Photographing people

What do you think about when you take a photograph of a stranger? This dilemma started for me a few years ago in Indonesia, when I was trying to take photographs of local villagers for my fieldwork research. I would see them clustered around a well, washing clothes, carrying firewood or sitting in a group, talking and smoking. But whenever I tried to photograph these scenes the villagers would jump up in a combination of alarm and excitement, insisting on changing their clothes and standing in a formal group pose. Unsurprisingly, I became frustrated with this! The 'natural' scenes I had envisaged, capturing villagers in their everyday lives, were being thwarted. Instead, I had roll upon roll of stiff family groupings.

Looking at these photos got me thinking, about how photographing a person is a two-way exchange between the photographer and the person being photographed. We like to think we can hide when we take photographs of strangers, so that the photographs are just images that we have already seen with our eyes. But the reality of the situation is that by introducing the camera into the environment, we are changing our relationship to the people around us.

So, how to get around the dilemma? One of my favourite photography sites solves the problem it by embracing the exchange with the subject, by talking to the person in the photograph and including part of the dialogue with the photo. The site is called Humans of New York, and sometimes I can't decide what is more compelling - the photograph or the story that goes along with it. Well, they are both pretty good!

From HONY: "I'm from the Ivory Coast."

"Why'd you come to America?"

He formed his hands into two imaginary guns. "Too much boom boom," he said. "So I run."

News from simoneandginko land...

I've been busy at simonandginko over the past couple of months! Here's some of the things I have been doing:

A stylish capsule collection of the Lolly range of simoneandginko jewellery is now available exclusively at Lulamae. Check out the range at their Melbourne Central store! It features three spring fresh colour combinations - pink/maroon and white/green in chunky bangles, square and oval bangles and rings, as well as pale blue/dark blue in oval bangles. I'm really happy with these colours and I have been experimenting with more, such as yellow and white, for some summery action! I don't know about you, but I am really looking forward to breaking out the colour for the warmer months.

Four bangles and rings from the Dirty Pastels range are now available for sale at Some Like It Hot in the Degraves subway near Flinders St Station. Check them out in the window display!

Last weekend simoneandginko had a stall at the Makers Market at RMIT Brunswick campus, as part of the Craft Cubed festival. Haven't heard of Craft Cubed before? Check out the Craft Victoria page for more info. It is nearly over for the year but make sure you get in early to book next year's activities, including fabulous speakers and workshops as well as open studios.

As part of the Makers Market, simoneandginko jewellery was featured in the Arts section of the Age newspaper on Friday 23 August! This was a lovely surprise and I think the jewellery came up really well on the page.

The Makers Market coincided with my launch of a new colour in the Deco range - a classic black and white. These brooches would go great with an evening dress for some deco glamour...

simoneandginko also ran a competition as part of the Makers Market to win a free bangle. The lucky winner will be announced tomorrow.

And finally... simoneandginko has begun new mouldmaking and resin bangle classes with Candu at their purpose-built workshop space in Swan St, Richmond. Sign up and learn how to make a mould of your favourite bangle, and then cast a bangle in resin! Bookings are at Candu or send me a message on my contact page if you would like more information.

Getting custom-printed tights

Recently I put together a folio for entry to a fashion design course. One of my pieces drew on some fabric patterns I had designed to be printed onto tights. The theme of the designs was 1980s Berlin punk, so I titled the collection "Ein Berliner" after the famous speech that US President Kennedy had given to the West Berliners, where, by saying in solidarity with the audience "ich bin ein berliner", he had actually said "I am a doughnut" and not his intended "I am a Berliner". Fact or fiction, it is a great story! I took inspiration for the colours and motifs from spray paint graffiti colours and paste-ups, as well as images of punk and post-punk fashion.

I had simulated my designs onto photographs of tights, which looked pretty good, but I really wanted to see how they looked on an actual pair of tights. The particular design I selected was a spray painted stencil of lips, scanned and digitally coloured.

I found a site in Germany called Funnylegs that custom-prints your own tights. It is pretty simple to use, although a lot of the information is in German, and fortunately they send their products all over the world. Another site that also looked good was Digital Art Wear, which has a wide range of custom digitally-printed clothing, but unfortunately they only appear to ship products within the USA.

I had the tights printed at Funnylegs and I think they came up pretty well! My other designs included a digitally manipulated sketch of a doughnut, overlaid and coloured to look like an animal print, and a paste-up letter F that was duplicated and overlaid with checks to create a punk-like tartan.

If you're interested in getting your own design printed on tights, I'd encourage you to have a go! It is a lot of fun, and it is very satisfying to see your print on a final product. Of course, if you would like one of my designs custom-printed on tights for you, please contact me.

Working with resin: Making the Deco range

Just over a month ago I launched the Deco range of resin brooches. The concept behind this range was to pick up on the glorious, rich colours and larger-than-life jewellery style of the art deco era. The idea began with some pieces of an old chandelier I picked up at a market stall.

I started by creating silicone moulds from the brooches. It was my first time using silicone so I was relieved by how easy it was to work with. After telling myself "the first silicone pour will probably be a disaster", I was actually really happy with the moulds from first go.

Mixing silicone - these shots from my latest experiment...

From then it was a process of mixing colours and pouring resin. This is the fun part of the process - particularly the moment when you pop out the new piece from the mould, and decide that yes, you really are happy with it. I played around with colours a bit until I got some that I was happy with.

Then was the sanding process, smoothing all the rough edges and making them look pretty! This can be the tedious bit, but once you get into the sanding it can be quite meditative.

Finally I found a strong enough epoxy glue to secure the brooch backs to the brooches. So far they're holding strong! I also managed to glue several of my fingers together...

I've been really pleased with how the Deco range has turned out. From the first idea to the finished piece, it was really what I had envisaged all along. This might sound unsurprising, but working with silicone moulds and resin pours isn't always as easy as it sounds. I'm lucky that my first three collections have turned out so well, because it doesn't always happen this way.

Right now I'm experimenting with ideas for a new range, and oh boy they look pretty average right now. So bad in fact that I've had to throw out both moulds and resin pours - something I really don't like to do because I'm very conscious of the impact of it on the environment. Anyone who has heard of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch doesn't want to contribute any more waste than they have to! Experimenting is part of the creative process though, so don't let this put you off.

After struggling a bit with my latest range, it is nice to go back to my existing collections and feel some pride for my vision and for the final products!

If you've got any questions about using resin and silicone, including where to find supplies, leave a message on my contact page. Or join a class! Because it can be very rewarding once you know the basics.

White Nights and Inspirations

 Flinders Street Station

I've had a lot going on lately... family illnesses and so on. After such an intense time, it is nice to get back to the blog and a little bit of creative normality.

Melbourne had a White Night a few months ago, mid February it was, a hot night with music, art and street performance from dusk till dawn. White Nights have been happening in other places around the world - including Saint Petersburg, Paris and Tel Aviv - but this was the first time we had experienced one in Australia.

I was impressed! The city was packed, so it made it difficult sometimes to see all the things there were to see, and find all the things that there were to find, but the volume of people added to the buzz. And it was a good sign for art in Melbourne - I have never seen so many people going into the National Gallery before.

I've been inspired by the colour, the lights and the fun to create a new jewellery range based on White Night. I might even include some textile and fashion designs in the mix! Watch this space for more news to come...

Buildings along Flinders Street 

 Busker in Hosier Lane

Flinders Lane

Money for the busker, Swanston Street

Princes Bridge

Foam artwork installation, National Gallery of Victoria (photo from NGV website)

Who are you? What do you do?

So many of us define ourselves and others by what we do. You know, "I'm a plumber, painter, lawyer... [insert other profession here]". Up until a year ago I was a public servant, a policy officer, but I kind of hit a wall. Partly it was having been in Canberra for seven years. I remember when I first moved there people said to me "Once you've lived in Canberra seven years you never leave." I laughed at the time, thinking there was no way I was going to be in Canberra that long. So when I got to the seven year mark last March, I started to ask myself "Is this it?" "Is this how I want the rest of my life to be?"

I knew I didn't want to live in Canberra the rest of my life. This isn't a Canberra bagging session, don't worry, I just knew it wasn't my type of place. So I determined that I would move back to Melbourne within twelve months. Knowing that I couldn't do the same sort of job in Melbourne made me question my job too, and my career direction, and before I knew it I decided that the career I was pursuing - policy and international development - just didn't interest me anymore. I was over it. It sounds callous, and I know these are very worthy, as well as interesting, jobs. But I was getting burnt out by Canberra politicking and by having the same development arguments (what works? Does anything work? Why?) that I'd had for ten years or so. I wanted to spread my wings a bit more, and explore other aspects of myself that might lead to a more fulfilling job.

I knew I wanted to try something more creative, aesthetically, but what? After musing for a few months, I chose textile design. I applied for a course, was accepted, and started only a few months later. Suddenly I was a poor student again, living with my parents in my old family home, buying clothes in op shops and working longer and longer hours on my homework.  I missed my apartment, my weekends, that sense of knowing and being confident about my work. And mostly I wondered why I was flogging myself in a course that I wasn't even sure I wanted to be doing. I realised after talking to several very clever people that I hadn't given myself a lot of time to pick a new career, to really work out what I wanted to do.

So for the next chapter of my adventure, I've decided to take some time off. I'm going to India to do a bit of soul searching... a la Eat Pray Love. It is exciting, and most people I talk to are envious of me having this opportunity.

But it's also scary. I've known what I wanted to do for so long, that being in this limbo state is disconcerting. Now when people ask me what I do, I don't know what to say, apart from giving them a shortened version of the above and ending with an uncertain "…so I guess I'll just have to see how I go." As much as we grumble about our jobs, they give us a sense of our place in the world, and of the contribution we make. Take that away and we are a whole lot of ideas, saddled with lots of furniture and probably too many pieces of clothing.

Who knows where this chapter will take me? Most days I feel quite zen about it. I'm willing to wait for a while and see what happens.

So what is textile design, anyway?

My favourite design from our 'Wildflowers' project.

A couple of months ago I started a Bachelor of Arts in Textile Design. It was a big change for me: going from full-time policy work for the government to full-time creative study, moving cities, changing my life.

When I told people that I was applying, the common response was confusion. What was textile design, anyway? And why would I want to throw away a perfectly good job and career for it?

Textile design is about designing the look, feel, texture and structure of textiles that we use every day: in clothes, on your couch, curtains, rugs, bus seats, packaging, military camouflage, webbing, storm water pipes, curtain walls for buildings, you name it, if it has a textile component, there will be a textile designer somewhere in it. It's hard to define such a broad area, obviously, it's not like fashion design - you know, like Vivienne Westwood, what she does etc. It has the unusual status of being a niche area of study with really broad application.

We study a range of things in first year - computer aided textile/pattern design, traditional pattern design with pencil, charcoal, ink and paint, making textiles like knitting machines, weaving looms and screen printing, and understanding the textile industry and the uses of various fibres and fabrics. Studying textiles changes how you see them - I spend lots of time staring at people now, trying to work out whether the pattern on their top has been knitted or printed, where the repeat units are and what fabric has been used to make it. This can cause some awkwardness sometimes...

First attempts at screen printing...

Some parts are more fun than others, sometimes we get great projects that I really sink my teeth into, like a project to design a modern travel item in a modernist style, or knit swatches that evoke the destination of Portugal. Other projects, like womenswear patterns in wildflowers, I find much harder to be inspired by.

Knit samples - made on a knitting machine

Changing lives has been hard. No money, long study hours, wondering if I will get a job in the field… some days I have really wondered if I've done the right thing. Other days, I love the fact that I get to draw, and paint, and design, and knit, all day, and maybe one day someone will pay me to do it.

Computer aided textile design

Another Wildflower design