Tag teaming

Our first solo exhibition is happening later this week and we're so close to finishing. We're cutting it a little fine again, but we couldn't resist doing one more embroidery. A week out from opening night we decided it would be a great opportunity to work on a larger piece so we're madly sewing to get it finished for bump in.

It's a little different to the rest of the works (we're calling it the bonus track of the playlist) and is a hint to what our future embroidered projects might look like so I'm pretty excited to see how it turns out. Co took some photos of the set up we McGyvered up for it. To handle the size of the design (75x75cm) we improvised a frame/stand by pinning it to the top of an old clothes horse we had lying around and it's done the trick so far. We're literally working around the clock to get it done in time. Tag teaming sewing shifts so one of us sews while the other naps. It feels just like uni days and our final year Major Project!

Also for those in Melbourne, Matt Huynh's latest exhibition of work Aurora sounds like it's going to be amazing. I'm pretty bummed that we we won't be able to see it. There's more info on his blog and site but here's a little excerpt that got me very excited. "This installation is a very large-scale charcoal and pigment drawing on 100% cotton watercolor paper running down the length of the entire gallery." Woah.. i'm usually overwhelmed working any larger than A3! The show opens March 10 at Lamington Drive Gallery.

And another project well worth supporting is the "What Song is That" project by Little Gonzales and Michael Wilton - a book of quirky pictograms. They've set up a pozible (fundbreak) project. Click here for more info on how to support them and help get the book published.

Macho Distrust - process

Thought it would be nice to share some of our process work in the lead up to our exhibition. I really enjoy 'making-of' videos and looking at process work and seeing how ideas develop. Not to mention it's always great when artists/designers share tips, I hope we can do the same.

This piece is one of co's and is inspired by Blondie. The words aren't meant to be taken too seriously. We were drawn to them because our work has often been described as cute, feminine etc and we used to think that was a bad thing. We've realised we do what we do, trying to act differently (in this case macho) or be something else is a waste of energy and also maybe insincere. I was reminded of this after reading a blog post by Lilly Piri this morning.

Co worked up the type in a series of pencil and pen sketches. The type is then refined using water colours with some adjustments in Photoshop. Sometimes we'll start a piece knowing what colour combinations we'd like to use but the water colours help add some randomness and some interesting gradients we'd not usually use.

Busy Bs

Hello! This week has turned out to be pretty hectic so the usual Monday blog post is terribly late. We've finally finished the pieces for our Mart show and they are at the framers now. We'll be posting up some process work soon.

Also, recently we've had some lovely write-ups about our show. We were pretty stoked to be on Booooooom! and also today the amazing Pip Lincolne of Meet Me at Mikes just posted up about our work too. Yay! We'd also like to give a huge thanks to Yen Magazine, Lifelounge, Frankie, Tough Titties and What Katie Does for writing up about us as well.

Also if you have time, we posted up some new work over at our site. There's a new Epic Battle and also the Sweater Letter co posted a sneak peek of a few weeks back is now finished. Hope you enjoy!

MaricorMaricar at Mart Gallery March 3-19

Maricor and I are very proud and excited to be having our first ever solo show next month at Mart Gallery.

'Turns of Speech & Figures of Phrase'is inspired by song lyrics misheard and mixed up. We've swapped pen and paper for needle and thread to create a mixtape compilation of hand-crafted type, based on lyrics borrowed from bands featuring Blondie, Paul Simon and Pavement.

The show opens on the 3rd March 5.30PM, hope to see you there!

What we did this Summer

We've just had a week long heatwave in Sydney. At first I was rejoicing after complaining about the lack of beach worthy days over the Christmas /New Year's break but after the first 4 days of 30+ heat in an unair-conditioned apartment that absorbed heat and refused to let any breeze it got a bit much.

Luckily since we work from home and are flexible with our hours we were able to escape to the beach every few days to cool down. Balmoral beach has become our favourite spot. It's calm and stays pretty shallow for a good stretch so I can learn how to swim without getting dunked every few minutes and best of all it's usually not that busy.

I tested out my Christmas present from Michael at the beach - an old Polaroid sx70 One Step Sonar with some colour film from the Impossible Project. It's been tricky figuring out the best lighting. So far all our shots have had a very pink/purple cast. We created a protector for the film so it's shaded from sunlight as soon as it exits the camera but still no luck. Has anyone got any tips for using the Px70 Colour Shade push film? I'd really like to get the colours looking more even and some darker blues.

Over the Christmas Michael and I stayed for a week in the Blue Mountains and took care of Sheba, Charlie, Olive and Dennis. I've never had a pet so looking after two dogs and two cats was pretty exciting. It was nice having a full house and despite a few minor accidents I think they were pretty happy. Charlie and Sheba are a pretty odd couple, Sheba is so big and yet you get the feeling that it's Charlie calling the shots. He's pretty adorable especially with his mane of fluffy hair on just the top half of his body, he looks like he's rocking a Mad Max style outfit. (no photos of Olive and Dennis but M's cat Freya dropped in for a few days)

My gift to M was some lens attachments for his iphone camera. I'm amazed at the amount of detail the macro gives and the wide ispretty impressive too. Here are some test shots using the macro and wide on the same cactus plant to compare. The lenses are available from Photojojo.