Monday, July 24, 2017

World of WearableArt 2017 is...go!!!



The anxious wait for the results of the first round of judging for the World of WearableArt came through a week ago.

This is a day when nothing gets done in a WoW designer's life from 9am in the morning whilst you try and distract yourself by refreshing your email inbox 30 times a minute. As you can imagine, this wears out your keyboard and the patience of everyone around you, be it at home, work or on holiday. As my partner and I work from home, sharing the same office studio with the cat, I had two to annoy all day with my distracted demeanour and attention focussed only on my screen. The computer, my tablet and my phone. Changed days from when I first started entering in 1995, when results were sent out by snail mail which could arrive anytime in the week, depending on where you lived and the postal service!

The private messenger groups we have all formed were buzzing with anticipation, nervousness, impatience and then finally celebration, relief or sadness depending on whether the email started with 'Congratulations...' or 'Thankyou for entering...'

The designer facebook forum started to fill up with pictures of simply amazing pieces that weren't selected. We aren't party to the judges criteria, or to the curation of art for the show. You can only make a piece from the heart, to the best of your ability and hope for the best. If the section has a brief, answer it, if not, design your own brief.

My piece for this year was selected for the Weta Workshop Costume and film section, the theme is Science Fiction. Part of the 2017 brief is 'Create an extra-terrestrial being from an alien world or a human being as you can imagine them living in the year 3446'. 
I've reimagined something in the cyborg realm. Other than that I can't tell you anything except to say it's super creepy and it took me a while to show my family what I'd made in case they thought I'd lost my mind. I love what I've done and once again I pushed beyond the boundaries of what I know I can do into the territory of what I could do if I used my grey matter and learned a few new skills. Each year I learn more and this is what keeps me on the WoW marathon. It's bootcamp for the creative being.

Come the award night, I'll be able to post my entry all over social media, so you'll have to wait until September 22nd. I can however show you the piece that didn't get in. Yes, there's always the one that got away. My friend Vicky Robertson and I made this from a selection of recycled items.  Her own gorgeous piece got into this year's show too, but whilst our combined entry didn't, we had fun combining skills and effort, and drinking wine when it was all over!

It was for the Illumination section where things light up under UV light, with the theme Float, Fly Flow. Thank you to Werner Kaffl for the photography and to Shonty Rogan for the studio and coordination to get our WoW pieces captured so brilliantly on one fine day in Trentham!

Danse de Lumière
Inspired by Guimard’s Chandelier

The float, fly, flow theme lends itself to a performance piece based on a reimagined interpretation of the French architect, Hector Guimard’s work of 1914. Three separate models, with wing spans and lightshade head pieces, come together in formation, to create multiple concepts for a chandelier. We scoured recycling centers and dumpsters with a portable UV light for the parts that make this entry up. Lampshades, a beer keg bladder, venetian blinds, curtaining rods, spa pool filters and lastly a harness repurposed from a previous UV finalist entry.

We purchased the black morph suits and split rings.

The entry is open to choreographic interpretation. All parts are easy to wear, UV reflective and provide huge scope for movement; floating, flying and flowing across the black stage. We considered the performance aspects of dance in this creation and what would work for performers to create the final ‘vision’ of light.

When it comes back to us, we will take it pieces and recycle the useful bits and back to the tip shop, all the rest will go. 

So- this first pic is not the entry- it was our inspiration!

 
Hector Guimard's Chandelier
It's hard to post a transforming, evolving dance, but try and use your imagination here!
The dance in three movements...



And here's what our models, Adrienne and James wore in the daylight. They were awesome even with the flu!





So, until I post again.... À bientôt!
x Fifi


Monday, July 10, 2017

Torty and the Soldier- the illustrators journey




The NZCYA book awards are coming up soon and apart from deciding what frock to wear, I’ve been thinking about the illustration journey I had with Torty and the Soldier, so beautifully written by the very expert author, Jennifer Beck.

When Lynette Evans at Scholastic asked me if I’d like to read the manuscript with a view to illustrating another ANZAC book, she also mentioned the magic word ‘tortoise’. She’s a clever woman… I have a very soft spot for these hard-shelled creatures.

My oldest sister and I had a one each as small children in Britain. Mine was called Sooty after the Sooty and Sweep Show (which left me with a lifetime love of puppets) and my sisters was Big Ears which was irony I missed at the time, given the lack of them on her shelly companion.
Tortoises have a tendency to roam far and wide in search of lettuce leaves which usually are in the garden proud neighbours place 4 doors down. They are the Peter Rabbits of the reptilian world. They also hibernate and I remember them in shoe boxes in the bottom of the wardrobe, wintering over. Sometime during this period of pet ownership, our family moved to Ghana in West Africa, and my parents line to this day around the tortoise disappearance whilst packing was ‘they wandered off.’ No amount of plying with wine will make my mother change that 50 year old story.

The book’s heroine, Torty (her real name) wandered off, all over the Greece and into the sight of Stewart Little (not the mouse), in 1917 where the story begins. I was entranced by her adventures bought to life by Jennifer’s writing and said yes to taking on the job of illustrating the book.
Normally, for a book based on realistic style illustrations, I would find models and photograph them to work from. So I paid Torty a visit when she was out of hibernation and residing with family in Havelock North. She has an enclosure that boasts a nesting box and plenty of access to grassy lawn and shady bushes, all with a tortoise proof fence, 25 cm high! She’s a feisty old lady of 200 years and I made my husband hold her whilst I photographed her from every angle. She gave him a good kicking in the process. I also visited the Weta Workshop- made replica of her in the Gallipoli exhibition at Te Papa. She's in a wooden crate and a very good likeness indeed!

As for Stewart and his brother, I had no real idea what they looked like apart from Stewart’s military records. Brown hair, hazel eyes. I was also running out of time to find models, so I tried a different method for the first time. I used a 3D programme called DAZ where I could create people and move them around from all angles. I am no expert with it, but managed to get what I needed by a fair amount of trial and error. The rest was interpretation with watercolours on paper and some digital textures layered on after the scans were done.

The story moves backwards and forwards through time so we needed to make a distinction between the illustration. I used monochromatic sepia watercolours for the backstory and invited colour into the ‘present’ storyline. Our designer Leon Mackie did a terrific job in a subtle way of dividing those storylines too. And every time I see our cover I sigh with gratitude that Scholastic use great book designers!


A book takes time, and by the time everyone in the team has finished their part of the creation, a year has gone by and you are well into other projects. So it is a delight and an honour that when I’ve almost forgotten the months of work we put into it, it is shortlisted as a finalist for the awards. The ultimate acknowledgement. Many thanks to the judges, and I’ll look forward to a night of celebration with some of New Zealand’s best writers and illustrators of children and young adults books.



Some of the illustration process


3D modelling