Ending The Year Right… Down Under!

2011 December 〜2012 January

• • • • • One of the things I love, that I always encourage the people around me to be as enamored over it as I am, is travel. In many ways it has influenced the way I see things, the way I approach a situation, the way I design. If I could compare designing to cooking (another pasttime I enjoy), knowledge and experience are the tools of the trade, hard work shows in technique, and travel adds character to it. 

In a way I try to chronicle how each place has affected me, through my designs. It’s important, I find, to keep an open mind always. My stay in South Africa, for instance, was a very profound experience for me, giving me direct contact to the esoteric nature that is the world’s most naturally-rich continent. When Kae and I traveled to India [»], we left mesmerized by their fabric craft, and their pattern making with woodblocks. 

The Congo Weave is my tribute to the lovely country of South Africa that I had the pleasure of living, and learning from at some point in my life. The boldness of their patterns and colours taught me to be likewise unafraid to show my own, and to celebrate the diversity of people living together. 

The vibrant, tactile culture of India impressed greatly upon me, and gave birth to not just a single collection (Tattoo) but greatly influenced several older ones, and even the newer installments and re-makes. I must admit to using bold colours to accentuate, being more conservative with my neutrals… but India dared me, dared me to go beyond the colour wheel. 

Travel is the little reward I promise myself (more like bribe!) to get more work done. I’m blessed to be in a business that not only is a creative one at the core, but one which allows me to actually mix pleasure (travel) and business (export) in one blow. There’s such a big world out there to explore!

In the Doumo square after a long day at work. Doesn’t look it, but this was a very chilly evening! How to counter the cold that knocks your knees? Eat gelato of course!

On the way to Milano. It’s important to be relaxed on the long journey from work… to more work! It’s also important to be comfortable. 

• • • • • • The tumultuous situation of the world economy has all of us in the industry reexamining our options, and getting to know our market, as well as discovering new ones. While we export heavily to South America and Europe (which is how we base our size standards), our contact with Australia has been touch-and-go, a light and limited one which we intended to explore. 

This coincided with many things—signs, one could say—that told us we needed to go Down Under soon. And because that was the case, a sidetrip to New Zealand (where my friend from many, many years lives with her family) for a bit of R & R as well as light business was in order.

The Dotarté, a recent addition to our furniture family, continues to be a success, for which I am grateful to God for. Kae likes to think of it as an appropriation of Kusama Yayoi [»]’s round-pixel world, and that’s one way of looking at it. I was inspired vastly by the aboriginal drawings I’d seen in my brother-in-law’s art book. 

A selection from the Natonal Victorian Gallery [»] section for Aboriginal art, featuring Tjurkurrtjanu art [»] from the Western Desert (above) which I fell madly in-love with. You know what Jung says that there is a collective archetype people dip into when they get creative? I’ve never seen this painting before but I felt very connected to it, felt it like it was the ancestor to my Dotarté. Kae is taking photos (below). 

Dotarte swatches (second from bottom) and Noah lamps (above).

Like kinder, more ergonomic pixels. I wanted to be closer to the source of this inspiration, because every culture has a way of expressing art and history, and if I were to create something spurred by this, I needed to know the place where it originated. I’ve come to realise that this is how a designer can be kind to her design… by understanding how each component works, and what they are supposed to mean.

Gus poses beside a surreal (much to Kae’s amusement) tractor sculpture, identifying with his farm-boy’s roots (and the yellow of his clothes visavis the tractors’… earth colors!)

Following will be a bit of travelogue of sorts, detailing the little lovely places and faces we’d met in our pre-Christmas sojourn Down Under (which involves meandering down Melbourne’s galleries [»], windy Surrey Hills [»] in Sydney, finding friends in Auckland, and Billy Kwong [»]).