Azurite Blue / Colour of the month #12

Azurite has been used as blue pigment for centuries; extensively used in Egypt, East Europe and China. It is a soft, deep blue copper mineral produced by breaking down copper ore deposits.

M U M M Y BROWN: Colour of the month #7

Photo: Studio Laura Daza

While studying Egyptian history and historical pigments I found an incredible and scary story behind one of these pigments.  Mummy brown, Egyptian mummy or caput mortuum, which means dead head in latin, was a pigment favoured by Pre-Raphaelite painters.

M A D R E Museum Napoli

This time The Traveling Colour Book visited the city of the Vesuvius volcano, Napoli. Some glimpses from the fascinating Madre museum of contemporary art and Daniel Buren's installation Kindergarden.

A R T R E S T O R A T I O N / Colombia

The Traveling Colour Book had the chance to visit the studio of one of the most influential art restorers in Colombia, her name is Maria Cecilia Alvarez. She has a vast story and experience restoring art from different epochs.

C O L O U R S in Istanbul / Turkey

The Traveling Colour Book sailed to Istanbul to celebrate the 30th birthday of its writer and designer, Laura Daza www.lauradaza.com, with a box full of dreams, experiences and apprenticeship. This is the perfect place to get new inspirations and learn its magnificent history and traditional heritage, which is kept sacred. 

S H O P / Bespoke limited-edition pieces

I'm so excited to come OUT and launch my first on-line SHOP http://lauradaza.bigcartel.com/  from London! Now you can buy limited edition LAURA DAZA pieces, from any part of the world!

A N C I E N T / Colours

Colour Provenance is a project on its early stage designed by Studio Laura Daza. Is a visual and tactile investigation into the ancient colouring world, using natural materials and early methods for making colours. 

W O R K S / London Design Festival!

WORKS www.madebyworks.com is a collective of recently graduates from the prestigious Royal College of Art, formed in 2012. Their projects and work range from furniture, glassware, ceramics, limited edition designs and lightning. 

C O L O U R / TOTEMS

The Traveling Colour Book' is a traveling journal of COLOUR inspirations and a recompilation of found objects throughout my journeys.

The Worship of Fashion / MoBA Biennale Arnhem

The MAKE Believe Exhibition at the MoBA Mode Biennale Arnhem, focused on the importance of fashion and how it is a ritual in our life. Its main theme was the 'The Worship of Fashion'.  

A m s t e r d a m in Colours

The Traveling Colour Book this time is Amsterdam. The city was pouring colours everywhere. I saw COLOUR spreading in the city; on the surprising canals, in the contrasting architecture, inside inspiring cafes and concept stores, in the rubbish and in the way they dress. Dutch people love colour and are keen in creating new colour combinations.

M O B A A New Materiality of the Body / Fetishism in Fashion

MOBA (www.moba.nu),  Fashion Biennale Arnhem,  took place in the Netherlands from June 8 until July 21, 2013. The re-known curator Lidewij Edelkoort, selected a relevant theme for this year's exhibition, 'Fetishism in Fashion'. 

B r i c k l a n e Market / London

An Outdoor Gallery / Bristol

This is my trip to Bristol, a city in the South West England. Is the sixth largest city in England, bringing a huge culture and arts capital to the region. This city is famous for its music and film industries, and especially for Street Art. Bristol is also home to street art event See No Evil, which started in 2011. 

MAXXI-Museum of Contemporary Art Rome

MAXXI-MUSEO NAZIONALE DELLE ARTI DEL XXI SECOLO

Via Guido Reno-Rome 

Continuing my journey, the next adventure is Rome! 
The Maxxi museum in the Flaminio neighborhood at the heart of Rome, has a contemporary view of architecture and art juxtaposed in the same place. Its amazing organic architecture was designed by Zaha Hadid the renowned Iraqi-British architect of our modern times. It is quiet interesting how classical architecture blends with contemporary, making it a place for entertainment and art appreciation. This project leaded by Hadid´s architectural design firm took 10 years for it to be completed due to its complexity and political issues.

The building´s longitudinal design, creates an optical illusion that simulates movement, as huge waves emerging from within towards the shore. Its infrastructure was built with materials such as concrete, glass and steel giving an elegant and minimal appereance to be contrasted with the vivid artworks from the temporary and permanent collections.

This can be seen at the imposing entrance that leads to the reception, bookstore, cafeteria, galleries and auditorium, giving a perfect ambiance for the interaction between artistic communities. This communities of art lovers, can appreciate the internal architectural view, while enjoying the amazing Italian style coffee with dessert in the futurist-organic cafe.

  
MAXXI is a museum of contemporary-applied arts such as architecture, photography, art, design, media and painting, with the objective of promoting the current creative Italian-expression through a space for cultural innovation and a laboratory for artistic experimentation. Art and architecture are essential components for means of communication through image and perception, which the museum emphasizes to transmit ideas and concepts throughout the world, as well as receive the flux of information from international cultures.

The MAXXI dimensions:

total surface area: 29 000mq

exterior space: 19 640mq

interior space: 21 200mq

exhibition surface area: 10 000mq

maximal height: 22 90mt

For more information visit http://www.maxxi.beniculturali.it/

B E R L I N / Street art and Graffiti

This is an international city, famous for its modern architecture, urban art and cultural diversity. Is the city with the biggest graffiti collection in the world and it is available all around the city. After its reunification in 1990, Berlin, has had a continuous process of social and urban change.

LAURA DAZA - design, concepts and sketches!

F L A V O R P A P E R / Brooklyn

While enjoying a cappuccino in Bogotá, the capital city of Colombia, I read about Flavor Paper; and vibrant colors popped up into my head,… after almost a year here I am… at Flavor Paper in Brooklyn.

TATE MODERN MUSEUM-LONDON

CONTEMPORARY ART 

Artists since Impressionism have often proclaimed a separation of art from literature, the breaking of a relationship that was certainly close to the heart of Classicism. A looser affiliation with music has often been offered in exchange. Music, it was said, reaches deeper levels of response than could be reached by an art dependent on learned interpretation. The abstract elements of art - color, form, scale, their deployment in hard, soft, rhythmically assertive or quiet ways - would strike through man´s beneath. 

Histories of modern art conventionally stress the road to abstraction as the essential course of modernism- as a race course even, since there is much talk of who got there first to produce the first abstract work. In the nineteenth century avant-garde painting proceeded mostly by means of landscapes and still-life painting. The painters known to history as the Post-Impressionists they were not a group, but shared the impact of Impressionism and an urge to move beyond its emphatic objectivity to something more obviously constructed and significant - provided many of the starting points of twentieth century art. Gauguin was the most openly primitivist of them and other artists as Monet, Manet, Van gogh, Cezanne.

Expressionism - was first used to imply the reverse of Impressionism, to indicate the rejection of Impressionist priorities in French art. We can find echoes of the work of Matisse, Munch, Mondrian. The objective with this movement, was to move the spectator emotionally an spiritually through a markedly personal vision of the world, communicated through anti-naturalistic forms and colors. 

In the works of Picasso and Braque, especially their paintings of about 1909 to 1911, the issue of figuration versus abstraction first becomes a conscious matter. This work is called Analytical Cubism, and though the term like most such shorthand labels is misleading it permits us to refer to that phase o kind of work quickly. It is generally true to say that their work were done without reference to models. This has to be stressed because Cubism is said to have sprung from the art of Cezanne and to involve the representing of objects from several different viewpoints. What they say about Cubism is far from conclusive except on one point: they were working within the tradition of painting and they were doing something new - ¨seeking a new expression, as Picasso put it retrospectively in 1932.

Courbet, Manet and the Impressionists had in their different ways asserted that it was the job of painters to represent the real world directly and exclusively. Seurat and Cezanne had found it necessary to process reality through a controlling method or an intuitive process of integration in order to arrive at a pictorial wholeness they found essential. Gauguin is the best known artist associated with this tendency, which is Symbolism, but he is not typical of it: most Symbolist painting aimed at hyper-sophistication, not primitivism. As Cubists, Picasso and Braque belong to the Courbet-Manet-Impressionism tradition of taking the ordinary world as subject. 

Bibliography:

Lynton, Norbert - The Story of Modern Art - Phaidon 1992

AURORA PELLIZZI-EXHIBITION AT JF+SON BOUTIQUE

Aurora´s Lips don’t lie. I can really assure it as I attended the grand opening of her latest collection in the JF+SON boutique on Kenmare Street.  A delicate and perfectly tailored collection, “Lips by Aurora”, was showed to a selected group of people, interested in traditional handcrafts juxtaposed with contemporary designs and cuts. As the show went on, everyone was amazed with the contrasting of high impact colors with neutral ones, energizing the entire place around. 

Aurora Pellizzi, a Mexican-American artist and textile designer, was influenced by traditional Mexican techniques of painting and weaving as well as the unique, New York style. Working by the hand of Travis Boyer in a special project series at JF+SON called MFT (My favorite things), both having a strong interest in fine arts, textile traditions and crafts, they worked together in this unique collection.

“We used a series of twenty-three lips-shaped paintings of mine to apply to fabric using traditional and contemporary techniques. We created a variety of textures and surfaces that resulted in expanding and contracting fields of color and adornment,” said Aurora about the concept and inspiration of the collection.

Using lip-shaped embroidered accessories as complementary wearable objects to garments and silk-digital printing was used as an innovative way to express through fabrics their story.

Aurora is currently based in Bogotá, Colombia looking to study the practices of craft and textile design, both traditional and contemporary, with the desire to incorporate new forms into her practice.

Interview

LD:  How has been the experience of working and developing a collaboration project by mixing inspirations, and styles, with JF+SON?

AP: I have been extremely fortunate to work with a company that shares my interest in natural fibers, traditional craft, and innovative design. JF+SON has a studio in India with excellent craftsmen, who can fabricate just about any idea, image, texture, shape, or form. The talented and creative individuals behind JF+SON have created an expansive community of artists, musicians, performers, and designers, both friends and collaborators, of which it is great to be part.

LD: Why are you interested in working with handcrafted and traditional techniques of beading, embroidery? Does it have something to do with your cultural backgrounds, or any special taste for simpleness?

AP: As an artist, I am invested in making images and objects with my hands, so it is natural for me to trust and value the innovation inherent in craft. I grew up exposed to both the handcrafted traditions of Mexican painting, silver-smithing, and weaving, as well as to the freedom and originality of NYC.

LD: For you what does ‘looking forward clothing’ mean; is there any environmental consciousness involved?

AP: I believe in clothing that looks in all directions. The past is really important to me, because I believe in preserving tradition and putting it to good use.

LD: As a fashion designer and label, what has been your biggest challenge, besides competition?

AP: My biggest challenge has been considering the problem of translation between the different cultures and visual traditions that I am fluent in. I have had to develop a personal cross-cultural visual language in order to communicate with my different audiences.

  

LD: How can you describe Aurora Pellizzi and what makes you different from the rest?

AP: I approach fashion, not from the perspective of trends, sales, or markets, but rather from my interest in color, texture, and surface. I am interested in traditional methods of production and the intelligence inherent in them.

LD: How would you differentiate NY from any other fashion capital city like Paris or London? Is there a unique difference for new and young designer?

AP: New York is a city of immigrants with a growing Latin American community. It is made up of both the Old and New Worlds. In New York you have influences from all around the world, but you don’t have any tradition of decency and there are no dress codes to be broken. Anything is valid, and sometimes the results can be extraordinary.  

LD: What would be your advice for students and young designer dreaming about making their fashion projects a reality here in NYC?

1)   Travel.

2)   Draw every day.

3)   Collect fabric.

4)   Create a blog.