Behind the scenes with our first four makers to glance over their most recent work. Inspiring projects that challenge our perceptions, nurture ideas and expresses the creativity and personalities of their makers.
Damu the Fudgemunk
Dan Taylor, Designer, UK
"This image ‘Damu the Fudgemunk’ is based on the simple premise that I draw all the time but very rarely if ever use freehand pen and paper drawing in my design or illustration work. My sketchbooks are full of drawings of people, places and things. I’ve always drawn and have dozens and dozens of sketchbooks full. They take up a lot of space in my studio but they’re the sort of things you simply can’t throw away."
"I love doing drawing but I never really thought anything about ‘using’ them. Recently my niece was nosing through my sketchbooks and was admiring some of the drawings in there and she asked me ‘what do I do with them?’ I said ‘nothing—they are what they are’ but then I thought about that for a few days and realised that it was an untapped resource of stuff."
"So I started to use these sketches, drawings and doodles by scanning and assembling them in a massively multi-layered Photoshop file. I printed a few of the originals out, they’re pretty big (1.5m square). The colours, I just chose five colours that were super punchy and alive so I’d use them and nowt else in order to save decision time on colourways…"
"...she asked me ‘what do I do with them?’ I said 'nothing'."
Dan Taylor is a designer. He works out of a studio in The Bluecoat; a 300-year old Queen Anne style Georgian arts centre in Liverpool. It’s an outstanding place to work "cause the place is super old and full of character".
La Reselva de Puerto Rico
Adnelly Marichal, Photographer, Puerto Rico
Adnelly Marichal is a documentary photographer and video artist currently based in Rio Grande, Puerto Rico. A graduate of Wesleyan University, Adnelly has previously lived and worked in Brooklyn, New York; Keene, New Hampshire; and New Orleans, Louisiana. She has worked on various feature documentary films including: 'The Central Park Five', 'The Roosevelts: An Intimate History', and 'Going Blind'.
La Reselva de Puerto Rico is a reforestation project in and for Puerto Rico that was initiated after the impact of Hurricane Irma and Maria.
"I spent a day with Steve Maldonado Silvestrini, the director of La Reselva and Urayoan Mercado, a local farmer and a botanist.”
"Steve was searching for the Ausubo de costa, Nisperillo (Manilkara valenzuelana), an endemic tree to the Antilles Mayores (Puerto Rico, Española, Cuba). It is a rare and endangered tree. Urayoan brought us to a site of this rare tree so that we could document and take samples for future propagation."
"Steve was searching for the Ausubo de costa, Nisperillo (Manilkara valenzuelana)."
View La Reselva de Puerto Rico
Landscape
Andrea Jones, Photographer, Western Australia
Andrea creates images with an ethereal feel, showing a different world to her viewer. "My goal is to incorporate my vision to create art that evokes emotion while being aesthetically pleasing."
"...art that evokes emotion while being aesthetically pleasing."
Andrea uses her artwork as a medium of personal expression and a way to capture the world around her. Influenced by her professional background, style and aesthetics, Andrea uses her vision and life experiences to create art - primarily with architecture, landscape and travel.
Originally from Louisiana, Andrea is currently based in Perth, Western Australia. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and her Master of Arts degree from Prairie View A&M University. Andrea’s fine art imagery has garnered recognition from international photography awards, and her work has been published and exhibited.
Ghosting
Sally Bourke, Artist, New South Wales
"The faces I paint are an ongoing project. When alone in my studio I’m not working to paint the stranger. Rather, I’m seeking to commune with the tangible: family, friends and foes. Ever present, or long gone these paintings are portraits of seminal people in my life. Good, bad and ugly they shadow me. I’m in awe and hyper aware of their presence.
I see these works hung en masse in a never ending wall of snapshots. They are tribe and community, a rumour I heard once, a tapestry, ghosts.”
"They are tribe and community, a rumour I heard once, a tapestry, ghosts."
"The faces and scenes I portray in my work are attempts to make reconciliations with my past, live in the present and imagine the future. I paint people from the inside out. At any given moment I am working on around ten to twenty paintings at a time in the studio. That way I can sit with them and see which demands my attention the most. But I always start with the ugly duckling. I work across multiple mediums and am constantly experimenting with them to create new ways of telling my stories.”
"My earliest memory of making art was sitting on the veranda at my parents’ house with a box of those cheap, round watercolours that make ghostly marks on paper. I did a painting of a pot of flowers that my mother had grown. I remember her walking past and then doing a double take, she turned and said to me, 'That’s actually good'. It was the first time I’d really heard those words. I buried that little seed in my chest and I guess it grew later.”
