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.

Mirazozo @ Sydney Opera House

Great inflatable sculpture at the Sydney Opera House forecourt - a maze of light chambers that kind of feels like a cross between being inside a womb/the colour fields you see when you have your eyes closed and you're sitting under a tree swaying in the wind on a sunny day/Tron. All the "lights" are just the sunlight shining through the coloured panels in the tents fabric. Go and check it out, I recommend pre booking a spot.

Mirazozo
Sydney Opera House Forecourt
3-27 January

Photos: Jon Zhu

Hello 2011

At lot has happened already, I can tell 2011 is going to fly right by.

So far:
- Moved out of our yellow house in Newtown and bid a sad farewell to Faheems, Black Star Pastry, Delicious Rolls, Pastizzi Cafe, Art on King, Gelatomassi, Pho 236...

- Got burnt and a suffered a little heatstroke in an attempt to shed a few boxes of stuff before we store our belongings away for our UK trip. A garage sale in 30 degree heat is not a good idea, market umbrellas are essential, pack only one ute to the brim with loot for the market instead of 2, if it's a sunny day it's a good idea to keep your jewellery in the shade ...these are just some of the lessons we learnt from our garage sale and market days.

- We confirmed dates for our solo show which will be held at Mart Gallery in Sydney 3 - 19 March. We're just finalising some details now and will post up more info soon. Which means we've been busy sewing like crazy, more pics to come...

- And ABD7 is happening early this year. Once again we're taking part in the group show at Wedge Gallery Books Kinokuniya, it opens 2nd of February and runs until the 27th.

- Oh and by the way we've just opened up a Big Cartel shop to sell our prints and sewn pieces, welcome to "co & ca's cornershop"

Happy Holidays

Tis a little late but Maricor and I hope that everyone has and is enjoying a great Christmas and holiday break. We'll be a bit quiet for the next few weeks as we're also going to be busy moving house and preparing for our first ever solo show next year. But we'll be back!

Deep Fried Xmas

Co and I had our annual Christmas dinner with our uni friends over the weekend and it was a seafood feast as usual. We swung by the fish markets earlier and managed to buy about a kilo of sashimi but since we had extra guys this time round we figured we'd need the extra food. We also came home with some cooked and raw prawns for the bbq grill, oysters and pippies. Our group is obsessed with chilli XO pippies so it's on the menu every year. We also had spicy meat patties, beef Kofta and cucumber salad, white wine sangria and ice kachang for dessert. Sorry for the details, I get very excited about food.

Co and I were on a budget for gifts :( so we decided to make embroidered cards. I wish we'd thought of making them earlier so we could have made a bunch for our online store (check back in the new year for more details about that!) and I forgot to document them before we sealed them up but I do have one to show. I also made some dark chocolate rocky road with Michael, complete with homemade marshmallows, macadamias, glace cherries and dried cranberries (Michael's idea and a very good extra chewy factor). I used this recipe and made the adjustments..
I was bit heavy handed with the first chocolate step so it set with a real thick layer of chocolate that made it a bit hard to eat.

[Correction: sorry poste dthe wrong link for the recipe, here's the rocky road recipe]

Sunday sunburn

I'm a little sunburnt from the weekend after spending most of Sunday at the combined garage sale we held with our older sister and her friends. We've had a few good garage sales/market stalls before and I was looking forward to a good day yesterday but the combination of a slow Sunday crowd and the heat made it a very exhausting and trying day. We got so hot we'd take opportunities while no one was around to sneak a lie down under the tables. We might have had heat stroke in hindsight. Hopefully the market stall we've booked next month for Kirribilli will be busier since we really need to offload some stuff before our UK trip next year.

It's quietened down for the year in the studio so we've taken the opportunity to work on some small embroidered bits for xmas giveaways. We're trialling stitched patterns onto cardboard and i'm quite pleased with how they've turned out. We've had to adjust our process to work on card and also the artwork is much simpler but I like how it's more linear and geo inspired. And not to mention a lot faster to finish than i'm used to!

Also I finally copied over photos of the recent Art by Design group exhibition co and I were part of. Sorry for the poor photos I didn't manage to get all the angles so I have inadvertently missed some of the artists. Naomi launched her site with more info on all of the artists that were involved. You can check it out here.

PS we had our first swim of the summer!

Liquid pencils, lace and other things

Been a while between posts, a lot has happened in the meantime.

"Liquid Pencil" tests: Fun times testing out a new typographic piece as an inked up poster before the sewing phase. I had bought a bottle of "Liquid Pencil" (Derivan) on impulse a while ago but haven't had a project to test it out on 'til now. It's less liquid than ink and more the consistency of globby paint but it glides off the brush smoothly and has a nice thick look to it with a graphite finish. I used it in combination with masking fluid which was a bit hit and miss. The bottle of masking fluid is quite old and probably past its prime but seemed to be working alright, although some areas dried too thin and ended up not masking at all. Overall I'm pretty happy with the results, I know I probably could have composited it digitally in photoshop with all the masking etc but its nice trying to do it the old fashioned way. The roughness of the edges where the fluid pooled at the corners and brushed edges of the mask add that extra bit of charm you can't emulate digitally. Or...I suppose you could but it wouldn't be half as fun.

Kevin Tran exhibition: We checked out Kevin Tran's exhibition at Mils gallery after seeing his work posted up online, the works up close are so vivid and detailed. Thanks to Catherine and Matt for the heads up on the show. (On a side note we went down to chinatown after the show for our favourite cheap eat at the Chinese Noodle House. Nothing beats special braised eggplant and combination hand made noodles!)

Lace Study Centre: We had a great time chatting to the extremely helpful ladies from the Powerhouse Museum's Lace Study Centre. They were nice enough to share their love of lace and give us a quick demonstration and pull out some amazing examples from the museum's collection. We went straight out and bought a book so we can start learning how to lace. So many possibilities.. so many things to make. First step, modify some chopsticks into bobbins.

Gaffa Gallery: Went to the exhibition openings at Gaffa gallery which were jam packed with a lot of great works. Anna Fraser's photographs and Linelle Stepto's flora/fauna studies are some of the works on display right now. After this show we also had a food odyssey, this time it was a reunion of sorts at KFC. We used to live on popcorn chicken while at uni. It's greasy and usually leaves me feeling a little ill afterwards but the smell always beckons me back!

Yen interview

This month's Yen has just come out and has an interview that co and I did with Yen's editor Annie Sebel. We met her at Black Star pastries for some yummy sweets and coffee and had a chat about just winning the British Council's Realise Your Dream Award, how we work together, the occasional screaming matches that come with being sisters and how our high school art teacher introduced us to Neil Gaiman's Sandman comics and led us on our path to becoming designers.

We're still very shy so we had a quick 90s dance off before hand to calm our nerves. But we needn't have worried, Annie was super nice and friendly!

Sole Cola

Our latest collaboration with the guys at GEA Interactive is live. MaricorMaricar designed the digital home for Sole Cola, the vivid artwork of the multi talented Roderick Smith.
"Sole Cola is an exploration of found objects, vintage papers and mixed media - a fascination with combinations of colour, form, texture, patterns of positive and negative shapes, areas of counterpoint, visual minutiae and textual stories subconsciously expressed". Roderick is a regular renaissance man, an artist and musician, he is one part of the band Firekites.

ABD Risographs & Sewn Pieces

The risographs we printed for ABD6 show are now available for sale on our site. Here are photos of the prints and the details for each are below. Also the remaining sewn pieces from the show are available to purchase from our site.

Los Muchachos Bestial - "Leche Derramada"
202mm x 275 mm
Risograph on light weight matte paper
Open Edition, signed
Will be mailed flat, padded.
$27 unframed (inc postage within Australia)
International buyers please email us.

Los Muchachos Bestial - "Enredado"
202mm x 275 mm
Risograph on light weight matte paper
Open Edition, signed
Will be mailed flat, padded.
$27 unframed (inc postage within Australia)
International buyers please email us.

"Diamonds On The Soles Of Their Feet
297mm x 420 mm
Risograph on light weight matte paper
Open Edition, signed
Will be mailed rolled.
$42 unframed (inc postage within Australia)
International buyers please email us.

Pinching Ourselves

The last couple of months have been pretty awesome for ca and me when we thought it couldn't get even huger, BAM, something comes up which makes us pinch ourselves and wonder if its all for real. The nominees we're announced for Plus Camerimage 2010 and in the music category sitting amongst the big names Lady Gaga, Gorillaz, Fever Ray, Florence And The Machine, Eminem and UNKLE et al is our clip for Murder By Death.

Plus Camerimage is an international festival dedicated to cinematography and our animated clip for Murder By Death's "White Noise" has been nominated in the music video category and to say we're chuffed is a huge understatement! We're excited just to be amongst great directors and to have our work seen by the jury.

Other things that have happened this week include; meeting one of our creative heroes, Deanne Cheuk, missing out on a SOYA award but huge congratulations to the winners and all the finalists, taking part in the I Can Draw You A Picture: Re-Building lab at LiveWorks, getting an ass-whooping in Scrabble, taking down our group exhibition ABD6 and parting with some favourites and enjoying a day in the sun at the Newtown Festival.

Capture the Fade Photography Exhibition opens at the Paper Mill Gallery this Wednesday and guest judge Bill Henson will announce the overall winner of the competition. Congratulations to our friend Gene whose work will be exhibited and good luck for the anouncement!!

One last thing for this Monday's post, ca and I have started work on our next series of type and thread pieces, below is a sneak peek. Oh and since ABD6 has finished up, the unsold pieces will be put up for sale soon on our site, we'll keep you posted.

/co

Upon A Fold

Ca and I were so excited to see one of our pieces on the awesome site Upon A Fold's blog. If you don't already know about it, its one of the best blogs on the internet all about paper, "a little peek into the world of paper artistry". Forgot to say their shop is full of paper goodness too!

"Don't wake me I plan on sleeping in"

I had an early day today, I woke up at 3am to watch Formula 1 with Michael. I used to watch it as kid and remember it being really looong and only watching the beginning and end but now I've started to really get into it again since Michael follows it pretty religiously. It's funny it doesn't seem to take forever like I remember.

This week co and I have started our new series of musically inspired embroidered type. We're having fun with watercolours designing the type and figuring out colour schemes before getting into the embroidery. Co finally cracked open the watercolour set she bought at Tokyu Hands when we visited Japan last november. Meanwhile I'm still using pencils and have a feeling i'll be switching over soon, i'm jealous of the colours she's getting. These are the threads I picked out for my next canvas, a lot of aqua greens and purples.

Also i'm very excited that my mini orchid is finally sprouting some new life. I got it last November and I was worried it was slowly dying because nothing was happening. But now it looks like there are 2 new shoots coming out of the old flower stem.

Gemini

Spent part of last week making repairs on the siamese twins we made for our 'Triangle Circle Square' animation. I'm not sure if i'm just excessively messy but I always manage to attract dust and fibre particles and have a horrible time keeping the white clay clean. Because we sort of rushed that animation some of the details we're a bit dodge, since I had some time on my hands I remade the arms and one of the legs. All that's left to do is patch the limbs onto the body and make a new collar since the other one got banged up a bit.

It was fun making the twins, they're actually based on an old illustration series co and I did based on sideshow freak zodiacs. We hope to make some more miniatures inspired by the awesome Ultraman toy monsters we got in Japan but we're still in thread and paper mode so it might be a while 'til we get around to them.

Paper + Type + Ramen

I've had "Keep On Moving, Tokyo Japan Nov '09" pinned to my inspiration board ever since our trip to Japan last year but hadn't got round to doing anything with it till now. I started out sketching some type treatments for another sewn piece based on this line, but along the way its switched from being sewn into something made out of paper.
The words are just a reminder for me to keep creating and making things. Tokyo is such a vibrant place, there's a constant flow of movement and there's so much stuff to soak in. I came back really inspired and this poster is just a quiet reminder to keep creating.

Tough Titties

We met Lou and Alex from Boccalatte at the Realise Your Dream awards night and they told us about their new blog toughtitties.com.au that is a showcase for creative females. I think it's an awesome idea, and hope word spreads. At UTS our course was probably 80% female if not more but once we started working professionally the female presence seemed significantly lower. I've always wondered why. Sorry I ramble.. please do check out their blog and recommend a tough titty!

PS co and I also have an interview up.

Nit-tweets

http://twitter.com/maricormaricar

We'll still be blogging though!

Matt Huynh "Alluvia" Ehxibition

Another good show to check out if you're in Sydney is Matt Huynh's  "Alluvia" exhibition at the Paper Mill Gallery, opening on November 3.

'Alluvia' refers to the earth washed down a body of flowing water, sometimes resulting in the formation of a fan at the base of deep slopes. When this collected earth has been found at the base of Martian craters, they are indicative of water’s presence and suggestive of proof of life.

This kaleidoscopic illustration collection reflects upon the enduring fragments of the universal in the personal that harmonise towards a holistic and romantic relationship with our future.

The show descriptor above is intriguing, looking forward to the show!

/ca