Birds of a Feather

Inspired by a trip to a pet shop titled Bird Paradise in the States, billed as the largest exotic bird superstore probably in the world, artist Claire Rosen armed herself with 200 sheets of wallpaper, a bird handler and a makeshift studio set up at the superstore. Her idea was to produce a whimsical series of photographic portraits featuring exotic birds with designed wallpaper as backgrounds. 

Wallpapers have often been inspired by either geometric shapes or nature. William Morris’s most popular repeating design for textiles was titled Strawberry Thief, 1883 an exquisite repeat design of flora, fruit and thrushes produced in an array of colour combinations used for fabrics and wall hangings. In the 18th-century, exotic birds were quite popular as pets. You can imagine rich stately homes featuring bold silk wall hangings and woodblock printed wallpaper designs, Gainsborough paintings and French bird stands with beautifully coloured exotic birds bringing the property to life. Nowadays French 18th-century romanticism is still a most popular style, as featured in plays, films, books and the fashion industry.

Claire Rosen’s photographic portraits achieve the same aim, only she’s treated the subject matter rather like a Vogue photoshoot the compositions and colours are very keenly selected and the bird’s characterful expressions are priceless! They are very beautiful, and so are the wallpapers selected. I also like the contrast created between the illustrative designs of the wallpapers and the photographic medium of the bird portraiture, this creates a visual contrast between the mediums, at the same time every detail of the colours is coordinated between subject and background, I think to perfection. 

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Further Reading

Artist Claire Rosen

Slate.com

Falling Garden

Falling Garden … there’s a wonderful romantic ring to it, it was created for the 5oth Venice Biennial, 2003. To celebrate National Poetry Day, a while ago I was looking for something tweetable, this piece had that willing suspension of disbelief for a moment… I was breathless. The staging of it is very theatrical, the plants and flowers suspended in mid-air, within the timeless of the 17th-century Baroque style interior of San Staë church on the Canale Grande... evokes feelings of passion and emotion. As seen from the photographs the whiteness, yet richly ornate space is the perfect backdrop as it enables the colours, shapes and textures of the flowers and seeds to interact. I wonder about the scale of the installation, it does seem pretty big from the aerial view although this kind of perspective we could only have gained by being there.

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Further Reading

by Swiss artist Gerda Steiner and Jörg Lenzlinger

Seed Packets

I rather like these vintage French seed packets, and it seems I’m not the only one, as they are now selling as framed prints and as patchwork wallpaper for the kitchen … check Google images.

I love the colour vibrancy and visual style although the compositions are not very beautifully balanced, considering the subject matter they are cropped a little awkwardly.

As a set displayed on shop racks and such the designs have some continuity between the tonality of the greens and yellows, all the other multitude of colours gives the feeling of variety and the subject context. Another added benefit with these French designs is that the typography is very uniform, simple and understated. There’s no advertising of the company’s name and address, no price tag and most importantly; not mentioning the obvious ... for example, a floral image and then the type saying: garden and flower seeds. The name of the flower is all that is needed and for further clarification, the Latin botanical translation developed by Carl Linnaeus.

“The binomial (two name) system of nomenclature was developed by Swedish naturalist, Carl Linnaeus in the mid-1700s. Grouping plants according to similarities such as leaves, flowers and fruit, he founded a natural order and named them accordingly.”

Compared to other seed packaging from past to present. Where designs fail for too many reasons to justify,  I think these standout and deserve a worthy mention, but perhaps the wallpaper is a no.

date of packaging 1920’s/30’s size 2.25"x4.00"

Plant drawings by Henri Matisse

He drew every day of his life, even on his deathbed he drew. Once to create a single piece of work he made more than a thousand drawings. Every day he drew from life and what he drew from his art was life itself.

 text from: Matisse: Drawing Life, Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art

Plant drawings by Ellsworth Kelly

One of the first drawings I did in Paris - I wasn’t thinking of doing drawings, but somehow or other, I kept drawing - I bought a hyacinth flower with a lot of leaves, just to make me feel like spring. ~ Ellsworth Kelly

Brush and ink, watercolour and pencil drawings by Ellsworth Kelly