The Finland Pattern

Here is the final Finland Pattern. Another one of my personal, (and Sasso's too), favs. Speaking of whom, at dinner Friday night I started bombarding him with all things Finland and how I really want to go there when he stops working 70 hour weeks, (poor thing, he is in a crunch period at work). It didn't take too much convincing. Anywhere that serves cloudberries, has a hotel made of snow and offers swimming in a BRIGHT orange plastic suit in freezing water, (and you survive), sounds pretty magical and like the perfect vacation spot.

Surrounded by Ice (the bling kind)!

So last season Marc Jacobs did this whole accessories line with gemstones. Big, cartoonish, over sized gemstones... and they were fabulous. I am a bit of a Marc Jacobs junky, (did you ever read letters to Marc Jacobs? so great), so I it was no surprise that I was head over heels for this. If I could have gotten my hands on those thong be-gemmed sandals or even the headband without having to sacrifice my rent money i would have. the moment I thought of those I said bling = ice = icebergs... floating gemstones. That was going to be the Finland pattern. Forget diving into a sea of mini icebergs, lets talk about diving into a sea of gemstones!
The above collage is from my sketchbook, with images from Elle, Teen Vouge and ThisNext.

Surrounded by Ice!

Imagine being surrounded by ice, all dark blues, purples and whites... That's the thought behind the above colored collages for the Finland pattern.
Now really imagine being surrounded by ice - you'd be staying at Kemi's LumiLinna SnowCastle where everything is made of snow!
The temperature in SnowCastle hotel rooms is approximately – 5 º C, but you can have a cozy night's sleep in a warm arctic sleeping bag, (which will also guarantee your survival). This is actually what it is like in our bedroom during the summer as Sasso like to crank the a/c as low as it will go. I could use one of these sleeping bags...
They also have a Snow Chapel for weddings and a Snow restaurant where the tables are made of ice and the seats are covered with reindeer skin.
You can see some pictures below, but make sure you check out the LumiLinna website here.
LumiLinna Kemi : Kauppakatu 16 : 94100 Kemi : Finland : www.snowcastle.net

Iceberg Diving

Well I guess it isn't so much diving as jumping in and floating. This picture on the left was cut out of Travel + Leisure magazine sometime ago. I put it away for some rainy day inspiration which eventually came and I began to research the company that runs these ice breaker tours.
The company is called Sampo Tours and it is the world's only tourist icebreaker. They sail on the northern Gulf of Bothnia out of Kemi, Finland from the middle of December to the end of April. The pictures on the right are from the Sampo website, there are a lot more to check out too.
You can take a tour of the ship to see how the whole thing works, then disembark onto the ice and finally don a big orange water-tight, thermal suit and jump into the black water. They also offer snowmobiling, helicopters, dog sledding taking you to a camp where you can sit under the Aurora Borealis and savor some Lapp treats and drinks.
I can't think of a better adventure. Sasso is always wanting to vacation somewhere cold, but I always persuade him that to escape Boston for a chillier climate is crazy, but this tour has definitely changed my mind. Imagine swimming amongst the icebergs...

Kemi, Finland

Kemi, Finland is approx 3,941 miles away from where I live. Pretty far. What sparked my interest was a picture of a person swathed in a orange rubber suit floating amongst some icebergs. It was just a little blurb about Kemi in an old issue of Travel + Leisure, but I ripped it out and put it in my "save-for-later" sketchbook. In the Spring I oohed and ahhhed over everything Marc Jacobs have covered in big, cartoon-like gemstones. Talk about some bling and some ice... wait a minute... it brought me back to that picture in T + L. Like floating in oversized gemstones. How wonderful. From there I researched Finland, Kemi specifically and found out what a lovely place it seems to be. Ice castles, reindeer, cloudberries, jewel museums, iceberg swimming, snow and much more...

The Death Valley Pattern

Oh Death Valley. Well the final pattern was a part of the 2007 calendar. It is July’s pattern because that is my birthday month I always put one my favorites on my month. Also, it’s a hot month, (though not so much this July… weird). Heat waves, mirages, desert hills, sunsets, snakeskin…
A few last but not leasts about Death Valley. The French song in clemifornia's YouTube video, (from the previous post), is by Les Cowboys Fringants and is called Les Etoiles Filantes which I believe translates to Shooting Stars. You can listen to the whole thing here. A perfect song for crusing through the desert at night.
And apparently there is this phenomenon know as the Moving Rocks out in the DV. There is a very flat area filled with big rocks that have left trails in the dirt, though no one has actually seen the rocks move. There is some video of it to check out here and some great pictures here.
This gloomy rainy day in Boston almost has me wishing to be out in the hot, dry 117 degree heat of Death Valley... almost.

Death Valley Skies

I was perusing youtube, (which is dangerous because it can suck you in for hours), and I found a some pretty great videos of sunrises in Death Valley. They are all really amazing, unfortunately you have to get up before the sunrises to see this, something that only happens when I book a cheap flight out of Logan. This first one is a time lapse video by Meminenow.

The below video captures some pretty amazing sky movement and is by MrUncleLucky.


This below video is by KyleHamilton of a very "heaven-like"sunrise in Death Valley.


Last but not least is this video filmed while driving though the DV at night. I'm loving the French music, (and accompanying whistling), that is the background! The video is by clemifornia.

It's not the heat it's the...

Here in Boston you'll always hear us say, "It's not the heat - It's the humidity..." It may not be hot today but I sweat I'm constantly walking through an invisible swamp. (In fact my dear Weenski has written a very funny ode to this swampy feel i speak of, see here.) Sasso has been to the desert a few times in his life. When preparing for a trip to Vegas last June I was a bit put off by a temperature that was in the "low hundreds". Sasso proclaimed, "It's a dry heat... it doesn't really feel that hot out." Ummmm.... I walked around wondering if in fact I was in an oven, I don't care how dry that heat was... it was HOT. So while doing my daily check of the weather here in Boston I decided to check in on Death Valley and see how it was holding up. Well as of 2:00 est it was a smooth 104 degrees (don't worry it only feels like 99 degrees) in the DV while it is a mild 70 degrees here in Boston. Our humidity is at 86% which equals swampy... that makes the DV's 12% humidity and high temps seem very enticing...

Sketches of the DV

The 2007 Death Valley pattern was highly influenced by the pages of Vouge and Elle, (Elle is my favorite fashion magazine for inspiration, they always have great ensemble collages). From Missoni's gradating fragrances to vibrant silk ombre dresses that resemble the sunset all i could think of was the desert. It was this python hobo bag by Nancy Gonzalez that got me thinking of the amazing geometric pattern of snakes skin.



After a little research I did various sketches of snakes skin patterns for snakes that call Death Valley home. Theres the mojave shovel-nosed snake, the ground snake, the panamint rattlesnake....

Painted With Light

I was browsing the web this morning looking for some images of Death Valley to post when I came across the site of Douglas Dolde from Simi Valley, California. Douglas is not only an amazing photographer but also a aerospace design engineer, (maybe he could explain to me how a plane stays in the air and help curb my flight anxiety).
Douglas shoots with a large format camera using 4" x 5" film. You can read more about his process here. His shots of Death Valley, (shown above), are incredibly beautiful, showing the amazing curves and angles of the landscape and the colors... breathtaking! You can also purchase prints from the site in various sizes from 8" x 10" all the way to 24" x 72" Check out Doug's site, Painted With Light, to see more of his photos from Arizona, Washington, California, Utah, Oregon, and Colorado. www.painted-with-light.com

Death Valley

Death Valley covers about 3,000 sq miles of southwestern California. It is the lowest elevation in North America at 282 ft below sea level and can reach scorching temperatures of 130º F in the summer. It is filled with ominous names like Funeral Mountains, Dante's Peek, Badwater and Starvation Canyon. It is also an area of amazing sunsets and sunrises and filled with curious creatures and plants, some you won't find anywhere else on earth.
What really intrigued me was the description of the Artists Palette site from "1,000 Places to See Before You Die" on page 573: Artists Palette, where mineral deposits have caused swathes of red, pink, orange, purple, and green to color the hills." Doesn't that sounds amazing?

Merging Water

I have a penchant for taking lots ocean pictures, strange because I live in a major coastal city and could be at the ocean in 15 minutes. It’s as if I’m afraid it is going to disappear on me.
Last spring while walking down the beach in St. Augustine, Florida I snapped the approve picture. When I started sketching Kanyakumari I remembered how this picture had all these different directions of tides being absolved into one another. That photo became the basis for the entire pattern.

Shimmering Blues

I was casually reading one night when this quote reached out and grabbed my attention: “At India’s southernmost tip, three bodies of water come together in a breathtaking display: The Bay of Bengal from the east, the Arabian Sea from the west and the Indian Ocean from beyond the horizon. Viewed in bright sunlight or by the glow of a spectacular sunset, each shimmers in its own shade of blue before merging to create a unique color.” What great writer of travel literature put this on paper? Well, I don’t know. In fact I cut it out of a Indian travel advertisement in Travel + Leisure some time ago. Obviously crafted by a copywriter with a great flare for words, it really struck me. I mean can you imagine actually seeing shades of blue combining into one? It is like an artist’s dream! I collected as many perfect “melding sea blues” as I could find for my sketchbook. I wish I had written down where everything came from because I still think the ceramics with silver flecks are pretty amazing.

Kanyakumari

Can you say it... Kan-yak-u-mari? Who am I kidding, I'm not sure if I am saying it right either, but I think it is a fabulous name. Kanyakumari stands for Vigrin (Kanya) beauty (Kumari) and is located at the southernmost tip of the Indian Peninsula.
Kanyakumari has sooooo many myths surrounding it. From one that explains the small rice like stones found on it’s shores to why the area is abundant in medicinal plants.
It is here that three bodies of water come together as one, (the Bay of Bengal, the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea), supposedly creating a wonderful sunrise and sunset. During Chitra Pournami you can see both the sunset and moon rise at the same time, how fascinating is that?
Kanyakumari is one of the most popular drawings of the print series. Could it be the melding of blues or the name that rolls of your tongue?

Andalucia Blossom Set

I had this idea of exploring a region and doing a few prints for one place, and I'd like to do this again with other areas. I chose Andalucia first because she was close to my heart. I researched all the varying flowering trees in Andalucia, (pomegranate, olive, lemon, orange, almond and more), and it was here that I learned that a lot of fruit comes from white petaled flowers. I ended up choosing the lemon (yellows), the orange, (um… orange), and the almond, (pinks) blossoms to draw. The drawings were then turned into cards for the Andalucia notecard set.



It was so fun to complete. I love designing sets of things, (which is why I love doing identity systems too), just to see how all the designs can relate to each other and come together as a cohesive group. I've got a big list of other "expansion series" I've been thinking about too!

Andalucia Screenprint

Last summer I decided to get back into silk screening and I knew I wanted to do one of the Andalucia pattern, 1. Because it is fairly simple and It was a good “getting back on the horse” kind of design and 2. Well, who doesn’t love orange blossoms? When doing these prints I like to incorporate something besides the ink and paper. So I figured what could be better than the actual orange? I wanted to make sure that the texture of the inside of the orange came through so I experimented with different methods of drying the orange. I baked them, froze them, let them rest in salt, let them rest for days on paper towels, (god bless Sasso cause my experiments did attract a small fruit fly convention), and in the end the ones that printed best were freshly cut oranges. Go figure. So each print is printed with a flat base color of light orange. Then the oranges are inked and stamped. The final touch is the screening of the white blossoms. Ta-dah! It was actually really fun, and a little messy, doing these but a great thing to do since I’m so used to the perfection of the computer and digital printing.

The Andalucia Pattern

People often ask me how long it takes to do each pattern, and I tell them that not counting research time, some take 30 mins and others take 4 months. Andalucia was a quick one. I laid out the pattern, looked at it and said, “No… it couldn’t be that easy. That can’t be it”. After showing the pattern to a few people I realized that it was in fact... it. With only 3 elements going on (the background color, orange circles and white flowers) it is one of the simplest prints I’ve done and one of my favorites!
Have a lovely Fourth of July!

Driving Over Lemons : An Optimist in Andalucia

As previously mentioned, the Andalucia pattern started with the spine of a book on a shelf at the BPL. Said book, “Driving Over Lemons: An Optimist in Andalucia”, (which has been re-released as “Driving Over Lemons: An Optimist in Spain – I guess not enough people were as enarmored with the word Andalucia as I was), is written by Chris Stewart who happens to be the original drummer of the band Genesis. Stewart left the band before they went big and eventually ended up living in Andalucia, Spain.

The book is entertaining with lots of great descriptions and there is one in particular that had me imagining fields of orange trees and white blossoms falling like snow:
“In Spring the blossoming of the orange trees takes you unawares. At first only a pale haze becomes apparent across the dark green of the leaves. This is the green of the flower-buds. Then all of a sudden the buds are transformed into exquisite white five-petalled stars, radiating from cream-yellow pistils and stamens. The scent is delicate and heady, and when each tree becomes a mass of white flowers an almost tangible mist of orange blossom hangs in the air”.
Mmmmm... I can imagine how sweet the air must be. Each tree blossoms for about three weeks scenting April, May and June. Some blossoms are blown off the tree, collected and dried for tea, and the others get to grow into bright oranges.

Stewart wrote “Driving Over Lemons” in 1999 and the sequels, “A Parrot In The Pepper Tree” and “The Almond Blossom Appreciation Society” about his farm life in Spain. I have yet to read the sequels, but I think they could be the perfect summer read while relaxing in my hammock.