Unikko

 Unikko, poppy in Finnish, was designed in 1964 by textile designer Maija Isola while working for Merimekko. 

This year the design is 50 years old and it is being celebrated in the many colors it has been printed. Since the 2000's it has found it's way printed onto every surface you can imagine, from shower curtains and bath towels  to mugs and plates, to Finnair passenger jets.

The simple, clean and bright pattern is still fresh today. It was created in protest, a real spirit of the period,  to the owner of Merimekko, Armi Ratia, announcing that they would never print a flower pattern. Maija, inspired by 60's Pop and the flower power movement ignored the ban on flowers and created the bold pink and red poppy blooms on a white background. It was an immediate success. It has never been out of print.


In the 70's it was printed in earth colors, by the beginning of this century it has been printed on a colored background and in 2009 the blooms became white on a black ground. Endlessly variable, always fresh and still retains that spirit of modernism:

 

I have always wondered if this silk screen print by Warhol had something to do with the imagination of Maija Isola in the making of Unikko:

Flowers, 1964

Super Future Kid

Last week I went to this exhibition called Super Future Kid, one of the painters represented by Rise Art. On entering the gallery I saw the paintings, my first reaction was: LA 60's, on closer look at the images and icons of American television and advertising I noticed all are from the 80's - 90's. Fun, I thought, great for kids rooms, until I spoke with Super Future Kid herself.

I asked did she grow up with a brother? No, she tells me, she has a sister but she was the tomboy. That is something I know and understand, I have 2 daughters, one played with Barbies, the other was a tomboy.

But what fascinated me was when she told me she is from East Germany, she was 8 years old when the Berlin Wall came down. After that event, an event that not only changed political maps, it changed the cultural influences.

Super Future Kid told me she had never seen such vibrant and bright images, never seen the tv shows of colorful puppets, muscle men, sports, cartoons and interrupted with brash advertising. Things I grew up with and saw and liked but ignored, part of the landscape.

We may see all these images as ironic, but for her it ignited her imagination, filled it with stories, images, fun and color,＃superfuturekid, I think her name tells it all.

Facepaint Animation

Very fun face painting, watch the line move around her face:

I was told it took it took 84 photos, but only 10 seconds.

The Cut Outs

Bright color on color, vibrant, complementary color, straight from the tube unmixed with white, gray or black. Flat shapes, frond shape, acanthus shapes, spirals, negative shapes. These are the materials Matisse worked with when he made the cut outs in the last productive and prolific period of his life.

The exhibition at Tate Modern of the paper cut outs has many of the pieces of work we associate with Matisse; the blue nudes, Jazz, the many frond and leafy flat shapes of bright painted paper. The exhibit explains how Matisse came to this technique changing from the lively paintings he previously painted. It was after an operation for cancer and a long recovery, but limited his mobility that he moved to this method of expression.

With a long pair of fabric scissors and sheets of paper painted with gouache he cut shapes, placed them on canvas to find a suitable arrangement.

It is a fun, immediate and active method of arranging compositions. A method that translates into Photoshop and Illustrator with ease. I feel we will see much influence from this exhibit in graphic and textile design, if we aren't seeing it already.

Sweet Ditch

A group of fantastic artists exhibiting this June at The Safehouse which is located in Peckham, South London, the exhibition will be in a Victorian house gutted and un-renovated. The art will look extraordinary in that space. There will be performances of music and dance.

"Hello! We are Sweet Ditch, a group of female artists who have joined creative forces to put on an exciting and diverse show this summer, then more to come both in London and New York.

We have artists ranging from painters and illustrators to film makers, sculptors and live performers. Our first show is about raw, original artwork. Work that is not trying to be anything but honest and courageous.

As Sweet Ditch, we set out challenge and inspire one another, and hopefully our audiences too. We are proud of the work that has been born out of of this supportive multi-disciplinary environment and can't wait to show you

We hope the uncompromising nature of our art will strike a cord with men and women who for whatever reasons are not making the art inside them, inspiring people to create no matter what."

 Kate Rubens

 Nicole Caltado-Davies

Please support them, this will be a great show, 4th - 8th June,  139 Copeland Road SE15
You can help by  going to Sweet Ditch

The Archives of Laura Ashley

This season the design team at Laura Ashley dug deep into their archives, they have found these lovely floral patterns. They are now available as their Archive Wall Art Collection, transferred onto canvas to hang as a piece or a collection. Each is made ot order or sold exclusively online.

Mounted and framed they will look so pretty anywhere.

Country Home and Garden

There is something about a real home, one not dressed up to sell by stylists or modelling the latest product. But a home that is for living with elegance and comfort and with your treasures you have collected.  A place to cook good food, drink wine and sit by the fire. Paintings and pictures of family or done by friends. It is a special space, almost sacred, you have a real sense of communion when you share the wine and break the bread and tell your stories. I had this past weekend when visiting a very dear an old friend.

The garden is sprouting and weather was cold but sunny.

Jazz Covers

With music still so much in my mind, I looked at another period where artists and musicians collaborated, album covers for jazz in the 50's and 60's.

 David Stone Martin

 David Stone Martin

 Andy Warhol

 Reid Miles

 Andy Warhol

 Andy Warhol

 

 Ben Shahn

Ben Shahn

Today these covers are for the collectors of art, but what a time of collaboration, how the drawing and colors capture those sounds. Wow, you have to listen.

Black, Red and White

 

 Malevich

Black, white, red, geometry

all images via pinterest.

Four Hearts

Jim Dine

Happy Valentines Day xx

Emma's Palettes

My daughter Emma is an artist in Mexico. I was with her early this month. While I was there she had 2 commissions for murals, there are the palettes from each painting.

Richard Serra at The Courtauld

  

Black, rich, mysterious, textured drawings by Richard Serra

Fashionable Illustrations

 

When we used to read large broadsheet daily newspapers, there was always on the 2nd page after the front page a large fashionable illustration of the newest collections at Lord and Taylor or Sax 5th Ave or another large department store that carried the latest collections from St Laurent, Dior or Chanel. I loved those illustrations, I loved the quick and bold strokes and the splash of watercolor. All were so evocative of style and fashion and invited your imagination to dress like that.

 

This collection of fashion illustrations by Eva Aldbrook were shown by Gray Modern & Contemporary Art at LAPADA Art and Antiques Fair last weekend at Berkley Square in Mayfair. These illustrations were shown for the 1st time since their publication in 1956 for The Sunday Times.  Eva Aldbrook, the artist of these fashionable illustrations was favored by the newspapers and magazines in London in the 50's and 60's. She was commissioned by the editor of British Vogue, Alisa Garland and Ernestine Carter, associate editor of The Sunday Times and other publications.

Eva Aldbrooks' illustrations caught that feel of the period, confidence, elegance and clean lines.

Fashion illustrations have always had an appeal to collectors, Erte being a favorite. They capture the style of the time. I like the quick sketching with charcoal pencils and contrast textures of watercolors, leaving lots of suggestions for us to imagine, those are the qualities that make them art and make great pieces to collect.

Painted Gardens From Pompeii

These painted gardens are from walls inside a house that was buried under the violent volcanic eruption of Mt Vesuvius in Pompeii and Herculaneum in AD 79. The British Museum has a put together a fascinating exhibition of these two cities.

The exhibition has a unique focus, looking at the Roman home, the businesses and community of people who lived in these ill-fated cities. It is arranged to focus your imagination on the life of the towns through plans of the cities to a floor plan of a house, all supported with photographs of the present, the ruined past and the excavated utensils, artefacts and furniture.  From the floor plan it leads you through room by room, showing you the items found there, particular to each room: the shop front, to the atrium, bedrooms, ante-rooms and kitchen showing us how similar the lives 2000 years ago are to ours.

Also on exhibit are the casts of the people and animals who were caught at the moment of horrific death from burning volcanic ash, a chilling and absorbing exhibit. The exhibition continues till 29th September. I think I will visit again.