Swedish travels

I'm going to Sweden in the morning to gather lots of research, images, materials, stories and inspiration....come back next week and I'll share what I found x

Multiples\2

Collections seen at Dutch Design Week. Fragile and delicate butterfly wings digitally printed onto thin rubber, hand-stitched into 3D forms and over-flocked for a soft, dusty finish. Experimental ceramic work-in-progress pieces exhibited in rows and grids, unfinished or imperfect, exploring how materials react to each other, coloured glazes, matt and shine, dry and powdered, hard and soft, expanding and sunken forms.

Wool Filler

One of my most favourite things from Eindhoven was Wolplamuur (Wool Filler) by Heleen Klopper. She explores the idea of mending holes in clothes by felting the area with a contrast colour wool fibre, creating textured circular patches by needlepunching the fibres into the cloth. She was also selling DIY kits at the show where you could pick your own colour wools along with a needle, sponge and instructions....why didn't I get one?!

Plaster and dust

The first of my Dutch Design Week posts is from a fantastic ceramics studio in TU/e (the technology university in Eindhoven) which was showing a small exhibition of work dotted around the space, while other artists were creating new work. I loved the interaction and the freedom of wandering around the studio, seeing the processes and machinery and sampling and final pieces, and documenting the mess, the tools, the colours, the textures, the stories.

Collective Wisdom

I've just been reading an article in the September/October edition of Crafts magazine called 'Collective Wisdom', that looks at the reasons some people are obsessed by collecting things, and love this quote from Susan Sontags 1992 novel The Volcano Lover:

"To collect is to rescue things, valuable things, from neglect, from oblivion, or simply from the ignoble destiny of being in someone else's collection rather than one's own". 

Patchwork boxes

These are some of Ellie Evans new pieces shown at Origin craft fair a couple of weeks ago. I met Ellie at New Designers last year when she graduated from Manchester and it was lovely to see how her work has progressed. I haven't been able to stop thinking about the patchwork-lined antique boxes made with digital prints, vintage fabrics and hand embroidery. They remind me of my postcard wall in a way with lots of visual patterns and imagery spliced together.

Displacement

I stumbled across a fantastic installation on Great Eastern Street by Maaike Anne Stevens for Levi's Live Unbuttoned project that "encourages people to separate observation from preconception". 

Reflections...refractions...distortion...displacement...optical...shards...layers...photographic...mirrored...

Retro pattern

A trip to the Geffrye Museum today...gorgeous ceramics, would look lovely on my shelf!

Featherdown Farm

More photos from our weekend on Featherdown Farm, see my earlier post here. I'm off to Eindhoven this afternoon for Dutch Design Week....very exciting, lot of amazing new work from graduates of Design Academy Eindhoven to see. Will post some of my favourites when I'm back.

Textured surfaces

A few more images from the current Saatchi Gallery exhibition Abstract America  - layers and swirls of colour, blurred and exposed patterns, torn and rubbed surfaces, mulched and recycled materials.

Staycation

Spent an amazing weekend with friends at Featherdown Farm in Lincolnshire - wood-burning stove, candles and oil lamps, freshly laid eggs, homemade bread, canvas cabins, absolute darkness and hazy sunrise, sandwich-pinching chickens, night-time sounds (owls and foxes), poached shepherd's pie (no oven!), chocolate quiz, no facebook, ha ha!!

Stamps

Inspired by a recent post on one of my favourite blogs Ungtblod, here are a few stamps that I have picked up on my travels or torn from found envelopes.....I love the horse one so much!

Exciting coverage

Postcards from Battersea has been featured on The Womens Room!

Soft wax, deceptive surfaces and digital fashion

Yesterday we had a team day out absorbing new exhibitions and being inspired by unusual materials and processes. Absolute favourite of the day (and I think the most inspiring and interactive exhibition I have seen since Psycho Buildings last year) is Anish Kapoor at the Royal Academy - loads of soft, squidgy red wax poured and thrown and dragged across the interior (red wax images from google).

SHOWstudio: Fashion Revolution at Somerset House was also really interesting - particularly working for an online fashion company - as it tracks how Nick Knight and his team have explored new ways of creating, showing and interacting with fashion using the internet and digital media.

Also fantastic for materials was Thomas Heatherwick's Extrusions at the Haunch of Venison (round the back of the RA) - creating furniture from single pieces of aluminium that are squeezed through the world's largest extrusion machine. Definitely a bit of a polished and mirrored surface theme going on during the day!