Color and creativity take centre stage at Reef Festival
AFTER months of painstaking work creators of wearable art took to the covered catwalk at the Airlie Beach foreshore yesterday.
Tops hand stitched from bead bag ties, gowns made from the pages of old books and dresses created from plastic bags were just some of the elaborately crafted costumes modelled at this year's Whitsunday Reef Festival wearable art competition.
Stepping up to organise this year's event was Head of the Arts at St Catherine's College Kirsten Orenshaw.
Ms Orenshaw said the very high standard of entrants was no surprise this year but she did find it challenging organising both the event and the many students who entered the competition.
"Each year the level gets higher and higher. The trouble is the judges have such trouble choosing first, second and third," she said.
Manager of Proserpine's Wilmar mill Danny Van der Berg was on hand to present the winners their prizes at the Wilmar Sugar sponsored event.
This year he left his high-vis shirt in the wardrobe and looked very sharp at the head of the catwalk.
He said the competition was "out of this world (and) it's been fantastic".
Ms Orenshaw said the competition provided young people of the Whitsundays with not only a vehicle to express themselves but a complete intellectual paradigm.
"It's not about the students producing this artwork it's about the way they think. It's about their imagination and thinking outside the box," she said.
