Exhibition : Inspiration
Wagga Wagga Art Gallery
19th May - 16th July 2006

We all love to collect; by nature we are hunters and gatherers in our own ways.

Buttons are an everyday commodity. They are small, generally inexpensive and instilled with memories - that's my inspiration for why I have spent countless hours carving these common-placed objects from wax. The more I look at them, the more I have become obsessed and intrigued by their history, beauty and diversity.

My interest in crafting buttons started when I inherited her mother's button jars, and all of the memories associated with them. Like many of you, my mother's button jar was probably a source of many stories chronicling the past. She would sew and I would play with the buttons - lining them up and sorting them out by colour and shape.

I vividly recall my father’s olive green cardigan which had beautifully handcrafted leather buttons and suede elbows. He wore this cardigan around our home, and I associate good feeling with this garment. I claimed it later for myself when I was studying.

My neighbour recalls playing tiddly winks with buttons as a young boy; my girlfriend Wendy from New Zealand remembers threading them onto string; and Gregory, at age 3 or 4, remembers wearing his hand-knitted powder blue cardigan with the fish buttons.

All photographs by David McArthur.

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