Torri Stewart came to Take Two’s Form to Freedom course with Harriet Goodall as a printmaker, a gardener, and someone curious about working with woven materials. Based in Gisborne, New Zealand, and originally from Scotland, Torri had already explored printmaking, texture, and animal portraiture, but she did not yet fully see herself as an artist.
Before joining the course, Torri felt she was still on the edge of that identity. She wanted to make, experiment, and move towards something more expansive, but she did not yet feel she had the skills or confidence to step fully into that space. What she discovered through Harriet’s teaching was not simply a new set of basketry techniques, but a whole new way of seeing materials, form, and her own creative potential.
Before Form to Freedom, Torri describes herself as someone who dabbled rather than fully claiming the title of artist. She had made animal portraits, explored printmaking, and even experimented with weaving little nest-like forms from materials in her garden. Those early attempts did not become the delicate bird nests she imagined, but they did reveal a curiosity that was already there.
“I don’t think I saw myself as an artist before,” Torri says. It is a simple statement, but it says a great deal about the quiet hesitation many creative people carry before they find the right doorway into their practice. For Torri, that doorway was not about being handed a fixed outcome, but about being given permission to experiment, play, and discover what materials could become in her own hands.
One of the most immediate shifts for Torri was how the course changed the way she saw the world around her. As a gardener, she was used to growing plants and fighting weeds. Through Harriet's teaching, those same weeds began to hold new possibilities.
Suddenly, the garden was no longer just a place for maintenance. It became a source of material, texture, structure, and discovery. Torri began to see plants not as problems to be managed, but as things she could gather, test, dry, weave, shape, and transform.
That change in perception reached beyond basketry. It altered the way she approached making in general. The course helped her recognise that materials are not just supplies; they are collaborators.
Torri originally thought she was signing up to learn basket making. She imagined coming away with the ability to make baskets and, in her words, perhaps becoming a “master basket maker.” What happened instead was far less expected and far more transformative.
Rather than staying within the bounds of functional basketry, Torri found herself moving towards sculpture. The techniques Harriet taught opened a door to three-dimensional thinking, which began to influence not only her woven work but also her printmaking. Paper, fibre, thread, garden materials, and printed remnants all began to feel more malleable and alive.
“I went in a sculptural direction I had never expected to go in,” she says. That shift became one of the defining outcomes of the course. What started as a curiosity about weaving became a new way of building form, working with dimension, and allowing materials to lead.
The first time Torri took the course, she focused on learning the techniques. She wanted to understand coiling, looping, random weaving, and how different materials could be manipulated. Like many students encountering a new discipline, she found the early experience was about absorbing the vocabulary of the process.
When she returned to the course a second time as an alumna, something deeper began to happen. Torri found herself looking beyond technique and thinking more about the materials themselves. She began asking how to give them space, how to create balance, and how to allow certain elements to become the heroes of a piece.
She compares the experience to learning a language. The first time through, the techniques became the vocabulary. The second time, she began forming her own sentences.
Torri’s printmaking practice has been deeply influenced by what she learned in Form to Freedom. Before the course, printmaking felt more connected to flat surfaces and layered marks.
After working with weaving and sculptural forms, she began to see paper differently.
Old prints that might once have been discarded became material for new work. In one piece, The King, Torri transformed strips of printed paper into a sculptural form by soaking, shaping, shellac, stitching, and weaving. The result was a work she says she would never have conceived before taking Harriet’s course.
This relationship between printmaking and weaving has continued to evolve. Torri now experiments with woven forms made from Muehlenbeckia, passing them through the printing press to create negative images. The weaving absorbs ink and leaves ghostly impressions, creating a direct conversation between the woven object and the printed surface.
One of the strongest lessons Torri took from Harriet’s course was the importance of listening to materials. Rather than forcing a predetermined outcome, she found that the most exciting work often emerged when she sat with the material and allowed it to become what it wanted to be. This marked a major shift in her creative process.
“One of the really key things that I learned was to listen to the materials,” Torri says. For her, this meant slowing down, paying attention, and letting the work reveal its own direction. When she tried to impose an outcome too strongly, the result often lacked the same energy.
This way of working has become central to her practice. It has helped her understand when to keep adding, when to stop, and how to recognise when a work has reached the right level of complexity. That awareness has brought more confidence and restraint to her art.
Torri openly describes her tendency to put too much into things. In her art, as in life, she noticed a habit of adding more and more until the work became busy. Harriet’s teaching helped her understand the power of restraint.
Through feedback in the community group, Torri received advice on balance, repetition, and the pleasure of recognition within a piece. Seeing an element appear more than once can create cohesion and rhythm. That simple idea became something she now applies across her creative practice.
Learning where to stop became one of the most important lessons of the course. Torri began working with what she calls the power of three, often choosing three elements, materials, or techniques to bring balance to a work. This gave her a clearer way to edit her own decisions while still allowing room for discovery.
For Torri, the Take Two community group became one of the most valuable parts of the experience. Although Form to Freedom is an online course, she found the community felt much like being in a shared studio. Students could post questions, share struggles, celebrate discoveries, and receive thoughtful advice from Harriet, experienced alumni, and material specialists.
Torri especially valued the group’s international nature. If an idea came late at night, there was often someone in another part of the world awake and ready to respond. That constant access to encouragement and knowledge made the online experience feel surprisingly connected.
The community also helped students move through challenges together. Whether someone was stuck with coiling, unsure about a plant material, or needing feedback on a work in progress, support was available. For Torri, that shared sense of progress was both practical and deeply motivating.
Since completing the course, Torri’s work has continued to evolve in unexpected directions. One of the most exciting outcomes has been her work with seaweed, a material she describes as something her fingertips love. Through braiding, plaiting, stitching, weaving, shaping, and drying, she has developed a strong connection to its texture, movement, and transformation.
Her seaweed basket was selected for the Small Sculpture Exhibition at Waiheke Art Gallery, where it won the People’s Choice Award. For Torri, the recognition was especially meaningful because the exhibition was curated, with around thirty-five exhibitors chosen from approximately one hundred entries. To then have her work chosen as the audience favourite was a significant moment.
The piece itself began as soft, leathery, wet seaweed and slowly transformed in the Gisborne sun. Over several days, Torri turned, shaped, adjusted, and listened to the material as it shrank and changed. The final work held the memory of that process in its form.
Looking back, Torri says the course exceeded her expectations. What she thought would be a basketry course became something that reached into every part of her art practice. It changed the way she worked with paper, fibre, print, stitch, plant materials, and sculptural form.
Because of Form to Freedom, Torri now embroiders her prints, prints from woven structures, and thinks more confidently in three dimensions. The course helped her find a stronger sense of style and gave her permission to follow what brought her pleasure in making. It also helped her see that her practice did not need to fit neatly into one discipline.
In Torri’s work now, printmaking and weaving are no longer separate paths. They inform and overlap with each other, creating new possibilities. What began as learning techniques has become a living, evolving creative language.
For anyone considering Form to Freedom, Torri is clear the course is worth doing, regardless of a person’s creative background. She believes students will gain practical skills and the confidence to apply them in their own direction. Whether someone wants to make beautiful woven pieces or take the techniques into large-scale sculptural work, the course offers room for both.
She also understands that cost can be a real consideration for artists. When she enrolled, Torri did not have much money spare, and paying in instalments made the course possible for her. Looking back, she is grateful she made that decision.
Torri’s advice is grounded in lived experience rather than polished certainty. She arrived expecting basketry and left with a more expansive practice, a stronger artistic voice, and a new relationship with materials. As she puts it, “I think it would be fair to say that the course exceeded all my expectations.”