"I was 10 when my mother taught me to knit. Each winter I would sit with my family around the open fire and knit jumpers. (This was more than 40 years ago, before television arrived in Junee in country NSW.) I wasn't teased, because I didn't knit in public until after I left home at the age of 17. Lots of boys of my age knitted. As an adult, male knitter, I was considered a novelty but, instead of being put off, I made the most of it."

By the time Jude was about 30 he was creating his own patterns and designs for garments, complicated jumpers, balaclavas, gloves, a whole range of things, pushing the limits of the normal techniques. From about 1978 on, Jude moved to a more creative phase, and in the 80's he was knitting large sculptural pieces, a series of large trees, ten feet high with tops six feet in diameter, installed in groups of three with matching mushrooms and toadstools. These were based around the knitted flat circle, a single tree taking 200 hours to knit.

Then around 1985 came the revelation. "..I had yet to satisfy my creative urge to produce something unique…while looking at the web of a tree funnel web spider, I knew what I would do - I would make webs, lots of them, huge webs, that I would string between trees." "It took me a couple of months before I achieved anything. I was trying to use lace-knitting techniques, trying to work out how to get the thin lines that form the spokes, the connecting lines around the web, and then create the big holes that a web has." "In that early stage I would go and visit people, knit them a web and literally pin it up on their wall, but if they ever took it down, once the pins holding it in place came out, the knitting would unravel just as knitting does. That went on for well over a year before I perfected it; finally I worked out that if I sewed yarn around the outside it would lock all the pieces in place."

"Webs were attached to my large tree sculptures. At that stage I had to sew the web on to the structure, and each time I took it off only I could put it back together, no-one else knew how to do it, which was a good thing as I then got to travel around with that exhibition." "It was an enormous problem getting up into the tree, the branch was more than thirty feet high and it was quite dangerous and I don't think I would do it again. The following year we did another one which was a 3D construction, I went back and knitted an enormous spire, and we strung this spire up, we stretched the bottom out and put a layer of web underneath it, …that was the second."

This is an optical illusion, as these two webs are actually some distance apart.
Thuringowa, Ross River Festival - July, 2001

Jude installed 10 webs in the park for the festival. The webs were knitted out of thick, white, synthetic string. Thuringowa, Ross River Festival - July, 2001

The silver cord incorporated metallic thread, this reflected light at night.
Fiber FORUM, Mittagong - April, 2002

Five piece web sculpture. Each unit was lined up to create different images, depending on the height or angle of view. Fiber FORUM, Mittagong - April, 2002
A combination of silver cord and bamboo, of webs and spires.

After knitting webs for about 15 years he decided to do something a little more basic - something that would give him a financial return on his hobby. So he began making hats, and now knits about 100 a year. "…hat knitting…early on they were knitted just for the fun and enjoyment of it, and then people wanted to buy them because they liked them, so I had to make more of them. I've sort of got trapped into making hats because it's that one aspect of my knitting which people really enjoy wearing, there's the immediate response, people are wearing things that you have made. I've priced them at a point to sell easily rather than making a few and making them expensive, they are not exclusive…In one sense perhaps they are however, because there are never two that are the same, they are not meant to be a major fashion item, just a fun thing to play with, so the hats knit alongside the webs."

The web was strung horizontally in a tree that was perfect for this orientation.
Thuringowa, Ross River Festival - July, 2001

The use of blue baling twine to knit this was very successful. This 6 foot diameter web changed its appearance depending on the direction of the sunlight.
Launceston, Tasmania - January, 2002

Does Jude describe himself as an artist? No, he describes himself as a knitter, and proudly so. It's a hobby. "…with my web it's, well, the fact that I created it, but by giving it away, by letting other people go off and learn it and teach it, it's become a living thing, it's growing, going further and further, the creative idea started with me but didn't stop with me, it's 'Take it, here it is, you go and work on it.'" "…They just look so natural, the beauty of when they were strung up originally from the big tree…I mean, there are natural webs all around this garden and yet somebody has dared to make this giant one, it looks like a web, though it's not exactly like something a spider would make, but it's hanging from a tree just as a night spider might have made it. I just love the way they change, with the shadows in the morning and afternoon light…There's that feeling of naturalness about them and yet a sense of artificiality is there as well…"

Ross River Festival.
Spider Web

Jude was asked to create a web for a giant metallic spider sculpture that is permanently in the park at Thuringowa. This is the largest web that Jude has created, it is 16 feet in diameter. Thuringowa, Ross River Festival - July, 2001

This small, 3 foot diameter, web was perfect for this setting.
Launceston, Tasmania - January, 2002

Ararat Town Hall

This work was the installation of 24, 6 foot diameter webs into the ceiling of the Town Hall in Ararat, Victoria, Australia. It was installed in the first week of October, 2002." Town Hall, Ararat, Australia - October, 2002

Photo by Tricia Smout

Photos by Loreta Grayson

Photo: by Loreta Grayson

Photos by Loreta Grayson