shirts og light

A trees memories from the roskilde festival

No Budget Performance

Last Friday, the 3rd of December my friend Han (a Belgium girl,who is also doing an intership at Camilla Norrback) I was at this art exhibit in Stockholm, Södermalm. Students from Kungliga Konsthögskola presented their sculptures, paintings or performances, making us reflect on human behavior and the relations between people. 

In the beginning I only took a short look at the girl making ice-cookies, who was standing right by the cold entrance. It didn't really speak to me - or so I thought. When we came back later and stood looking at her for a little while, seeing how cold she was, and despite that fact how persistently and stubbornly she went on doing her self-torturing performance, it became the most important piece to me. 

I interpret it as a sort of illustration of how we love. 

She is standing there in her little kitchen with all the housewife cliches making little cookies out of snow. She marks each and every one with a little red spot representing a heart. Then she puts them on the ground where they melt away - disappear. 

The eternal falling in love, the love dies away, you get hurt - melt, but next time it's the same over and over again. You keep going for love, even when it seems as there will be no happy ending, and you get colder and colder.. 

As hard it is to put words to art I tried to express what I felt when experiencing this one. I am not sure if this was what she wanted, since we didn't find a brief description on the different pieces. Maybe she wanted the viewer to find out for themselves. 

I'll probably never know, but it's not that important anyway, because this one really touched me, and I think that is what art aims to do.

Take my breath away

On Wednesday I went to the ICA in Boston to see the Exhibit with Dr. Lakra, an artist and tattooist from Oaxaca, Mexico. His name can be translated to something like Dr. Delinquent. I have a thing for tattoos and old school, kinda 50's style art, and Dr. Lakra uses both in his art besides from mixing a whole lot of symbols from cultures worldwide.

Picture from the visual art guide Art Splash

Little did I know that another exhibit there, would blow me away completely.

Do you know the feeling when your heart starts to beat faster, and you feel kinda out of breath. Similar to being in love, the moment he sends you a smile, or maybe a text, or he invites you out.. 

Well, that's how I felt walking around looking at these incredible art pieces. Of course it's because of what I do. I sew. I embroider. I'm nerdy about it. I love it. And I appreciate the difficulties and how much work it is.

I am talking about the artist Charles LeDray and his work.

He makes everything himself. Only three found objects. No assistants. His mom taught him to sew and embroider from he was four years old and he is so talented!

His exhibit called workworkworkworkwork at the ICA contains a number of smaller or miniature sized suits and outfits, alot of them connected with even smaller ones. A tiny suit made of and attached to a small suit. A small jacket with an unknown number of clothes inside. A blanket of little garments. Jackets and suits with embroidered labels on.
 

First LeDray picture from the Telegraph. Other pictures are from the website Sperone Westwater.

Read more about the exhibit here.

If this catches you, read also this blog post from The Layers Of Meaning.

Like I said, I was blown away. And feeling like this looking at his work, 

I know I am in the right place.

Thursday in fashionable, creative Copenhagen

The past week was stuffed with press days at the different PR companies and Thursday I unintentionally and for the first time found myself at one at Star Public Relation. I had met up with a friend who did an internship at this company, she wanted to drop in to say hi and see the FW10 collections and she knew I'd find it interesting. 

I especially fell in love with these necklaces from Gem Kingdom.

They are all really cool, I think this one is my favorite. So, another thing just got added to the many things I need to safe up money for.

After this press experience another friend asked if I wanted to join her seeing a talk/discussion on the subject, the difference between design and art, wich took place at the museum of contemporary art Luisiana and of course I'm not one to put down a chance of gaining knowledge about art and design. Present was a furniture design team Salto & Sigsgaard, a textile designer, Margrethe Odgaard, and a craftsman Louise Hindsgavl, so all sides were represented.

Salto & Sigsgaard represented the more generic design and had a very matter-of-fact attitude to the process, wich was really interesting to hear about. They begin with research and make a list of criteria before even thinking about what the product should look like. Their target are wide and with the risk of sounding harsh I'd say their design is kinda dull.

Margrethe Odgaard's design is in the middle of the different types, design, arts and craft. She explores and challenge the general idea of textiles and has fx made this huge oversized napkin. She takes everyday life and moves expectations a little.

 Louise Hindsgavl is more an artist than a designer; very intuitive in her way of work and with her attitude towards the process. She doesn't aim to make something for a certain group of people opposed to designers.

My friend and I came to the conclusion that, that is the main difference between art and design. Design has a target group and criteria to live up to. The designer can argue for every little choice taken in the process; -why this shape, why this colour, why this light bulb and so on. The artist works intuitively and the work is an expression, not something meant to sell. That is just a benefit. An artist asks questions and provokes. And can't argue why it's this shape, this material.

It was all in all a great day.