Polyanthus montage

Image copyright 2007 Grace Dalley, all rights reserved.

Now available in both greeting card and gift card sizes here.

Iris

Image copyright 2007 Grace Dalley, all rights reserved.

Now available in both greeting card and gift card sizes here.

Cream peony

Image copyright 2007 Grace Dalley, all rights reserved.

Now available in both greeting card and gift card sizes here.

Fern frond montage

Image copyright 2007 Grace Dalley, all rights reserved.

Now available in both greeting card and gift card sizes here.

New card designs

I haven't posted here for a while, but now I can show you the reason: four new designs that appear on my greeting cards and gift cards at Rata Design! You're very welcome to tell me what you think about them.

I want a puggle!

What is a baby platypus called? A puggle! I kid you not! There's a picture of one here. And there's a neat article on platypuses here in the NYT. (access is free but registration is required)

Baby echidnas are also called puggles, and there's one here.

Morris and Co.

The Christchurch City Art Gallery has Morris and Co: The World of William Morris until June 29th. It's a beautiful show, with printed textiles, wallpaper, embroidery, furniture, carpets, books, ceramics, and the centerpiece of the show, the vast, jewel-like tapestry of The Adoration of the Magi. It's worth seeing the show for that alone - no photograph can adequately convey the shining, rippling surface of millions of tiny stitches. And while the symbolism is rather laboured, the rich colour harmonies and beautifully-observed naturalistic detail in the plants and faces and objects is exciting to look at.

One thing that would have increased my enjoyment of the Morris designs was more technical information about how they were printed and made. I was tantalised by a photograph of the Morris workshop printing chintz fabric, with stacks of wooden printing blocks visible in the photo, but no indication of how such a method was used to produce such fine, continuous, printed pattern. And how were the inks made? I gather they were derived from plants, but I'd love to know the details.

And how did the cost of producing Morris designs by hand compare with the cost of factory production? How different did they look? What are the economics of hand-printing today? Morris's revolt against mass-production and worker exploitation seems highly relevant to the globalised market we have today. But I wonder how many people could afford to surround themselves with beautiful hand-printed, hand-crafted objects.

I was pleased to see more information on Morris's book-printing techniques given on the gallery website, and the links they make to artisan-printing in New Zealand.

The exhibition is accompanied by a huge range of events, from lectures to performances, demonstrations, and even workshops in Morris-style embroidery, wallpaper- printing, and life-drawing!

Art D'Eco - recycled fashion

Katell Gélébart is a Dutch activist and designer who believes in recycling. In partnership with other designers, she produces two haute couture collections each year, all made from reused materials. These materials include old mail sacks, parachutes, sails, offcuts of felt, old curtains, mattress-ticking and inner-tubes!

You can read all about it here.

These are some of my favourite Art D'Eco creations: the army blanket hats, army blanket jacket, inner-tube wallet, postbag dress, record notebook, and inner-tube belt.

I really like how the designs preserve the character of the original materials. Perhaps we will all be dressing like this, before too long....

Save the planet by eating less meat

According to an article in The New Scientist, eating meat causes more greenhouse-gas emissions than eating food which has travelled a long distance. Read it here.

Anime lunch

Dinosaurs and Robots has an amazing piece about Japanese obento box lunches, here. The lunches are decorated with incredibly detailed pictures of anime characters; the pictures are made up of edible items. Go take a look, you won't believe it!

That's it, I'm moving to Norway!

I thought new Zealand was beautiful, but check out these amazing photos of Norwegian landscapes! (clicking the link opens a slideshow, or you can open a static page here)

Congratulations Edith Amituanai

Edith Amituanai is the inaugural winner of the Marti Friedlander Photographic Award. The award is biennial and gives the recipient $25,000 with which to further their career.

Amituanai's subjects are drawn from her family and community and the houses they live in.

Friedlander says:

"I have chosen Edith as the inaugural recipient of the Award as I believe she has an exceptional talent. I particularly like the way her photographic essays portray people and places that reveal New Zealanders and all their diversity. She is a most worthy recipient of an Award that is intended to support the development of the medium of photography."

You can read more about the Marti Friedlander Award, Amituanai, and Friedlander here.
There's a nice article from the Herald about Amituanai's work with Samoan rugby players in Europe here. And there are some more examples of her work here.

Sophie Ryder

English sculptor Sophie Ryder is installing some amazing new work at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park: 6 metre tall "hare-ladies", creatures with human bodies and hare heads.

You can read about the exhibition here.
And see some of the huge work under construction here.

Sophie Ryder has a website with lots of stunning exanples of her work here.
Some of my favourites are the Curled-up Figure, Sitting Lady-Hare on Dog, Conversation, Lady Hare Holding Dog, Dancing Hares, the wire drawing Eye, and the two collograph prints Kneeling Figure and Bending Figure.

The most common life-like thing on earth :-)

The folk at Astronomy Picture of the Day have this crazy photo of some bacteriophage viruses attacking a bacterium.

And these bacteriophage ("bacteria-eating") viruses are everywhere!

"A pinch of soil or drop of seawater, for example, contains many millions of bacteriophages."
"They're nature's most successful experiment," says Marisa Pedulla of the University of Pittsburgh. "They outnumber all the bacteria, all the humans, whales, trees, et cetera, put together."

They're "the pinnacle of creation," adds Graham Hatfull, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at the University of Pittsburgh. "Phages represent the major form of life in the biosphere."

Read more in an intriguing Science News article on phages, wittily titled, All The World's a Phage.

A toilet-paper gown

Stuff has this nice story about an unusual wedding-dress design competition - the gowns must be made of toilet paper!
I've no idea how the winning gown is held together, but it's very impressive.