Inspiration: some pretty things ... like precious adornments, paper petals, pinwheels for parties ... and some DIY:projects ...

Shown below is the Souvenir Delft Blue B-Set (2003) by Jongeriuslab - A miniature of the Delft Blue B-Set, intended to be used as a neck­lace, a light-hearted comment on the cliché Delft Blue souvenir industry.

Fabric and bead necklaces from Anthropologie ...


I adore EmersonMade. for their paper flowers as adornment for hair, shoes and clutches, as corsages and even as table decor ... shown below are some of their paper products ...

FYI : How to set for a formal dinner (from: BUTLERSGUILD)


DIY Project: Paper Pom Pom by Rachel of Smile and Wave ... (click on link for tutorial)


And another DYI project ... dozi: paper flower tutorial (click on link for tutorial)

DIY Project: Pinwheels by Style Me Pretty (click on link for tutorial)


More paper rosettes/pinwheels and tablescape design from: Design*Sponge: spirograph wedding

A quick little post for today ...

Here is a cute company Minimii. I especially like their dollhouse Arne Jocobsens Own House, 1929 (pictured below)

"Kids can play for hours with a dollhouse. With miniature furniture, the house can be redecorated again and again, differently each time. With dolls, countless stories play themselves out, scenarios that remind us of what happens in a real home. The idea with Minimii is just that, to create dollhouses and furniture that look like a real home which both kids and adults can play with."

Here are some great blogs ... Apartment Therapy Re-Nest + April and May

I love the work of Shana Faust, she is a Toronto photo-stylist who has worked for Martha Stewart Weddings magazine. She is now based in Brooklyn. I love her props/crafts styling ... Here is a sample of her work ...

Katrin May is an internationally recognized professional origami artist. First introduced to origami in France in 1989, she and her partner developed this art in a heretofore unseen way. Now residents of Toronto. Here is their website ORILAND and some of their work is shown below.

Today, we went for a long walk, I love autumn for its twigs and berries, like rose hips, snowberries, dogwood, etc. These were just a few along our journey today ...

It's fall, back to the books ... I'm taking another hiatus from blogging... this time to work on my thesis MAKE:PLAY. Since I am starting back to work soon I need to give it all I've got until then!

Here is a segment from my interview -Vanitas: The Work of Rachelle Soucy,with Patrick McNally from Daily Undertaker. Click here to read the entire interview.

Pat McNally: Rachelle, your work certainly has a wonderful sensuality to it, along with some very clear references to mortality, and although there is a playfulness to your work, I do not sense an irony or distancing yourself from the genre itself. Instead, you seem to be honestly engaging with this theme, rather than making a statement about it. While your work gives the viewer a lot of food for thought, absent are the simplistic moral preaching and guilty pleasure elements that were often a part of Vanitas pieces in the past. What drew you to explore this form?

Rachelle Soucy: The entire series originated through playfulness and discovery. It was a playful experiment that led me to explore themes of Memento Mori and Vanitas – I started by arranging still-lifes on top of my scanner. I was quickly inspired by the shallow depth of field created by the scanner – it shows incredible detail that quickly drops into beautiful shadows. This aesthetic is uncanny in its resemblance to 16^th and17^th Dutch paintings of Memento Mori. Coincidentally, I was arranging all these symbolic items, flowers, fruits, shells, and hourglasses, which are typically present in these types of paintings to symbolize life’s fleeting moments, futility of pleasure and ultimately reminders of one’s mortality. For my first series, I decided to place myself amongst these items. So you are correct, I am not making a statement about this theme, more so I am engaging directly as subject matter – just as the flowers are decaying, so too am I. In general, decay is an unusual subject matter that I was intrigued by. I wanted to explore this genre personally by capturing myself in a fleeting moment and to remind myself of the shortcomings of vanity.

PM: The skull has become such a common image in our society, that either everything has become a memento mori, or perhaps through overexposure, it has lost its power to bring our thoughts to our own mortality. Your work makes use of the human skull, but in a very subtle way. This is certainly a departure from the genre tradition. Could you share your thoughts on the ever-presence of the skull in our culture, and how you chose to use it?

RS: I chose not to use a single skull in my work, which perhaps has a negative connotation or has been over popularized in our culture. Instead, I strung these carved skull beads into prayer beads, showing the skull in repetition - symbolizing prayer and meditation. I choose to use the skull as a quiet reminder of mortality and not as a logo of death.

PM: Your sensual use of hair in these pieces ties them together, and creates a kind of oceanic depth and surreal texture to the work. I don’t think I’ll see hair in the same way again, which is something that art at its best, really can do; help us to see things in a new way. Has your work and thought in this project changed the way you see death?

RS: This is such a compliment, thank you! It is the hair the ties both series together. Piecing different scans together was easiest by matching the hair in different scans … and it is this which connects all of the works. By piecing multiple scans together, I could create the illusion of long flowing hair, a type of hyper-portrait. So these portraits aren’t completely representational, there are still illusions at work in these portraits connected to vanity.

What a whirlwind trip to Toronto!!! It went by so quickly, I guess vacations always do ... I visited lots of little galleries in Toronto, but I really enjoyed the exhibits at the Royal Ontario Museum ... Here are some of my favourite things I spotted at the ROM ...

Miniature room including silverware

Wallpaper from different eras

Displays of vegetation

Stairwell displays leaving the Museum

Art Nouveau flower vase

Nelson Mandela Doll

And what a way to end a vacation - the day before we flew home to Calgary, I received an email from The Daily Undertaker wanting to interview me and feature my artwork (series: Vanitas and Vanitas 2) ... I'll post the link to the article on my blog once it's posted ...

My first week in Toronto has been fun, spending some time checking out the city, shops and galleries ...

I checked out a show featuring Saskatchewan artists at the York Quay (Harbourfront) Centre, here is the show's write up ...

COMBINE situates the works of 18 artists from Saskatchewan throughout York Quay Centre. The title joins two iconic references - the image of the prairie farming machine and the assemblages first created by Robert Rauschenberg - to provide a hint as to where the artists are from and what they are up to. Participating artists were selected for their mutual understanding of how the amalgamation of disparate objects and images can create new stories and meanings.

Here are some photographs I took at the show ...

At the harbourfront I was impressed by this wave boardwalk for children to play on ...

Another show I briefly saw was Christina Leslie's photographic series (MISSED) PERCEIVED at the Gladstone Hotel. It showcases multiple portraits and deals with satirical representations, for example the portraits reference the sambo character and representations of othering in media and popular culture. Leslie juxtaposes the sitters actual portrait with their 'caricatures'. Here are some photographs I took at the show ...

Some more fun finds on Queen West + Ossington ...