Gnomes vs. Snowmen: The Battle for Mochimochiland

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Today I was lucky enough to attend the opening reception of Gnomes vs. Snowmen: The Battle for Mochimochiland, a brilliantly inventive and imaginary land created by fiber artist Anna Hrachovec.

The story was charming and told over 45 foot-long panels that are bursting with woollen delights. The details in the panels suck you into the chaotic and extremely cute battle scene. Want to know who won? Well you'll have to go and see it for yourselves! The exhibition runs from November 3 through to November 18th, 2011 at Gallery Hanahou.

Tara Donavan

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Last weekend we managed to catch the last showing of Tara Donavan's exhibition at the Pace Gallery. The gallery space was completely dedicated to her large-scale installation called 'Untitled', 2011.

The Brooklyn artist is known for transforming everyday objects such as Styrofoam cups, scotch tape, pins and drinking straws into huge bio-organic sculptures, and this one was no exception.

'Untitled' consisted of varying sizes of stacked metallic balls, created by folded sheets of mylar and hot glue, to form organic almost molecular structures. Some areas of the sculpture reach 11 feet high. Donovan says of her work, "It is not like I'm trying to simulate nature. It's more of a mimicking of the way of nature, the way things actually grow."

The enormous glimmering balls, that encompassed the whole room, reminded me of Christmas baubles or even one of my cat's toys but on a grander scale of course! The reflective quality of the mylar is important to the visual balance it maintains within the white space, made more apparent when you walk around the piece. Stepping back from it, it was just stunning and so graphic. I have to say I had to resist all temptation to scrunch the balls.

Handmade zipper bag

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Fueled by my enjoyment of making the tote bag's from my Purl Soho class, I decided to get more adventurous and try a project from Amy Butler's Style Stitches book. The bag I decided on was the zipper Origami bag in small. This was my first project using zips, so I was a little nervous. However I really enjoyed this project, so much so that I made a few bags (they make great gifts!).

The materials I used here were: Ikea's SNÖA FLINGA fabric for the outer fabric - 100% cotton by designer S. Edholm/L. Ullenius; the lining was a striped fabric from Mood Fabrics and the zip was from Purl - a nylon coil 12" zip in Medium Grey #340. I really liked the way this one and my others turned out, however I would like to try them with a thin waterproof liner as I think they will make great make-up bags.

If you know of any good waterproof linings please let me know.

Sweet typographic umbrella

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A 'Spoonful of Sugar' is a gorgeous typographic umbrella, hand-lettered by the talented Leen Sadder for Stefan Sagmeister's class, Can Design Touch Someone's Heart at SVA.

Leen is a designer from Beirut, Lebanon and moved to New York City to attend SVA. Inspired by Mary Poppins (which happens to be one of my favourite films) she decided to reach out her hand - well umbrella - and touch the hearts of umbrella-less New Yorkers on a rainy day and gave out bags of chocolate dipped spoons, to those who accepted her shelter. I certainly think she has touched many people's lives with his beautiful umbrella, I would certainly buy it.

Images from the SVA site

Baseman & Kehoe

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In a strong attempt to crawl back some creativity into my life, after another terrible week at work, I decided to make the most of living in New York's dense gallery area and get some culture. Of course because of work I missed Gary Baseman's opening at The Jonathan LeVine Gallery, so Saturday would be my day.

Luckily for me there were two exhibits at the gallery, Baseman's Walking Through Walls and Andy Kehoe Strange Wanderings. There was a great contrast in the artists' work with Gary's almost monochromatic twilight colour scheme, children in ghost and Halloween costumes vs Andy's autumnal fairytale, Where-the-Wild-Things-Are-esque beautiful and painstakingly detailed paintings. Both equally lovely in different ways.

So if you're in the hood, please go and check it out. The exhibitions are on from March 5th to April 2nd, 2011.