Seek Inspiration: Spring/Summer 2020

I usually start thinking about a season over a year in advance. When I look back I often realize that the ideas had been bouncing around even longer. I like having each season start to blend into the other. While I speak to seasons here, my intention is to create pieces that can be worn and used all year long and not limited to one season.

Overall, it's a sense of space or a moment somewhere that stands out that I'm then trying to capture visually with colors, prints, and silhouettes.  My background is in painting, my mother is an artist, my aunt was an artist, as was my maternal grandmother. So art and artists are always influencing how I see the world. I briefly studied architecture and still am deeply drawn to it all the time. I'm ok with coming back to the same things and having them inspire me in different ways. It's safe to say my inspiration is always somewhat eclectic yet it somehow always comes together in abstract ways. 

SPRING 2020

Vibrant purple spring flowers blooming along the hills of hikes I frequent in the Bay Area of California, pops of this same color showing up in the home of Luis Barragán and the candy like glass lamps of Helle Mardahl.  My life long love affair with polka dots in a simple but bold form. I appreciate how dedicated Yayoi Kusama has been to the polka dot. I fell in love with an image of a young man pondering life in a polka dot shirt. What is he thinking about? The clean and orderly dots and lines of Agnes Martin paintings, the circular body sculptures of Rebecca Horn. On a more textural note, the textiles in neutral earthy shades of Eva Hesse and the clean lines of Barbara Hepworth. 

SUMMER 2020

Last year was my first full year living in northern California. As a New Englander, I was struck last summer by the arid landscape against the clear blue skies. The camel and tan colors of the dried plants and thirsty ground. This conjured visions of the Sea Ranch community located in the northern Sonoma coast. I felt drawn to the soft blues, whites, and desert colors in many Agnes Martin stripes as well as to vintage photographs from the 1970s of relaxed silhouettes. Meanwhile I kept coming back to my fascination of the shapes found in the sculptures and studio space of the Romanian sculptor Constantin Brâncusi.