Happy New Year 2011

Wishing you all a happy and healthy New Year for 2011 xxxxx
I always find it a tricky time and have overpowering desires to clean the fridge and cooker etc. I hope you have more enjoyable ways of moving from one year to the next. X

Miranda Skoczek

Wonderful vibrant colour from Melbourne based artist Miranda Skoczek. Textiles and traditional dress, folk art, modernist design and architecture are some of the visual references from which Miranda Skoczek draws inspiration.

"I often reference the history of textiles, acknowledging certain fabrics ability to transmit information about the society in which it was produced . And how, in many cultures, pattern is not purely decoration, but also a form of identification." Miranda Skoczek

Helen Steele

Helen Steele's work is a cacophony of colour and a joy of paint. Helen's working practice seems to be developing into installation and performance pieces.

Loom

Stunning reworked antique rugs from Australia's Loom. Loom is a company that patchworks and over dyes old rugs to create new beautiful rugs.

Murine Kate Dineen

Murine Kate Dineen loves colour "colour is the point of my work". Kate has spent a lot of time in India including a two and a half year scholarship with Gyarsilai Varma a famous practitioner of araash. Varma taught Kate how to mix pure white marble dust from Makrana with slaked lime and pigment to create a paste. This is then layered to create a build up of intense colour that drys to a hardness of rock, that is then rubbed down and polished.
Like chalk or play dough Kate's work has the purity of colour that is childhood, the intense joy of colour on new eyes.

Claire Basler

Claire Basler is a French painter of flora, who uses monumental scale, her works remind me of the great French painters, an obvious analogy being Monet.
Claire also designs ceramics and textiles. I love the scale of her work, and the obvious enthusiasm and love of her subject.

Matthew Daren Shlian

Paper engineer and artist Matthew Shlian makes incredible structures, we are still surrounded by snow, so I love the crystal like forms that Matthew has sculpted. I understand now that mastery of such a simple material as paper, creates basic three dimensional knowledge that can be applied to fashion furniture architecture and many other disciplines, it is invaluable.

Toilet Roll Robin

Ok, I promised Deb that I would do this as soon as I was free from worldly worries, and today is that day. Here is my toilet roll robin, I am scared now, as Gordon is just starting his and is very competitive. There are six days left for you to have a go too, go on, you know you want to! (when you have done it share it here.)

Many Happy Christmas Greetings to you all xxxxx

Jeffry Mitchell

I just wanted to share Jeffry Michell's lovely happy elephant lantern.

Vicky Hanrahan's asher jasper

Vicky Hanrahan trained in drawing and painting but now has a wonderful shop asherjasper selling toys, this robin is just perfect.

Samantha Clark

Samantha Clark's wonderful cloud chamber, Samantha Clark is an artist who's work is concerned with environmental ethics and aesthetics, to view her varied portfolio and writings please visit her website.

Walter Martin and Paloma Munoz

Walter Martin and Paloma Munoz are a husband and wife collaboration who make these surreal and ethereal snow globes. Little jewels of dreams, stories and nightmares sealed in a world where it is always snowing.

Ozlem Kilic

These works by Ozlem Kilic of LemkaB a fashion graduate who now makes jewelery and accessories from leather, they remind me of the beauty of snowflakes and Spirograph's, I love the clean design and the quantity of component pieces, please look at Ozlem's shop she also has wonderful cuffs and bags.

Winter Branches

White, winter branches from the ever wonderful Masami Akatsuka of Cocon.

Cathy Orton's Baubles

At last got some time off today and at last got the chance to catch up with a friend, and then a lot more friends. Here is my Christmas present, the wonderful baubles of Cathy Orton. I almost refused because they look so good on Casey Miller's Stag head! Now tomorrow is mapped out I need to make a stag head!

Liu Di

Liu Di is a young Chinese photographer who has won the 2010 Lacoste Elysee Prize for his series called Animal Regulations, shocking images that make us reflect on the impact of urbanisation on wildlife.

Riitta Ikonen,

Riitta Ikonen is a Finish artist currently living in London. Riitta creates costumes, these then become instances of performance art, environmental art and photography projects.

"My work is concerned with the performance of images through photography and costume design . . . in my costumes tremendous things happen- to me and to the people I work with"

Riitta's work is concerned with ecology, climate and the bigger picture of planet health. All of the images I have included are from a project called 'Snowflake'. For a wonderful interview with this artist go here.

Ice Sculpture by Lake Erie

These are images of a lighthouse in Cleveland, Ohio after frozen waters of Lake Erie had iced it. You can see the BBC news article here.

Yamamoto Motoi

Above: Fountain of Remembrance (after rain) outside installation with cast boat forms.

Above and below examples of Yamamoto's Labyrinth series of installations

Yamamoto Motoi creates salt gardens, intricate capillaries, spreading across floors like a mysterious language. Salt holds a strange place in world cultures, vital for our survival and part of our mythologys of love, life and death.

Often Yamamoto Motoi creates these magical intricacies and then invites the audience to gather the salt and return it to the sea.