Inside Jo.B

19/05/2026

Been too long between sharing post …has given me some anxiety to be honest.
As artist, designer maker, educator, professional nanny, women’s worker, home birth coach, I’m here to be and share.
Around all the grief that i witness on this device in the world I hold the space between.
Allows me the privilege for creativity as an act of resistance in community!
To share places and spaces to come together and co-create, collaborate with our hands.
Raising myself up to have clarity and presence for each other and especially our children, all children.
God creator bless us with strength to be truely advocate in spirit, word and action. 🤎

23/04/2026

Hey my creative community here to share, clay is the earth and part of us, it opens a portal to creativity.

Playing in the mud making cakes for my Dollie’s and digging for clay in the creek next to my house in Aotearoa New Zealand are core memories.

The joy of creating with clay playing and making with our hands vessels to drink and eat from is such an elemental human experience!

As a ceramics artist since high school, worked teaching ceramics at Camp America and studied with few Bohemiem artists in the 1990s in Sydney and have set up multiple tiny clay studios a few on Waiheke Island!

As I had many the opportunity to share this passion for clay with my six children when I home schooled them years ago, to this day we still enjoy setting up the table to make some little gifts for each other and friends.

As an educator I’ve also taught clay playing at local preschool Belong Booker Bay and I’m part of a local arts and crafts studio on the Central Coast.

Love to create with community and having Inside Jo.B Clay Club at our creative home studio Umina Beach, on the Central Coast is our offering for beginning locals, established artists, home schoolers and their families.

https://www.insidejo-b.com/offers/clay-club

*Happy and experienced to share materials, time, space and practical tips to achieve your vision for hand built vessels and small sculptures.
Plus in these confusing polarising times I have found so much comfort in making ceramics in community and as form of creative resistance to whats going on in our world!
I heard a indigenous sister on Turtle Island say recently the opposite of war isn't peace its creativity!
May we all find creativity within x Jo.
* Some funds raised from the Clay Club will be donated to PCRF - Palestine Children's Relief Fund

20/04/2026

Excited to create with local Central Coast community and open up our home studio in Umina Beach we have new season workshops coming up!
https://www.insidejo-b.com/offers/flower-forage-and-fold-workshop-central-coast-eco-print
On 17th May 10-12 come and Eco Print Hapa Zome togeather - $45 adults and $30 children 🧡🌺🌼 ( Great gift for Mama )

*Teaching eco and natural dyeing for nearly 10 years join us for nature play everything provided (can bring your own T-SHIRT or pillow case too).

Join Jo from Inside Jo. B to discover how to use foraged flowers, leaves from the neighbourhood, healing herbs, medicinal flowers grown at her home studio, with basic food scraps and household items to simply Natural Dye and make patterns on fabric. All sourced foraging locally here in Woy Woy on th

12/02/2026

Watch this short film!
Another good reason to learn how to Sew. 🧵🪡

Next sewing circle Stitch, Bitch & Enrich. Sunday 22nd February in Umina Beach studio, book online or DM and bring your kids for free 🫶🏽 *(10+ only)

“Sew Torn” is a tale of a seamstress, her thread, and a deal gone bad.https://www.macdonaldentertainmentpartners.comDirected by: Freddy MacdonaldStory by: Fr...

31/01/2026

The ART OF CREATIVE RESISTANCE IN COMMUNITY!🦋
As the old saying goes "A stitch time (saves nine)” said to mean that it is better to act or deal with problems immediately, because if you wait and deal with them later, things will get worse and the problems will take longer to deal with.

Lets take the action to heart we have never been in this place in time with our world in such a state, on the precipice of artifical intelligence, wars on humanity. If we actively resist with action in art with our god given hands we change the direction and influence in our community!

Fortnightly gathering for stitch in time with community supporting each other over tea and hand work the art of sewing and repairs. Welcome to Inside Jo.B textile and ceramics home studio in Umina Beach on the Central Coast north of Sydney.

21/07/2025

02/06/2025

Last week’s sweet moments. Yet everyday the same, I wake up and cry for what’s happening in our world.
Wiping my eyes i rise and mother myself while praying for my children, they have come through my body or into the flow that’s my life to care for them.

Freedom a birthright which I’m blessed to be chosen by a select few women and men to witness, birth of their babies.

To advocate for their needs and choices especially when come home birth and the herbal, cannabis or medicine they choose if any!

How privileged to create the life I/we choose!Underneath keeping our hearts and bodies soft, focused for those in these very moments can’t choose where their children are born or how they will survive or feel free?
Do we stand and shout, scream and cry some more. To keep choosing our freedom to build resilience as they will need us our strength, our abundance to be shared our joy.

Let’s continue to speak for them act acknowledging to live fully and never stop, boycotting, donating, marching for a free Gaza, a world where our children are fed and safe, where land and waters with all living creatures on and in them are honoured. Amene and so it is. 🖤
STAY TUNED IN MY LOVES YOUR STRENGTH AND CREATIVITY WILL BE CALLED UPON SOON TO GATHER WITH ME! WHO WANTS to JOIN ME?!
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27/03/2025

Blessed to back from the Pacific Islands, on Rarotonga for a week now and the shared ancestral creativity was a gift to witness and participate.

Especially in these times where the choice to travel to ancestral lands is not a freedom or privilege we all have.

Our Pacific Island arts has always drawn me in, as a young girl one of my first books I bought when traveling between Aotearoa and Sydney was on Samoan Tapa and the markings.
So grateful it’s part of me the familiarity and peace it brings and how connected I feel to spirit of my Grandparents and my tupuna.

Pacific island culture and the symbols and stories are intertwined we are one peoples with different but similar ways. Connected by our ancestors /tupuna, trade, relationships and their navigation waka journeys.

Appreciate the sense of belonging as an Islander; creating is deep desire of mine, to learn and share our stories.
I was guided and made connections at Vaimaanga community hall with a sister Tumutoa and her Auntys to understand more mark making on the pareu/lava lava/ sarong will return to practice and play with them soon.

At the local Rarotonga community college had the absolute joy to start some more weaving with bro the and teacher Sunshine.
Plus awesome connection with local artists and carvers Ivon and Pania at local gallery who just picked my brains on plant colour for inks and future collaborations.

Of course so keen to return soon to the Raro and the other Cook Islands to learn more about the plants and to create and share more natural dyeing skills, eco dye practices with local artists and makers there.

Thanks to my gentle sis again for helping me make these connections and start our first Eco Dye workshop .reef.bungalows
Mostly to god my father for immense blessings given to my family aiga this year to travel with and to see each other🙏🏾🤎🏝️🌺
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21/03/2025

Foraging for Kai/food, flowers, shells and being with my people and the animals is a big part of who I am and crave.

The beauty, kai, ocean and the community culture in Rarotonga, Cook Islands blew me away.

Abundance of spirit, the mana of the Pacific Islands reminded I am of these places.
My blood and skin more alive to familiar ways of being that are my Islander Samoan and Sri Lankan blood.

Night dream scape were busy traveling to see my children and wakefulness was a way of being.
Processed more healing to soften and flow like the waters within, being nourished by moana ocean and take that energy to the land.
So blessed by the people I love and connected to there.
I can’t thank enough my sis for all the moments together and having more time with niece Tallulah.
Was a dream come true after so long since she helped look after me and my children on our Waiheke Island home.

There was so much available and shared in the islands and the creativity inspired my making ways.
I’ll share more how I’ve started to connect more to the Textile and fibre arts in my next post.🙌🏾🛬🏝️🌺🌕🥭🤎

02/03/2025

So far this year is blessed in sweet creative flow, loving the house and dog sitting, and sharing with loved ones life.
Thanks to my people’s for holding me and knowing when to let me go.
Love being back teaching and sharing my joy to play with plants and be with women.
Looking forward to more creativity as new seasons unfold, but for now I’ll keep chasing summer.

Collaboration this year with Helen has been epic she’s an inspiration and generous maker.
We been sharing with each other for nearly 10 years around markets and making with a side of single mothering (and how to do relationships!)

Thanks to .gallery who shared space with me this last year in Woy Woy, I’ve packed up my gears there too.
Patiently waiting for options for new creative collaborative spaces for making, and to have my slow made, zero waste and natural dyed, rare textile capsule collection.
Let me know if you have some ideas, wishes to collaborate or have your own private event, bride/hens party and ritual eco dye workshop.
I’m so much more open to healing in creative community.
So keen to share where I’m next adventuring to find more of my people and new places. 🏝️
Thanks for being here for me, even when I don’t seem my self, you’re helping me grow from a distance with the spirit that connects us all.
I’m supporting freedom and aroha, with abundance as our children are watching. 🤎🕊️🌿
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