Trove, Wildernis and Majesty

With the 'Open/Closed: A pop up gallery' coming up fast, I've decided to make a selection of hats and headdresses to be suspended from the ceiling/beams and hopefully to be interacted with by the private view guests. The latest additions to the collection are:

Trove

The original idea was to create a nest like base however I combined this with the cocoon habits of the caddisfly (in particular the project of the Hubert Duprat). Another influence was the bower bird, who collects coloured items to decorate a small area for the purpose of courtship, leading on to other birds with similar habits such as magpies. 

Wildernis

Dutch for Wilderness, this piece is a composite of large European bird feathers and pre printed butterflies from a book of cut out DIY mobiles.

 

Majesty

Majesty was made during my weekend stay in Southampton, though the influences for the piece can be found as far as the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Feather trim, leopard print button and gold chain form the majority and hopefully it's vaguely reminscent of a central African headpiece.

 Images by KLV

Of Hair and Mirror

The following images are the result of playing around with my webcam whilst wearing my various headdress creations, though the only effect worth experimenting with in this way was the mirror image. The low quality images do actually depict interesting shapes and possible ideas considering future headdresses as well as breathing new form into the pieces!

On a different note, though still relevant to the head, I had a friend over at the weekend for dinner and seeing as I quite like ruining people's hair I decided to create a few masterpieces.. Honestly though I was quite happy with how the styles looked, especially the hair turban. It was fun!

 Goodnight!

Images by KLV

Winchester Fashion Week - The Designers

Last Thursday, I and a few friends attended the very first show of the first Winchester Fashion Week 'Cirque du Fashion Show'. The evening was lovely, especially since my name was on the designer/guestlist and accompanying this was a free program, with the catwalk show lasting around an hour there was plenty of clothing and headpieces on display. I haven't seen any photographs from the actual event but a few of the designers are as follows:

Mark Fast

Felicity Thomas

Charming Magpies

Suzie Poulton

Rachel Drewer

Hayley Kiley

KC Lake Millinery

Hsiao-Chi Tsai

As for my own work, two of my headdresses I created this year were displayed on the night and I was happy with the choice of outfit they were matched with. Running up to the event, images of these headdresses were displayed around Winchester.

As well as this, here are some images of the shoot I attended from the Winchester Fashion Week facebook page. 

Images by Rashi Rajguru

Paper Skull

Not quite a paper skull but close enough, my newly made mountboard baboon skull draws inspiration from the Baule monkey sculptures. Basing my work on primates is not something that happens regularly seeing as I find them kind of intimidating for some reason, mainly chimpanzees though, but there was something about the images in my previous post 'Moon Baboon' that demanded me to create with them in mind. After a few minutes I constructed a paper prototype to give me an idea of what I wanted my next headpiece to look like, next thing I know it's 1am and the larger version was completed! The proportions are out in places but overall I'm happy to use it in a photoshoot soon! I've also posted an image the thank you card I sent to the lovely friends who let me stay with them whilst I was locked out of my flat for what felt like forever, luckily I was staying with nice people in a nice house so can't complain! I think I straightened out the bottom of the card..

Images by KLV

Joao MT Illustrates

 

 Source

EjectorSeat Festival: The Monarch Colony

My own personal project at the EjectorSeat Festival was a reenactment of the Monarch butterfly and their habit of migration and hibernation. A natural phenomenon that captivated me as soon as I saw on it 'Life' by David Attenborough, when combined with the white butterflies I've used in my work before it resulted in this Monarch Colony. Eventhough the outline of a Monarch butterfly isn't complex, the cutting was a long process but thanks to help from Nikki, Georgie, Lewis, Katie and Daniel, all 570(ish) butterflies were cut, taped and ready for the tree. The tree itself had been picked in advance and at around 7am on the day of the festival I began to cover the trunk and though there were preliminary issues with the butterflies staying to the tree, all was sorted and ready by 12! I was extremely happy to see the way the public interacted with the tree and how they would stick the butterflies back on, a few people even wrote messages on them which was also nice! In a way these paper butterflies migrated, albeit very slowly, from the trunk to the pine needle-like leaves as whenever ones dropped they were placed further from the centre and some only hanging loosely to give the appearance of flapping in the wind. It was lovely to have my family and friends visit the park too