Indian Chaat Stand

Bhel Puri Stand: inspiration and process

I am a bit of a chaat fiend. Chaat is a type of Indian street hawker food that's made from puri. Puri is basically a type of deep fried biscuit upon which a range of toppings are stacked, like channa (chickpeas) boiled potato, onion, lots of different chutneys, fresh coriander and dahi (curd).

It usually costs about 20-30 rupees (less than $1) and there was a stage I was eating a LOT of it. When I started to get incessant head spins I decided to give it a break for a while- chaat sellers are hardly known for their hygiene. Like all food service in India they seem to think there is a correlation between extreme use of hands and quality food.

The best way to find safe chaat is the same when hunting for food all over India- head to somewhere that's busy and go with your gut. Or if you are in Mumbai head to my favourite haunt Swati Snacks.

Crowd Funding Article for Architecture Australia

Image Courtesy of PlayLab and Family Architects, New York
I was recently commissioned by Architecture Australia to write an article (found here) about the impact alternative economies and revenue raising platforms such as kickstarter, can have on architectural projects.
I spoke to so many interesting people about the article, not all of whom I was able to cover, but a big thanks go out to them all. It is one of the best things about writing about design and architecture, being able to meet and get into the minds of the creatives who create the projects we love.

Indian Print Vases

One of my current favourite techniques is to hand build vases and cups using clay that i have stamped using my collection of Indian fabric block prints.

Pit Firing Pots with Joy

I discovered the adventure of pit firing with my new favourite woman, Joy. See the above markings and and amazing textures on those pots above? That was all the result of pit firing, my new favourite thing to do on the weekend. Yes my weekends get pretty wild.

Ceramic Vase - Indian Block Prints

I started to experiment with the collection of timber fabric wood blocks that I bought in India with the ceramics I have been working on. I love the subtle result of this pattern on the vase I threw on the wheel.

Ceramic Tea Set

So I'm just going to put it out there. I had a 4 month gap between posts. Shocking I know. Even this sloth was making me feel guilty. For my hundreds of fans all I can say is SORRY. I haven't been lazy, there have been many things in the pipeline, articles being written, ceramics being thrown and glazed, magical trips to Brazil, folio work sucking me dry and it hasn't been until now that any of it has come to fruition. It's just the creative process. But I recently took a few bits and piece out of the kiln, including this little tea set and jug and am able to finally post something! I love this glaze (F4R3) it's so Japanese-y and gorgeous.

Dezeen spot

Dezeen recently featured my chai cups on their amazing online magazine.  The article can be found here.  From the dezeen article it spread to a few other blogs, including this one in which I am apparently a French artist. Awesome! Fingers crossed the rumour spreads.

Chai time

I'm taking part in a group show at Obscura Gallery in East St Kilda.  I have produced a series called Pi Ki Puht - Earth, clay, cup, earth, a series of disposable clay cups which have been embedded with seeds.

The rational behind the work is below...

Ceramic Love

If you want to see someone doing something they love, look no further than me on the pottery wheel.
I have been preparing for an upcoming exhibition (December 8th, more on that in a later post) and have been practically sleeping at the Carlton Arts Centre in order to get it all done.

Furniture Piece

A month ago i was in sunny (*sigh*) New York city. I was there to visit friends, shop in vintage stores, be inspired by galleries and buildings and visit the International Contemporary Furniture Fair. 
I ended up covering the show for the Australian Design Review- my article can be found here.
What the article didn't cover was all of the highlights for me from the show, so here are some of the pieces and designers whose work I loved:

Knitted Guns

I knitted these guns as part of a series that included the knitted stags head.  They were all made using my knitting machine. It's a big hulk of a machine, that I drag from house to house, together with a massive refugee bag of hundreds of dollars worth of yarn. It's such a pain but I really love everything about it. 

It's such a tactile machine, everything about it makes you feel like you are really crafting something using a long lost skill.  It makes so much noise when you use it and is such a funny shape. It's also so quick to whip up a scarf which is great for an impatient soul like me and what's even better is that you get a stomach workout when you use it.

I really should make a video of it because it's jut so amazing to see it in action.

Collage Kids

It's been a long time between posts, but I only have one person to blame for that.  And that's my sister. She just got married.

But I am back on track  with my creative endeavours and to ease my way into it I started with some collages.  Inspired by my lovely friend Colin Trechter of People Collective (who recently exhibited his collage skills in an exhibition of PC's work) I lugged my bunch of old books to his place and got stuck into this most satisfying of crafts.

Besser Block Shelves

So despite how it may look, this post is not a guiness world record entry into how much one person can fit onto a set of shelves.
It is, infact, about the magic combination of besser blocks and chipboard to create a cheap and screw free set of shelves.
Yeh take that IKEA! You think you have the market with that alan key! But who needs it! 

Perspex cardboard shelves

I have been writing so much copy for my work website that I just don't have the energy to write any for my own. So I'm going to keep it to dot points:
- I made these shelves for my desk out of 100% recycled materials.
- The perspex shelf makes my desk still feel open, but I have double the storage space!
-The supports were made from old fabric rolls I collected from Lincraft which I tied together from massive plastic bands.
- It cost me nothing. Yay.
- I wish my desk always looked this clean.

Bump In-Pop Up-Pin Up

This is my doodle for the Pin Up Your Doodle exhibition that is opening tomorrow night.  True to doodle form it was very last minute. An old sketch cut quickly from my visual diary and stuck on a piece of paper from our recycling bin this afternoon (wow it sounds so appealing- you want to buy it, right?).

Quirky Bird

I have recently been spending a lot of money on holidaying and general galavanting with little time to actually make money in between. But that has nothing to do with anything.  The point that I really want to make is that holidays are awesome because not only do they often mean you get to lie around and drink lots of cocktails but also because they provide such great fodder for creative projects.  

Stuff It

Ok so I saw this amazing bambi sculpture (below) by Frederique Morrel in a magazine the other day and it took me back to the days when i was working full time on my exhibition (2007), knitting away at stag's heads (above) and guns and sewing up wall hangings and doing all sorts of lovely creative things *sigh*.  And well it got me thinking about how funny it is when you think you are being totally original in creating something, when in fact 50 other people have already done it before you and have also actually done it far better than you anyway.

Concrete Casting

Working for Janet McGaw has been such a great experience.  Not only is she an incredible 
architect and academic, but she is always working on a myriad of interesting projects.  Her latest residential project has been for a wonderful client and I have been lucky enough to work on this with her.  

The Eggs

Some friends of mine from Moop Jaw were working on a clip for the band The Holidays and asked me to help them out with some of the sets.  The song was called Golden Sky and the concept required some magical eggs to be made.  These eggs had to be large, smooth (so no papier mache...) with a marbled pattern on them and able to be sturdy enough to be pushed off the edge of a building.

Indigenous Place-Making Symposium

Photo by Louis Porter
A couple of months ago I did some work with the University of Melbourne to help out on a very important symposium on the practises, processes and politics of Indigenous place-making.  I was taking photos of the speakers and attendants and was also fortunate enough to be able to sit in on the event.  Creating an indigenous place in Melbourne is such an important and complex undertaking and it is something I am not even going to attempt to explain with my limited knowledge and understanding of the subject.  But it is something I would like people to know about and perhaps also try and find out about.  I wasn't able to put any of the pictures I took up on this blog but I have attached a link here about the event and what it entailed for those that are interested.

Birdy Num Nums

I spent the last week house-sitting for my wonderful friend Louisa in her beautiful home in a gorgeous inner city suburb of Melbourne.  It felt like I was on holiday in my own city- it was fabulous!  I was able to just hunker down and work away on my architectural projects without any distraction.  It was any Etsy-loving woman's dream- countless cups of tea, Genius' Nina Simone playlist (I'll never tire of loving iTunes Genius.  I wish I was getting payed for that plug...) and the sweetest little cat imaginable.  I never realised how small a cooking repotoire I really need to feel sated, and just how much butter I get through weekly... (!?)  So in order to pay my thanks to my friend I decided to make her a little card.  My initial fashion illustration attempts failed miserably (A sure sign I am not drawing enough!) so I drew these two little birds for her instead.

My Best Friend Bot

I collaborated with a couple of my friends on this photo shoot, the Mumbai based film director and fashion photographer Rohan Michael Hoole and Melbourne based stylist Elice Blakeny.  I worked on creating the sets and props (as well as offering some of my wardrobe and my hair and makeup skills).  The concept of the shoot was of a lonely girl, some time in the distant future, ordering and making herself a robot best friend who could do all the things a friend did- knitting, celebrating a birthday, watching a movie etc.

The Great Divide

I feel kinda bad.  Asuka sits opposite me in the studio and I just put a divider between our desks.  I just hope she knows it's because I want to put some inspiration images up around me and not because I don't want to talk to her.  Because she is very nice.

The Mustard Neck Warmer

Melbourne Winters are notoriously hideous- rainy, windy, grey, enough to give even the most emotionally stable SAD disorder.  But this Winter has been particularly awful, especially considering that it actually started 2 months early. So what's a girl to do?  I think the only way to manage the encroaching blues and insatiable appetite is to rug up and start knitting.

This Modern Life

So i have finally been published in Vogue! Woohoo! Yep, my letter to the editor was published.  I love that they titled it 'Modern Woman'.  Fabulous. I didn't make the letter of the month but I blame that on my verbosity. I have simply been reading far too much (ever since i started a book club) and I have this habit of taking on the style of writing of the book that I'm currently reading. It's sort of like when you're at a pub talking to an Irish person and you realise you've started talking in an irish accent. Embarrassing for everyone all round. But, hey, it mustn't be all bad if i got published, right?

Stack Stand

I once spent over $250 on knitting machine yarn. And I didn't even have a job. And then about 2 weeks later I went to the Bentleigh op-shop and found even better colours for $2 a cone (that's how yarn comes, in cones). Mustard yellow! Texta Orange! Aggressive Beige.  It was all there- thanks probably, to someone dying. (Sorry, but it's true and I'm sure that whoever she is, she'd be glad I was using them well because her son/daughter OBVIOUSLY had no idea of their value.)  I still have the yarn and it still comes in handy for all sorts of things.  Including holding together bits of cardboard to make a computer stand.

Print-on Plaster

I had been working with plaster for my job- creating different imprints into the plaster to test textures for a concrete wall which might have abstract fossils etched into it's facade.  I was loving working with it as a material- it was just so much fun getting my apron on and my hands dirty and water everywhere (and I'm sure everyone in the studio was JUST as enthusiastic as I was about the whole process too).  So I decided to keep the fun going by making these little brooches for my jewelery lovin (and makin) friend Bosco (http://francescaloveheart.com/).

The Lost Art of Letters

I salvaged a stack of paper from an architectural firm I was working for a few years back after they changed their address and the letterhead went out of date.  The paper stock was so nice I just couldn't let it go in the bin- so I chopped off the letterhead and ended up keeping hundreds of sheets which i decided to print on and use as letter writing paper and to make little sketchbooks with.

The Girl and the Hummingbirds

I produced this illustration for the exhibition 'Fundrailslinn' at the Helen Gory Gallery Prahran (Melbourne) last year.

Bird(th)day Present

So what do you get for the girl who has nothing??... Mmh there were probably so many things that Karina needed more than a flat pack bird sculpture but HEY they were just too boring to think about.  So a flat pack bird it was.