As we are in the dawn of spring, March the 20th brings more than longer days and extended evenings. In Chinese Medicine, Spring is the season of the Wood Element. The organs that are associated with the Wood element are the Liver and the Gallbladder. The colour connected is green and the odour is rancid….
Spring, the Wood Element and Chinese Medicine
Richard Diebenkorn is one of the greatest colourists in the history of American art. Throughout his long and varied career, he moved through various styles of figuration and abstraction, but it was always an emphasis on the expressive properties of bold, brilliantly bright colour that he returned to over and over again. In soaring shades…
This Heavyweight NATURAL linen I was excited about. It was my first time working with this texture of linen and I decided to make a blouse. It’s 7.1 ounces in weight, but has a beautiful drape to it. To add some interest, I draped two flowers and hand sewed them to the shoulders. There’s something…
For Kazakh artist Almagul Menlibayeva, fabric is both a way to tell a story and a metaphor for storytelling itself. In photography, video and digital works she uses fabric as a subject and a character. Take The Red Butterfly, which features a woman swathed in seemingly endless red fabric, wearing numerous skull caps, and in…
Like many artists of her generation, mid-20th century sculptor Dame Barbara Hepworth saw the importance of honing an intimate personal style, one that could reflect the same language as her art. And like her bold, sleek sculptures, her way of dressing was equally as elegant, classic and refined, often with practicality in mind. Along with…
There is a quiet, entrancing magic to Marc Chagall’s art, a quality that allows us to escape the challenges of life, if even just for the briefest interludes. Deep indigo blues like BLUE WHALE appear often, invoking the dark blue air of dusk, when day turns into night and the mind slowly shifts into a…
It is winter in Vermont as I write this. Skies are grey with occasional bursts of sunshine, and the ground is still frozen and will be for some time. It is a time for reflection, and for dreaming of warmer days ahead. I was looking for a pattern that would help me feel cared for…
With a successful career spanning more than 60 years, Serbian-American artist Marina Abramovic has jokingly named herself the “grandmother of performance art.” In this time, she has pushed her body to the extreme, inflicting pain, suffering, trauma and violence on herself in the name of art. Her work is no theatrical performance – instead it…
Motherhood is a recurring theme in the art of British sculptor Barbara Hepworth, an intimate subject so close to her heart she would return to it over and over again. Mother to four children, she juggled raising them almost singlehandedly, while continuing to create some of the most important and enduring sculptures of the 20th…
British painter Francis Bacon made some of the rawest and most visually arresting images of the late 20th century. A true painter’s painter, Bacon embraced the viscous, tactile energy of oil paint, applying it in great streaks and swathes to emphasise the emotional impact of his brutally confrontational subjects. These included contorted bodies and faces,…
I’m looking forward to share fun ways in which I incorporate new pieces into my closet. My background in design and styling has allowed me to see and play around with limitless ways when it comes to dressing up. When I create a piece, simultaneously I am always thinking about garments I already own and…
Tell us a bit about yourself and what you do. My name is Abby and I live in Vermont with my husband and our three spirited kids. I was an actor in NYC during my twenties, and still miss the energy of the city, though I have come to love and deeply appreciate the beauty…
Motherhood and creativity: it’s a tricky, loaded subject that has been the subject of much debate. Do the two roles blend into and complement one another, or are they opposing forces pulling women in different directions? As as a mother myself, I know what it feels like to juggle different identities, and yet how the…
SILVER LAKE BLUE’s soaring, luminescent blue stretched out across Helen Frankenthaler’s vast, abstract art, invoking endless blue skies or glassy pools of water. A pioneer like no other, Frankenthaler made her name in 1950s New York, a leader in the second wave of Abstract Expressionism. Her light, airy canvases broke away from the impasto, painterly…
In this series, I’ll look at art works featuring fabric by three very different women from Kazakhstan. I’d like to find out why Almagul Menlibayeva created epic videos and photographs of women swathed (or strangled?) by traditional fabrics in front of historical monuments. I’ll discover how Gulnur Mukazhanova reapplies felting techniques to create haunting face…
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