In 1933, an art school like no other was founded near the Blue Ridge mountains of North Carolina: its name was Black Mountain College. While the experimental and progressive art school only lasted for 24 years, its legacy has survived far longer. Black Mountain modelled a new, open-ended and unstructured way to teach liberal arts,…
Black Mountain College: Learning by Doing
When I set out to start sewing my own clothes, I had no intention of making myself frilly dresses… but here we are. I actually had every intention of quilting when I first started sewing more than just simple alterations on ready-to-wear shirts, but then I fell HARD when I found the lovely garment sewing…
Cold, luminescent shades of silvery grey like PERFECTLY PALE ripple through British painter Paul Nash’s surrealist art, creating the ethereal atmosphere of a dream. Nash was one of a generation of English artists who brought European ideas around Cubism and Surrealism into Britain during the 1930s and 1940s, but Nash interpreted European styles of art…
I used to struggle with choosing pants I go to work with. In Silicon Valley, the dress code is business casual. If you come for an interview for a tech job, the recruiter would repeat three times — don’t wear a suit. The RIVA linen pants are the perfect middle-ground between suit pants and jeans,…
From remnants of antique rugs to recycled denim and swatches of old cashmere, Uruguayan-American designer Gabriela Hearst demonstrates how high-end fashion can be made in the most sustainable and ecologically aware way. Along with her eponymous fashion house, Hearst is also creative director of the established fashion house Chloe, and in both ventures, Hearst wants…
Jenny Saville’s raw and physically direct paintings are all about the true reality of human bodies. Flesh is her primary subject, and she paints it creasing, flopping, squishing and folding over itself in a way that is all too familiar to anyone who has given birth, or experienced the visceral process of raising young children….
Bright, hot pinks like BOUGAINVILLEA burst forth from the abstract art of post-war British artist Patrick Heron, illuminating space with the radiance of summer flowers. A true colourist, Heron dedicated much of his life to the exploration of how one tone could bounce of another, and create sonorous or discordant sensations. His compositions and colour…
When I was in veterinary school, we had a practical skills lab where we had to put on our ~white coats~ and “play doctor” on very sweet volunteer pets. At the time, I remember feeling so giddy to put that coat on. On the one hand, it felt surreal and exciting and on the other…
Have you ever had a major crisis come up in your life or a big door closed on something you were putting a lot of hope in? Maybe in a career or relationship or something else you hold dearly? It is devastating when a dream, a hope, a plan goes careening off a cliff edge….
Tell us a bit about yourself and what you do. I’m an introvert, a lifelong creative, an ex theatre student, a mama to two beautiful kids, and a school counsellor and therapist. Why do you sew? Sewing is my therapy. It gives me something to channel my hopes and frustrations and big feelings into, so that I can be…
Vincent van Gogh was one of the greatest colourists of the 19th century, and his legacy lives on today. While he painted from life, his colours were heightened, elevated versions of reality, bristling with the anticipation and excitement he felt while observing the minutiae of the world around him. BASILE’s pale, fresh and minty green…
Every woman (or man, if they so please) needs a good basic dress in their closet. I, for one, savor in making just one decision instead of two. Although I’m not very good at making basics (I tend to get most excited about the “frosting” projects), I was really ready to whip myself up a…
American fashion designer Mara Hoffman launched her eponymous brand in 2000, showcasing loose, easy-wear dresses, one-piece swimwear and trouser suits emblazoned with bold colours and wild, Matisse-like prints. Fifteen years later, her brand had become an international hit, with offices spread across the globe. But by now Hoffman was painfully aware of how wasteful and…
I really like to sew dresses and jumpsuits for my daughter. Today we will talk about one of my favourite dress patterns for girls. I usually find interesting patterns on Etsy, there are a lot of great stores. But be careful if you want to sew clothes with the intent of selling them, as some…
BEET RED Linen’s deep crimson burrows through Joan Mitchell’s paintings like the roots of an ancient tree, twisting and turning with a live, pulsating energy. Leader in the second generation of Abstract Expressionists throughout the 1950s, Mitchell pioneered a daring and adventurous approach to painting, allowing wild tangles of paint to become dense networks of…
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