HOOPLA group show

Hey all! We have a group show coming up curated by He Made She Made at their Sydney gallery. Opening night is next Wednesday night. October 22nd / 18.00 - 21.00 He Made She Made 70 Oxford Street, Darlinghurst.

Lots of amazing people in the show - Kitiya Palaskas, Adame France, Jordan Clarke, Izziyana Suhaimi, Province, Maria Aparicio Puentes, and Victor Espinoza Aparicio. The hoops were custom made by HMSH and are a whopping 80x80cm. 

We based our work on a piece of lyric by Sunset Rubdown. It's another one of our painting with thread pieces but a bit more fractured and loose. We hope you can make it down if you're based in Sydney!

Material Edge at Wangaratta Art Gallery

We're very proud to be part of an exhibition on now at the Wangaratta Art Gallery (Vic, Australia) that has been curated by the wonderful Sally Huguenin. Sally has brought together artists/designers working in contemporary textiles across varying fields such as the visual arts, fashion and graphic design.

 "The exhibition includes work as diverse as Douglas McManus’ laser-engraved textiles with 3d printing; Kathy Temin’s renowned synthetic fur landscapes; and an interactive pompom installation space by Australia’s queen of craft, Pip Lincolne. There will also be four incredibly intricate outfits by Sydney fashion designers Romance Was Born, including a dress famously worn by Cate Blanchett that is on loan from the Powerhouse Museum; knitted self-portraits and photographic imagery by Melbourne-based contemporary artist Kate Just; and colourfully embroidered advertising and typography by twin sisters and graphic designers, Maricor/Maricar."

 The exhibition runs until the 19th October. More details can be found on the gallery website and the flyer is below.

The work we have on display is primarily our commercial work - showing how embroidery is being used by clients in publishing and advertising. We also included some of our personal textile pieces that were created after our time in London ("Maps" wallhangings) as well as two new pieces created specifically for Material Edge. "Don't Worry Baby" hand embroidered lettering and a new patchwork wall hanging, "Neue Folk".

Art by Design 9

Art by Design is happening again at the Wedge Gallery at Books Kinokuniya here in Sydney. We have a few bits and bobs on display and for sale including this new embroidered monogram which we stitched during our Studio Pop Ups stint at the Powerhouse earlier this year. The exhibition runs now until November 25 and features some very lovely work including paper cuts by Cecilia Mok, cute knitted characters by Jake Henzler and beautiful silk scarves by Happy End Designs.

Plants and things

I started writing this post a few weeks back while we were in the middle of a big (for us) project. I had planned for it to be a bit of a wrap-up of the things that had happened over the months since our last proper post but the original draft doesn't make as much sense now. But to boil it down it was mainly a bit of a guilty whinge about being so busy. Guilty because I always feel a little ungrateful complaining when we're busy with work as goodness knows how anxious we feel when we're not busy! And I seem to have tempted fate. Now that we have a bit of a breather studio-wise we're both back to worrying again. Blerg it's a never ending cycle.

Things that have been making us happy lately though are finishing off the Christmas project that kept us occupied for the last 2 months and occupied a huge chunk of my loungeroom/kitchen. I'm very glad not to be finding gold thread in every nook and cranny now (eg daughter's nappy??). We had very sparkly dust bunnies last month:)

Other things in no specific order:

- Taking part in the Sydney Design Studio Pop Ups at the Powerhouse. This was the first time we'd tried holding a market stall (not counting our garage sales) so it was a huge learning experience for us. It was wonderful demonstrating some embroidery techniques to the people that visited our stall, especially the two young visitors we had who blitzed through the beginner stitches we showed them and were keen to learn more.

- Spending the long weekend up the coast at Smiths Lakes which included a walk across the lake, gourmet breakfasts and meals thanks to our friends, lots of sun and did I mention the breakfasts? It was the first time I'd tried blue cheese french toast, I was a bit dubious at first but was a surprise convert.

- Air plants. If you follow our instagram feed you may have noticed a bit of tillandsia love. Sorry for all the plant posts but we have both become obsessed.  A few weeks back we went to the Mr Kitly x Dagamar Rousset Sydney pop up and added some new plants to our collection. Sadly I showered some of mine with too much love (water) and half of them died of rot. I've learnt my lesson since then and promise to take better care (give them some space) of the new dudes I picked up at the Bromeliad/Tillandsia fair.

- Cactus and Succulents. Sorry more plant talk but the C&S Society are holding their Spring show on the 26th of October and i'm coming prepared with my own box this time. We're working on a flower themed magazine cover at the moment, if i'm not embroidering flowers i'm looking up lithops and tillandsia.

- We're contributing some work to the upcoming Art by Design 9 group show at Wedge Gallery, Kinokuniya. I think the opening night is Oct 31 and t will run until Nov 25.

- An interview and spread in House and Garden as part of their Sister Act article in the October issue. It was lovely meeting Elizabeth who wrote the article and it was a thrill seeing our studio included amongst their beautiful pages. We were madly trying to clean up the house ahead of the shoot but made the rookie mistake of shoving everything under our studio table which inevitably was in frame. We had to haul everything out mid shoot causing a minor dust storm.

- And lastly some very lovely and kind write ups on thisispaper, Kaleidoscope blog and the Fox is Black. Special thank you to Amanda from Kaleidoscope blog who saw us at our first ever talk at Field Trip last year, we were so nervous before and after the talk to watch over the tape of it but since you still wanted to write about us I hope that means we didn't mumble/make an arse of ourselves too much!

Etsy update

Hello! We've just updated our etsy store with some of our original hand embroideries, new giclee prints and embroidered totes and pincushions. There's a mix bunch of lettering pieces as well as the epic battles we created for Pick Me Up London waiting for a lovely new home. Below are some of the new pieces available.

Dream Weavers

It's been a while since we've posted process but an embroidery project we completed earlier in the year has gone live so I thought now would be a great time to go through a project from sketch to final embroidery. The project was for SHOP magazine and their Madrid and Barcelona shopping guide, which came to us through UK based studio Design by St and our UK illustration agency Handsome Frank. The brief was to create a patterned graphic inspired by the contemporary rug designers based in Madrid and Barcelona that are featured in the issue.

It was a wonderful project that allowed us to play with patterns but was also a little tricky. We knew we had to somehow work the title Dream Weavers into the pattern but we weren't sure how obscure the text could be. The first briefing mentioned perhaps hiding the title within the pattern which we tried to push in some of our earlier concepts but had to bring that back a bit for legibility. In the final design we opted for a traditional sans serif font but used contrasting colours in the stripe design to suggest the type being woven back into the pattern.

You can see two of our first round ideas in the top image, a very rough preliminary sketch next to the final design chosen and lastly the final embroidery. With this project most of the design was worked up in Illustrator with just that rough sketch as guidance for some pattern structures and you might notice a minor difference between the final digital version of the design and the embroidery. We had to undo one panel to help with the legibility of the subline. It was a minor change so no biggie but still makes you wish there was a control Z embroidery equivalent handy!

So that was that project, I hope seeing some of our process is helpful, I know I personally find it fascinating to glimpse into other illustrators/designers/artists/makers process. If you follow us on instagram (maricormaricar) we post up some process/wips/inspiration, much more regularly than we update this blog (sorry it's not as often as we'd like). And i'm also very please to share that Maricor and I are taking part in Studio Pop Ups which is being presented by the Powerhouse Museum as part of Sydney Design 2013. We're not used to holding market type stalls but we'll have a mini version of our studio space set up with some originals and prints on display and for sale. We also have a few bits and bobs we're making for the pop up - some pin cushions made with fabric remnants from our Maps series of patchworks as well as some tote bags we're embellishing with hand embroidery.

There will be pop ups hosted by a nice mix of designers such as Emily Green and Limedrop. More information is up on the Pop Ups page here and it will run from the 15th - 18th August 10am-5pm. We'll have some current projects that we'll work on during the pop up so if you're interested in learning more please pop down for a chat!

MAPS opening

Pheew I'm very pleased to say that our MAPS show is now up at Koskela. True to form there was some last minute up all night nimble needle work to get the last piece finished but it was all worth it. The opening was last weekend but the exhibition runs until August so there's still plenty of time to see it if you're Sydney based. Unfortunately I was in a rush and arrived late to the opening, so was a little frazzled and didn't take any photos on the day. But we did take some photos during the install and will try to get some pics of the show before we take it down. Many thanks to Kate at Koskela and M for all their help measuring out positions, hammering and ladder climbing. Below are the main patchworked wall hangings and the one we've nicknamed the long sock.

There is also a little extra side show in the nook with some of the pieces we created for Pick Me Up earlier in the year. You can see some of the Epic Battles and our Aim to Misbehave piece.

We also had some great write ups on the show on Inside Out magazine's blog, Desktop and Broadsheet Sydney.
PS You can see some more of our workspace ie my lounge room in the Broadsheet Sydney feature.

Maps solo show

We're very excited to invite you to our solo show which is being held at Koskela in July. It will be a little different to the works we've exhibited recently since we wanted to work with new techniques and at a larger scale. The pieces are abstract embroideries and patchworks inspired by our stay in London in 2011. We were fortunate to live just near London Fields park so there were no other high rise buildings for a good distance and living on the 10th floor gave us an amazing panaromic view of London (we were extremely lucky to find that apartment the universe must have thought we were due a break!). Each day and night we were treated to an amazing study of colour through our windows. We tried to document the different coloured skies and the palettes chosen for these new works are based on those photographs. The show opens at Koskela 6 July from 2-3.30pm and runs until the 18th August Koskela // 85 Dunning Avenue, Rosebery, NSW 2018 // 9280 0999. There will be some refreshments and nibbles kindly provided by Koskela/Kitchen by Mike so hope to see you there!

And a few previews..

New prints on etsy

Hulllooo, just updated our etsy site with some new giclee prints of our Pick Me Up artworks and newly released prints of some oldies but goodies - 'Head Collapse' and 'Macho Distrust'. We're winding down our bigcartel shopfront so please go to our etsy site if you're interested in picking up some prints and original embroideries. We'll have prints of 'Aim to misbehave', 'Stay Golden' plus all the originals soon!

It's not always sunny, sunny side up.

Hello! We mentioned earlier that we have some new work showing at Pick Me Up London. It's on now at Somerset House and runs until this Sunday the 28th. We really recommend you go visit if you're in London. Not because of us (that would be a bit up ourselves!) but because of all the other great things happening over the three floors. There are live demonstrations and free workshops, fun stalls such as Human After All's "Face Stamp!", an 'ink-teractive' are where you have the opportunity to create your own print using stamps designed by illustrators such as Craig & Karl, Emily Forgot, Malika Favre, Jean Jullien, Supermundane and Hattie Stewart.

More details can be found at Pick Me Up. If you do go and happen to take snaps of our stall we'd love to see them and would be eternally grateful! Unfortunately we couldn't make it so have been suffering from serious FOMO seeing all the amazing pics posted on our twitter and instagram feed.

But just in case you can't get to PMU we created a mini site of the new work. Originals and giclee prints are for sale at Pick Me Up, and will be in our store after the fair wraps up. Please email us if you're interested! Pictured above is Epic Battle #3: Egg vs Baked Beans (It's not always sunny, sunny side up).

Corn Cobbed

Woooo we finished our artworks for the Pick Me Up show and have popped them in the post. Fingers crossed they make the journey to London safe and sound! Before we mailed them we took some snaps and have a sneak peek below of one of the works. It's technically not an Epic Battle but we couldn't resist including this blushing pantless Corn. I imagine he came out second best in his stoush and was pants'ed in the process.

How do you eat your corn? We like to eat ours by picking off the kernels since we hate having corn bits stuck in our teeth!

If you're on instagram we've been posting wips of some of the works there, you can find us here.

Pick Me Up

We've been busy for the last few months planning and creating some new work for Pick Me Up 2013. It's a contemporary graphic art fair held at the Somerset House in London. We've very chuffed to be part of the Selects program alongside exciting artists such as Malarky, Jean Jullien and Malika Favre (both fellow Handsome Frank'ers).

We were hoping we could go back for a visit during the fair. We could show Ava our old stomping grounds and visit with friends but unfortunately we didn't get our arses into gear fast enough so we'll be sending our work through the post with fingers and toes crossed that they arrive safe and sound.

If you're in town I hope you can go and visit. There will be workshops and I hear that the amazing Damien Florébert Cuypers will be in residence on select days to do One Minute Portraits...Dang would have loved a family portrait with M and Ava!

Here's a little sneak peek at one of the new pieces we've created. Also we've just put up a huuuuge update to our website. It's been at least half a year since we last updated so there's a lot of projects, some that couldn't fit on the home page but can be found on the separate Tactiles page.

ADC Young Guns X

Maricor and I were selected for this years Young Guns award which were announced earlier this month. The Young Guns is an international portfolio based award presented annually by the Art Directors Club and is open to creatives under the age of thirty. This year 34 were given and we're beyond happy to join alumni we very much admire and are inspired by such as Kyle Bean, Deanne Cheuk, Johnny Kelly and Alex Trochut to name just a few.

We weren't able to make it to the awards night that were held in New York earlier this month but our friend Matt was kind enough to snap some pics of our work on display.

Field Trip Sydney

We've mentioned it on twitter but not on our blog yet but Maricar and I will be speaking at the Sydney instalment of Field Trip this December. It's a creative conference presented by our Australian agents Jacky Winter and Australian Infront. They held the first in Melbourne earlier this year with Beci Orpin, Jeremy Ley, Tin and Ed amongst the stellar line up so we're pretty proud to be asked to speak in Sydney.

Field Trip is a little different to the usual conference, speakers are encouraged to think of it as more of a performance rather than a talk, as we'll go through the nitty gritty process of creating work, live on stage with a lot of tips shared. Both creative tips as well as technical short cuts. For Sydney there is a great variety of skills represented by the speakers: the highly respected traditional illustrator Nigel Buchanan, paper engineer Benja Harney of Paperform fame, letterist Gemma O'Brien aka Mrs Eaves, 3D digital wizards Forge & Morrow, infographics designer Anthony Calvert and the motion gurus from Flutter. Hopefully we won't be too nervous on stage but I'm slightly freaking out about the prospect of presenting in front of a big crowd. But it's a interesting format for a conference and one which we would have enjoyed going to as a student and young designer to get an insight into the creative processes of some of our creative heroes so we're glad to be involved and I hope what we have to share will be interesting.

We'll be going through a brief from start to finish, discussing the ways we tailor our work flow to working with such a labour intensive medium as embroidery. We'll share some of the digital techniques we use, but most importantly we'll be doing some live embroidery on stage.  If we have any regular visitors to the blog I hope we see you there, please say hi :)

And also if anyone wants to ask us a question about how we work please leave them in the comments section of this post and we'll try to go through them during our talk.

Field Trip Sydney takes place on the 7th of December at the Seymour Centre. Tickets are still available through Australian Infront, details are all on their site. But if you do a bit of sleuthing on the Desktop magazine website I think they're offering a reader discount!

Some things that have happened, will happen and are happening right now

Hello! I'm not sure what it is about July/August but we've just come into a bit of a busy period with a few projects and exhibitions on. It's an exciting time and wonderful to have the security of knowing we have another job lined up beyond the current one but I wish we were able to spread these out a bit! Especially as i'm taking some maternity leave I feel a bit guilty at relying on Maricor to hold the fort.

Unfortunately we are a little late posting about the Tweet a Brief exhibition organised by Handsome Frank, our agents in the UK. As the title suggests the show asked people to tweet illustration briefs for their illustrators to create the artworks.

We chose this brief from @ejikeanyanwu 'A balloon full of multiple colours of paint, burst by a bullet, spilling onto a blank canvas. Represents creativity.' We've explored water colour gradients in our work before but have wanted to experiment more with thick paint textures and splatters so had a lot of fun with this brief. Below is our response to the brief and if you follow this link Handsome Frank have posted up the exhibition in it's entirety on their blog.

Maricor posted earlier about the True Self exhibition co presented by our Australian agents Jacky Winter and MGPO. We had a lot of fun collaborating on our two boards - the first with Limedrop and the second with Thom Kerr, and to be in an amazing group show with other talented folk such as Matt Huynh, Beci Orpin and We Buy Your Kids. The entire show is up online which is great since we also missed out on seeing it down in Melbourne.

We also had the chance to be a part of a group show down at He Made She Made gallery in Sydney which opened last night. 'Who Shot the Serif' focuses on type on and off the page and brought together another group of designers that got us excited, WBYK, Luke Lucas, Thi Nguyen, Wing Lau plus a whole lot more. Our original Go Play, Kylie type and B&E are on display, the show will run for 5 weeks. You might see us down there, I have to go back and have a closer look at the work, the opening was pretty chockers and I could't get close enough to the works to take in the details!

And to round off what's become a monster of a post is another group show we'll be part of in Melbourne at Brunswick Street Gallery. Needle Work Needle Play will showcase contemporary Australian artists and illustrators who have used embroidery in their work. We are very excited to be part of this show and can't wait to see what the other artists have created. Carly who invited us to take part has done an amazing job organising the show and has even created a blog to document the lead up to the show and has profiled each of the artists. Some of the artists have shown some sneak peaks of work in progress, it's all looking great, here is Cat Rabbit's blog post on her piece. Another shame that we won't be down in Melbourne to check it out!

As Prescribed - Fine Lines

As Prescribed is an artist driven t-shirt label that aims to be a platform for exposing artists and designers to the universe. Founded by Melbourne based illustrator Eveline Tarunadjaja and designer Nick Parker, As Prescribed takes on the form of an art gallery, in an online retail environment.  The awesome folks behind new T-shirt label As Prescribed invited MaricorMaricar to take part in their first artist series "Fine Lines". The series of shirts also feature designs by Eveline Tarunadjaja, Sean Morris and Kubota Fumikazu.

The label launched last week with a pop up shop and exhibition at No Vacancy gallery in Melbourne. Head down and say hello to Eveline, she's super nice and until the 20th of May visitors to the gallery get $10 off shirts.

Our piece is titled "The Hungry Slug" and this little monster and some of his gang are currently on display in the exhibition as well as a couple of original hand sewn embroideries and our print "Makers, Dreamers" which is available for sale during the exhibition.

Each artist has a nice little interview up on the As Prescribed site, here's our one, we were pretty nervous on camera and kept pulling faces!

MaricorMaricar joins Jacky Winter

We're playing catch up on our blog so apologies for some not so 'new' news. Last month we were incredibly stoked to join the talented stable of artists represented by the illustration agency Jacky Winter. We're so happy to have local representation by such an awesome agency and we look forward to working with them on some super projects. Coming up is a group show presented by Jacky Winter and MGPO titled "True Self". It's a collaborative group show, each artwork on display will be a collaboration between two artists. The creative process is sort of a chain letter: Each artist starts off one piece before mailing it to another artist to complete, so MaricorMaricar will have our hands on two pieces in the show.

More information on the exhibition is available here. The exhibition will be on display at Melbourne's GPO and will be on show between June 1 - 24. All artworks will be for sale ($200) and all proceeds go to the charity Fitted for Work - a not-for-profit initiative, providing clothing and training to help disadvantaged women find employment. Below are some sneak peeks of one of the pieces we're collaborating on.