Hello sunny Monday!
Hope you’ve had a good week, it’s been all work work work here as final deadline for uni is fast approaching (a week tomorrow! eek!), catalogue and book cover are almost ready at work (looking soo good) and have a couple competitions on the go due this week.
I somehow made the time to attend the Designing the Decades study day at the V&A on the 1950s. An all-day event on art & design history of my favourite decade! Really enjoyed a full on day of talks and discussions with speakers such as V&A curator Lily Crowther on the Festival of Britain that celebrates its 60th anniversary this summer, author and lecturer Dr David Heathcote (of BBC fame) on Architecture and Urban planning, Geffrye Museum director Christine Lalumia on Furniture and Interiors, design historian and author Lesley Jackson on Robin and Lucienne Day and author and lecturer Dr Christine Boydell on The New Look and Horrockses Fashions. Filled a crazy 54 pages on my sketchbook with the new palette of radical colours, the brave new ideas for the future and the importance of European emigrant designers after the war. The 1950s were a time for optimism and rebuilding all aspects of design from the ruins but also a time for over-thinking and hard work. Not forgetting it was also a time of great social contradictions, sexism and injustice to minorities, the decade is a great source of inspiration for me in my everyday life. Beyond the pretty dresses and perfect hair I’m interested in the passion and determination to design a new and better world for everyone regardless of class, the profound understanding of materials and design processes and the meticulous attention to detail and love of typography. The want and drive to improve with limited resources available is very inspiring from clever use of cheap materials to a boy picking up a guitar and creating a new sound.
Before I forget, I wanted to share my latest illustration for Amelia’s magazine an art review by Jessica Furseth on Edwina Ashton‘s performance at Jerwood Space. It involves Edwina dressed as a lobster moving things around in the gallery. Wait, does it? Mmm… Jess’ words always far better than mine read The Lobster Within in full here.
After the Lobster Lady I was in the mood for more Lobster fun (ie. Procrastinating with a capital P) so I played around a bit and came up with this pattern:
All the summery colours and motifs made me think it could work for a beach towel maybe? parasol? swimwear? Which prompted me to look up flights to Cuba, Croatia, Australia… PROCRASTINATION. Ok, I’m off to work. No, really.
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