Craft Cubed opening night

On a Friday evening not too long ago was the opening night of our brand new festival, Craft Cubed. There was a great turnout, with lots of friends and family of the participating artists and fans of Handmade Life and Snawklor turning up in full force.

Because good things come in threes, the launch was not just to celebrate Craft Cubed, but also to launch Professional Members' exhibition Perspective and Handmade Life publication I MAKE STUFF: the beta edition, both of which were done to the smooth sounds of arty fellows Snawklor (of which I'll Show You My Craft If You Show Me Yours exhibitor Dylan Martorell is a member of).

Snawklor

Installation view

Clockwise from top: Perspective exhibition work by Maryann Talia, Nicholas Jones, Dell Stewart and Jennifer Bartholomew

To view more images of the opening and the exhibition, click here.

As usual, photos by the ever-lovely Alexia Skok.

I'll Show You My Craft If You Show Me Yours (Dylan Martorell & Sunday Morning Designs)

Currently in Gallery 3 and in enCOUNTER are the first duo in I'll Show You My Craft If You Show Me Yours. Comprising of artist/musician/illustrator/sonic gardener Dylan Martorell and accessories/textiles/clothing label Sunday Morning Designs, this collaboration can be described as guerilla garden/shelter/sustainably-designed loungeroom, complete with homely furnishings like cushions and lamps to set the mood.

I'll Show You My Craft If You Show Me Yours is all about the slashes, it being a program designed to bring together two makers working in decidedly different fields. In this instance, Dylan has constructed a garden in the confines of Gallery 3 where he is currently growing a variety of edible mushrooms in a prototype multipurpose portable shelter made from market bags and tarpaulins patched together by Sunday Morning Designs.

There's portobello, shiitake, button, and oyster mushrooms, along with other assorted fungi and water plants, sprouting forth at the moment to a hynoptic soundtrack of field recordings and ambient lighting. One visitor mentioned it smelt like Bunnings... and it kind of does...

To catch the growth in action, make your way down to CVHQ from now till 22 August. You can also view more growth action in our 24/7 window display enCOUNTER where Dylan and SMD are growing more mushrooms and a potato plant.

In the meantime, here are some images of the installation as of last week.

Photography by Alexia Skok

Bio-Accessories

Bio-Accessories, a project by Melbourne-based artists Ben Landau and Brittany Veitch, is one of two satellite exhibitions that are part of the Craft Cubed festival lineup. For their exhibition, Ben and Brittany have created a series of living headpieces, brooches and accessories to bring a bit of low-tech couture into modern city living.

The exhibition is currently on display in two locations: the main body of work is located at the niches in the City Library and there is a small collection of work exhibiting in Craft Victoria as well. It's really easy to spot, just have a look at our niche-in-the-wall of Gallery 1 (to keep the niche theme running).

Since installing their exhibition on Sunday, Ben and Brittany have been inundated with attention. Internet bigwigs Designboom recently featured the exhibition (which you can check out here), along with Veg.itecture, RMIT, TechNews, and DeZona, to name a few.

The exhibition will officially open tomorrow (Saturday 8 August) at 2pm with an artist talk presented by Ben and Brittany. The talk will take place in the Seminar Room, Level 1 at the City Library, 253 Flinders Lane. Come on down and meet the artists for a chat and if you're lucky, maybe even a drink after.

And of course while you're in the area, don't forget to come say hi to this month's fabulous Craft Hatch stallholders! The market was featured in today's issue of The Age - how wonderful!

We'll be posting the accompanying catalogue text along with more images of the exhibition next week as well as an interview with Ben and Brittany. Stay tuned for more!

WHITEBOX

Party Dress by Dana and Karla Kalwas (image source)

As part of the Craft Cubed festival program, we are proud to present online component WHITEBOX.

Consisting of 50 international and local design projects, WHITEBOX presents a carefully curated selection of online articles, websites and blogs that address the festival theme CITYCOUNTRY. Our very own curator Nella Themelios has trawled through the vastness that is the internet to come up with a one-stop click central that will probably keep you occupied for the next couple of hours or so.

Free Spirit Spheres (image source)

Some of the standout projects include ball-shaped tree dwellings (pictured above), a party dress worn by five peolple that can be modified to form a shelter (pictured top), various articles on guerilla gardening, the fascinating concept of 'rural design' (as opposed to urban design) and a directory of edible vegetation in the city of Bristol, UK. Of course there are plenty more projects to read through so click click click!

Local inclusions include Urban Interior (who exhibited at CVHQ in September 2008), Fresh! 2008 exhibitor Rob Dumaresq's Switch Commuter Bike, Anthea van Kopplen's envelope garment, Bench Architect's rooftop garden and of course Ben Landau and Brittany Veitch's Bio-Accessories project, to name a few.

For your reading ease, brief easy-to-digest descriptions appear when the project is clicked. Aren't we thoughtful!

WHITEBOX is an exciting project for us as it is presents an exciting new virtual dimension to the Craft Cubed program. We hope you have as much fun reading it as we did sourcing it.

Craft Hatch goes CITY|COUNTRY

Coming up on Saturday are two very special events: Craft Hatch (the CITYCOUNTRY edition!) and the artist talk/launch of Craft Cubed satellite exhibition Bio-Accessories (pictured below) by Ben Landau and former Craft Hatch participant Brittany Veitch.

To coincide with our inaugural festival Craft Cubed, Craft Hatch goes CITYCOUNTRY in this month's edition of the market. Featuring 9 spectacular emerging makers, each of whom have addressed the theme CITYCOUNTRY by presenting a special limited edition work, expect to be ooh-ed and aah-ed by a wonderfully curated selection of jewellery, textiles, accessories and more.


Stallholders this month are: Alexandra Bletsas, Sarah Hinds, Gemma Patford, Jennie Barnes, final year students from RMIT Gold & Silversmithing, Matt Nicholls, Kate Brereton & Charlotte Tizzard, Chloe Vallance and Cat MacInnes.

The market will take place in the usual spot: in the Gallery of the City Library, 253 Flinders Lane Melbourne from 11am to 4pm.


Here's a peek at what's to come this Saturday:

Alexandra Bletsas

Chloe Vallance

Gemma Patford

Jennie Barnes





Kate Brereton


Charlotte Tizzard


Matt Nicholls



Charles Wyatt (RMIT Gold & Silversmithing)

Fiona Simmons (RMIT Gold & Silversmithing)

Sarah Hinds

To recap, here are the essential details:

Craft Hatch: Saturday 8 August, 11am to 4pm at the City Library Gallery

Bio-Accessories launch/artist talk: Saturday 8 August 2pm at the City Library Seminar room.

If you're doing the Facebook thing, we are too so click here to RSVP your attendance. Looking forward to seeing you on Saturday!

Pantone Pom Pom by numbers...

You've seen the show and read the interview, so today CLOG is super proud to present Pantone Pom Pom-by-numbers... after all, the numbers don't lie!



760 pom poms

250+ hours

152 balls of wool

38 colours

15 metres of yarn per pom pom

13.68 kilometres of yarn

6 cracked and blistered fingers

a larger portion of the dvd’s at my local video store than I care to admit…

and of course,

countless puzzled expressions when forfeiting a night out to stay home and make pom poms…

Introducing... Anita Cummins

With Anita Cummins' exhibition Pantone Pom Pom almost at the half way mark now, there's never been a better time to shine the light on the life and work of fabulous lady herself.

We all know that Anita is one of the loveliest staff members here at CVHQ, but did you know that prior to her textile-based artistic practice, Anita worked as a freelance stylist? This totally explains her amazing wardrobe and keen eye!

Anita, who many of you will also know as CVHQ's ever-capable Assistant Retail Manager, is a budding textile artist who is particularly skilled in the art of the pom pom. For her exhibition Pantone Pom Pom (which is on at Mailbox 141 until 22 August), Anita has painstakingly wrapped, wound and trimmed over 700 pom poms in a myriad of colours and tones.

If you haven't already, take a peek at previous entries on Anita which includes photo documentation of Pantone Pom Pom.

Happy Friday everyone, see you at the launch of Craft Cubed tonight (from 6pm!)

About Pantone Pom Pom…
I started making pom poms years ago for a university exhibition. I tried to make as many as I could in the university semester, which ended up being about 350. Back then they were all white with a few red ones. Making pom-poms developed into a bit of an obsession, and it became a sort of meditation for me.

Pantone Pom Pom was a natural progression for me. I have always been in awe of artists who use explosions of colour, but never had the guts to do it myself. I had started making pom poms in every colour I could find and then it dawned on me that I could really play with colour by referencing the pantone colour chart in response to the Craft Cubed theme of CITYCOUNTRY. I chose two colour palettes, a really bright, fluoro scale for city, followed by a really earthy, natural scale for country. That is not to say that these particular colours cannot appear in both urban and rural environments, but for the purpose of this project I wanted to celebrate colour gradations. A simplified response to the word city is bright lights and neon, while I think of the words neutral and natural in relation to country.

About the process…
It was pretty hard to find the colours I wanted, in the yarn that I wanted. Different types of yarn produced very different results, so I had to choose my colours according to what was available in the yarn that I like. I wanted to use only natural fibres, but there were some colours such as the fluoro green and orange that you can only get in acrylic fibre, so I did have to make a few exceptions. My Gran thinks it is a shame to waste all that beautiful wool on making pom poms, but wool really does produce the best results. It would also be great to dye my own colours, but I have no experience in dyeing, so perhaps that’s something I need to try in the future.

I would often take my stuff to my mum’s and make pom poms in her lounge room. On a number of occasions her wayward dog Louis stole a pom pom that had rolled onto the floor, snuck under the couch with it and proceeded to ‘kill’ it. It was funny but annoying…

Five years’ ago I was…
I was studying Creative Arts and Arts at The University of Melbourne. I drank a lot of coffee, smoked a lot of cigarettes and wrote some very unworthy essays. I dabbled in all of the creative arts, my favourites being life drawing and photography, mainly because of my lecturer Barb. I majored in Italian, which was by far my worst subject but I scraped through and even ended up living in Italy for a semester. I saved up my pennies and travelled in South East Asia over summer.

…and in five years’ time I hope to be…
I don’t like to think too far into the future. I am not a career-focused person. I just want to keep doing things that I love and be open to any opportunities that may arise as a result of that.

A selection of Anita's scarves available at COUNTER

About making the move from being a stylist to textiles as an artistic practice…
I love fashion and photography, so styling seemed perfect for me. I should have known that nothing is as it seems. I really enjoyed working with all these creative people who were beginning to forge their careers as photographers and make-up artists and models, but a lot of these jobs were unpaid. The jobs that paid well were really boring, less about being creative and much more about being super-organized and getting everything done as fast as possible. I also stopped getting excited about putting outfits together, which is a bit of a disaster if you want to be a stylist. So I stopped.

Now I have time to say yes to opportunities that arise and put my own artistic practice as a priority. I get so much enjoyment from ‘creating’ and since making the decision to focus on my own stuff everything is just falling into place. And I am starting to get excited about fashion again…

My dream collaboration would involve…
I think Yoko Ono is a brilliant artist. I saw one of her exhibitions in Barcelona about 5 years ago and I have never forgotten it. The gallery was massive with about twenty rooms and in each room was an instruction. She orchestrated it so that her audience was a vital ingredient in the creation of the work. It gave even the most unlikely candidate a chance at being creative. She is so whimsical and particularly generous with her audience – allowing them to participate in her artworks. I think I would find it really hard to give over control to someone else but I would love to learn from someone like Yoko.

Having said that, I don’t really think about collaborating. It’s something that just seems to happen when two artists are inspired by each other and living in the same city.

I’m really looking forward to…
The Victorian Tapestry Workshop has asked me to share my love of the humble pom pom with others by giving classes. It is something anyone can do for not much money.

Tune in to SYN FM on Sunday for their Arts Mitten program from 3 to 4pm to hear Anita and Joe Pascoe (CVHQ Chief) talk about Craft Cubed and the exhibitions involved! Exciting stuff. We can't wait!

I MAKE STUFF: the beta edition by Handmade Life

Image pinched from the HML blog - thank you!

CVHQ's nearest and dearest, the lovely Handmade Life, are launching a book! How very exciting indeed.

Entitled I MAKE STUFF: the beta edition, the ladies behind HML (Ramona Barry and Beck Jobson) are serious makers. Aside from being the makers of Words and Pictures and Peeps respectively, they've just made some babies and still managed to make time to make I MAKE STUFF. Phew! That's a lot of making!

Feauturing 25 makers from Australia and overseas, I MAKE STUFF asks the crème de la crème of the craft scene the big question, "Why do you make stuff?"

Expect to gain a glimpse into the lives and artistic practice of some of the world's best ceramicists, jewellers, painters, graffiti artists, toymakers, musicians, textile designers, sculptors, bootmakers, and illustrators as they speak about their craft.

To be officially launched at this Friday's bonanza Craft Cubed opening (which also features a special performance by Melbourne darlings Snawklor), I MAKE STUFF: the beta edition is currently available for purchase from here and it will most definitely be available at COUNTER very, very soon. In the meantime, keep checking the HML blog for updates.

By the way, if you haven't yet RSVP-ed to attend the launch on Friday, you better hop to it by emailing rsvp@craftvic.asn.au your name and how many there'll be in your entourage.

Fully Furnished

A selection of designers have made work responding to the notion of interior and domestic space. Drawing from the methodologies of both design and the handmade, the exhibition showcases work by some of Australia's most eminent emerging and established designers: Tim Fleming, Erik North , Studio Hip (Damien Hipwell and Jacqueline Cuijpers) and Studio Sam (Samantha Parsons). The installation will explore the strategy of 'sampling' as both a basis for design and a new critique of the interior.

Acorns by Tim Fleming of Flatland OK

Fully Furnished was part of the 2009 State of Design Festival’s public and cultural program, Design for Everyone.

Sleep out by CVHQ's installation genius Erik North

Siena bookblock table by Studio Sam, acorn by Tim Fleming

L-R: Tim Fleming acorns, table by Studio Sam, chair and light by Studio Hip

Introducing... Prudence Rees-Lee

This week, CLOG is proud to present an interview with Prudence Rees-Lee, the brains behind cult favourite PHILOS-o-FACE and more recently, Prudence & Horatio and even more recently, PHILOS-o-FACE: The Director's Cut, a special collaboration between Prue and the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF). Big things are brewing for Prue and they can only get bigger!


To quote Prue, "Put your thinking face on" and read away. Happy Friday!

How did the idea for PHILOS-o-FACE develop and evolve? Was it a lightning bolt moment of inspiration, or was it something that you’ve been mulling over for a while?
I suppose it was more lightning bolt. I’d been fiddling around with resin and made a couple of brooches of my own face, they looked kind of creepy and weird, but really unique. I tried to think of a group of people who’s faces I could make who would look equally stoic and then then the name PHILOS-o-FACE and the idea of making philosophers (who let’s face it, are generally not a particularly pretty, or even recognisable lot) hit me.

The idea grew on me, because I realized that it could actually synthesize a lot of the things I wanted to do both creatively and professionally. There’s the oblivious craft side of things, but I’ve also used PHILOS-o-FACE to create site specific media installations and window displays, I’ve had to do some extra research about each philosopher, so I’ve actually been able to pursue the areas of interest from my arts degree. I’ve got plans about how the other branches of PHILOS-o-FACE can kind of develop, the one I’m really passionate about is creating a resource about philosophy and theory, something in between those awful comic book style idiot guides and dense academic papers.

How have things for you changed since launching PHILOS-o-FACE?
Things have changed quite a lot, especially recently. I’ve quit the day job to pursue this full time, so now my life kind of revolves around all the things you would expect to be involved in running a label. I spend a part of everyday in the studio, and the rest taking orders with shops, organizing commissions, meeting with designers and copy writers who are doing things for PHILOS-o-FACE, having long coffees at various Jerome’s establishments and longer vodkas at Hells Kitchen!

I can also do things like take an afternoon to go read magazines and count it as work. As I’m looking at putting together a publication I’m starting to hang out in book shops looking at book and magazine design, what kinds of paper I like, layouts and that kind of thing, it’s pretty rad!

Apart from PHILOS-o-FACE, what other exciting projects/things are you working on at the moment?
Well, now that everything has been done for the Director’s Cut series I’ll be focusing a bit more on tightening up Prudence and Horatio. Also, within PHILOS-o-FACE there are a number of things I’ll be working on over the next few months apart from the actual brooches. I’ll be developing a website with CC&Co, as well as gathering writers together for the publication, so the business will have a slightly different focus.

I’ve got a few other things which will be coming out this summer, but I’m afraid that at the moment it’s all top secret!

Prudence & Horatio was the next line you launched after PHILOS-o-FACE, could you please tell us a bit more about it?
I actually started making bird brooches before I started PHILOS-o-FACE, but didn’t release them till recently. I’d bought a whole stack of trading cards with old images of Australian birds on them. I really liked the idea of using Australian images, because I love nature and we really have the most amazing flora and fauna, so it’s a way of celebrating Australiana without doing something douchey like draping a flag over yourself at a music festival or getting an obnoxious tat of the southern cross of your chest.

As far as the name goes, well, I’m Prudence and, Horatio was my amazing dog I had as a teenager! He died quite a while ago but I still have lots of dreams about him and I loved him very much.

Who is your all-time favourite philosopher or director and why…
That is really difficult without going into a long discussion! The short answer would be that I like the existentialists and find Sartre in particular very seductive. I find the idea that we are completely free to create out lives very liberating, despite the inherent responsibility of this freedom. Also, he really lived by his convictions which I admire. If anyone is interested in the long answer I think they should probably email me!

As far as director, my opinion is probably a bit skewed right now as I’ve been staring at the all non stop for about the past month, but I’ll go with Jim Jarmusch (whose hotness is pictured below), because he’s a babe.

What was your first job?
My first job was spinning fairy floss at Chadstone shopping centre. I quite liked it, but would always fantasise how great my life would be if I got to be the girl who worked for the Pancake Parlour and dressed up as Alice from Alice in Wonderland, handing discount flyers out. My mum would come in and take my photo and I would scowl at her, so we’ve got all these photos of me covered in fairy floss looking very unhappy.

Editor's note (from yours truly, Kim): My first job was handing out flyers for Pancake Parlour on Bourke Street and I didn't get to wear an Alice outfit. I did get to wear an amazing t-shirt screenprinted with an image of a chimpanzee eating a tall stack of pancakes with the words "Any time is pancake time" next to it. Those were the days...

…and your dream job?
Hmmmm, this one is pretty good… too cheesy?

One thing you can’t live without?
I guess I could say love, or friends or family or something like that, but I’m going to go with my iphone, or cups. Life would be pretty difficult if there were no cups.

And finally, what are you really looking forward to in the near future?
Hitting the road. I recently got a car so I’m looking forward to going to a long solo drive up the coast and going skinny dipping somewhere warm and secluded.