making a home

I love megan morton's minimal and textural styling. Lately my life situation has meant that I have again, excitedly and surprisingly, started thinking about making a home - full of love and light! What a joy.

life is fun with work, work is fun with life

I simply cannot wait to watch this documentary.  For a number of years the Eames have served as a great inspiration to me and my architecture and design career as a whole.  I know Ice Cube is also a fan!

life is a beautiful thing

 

you and me versus the world

I have lots of exciting news. 

take that james bond!

I really like this table, the 'Kai' table, designed by Hirakoso and Kitahra.  The table is made almost entirely of secret compartments! Sliding drawers, hinged cupboards and shifting panels - like a giant wooden puzzle! My only fear is that I would lose things forever inside of it! (via architizer)

the edge

Last night I went with a very lovely person to the opening of the Campbelltown art centre's 'Edge of Elsewhere' exhibition. Going out on the journey west after work was a first for me, all that traffic and the longest tunnel in Australia?! (or maybe the driver driver was pulling my leg...) It was interesting to see a side of Sydney relatively so close to home that I am so removed from culturally and physically! Suitably, the exhibition focused on community projects by artists working on the periphery or 'edge'. The exhibition as a whole is part of a three year project engaging with the diverse cultural mix that is Western Sydney.

I didn't take any photos last night, and I can't find any on the internet at the moment, but if you are a sydney-sider I definitely recommend going along to check it out. taking a bit of a road trip. Enjoy the beautiful coin opperated dancers, studio ghibli-esq animation shots telling the story of an aboriginal boy and robotic cow! All glimpses and takes at what it might mean for us to be Australians in this moment.

Artists :Brook Andrew, Arahmaiani, Richard Bell, Dacchi Dang, Newell Harry, FX Harsono, Shigeyuki Kihara, Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba, Lisa Reihana, Khaled Sabsabi, Phaptawan Suwannakudt, Michel Tuffery and YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES

2012!!!

After an incredible trip away with great friends I have returned to life, and am in better shape than ever!
2012 will bring bright and wonderful things, I can just tell.  At the request of some, I will endeavour to update le blog more frequently, and will try and get an ever-expanding backlog of my own work up, from time to time.
Love and Light!
Melissa
x

My heart is ready for the sun

Rain art installation by Stacee Kalmanovsky. Hand-crafted drops are strung together by hundreds of strings is the inherent interactivity of such an isolation – it invites people to move through it, brushing the motionless rain into new and unplanned directions.
Despite the complexity of experience the materials are simple: fishing lines, plastic beads and a good deal of time were the core elements it took to create this. In her words: “Stacee Kalmanovsky’s work is rooted in the uncanny, suggestive, and picturesque. Her urge to invent and exaggerate is tempered by a deep dedication to the medium at hand. She believes in the conceptual process itself, from gathering information and sorting through, manipulating, and qualifying the image, to the indisposable skill to achieve the end result. Like in the alchemic process, the raw matter (sulfur = visual information) is transformed, refined, and persuaded into its purest form (gold = art).”

bookends and bright stars

TO EARTHWARD 

 Love at the lips was touch
As sweet as I could bear;
And once that seemed too much;
I lived on air

That crossed me from sweet things,
The flow of--was it musk
From hidden grapevine springs
Downhill at dusk?

I had the swirl and ache
From sprays of honeysuckle
That when they're gathered shake
Dew on the knuckle.

I craved strong sweets, but those
Seemed strong when I was young;
The petal of the rose
It was that stung.

Now no joy but lacks salt,
That is not dashed with pain
And weariness and fault;
I crave the stain

Of tears, the aftermark
Of almost too much love,
The sweet of bitter bark
And burning clove.

When stiff and sore and scarred
I take away my hand
From leaning on it hard
In grass and sand,

The hurt is not enough:
I long for weight and strength
To feel the earth as rough
To all my length. 

-Robert Frost 

 

Nebulae :: IC423 - Tear Drop Nebula   

Mark Mawson

peonies!!!

Alan Jaras

These are incredible analog images formed directly on to film without the use of a camera lens (in the same way as a photogram), of the refraction patterns of light passing through formed and shaped plastics.
So beautiful and inspiring!

train tunnel

with a genetic disposition to all things train related, I was enchanted by this train tunnel from Kleven in the  Ukraine. The Ukraine was not previously on my list of desired travel destinations, until now.

vintage vogue

I have found a literal treasure trove in 'youthquakers' blog.  Full of issues of the vogue spanning the past decades I could get lost for hours on this site.
I have copied a couple of favourites from early 70s editions of US and French Vogue below...

From 15th April 1972 - US Vogue  with  Sofia Loren on the cover, an interior moment 'The new Roman way'. Loving the earth tone colour wheel in motion!

March 1971 - Paris Vogue has a sparkle-eyed Audrey Hepburn on the cover, with some black and white gems of Viviane and Margrit Ramme by Helmut Newton.

 as well as a shoot of audrey at home!

It is amazing to consider how far fashion has come in the last 30-40 years, how style has changed and morphed through time and context, and yet how things that are truly beautiful can be maintained as inspiration through the ages.

isabel lucus for vogue australia

this shoot is one of the first in a while that has inspired and shot me with pangs of fashion and travel envy! Photographed by Max Doyle.

looking plum

1. Tan Kodi Cuff - Benah
2. & 4. Plum scarf by Acne
3. K Jacques St Tropez (which I am dubious about purchasing from net-a-porter due to the difficultly I am returning after a previous purchase/ my funny wide feet)!

Frank Magnotta

crossroads/advice of a dead-man/day of the dead

"Why don’t you tell me that ‘if the girl had been worth having, she’d have waited for you?’ No, sir, the girl really worth having won’t wait for anybody."

F. Scott Fitzgerald

After watching Woody Allen's new film Midnight in Paris I have been ironically compelled to re-read some Fitzgerald - who has given me advice - through consideration - of what lies ahead of me.  The fact that it is the 'day of the dead' is an added touch of humour in the context I find myself currently in, which I am sure will come to light and unravel in its proper time.

The film was all things I have come to expect from Allen, with a touch more lightness and *spoiller alert* time travel included. Like all of his films, they have sparked my urge to explore and travel. My holiday to Paris next year cannot come soon enough!

Speaking of roads and paths always reminds me of a Robert Frost poem that my mother taught me to read by memory when I was about 7 or 8. 'The Road Not Taken' has not only proved as a 'party piece' on several occassions (particularly where grand-parents were involved),  but once was a question on 'who wants to be a millionaire' that I was confident in announcing the answer to!

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference
 

faceted treasures

Inspired by these beautiful faceted shapes in various collections at the moment.
I'm feeling this summer will uncover further realisations of the power of the triangle.
Following a conversation with an old colleague last night I have also spent the day looking through an old architectural encyclopedia researching ancient symbolism and spirituality in architectural geometeries. stay tuned.

Alexander McQueen

Eddie Borgo

Solange Azagury-Partridge

Kara Ross