Freaking genius

Oh Walter, you are too good!

Sorry that this show has ended, but I am mighty glad I visited RMIT Design Hub to witness the fitness that is Walter Van Beirendonck.

Hot damn.

Arty Farty

 Listened to a lot of The Strokes' new album. Full volume.

Ditto the the new Phoenix album. Glorious.

 Went to the Abbotsford Convent for Brick Club, which is a Lego day on the 3rd Sunday of each month. They also have a Maker's Market in the adjoining rooms where Hazie gets her fix of $2 facepainting, and this week I got my fix of Sandra Eterovic prints. Sandra has a show opening tonight at Hut13.

 I got a haircut.

 Used my Northcity4 shopping trolley token.

 Went to the NGV with Hazel. This is a new acquisition, a Japanese artist whose name I forget. There is a taxidermied deer underneath all the globes of acrylic, glass and crystal, it's all about pixels and magnification. Delightful.

 Bronze woman.

 Toni Maticevski and Richard Nylon for the Australian Ballet.

 Jeremy Scott and Adidas. I love every single variation of these winged high tops.

 Does this look like a 2D stencil-esque work? Because it's not - it's a fiberglass lifecast which is painted.

 On Saturday we went to Lamington Drive to see the Beci Orpin and Kat Macleod show. Hazel loved this installation of streamer curtain/confetti heaven, we recreated it on her bunkbed.

I loved these little beetles which Kat had embellished with sequins and machine stitching. So gorgeous. I'm planning a return visit sans enfants, I was too worried that Hazel would rip the streamers down to really look at the works for a long time.

Ray Gascoigne

I love reading Smith Journal, and the latest edition features the subject of this short film - Ray Gascoigne, maker of astoundingly detailed ships in bottles. Leo and I pored over the photos but now I can show him this video, and hopefully it will make a bit more sense to him.

In contrast to yesterday's post about Loewe, and their impeccably clean surfaces and benchtops, Ray's workbench looks very familiar to me, layers of materials and tools with one small clear space directly in front of him. I'm always keen to see how makers order their space, or not!

Bravo to the Etsy blog for featuring such gorgeous short films.

Loewe loves leather

Via The Selby - wow.

In the words of Liz Lemon 'I want to go to there'!

 

  

 

  

 

 

Andiamo Venezia!

We're all very excited to announce that Sam's work is going to Venice!

Ten years ago Sam and I visited Venice during the Biennale, so it is quite a thrill to be going back with his work. The whole family are going, kids, adults and Granny, and we'll be visiting Florence and Rome as well. We should be there for about a month, during which there will be a lot of eating, adventuring and sweating in the summer heat.

Obviously there is a lot to organise, and for Sam, a lot of sculpting, which has been quite challenging in the recent heat - melting plasticene anyone?

I've already started Italian classes at the CAE, molto bene! Can you tell I'm ridiculously excited?

Craft Crush

I was thrilled last week to see accessories designer/maker Moya Delaney get some love on the Design Files. I have been a fan of Moya's since I moved to Melbourne 13ish years ago, and have re-read this post many times already.

I won't give you the whole rundown, you can click on the link above, or visit Moya's site, but I will give you the reasons I love her work.

Moya loves military and nautical references - snap! She is also from a sculpture background - snap! And of course Moya is always at Leffler stocking up on supplies - snap!

                                            Grand Jackpot - from the Cruiseline collection

 

Rio Grande from the Apache collection 

 

Amazon Wings - Apache collection

 

Nato signal flag shade

Belated mention

Totally forgot to mention that my pal Stephen Phillips designed the shoes for Christina Exie, the winning contestant of Project Runway - woot! He knows that I love spending time on my sewing machine and asked me to stitch the uppers for 10 pairs of slick ankle booties, which was heaps of fun.
Check out his site for the HUGEST post on his experience making this production run all by hand - the man is a champ!

Artist Profile Issue 20

My beloved Sam is featured in the latest issue of Artist Profile magazine. We hunted down our copy at Readings the other day and Hazel proudly announced 'That's my Daddy!' to all the staff at the front counter.

The interview is a transcribed conversation with Sam, I hope you can read it from these images.