Jordan Fardell

Winner - Outstanding Student Award 2009.

Displaying an obvious love of colour and surface design, Jordan Fardell is the worthy winner of ATASDA’s Outstanding Student Award for 2009. Her skill in design and execution is evident from her major work for HSC in 2009 and her enthusiasm to further and share her talents through extracurricular activities and workshops lie close to the heart of ATASDA.

Jordan has lived all her life in Dubbo, NSW, growing up with her sister and parents. Her first encounter with textiles could be said to have come from her grandparents who owned a fabric shop and repaired sewing machines. She remembers sewing with them as a young girl but only found a real interest for textiles when she chose the subject as an elective in year 9. Since then it has become a passion and has taken over her focus, and her mum’s spare room, of course. Welcome to the world of stash building, Jordan!

In her years 9 to 12 at St Johns College, Dubbo, her inspiration and guidance has come from her textile and design teacher, Cecilia O’Donnell, who has given her the opportunity to learn and discover innovative techniques, and to develop her own creativity. Mrs O’Donnell is clearly supportive of Jordan and indeed was the ATASDA member to nominate her for the Award.

Jordan’s creativity is not restricted to textile design. She excels also in visual art, guided by her teacher Luke Carter; her HSC major work, a piece compiled of 365 self portraits entitled Narcissus Calendar, being nominated for Art Express.

Over the years Jordan has learned many valuable fabric manipulation and embellishment techniques such as appliqué, hand and machine embroidery, pin tucking, lace insertion, foiling, felting, screen printing and various dyeing methods. Silk painting and dyeing along with hand embroidery have become some of her favourite techniques as they impart colour and texture to her designs, no better illustrated than in her textiles HSC major work, a beautiful peacock inspired dress. The peacock’s feather, the principle source of the bird’s perceived age, strength and status to its mate, was the focal point of Jordan’s inspiration for this work. The silk dress, including the bodice lace was dyed according to the colour theme of the feather ‘eye’ and detail later added with hand beading. She created a detachable feather skirt by hand sewing feather boas and individual peacock feathers onto a skirt base. On the underside of this skirt a peacock was hand painted with further embroidery and appliqué. A complementing headpiece used a number of peacock feathers and jewels to complete the outfit.

Jordan recognizes the need to be aware of current materials and techniques and has attended workshops, a Preliminary three week VET course and a one day course with the Whitehouse Institute of Design, Australia. It was in one such workshop that she was able to develop her skills in dyeing silk for her major work. 

Outside of her academic curriculum Jordan has used her skills to design and create costumes for dance groups and end of year productions held by the dance studio at which she volunteers each year, and produce props for her College musical productions. This is clearly an area of creative work that she enjoys and would like to continue and develop. When asked whose work she most admired, Catherine Campbell from Australia came to mind first, but also included a look to the dramatic arts citing Susan Hilferty, who designed the costumes for the Broadway version of the musical Wicked among many other shows. Her hope to design similar fantastic costumes on stage could well be realised if she continues in this vein.

So what plans does Jordan have now? Well, she has applied to the National Institute of Dramatic Arts (NIDA) in 2010 and hopes to complete a Bachelor of Dramatic Art Production Crafts-Costume there. Alternatively she may follow a degree in teaching or in Fine Art at the University of Newcastle. Whatever the choice, she sees this recognition from ATASDA as a platform from which to launch her textile future and hopes to gain valuable knowledge and skill base from her involvement with the Association.

Many congratulations again, Jordan, on representing ATASDA as our Outstanding Student for 2009, and our best wishes for your future success.

Below is just a small representation of works that Jordan submitted with her entry.

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