Artist Research

Mary Katranzou

Mary Katrantzou is a Greek fashion designer who currently lives and works in London.

She moved to the United States in 2003 in order to attend Rhode Island School of Design to study architecture. She then transferred to Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design where she completed both her Bachelor and Master's degree. Graduating from her Bachelor course in 2005, she switched her focus from prints for interiors to fashion prints. 

Katrantzou's graduating show in 2008 mapped out her signature style. It was themed around trompe l'oeil prints of oversized jewellery featured on jersey-bonded dresses. these pieces created the illusion of wearing giant neckpieces that would be too heavy in reality.

Mary Katranzou (cont)

Her thematic collections revolve around an icon of luxury, an object from art or design that a woman would not be able to wear if it were real. Mary has based the collections on perfume bottles, artisan blown glass, eighteenth century society paintings, and interiors while keeping the printed image central to her aesthetic.

In November 2011 Mary was awarded the British Fashion Award for Emerging Talent: womenswear and in February 2012 was awarded Young Designer of the Year at the Elle Style Awards. February 2012 saw the release of her much anticipated collaboration

Mary Katrantzou (cont)

Katrantzou uses digital technology for her prints as she says it allows her to make the impossible possible. Also in her works you can see her architectural side as she likes the way clothes fall around the body.

Mary Katrantzou (cont)

Yinka Shonibare

Yinka Shonibare, MBE, (born 1962) is a British-Nigerian artist living in London whose work explores cultural identity, colonialism and post-colonialism within the contemporary context of globalisation. A hallmark of his art is the brightly coloured fabric he uses.

Yinka Shonibare was born in London in 1962. His family moved to Nigeria when he was three years old. At 17, he returned to Britain to do his A-levels. Shonibare contracted transverse myelitis, an inflammation across the spinal cord, at the age of eighteen, which resulted in a long term physical disability where one side of his body is paralysed. He then studied Fine Art first at Byam Shaw School of Art (now Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design) and then at Goldsmiths, University of London.

Yinka Shonibare (cont)

Shonibare’s work explores issues of colonialism alongside those of race and class, through a range of media which include painting, sculpture, photography, installation art, and, more recently, film and performance.

Shonibare's first solo exhibition was in 1989 at Byam Shaw Gallery, London. During 2008–2009, he was the subject of a major midcareer survey in both Australia and the USA; starting in September 2008 at the MCA Sydney and toured to the Brooklyn Museum, New York in June 2009 and the Museum of African Art at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC in October 2009.

Yinka Shonibare (cont)

Timorous Beasties

Timorous Beasties is a design led manufacturing company based in Glasgow, who specialise in fabrics and wallpapers. Timorous Beasties was founded in 1990 by Alistair McAuley and Paul Simmons. Winners of the Walpole Award for 'Best Emerging British Luxury Brand' in 2007 and 'British Luxury Design Talent' in 2010, they have branded showrooms in London and Glasgow, and export their luxury products and design talent worldwide.

Timorous Beasties studio mixes design and production under one roof allowing them the freedom to create their own unique style, their fabrics catching the eye of museum collections such as the V&A (London), Cooper-Hewitt Museum (New York), and Gallery of Modern Art (Scotland).

Timorous Beasties (cont)

They are known for their take on the Toile de Jouy fabrics of Napoleonic France, Timorous Beasties’ toile designs include a balance of decorative, architectural, and human contexts. 

Recently they have produced two collections of hand tufted carpets and rugs for Brintons Carpets, engraved a building and collaborated with brands such as Nike and Famous Grouse. More recently Timorous Beasties have collaborated with design duo ‘Nobody and Co’ on a revolving tablecloth, designed wallpaper for the Chicago Art Institute and exhibited at Sheffield’s Millennium Galleries with a Ruskin inspired installation.

Timorous Beasties (cont)

Brian Dettmer

Brian Dettmer, born in 1974, was raised in Naperville, Illinois. Until 2006, Dettmer lived in and around Chicago, where he earned a BA in fine arts from Columbia College Chicago in 1997.

In college, Dettmer focused primarily on painting. When he began to work in a sign shop, his work began to explore the relationship between text, images, language, and codes, including paintings based on braille, Morse Code, and American Sign Language. He then began to make work by repeatedly pasting newspapers and book pages to canvas and tearing off pieces, leaving behind layered fragments.

Brian Dettmer (cont)

A large body of Dettmer's current work is created by altering books, including older dictionaries, encyclopedias, textbooks, science and engineering books, art books, medical guides, history books, atlases, comic books, wallpaper sample books, and others. Dettmer seals and cuts into the books, exposing select images and text to create intricate three-dimensional derivative works that reveal new or alternative interpretations of the books. Dettmer never inserts or moves any of the books' contents.

Brian Dettmer (cont)

Batik

Batik is both art and craft and was originally created in the far east, it is known for being made in Java, Indonesia but it is also made in China, Japan, Africa and Ukraine.

It involves drawing or brushing hot wax over a cloth and then adding dye, so when the excess dye is removed it does not stain the wax, before this the cloth is washed and beaten with a mallet.

Batik - Material

Colour dye

Clean, washed cloth

Batik wax

Tools to apply wax

Hand Stitch

Running Stitch -Perhaps the simplest of stitches, the thread runs straight through the fabric without doubling back on itself. Used to join fabric for gathering and mending.

Basting Stitch -Similar to a running stitch with very long stitches. Used as a flexible alternative for pinning and for gathering, it can be pulled out easily.

Back Stitch -A strong stitch, the back stitch is formed by pulling the needle through the fabric, then doubling it back on itself. The needle emerges beyond the stitch just made, and doubles back again for the next stitch.

Repeat

We made repeat patterns by drawing a image on the center of a piece of paper and then cut it into 4 pieces which we turned into the corners and taped the page back together, then we photocopied the new page and when they are taped up together it will make a repeated pattern and the edges will match up so it looks fluent and continuous.

Use of CAD

For my final piece I relied heavily upon CAD and the tools available to me and photoshop, originally I wanted to use the CAD stitch machine.

I changed my mind because the stitch machine is for more linear designs but my design now has multiple blocks of colour which I don’t think would have worked to well

Final Piece

Final Evaluation

This piece of work is mainly inspired by circuit boards and computer graphics, I collected the research from college and did a few observational drawings of them from them I decided to look at certain patterns that appeared throughout the multiple drawings and focused my attention on them.

From my research I looked at the colours I could use in the pattern I was going to make, I made my final piece on photoshop and was originally going to use the CAD stitch machine and make a stitch but instead I printed the design on to acetate and then made a screen on which I could produce multiple screen prints.

Final Evaluation (cont)

This is my final piece and I personally really like it as I think the black and red combine well and really bring out the sharp edges in the design, I also like the texture and how the screen printing didn’t work perfect and has some faded areas which I feel really add to the design.