TWO Perth Hills artists, Silvana Ferrario from Mt Helena and Kalamunda’s Sally Edmunds, will feature in an exhibition of 11 artists to raise funds and awareness of OCD WA.

The Creating Connections event, curated by OCD WA founder Susan Sheppard, will be held at the Atwell Gallery, Alfred Cove on March 15-25 from 10am to 4pm.

Silvana is passionate about glass, making kiln formed glass inspired from her childhood memories, experiences as a subsea engineer and scuba diver, and her surroundings in the Perth Hills.

“I use a range of techniques that I’ve learnt and developed, often making use of the fluidity of the glass when it is hot to give my work a painterly feel,” she said.

“I find great joy in making glass pieces. I can lose myself in designing and assmbling the glass to go into the kiln. Then the excitement of opening it when the firing is finshed, to see how the heat has transformed the glass – often beyond expectations, and sometimes catastrophic – but always fueling more inspiration.”

Silvana has worked in glass since 1997, initially with lead light, and progressing to fused glass in 2009, which she creates from her workshop in the Perth Hills.

She has won several awards, in particular the Gordon Award at Glass+, emerging artist award from MAGE, and a finalist in Tom Malone and Mandorla exhibitions, and is represented throughout Western Australia.

Sally, who works from her Kalamunda studio has been a professional, full time artist since 2014.
Previously she had a career in design and reprographics in the print industry in London and then in Perth.

“My work reflects my passion for birds. Using pastel, colour pencil and acrylic as my varied mediums, I lean towards realism but deliberately stay away from the more traditional style of portraying wildlife preferring to use a bolder style with visible marks, large size, dramatic light and exaggerated colour,” Sally said.

“I aim to reveal the individual character that all birds have and have won multiple awards for my work so far and have exhibited extensively.”

In 2022 she was featured in a book by Penny Olsen called ‘Feather and Brush: Three Centuries of Australian Bird Art’ – a revised edition of the book which was first written 20 years ago.

“I’m very happy to be able to support Kaarakin Black Cockatoo Conservation Centre and Kanyana Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre through donations of profits from the sales made through my website of prints of my artworks depicting their resident birds.

“I intend to keep building my large catalogue of fine art limited edition prints which currently numbers at around 70.”

Founded by Leigh Sheppard, OCD WA is a not-for-profit organisation, with a team who work together to provide a psychologically safe space, working towards providing advocacy and significantly improving, awareness, education, funding, research, access to evidence-based treatment and community support for people living with OCD in Australia.

“It is the mission and purpose of OCD WA to optimise recovery and maximise quality of life for people living with OCD and their families, by establishing a hub that provides holistic, evidence-based, gold-standard care and guided peer support,” she said.