 with my Community Wall Tangling events. Please feel free to leave a comment on the Blog too!
If you want to do some of your own BIG scale tangling, or host your own Wall Tangling event, you might find one or both of these two PDFs of tips helpful. Spread the word and cover the walls big time!
Previous events & work below:
Community Bee Tangled – 6 Dorset Street
Bees are symbols of hard work, unity, resilience, and spiritual wisdom. Across many cultures, they represent prosperity, transformation, cooperation, fertility, and divine connection to the natural world. From Ancient Egypt to Celtic traditions, bees have been seen as messengers between worlds, guides of the soul, and enduring emblems of balance and renewal.
Here on the street of Christchurch, our garden city, they are one of our great pollinators. So with the local inspiration both ‘growing’ and ‘placed’ around this corner cabinet, the box was designed using the hexagonal shape of bee’s beautiful strong honeycomb structure. The nearby foliage, rocks, bench and other street furniture were the colour inspiration, along with the un-natural neighbours to its environment.
The different tangles within each hexagon shape represent the different communities living within our city. All different, all beautiful and living in harmony.
River Labyrinth – 5 Bassett Street, Burwood
On the pavement near to the ‘Green’ Red Zone and the Avon Ōtākaro River you can enter labyrinth which features the river’s colours. Where you might enter a maze to lose yourself, you enter a labyrinth to find yourself. This simple circular journey of a blue river labyrinth, over three sides of the cabinet, with various patterns along this symbolic river pathway.
Click on the image below to watch a timelapse of the process of painting it!
Window Watchers One and Two
– 6 Rolleston Ave and 20 St John’s Rd, Woolston
There are two cabinets one in the city and one in Woolston feature the same host tangle – Sashwinz – one of my tangle patterns. The ‘frame’ colours are reflected in the building behind at Rolleston Ave, with the light reflecting on its unusual architecture pattern. With multiple sides to paint, various patterns are inside the window areas looking out, but with the occasional swap of one element into another, sometimes drawn over and then behind the window frames. There are various Zentangle patterns I included in the frames, particularly some of the organic patterns which give the look of something likely to be in front or behind a window, or sitting on the sills.
Click on the image below to watch the timelapse of the process of painting!
Crazy Weaving – 390 Montreal St
Using Crazy Huggins, with orbs of different sizes, the pathways blend over and under each other in a crazy format. The pathways weave in and out of each other, all the same design, meant to symbolise the many pathways we can take within Hagley Park, our green oasis in the city. Super excited to be just in front of the oversized ‘Chch in a Bottle” mural by Jacob Yikes, Dcypher & Ikarus.
Enable Box – Cnr St Asaph & Colombo St
Out and about in town, this time a Finding the Flow cabinet. Using a Labyrinth design which goes around all four sides of the cabinet and a continuous path loop on the lid. Using tangleations of the tangle ‘Flux’, had great fun on a journey all over the cabinet changing things up, and a few insect friends to help on the pathway! Can you spot Bijou?
Enable Box – 27 Lichfield Street
Out and about again – this time in the centre of town! Drawing a Huggins covered box to then fill with tangles! Took me about four days, thank goodness the Sushi shop was my nearest neighbour, and Rollickin’ Gelato was behind me! I was just down from the centre bus exchange and opposite the main Police Station and Law Courts on Lichfield Street, which gave me lots of passing traffic, lots of fun to do and people to chat to!
Our Criss-Cross Community – 59 Marriotts Rd
CCC and Chorus (who run the fibre network in NZ) have a wonderful initiative to let artists decorate the street ‘furniture’ to make them more colourful. I was one of 10 artists chosen to decorate one this winter! Here’s a time-lapse of Day 3 and the ‘smaller’ tangling on the woven W2 tangle which acted as the host! Click on the image below to watch the time-lapse. Wonderful jazzy music by BenSound License code: CIQ0VSZ3OHUO2QSN
Zenacity Wall Tangling
Although I haven’t seen it in person yet, these were the four canvases that now decorate the walls in the Overjoyed Art shop in Singapore. Done over three days by the in-person participants at Zenacity – what a mammoth effort by everyone!
Climate Action Campus
Working with the Christchurch City Council Graffiti Programme, and Climate Action Campus I have been doing some wall tangling as part of the development of A-MAZE of Art; designs within the campus using the classrooms, fences, courts, pathways, as the MAZE walls. The Climate Action campus is host to a hub of activity; to primary and secondary schools in Christchurch, as it grows they see there being businesses reaching out to the community and locals to be proud of their community with markets soon to start on site. Meanwhile us artists are developing the walls! So more to come, but the public viewings start on Sat 22nd June between 10am – 2pm and Wednesdays after that date from12noon – 3pm – Christchurch’s largest outdoor art gallery. 24 Cowlishaw Street, Avonside. Many thanks to Resene paint test pots and Posca pens!
Community Zentangle Feb 2024
Over 325 different tangles were on the wall – VERY large scale, 30 sqm of tangling to be exact, two canvases done by the community, one by the clients and staff of Chch City Mission, and a couple of solo canvases illustrating a more traditional string set up and another with colour added.
Each person has filled one section (or more) with (mostly) one tangle at a time, drawing lines step by step that make up a particular tangle and then adding any odd and fun embellishments before shading to complete their section. Sometimes two tangles may morph together, sometimes you may see the same tangle drawn by two different people – each person will add the tangle in a different style, woven together in a giant W2 string!
1st February to 29th February 2024 at South Library in Beckenham , 66 Colombo Street
South Library Feb 2023
Just to let you know if you participated – or are just interested to see the fantastic result of all the Wall Tangling sessions from 2022 – head down to South Library some time in February 23 to see all the epic sized tangling on the Gallery Walls.
And below is the time lapse video of the July 2022 edition, and hopefully it will get you excited to see the final finished work on the walls.
If after you have seen it, and are keen to learn more, I have an intro day classes at Risingholme Learning throughout 2023, in Opawa in Chch.
Congratulations everyone! (Previous years artworks are below)
It was amazing to produce this enormous piece of art, with a team of tanglers that turned up to join in the fun. Completed the border with some shading, and the remaining 6 tiny spaces that need to get filled after the 5 days of tangling, and then it was on show at CCC’s South Library Gallery Wall for the month of February 2022, watch the time-lapse below to view this incredible piece of tangling work unfold. (Although my camera skills weren’t in focus for day 5, but I am sure you will get the general idea!)
TangleatioNZ and Life in Vacant Spaces joined together for a creative community project over five days in September/ October 2021, to ‘tangle’ some patterns on the wall at LiVS’s site in Waltham. It was delightful to make it happen.
This is what happens when three CZTs get together for a weekend! When Beate Winkler came to Auckland and at Anne Toth’s place, we drew on the walls together.