Glass Garden

Glass Garden by Alison Day

In week three, we designed home decor products for the substrate: glass. Combining both my bird and flower icons, an overall garden theme emerged. The pieces are a mix of translucent and opaque glass and are decorated with decals, hand painted or have fused elements.
Can you see any of these home decor products in your home ?

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Come Buy With Me

Spring will have definitely sprung...

Alison Day Designs) will be appearing at the Design Market: 11.00 - 17.00 Sunday 7 April on the Grote Markt, Groningen. Joining about 50-ish other stall holders offering their imaginative creations for sale.

So... if you happen to be in the area, why not drop by for a look, and who knows you may find something you just can't leave without!

Smooth Artist

The power of mother nature, the artist... 

A beach in Fort Bragg, California that became dumping ground for people's waste in the earlier part of  the 20th century. 

By the 1960's there was a clean-up initiative, but they were unable to totally remove all the glass that was left. 

Several decades later, with a constant beating from the sea and sand particles, all the broken glass has transformed into round pebble-like forms, resulting in a glittering glass beach - beautiful!

Source: here

Millefiori

The art of Millefiori —Thousand Flowers,  dates back to sixteenth century Venice, in which coloured glass rods are fused and cut to create flower patterns and incorporated in glass to make beads.


Alison Day Designs

Lily Glass

    © Alison Day Designs

Mosaic Fish Jewel

Re-cycle, Re-Use, Re-invent. Fish is made using papiermaché, glass, mirror pieces, and whatever comes to hand. 


For more: ©Alison Day Designs

Funky Upcycled Handbag

This handbag I found in a vintage store...A generic, black, ladies handbag, but still in good nick....It needed new life blasting into it...so that's what I did!

© Alison Day Designs

Jessica Lelieveld - Artist interview

Jessica divides her time between a house in the countryside, situated in Norg (which she shares with her family and two dogs) and her studio in Groningen. With two such different worlds at her fingertips, she finds plenty of influences, which can be photographically captured. After much contemplation, an idea will emerge and this she then interprets in clay.

Particularly interested in the transience of existence, she is fascinated by the process, structure and colours in nature when something dies away. Layers and organic forms are recurrent themes in her work and with this in mind; her interpretation of the four seasons has emerged. This consists of twenty clay panels (mosaic-like in their layout), depicting the flora and colours typical of each season. During my visit to her studio, winter and summer were laid out on display, ready and waiting for the panels to be joined together with a copper-coloured wire to make a wall hanging.

Other current works include lamps; one of which has as its base form, a large stripped walnut tree trunk, encircled by metal swirls. The finished product will symbolize the relentless continuance of life. On display in windowsills smaller works can be seen, comprising of a series of clay tiles, some displaying cross-section slices of a small tree trunk, some a procession of pebbles, ever increasing in size. The roundness of the forms she uses symbolizes nurturing whilst the tile procession that of evolution.

With beautiful high ceilings and ornate decorations, Jessica has renovated her studio-house, imprinting on it her signature style, with a touch of the modern here and there where appropriate. Future plans are to decorate every room, door and space with her work so that it becomes an artistic house, where it would be possible to spend the night, or artistic companies could come and hold workshops and inspirational events.

Apart from the natural world, another inspirational source (as well as his philosophy) comes from the Austrian artist and architect Friedensreich Hundertwasser. He was best known for the colourful buildings he designed as well as being a champion of human and environmentally friendly construction.

Jessica is a member of a collective of artists, Galerie Huis ter Heide, which can be found in a converted stall of a farm in Drenthe. The exhibits are refreshed every couple of months with new work and all works are for sale. More about the collective can be found at: Galerie Huis ter Heide.

The aftermath of the economic downturn has had its effect on every walk of life and particularly that of the artist. I asked her what kind of effect it has had on her and her work. From her reply it seems that art fairs have become more important as venues for artists to show and sell their work, as well as making a concerted effort to offer a selection of work in a broader range of prices. Jessica intends to show her work at a couple of these fairs, as well as taking part in Art Explosion, a platform for artists, which occurs annually in Assen.

She has no issues about parting with her work when it comes to selling it, for her it’s the process that is important, particularly whether her idea is feasible, not only from the design perspective, but within the confines of the size of her clay oven. The biggest ‘present’ for her is that she can make people happy with her work.

First published in the Connections magazine #27 Spring 2009 

View all issues of Connections HERE (editor, designer, illustrator: 2006-2013)

©  Alison Day Designs