Guest Editor’s Profile – Karen Wardle
Posted: September 11, 2011 Filed under: information, Karen Wardle Leave a comment »
Karen Wardle
(the hamlet of) St Genevieve, Manitoba
www.karenwardle.com
In terms of your things, what does your space (studio/office/living area) look like? please describe.
My home studio space was orginally a bedroom, still carpeted it is stuffed with a little too much furniture. What wall space I have has shelves with stacks of books and magazines, paintings, sculpture molds, sculpture materials, and sculptures. I also have cardboard boxes, wooden boxes and clear boxes containing various items I have collected. Its all very disorganized and cluttered but I know where pretty much everything is
I have a second studio in an old warehouse in the core of the exchange district of Winnipeg. It’s an open studio I share with 6 other artists and several hundred paintings stacked along the walls. Hanging from the rafters over my space is a life size aluminum dress-sculpture that I constructed and wore for a video I made several years ago.
Where do you normally get your things?
I normally find objects lying on the ground or I love to rummage around in second hand stores although my favourite store to peruse through is Princess Auto.
What is your prize possession/”thing”/collectible/tool?
My prize possession is an old handmade wooden tea cozy covered in fabric that used to be used to carry tea on picknicks. I plan on using it someday for a project, but haven’t figured out what that will be.
day 290 – four favourite design books
Posted: September 11, 2011 Filed under: books, Elsie Jones, inspiration Leave a comment »
I love books, so I wanted to make books one of my fours, and I decided to share some of my design books. It’s hard to pick favourites, so the ones I’ve chosen are the most well-thumbed, the most familiar. I know each page, and I’ve pored over the pictures many, many times. Consequently, these are some of my older books.
The one I’ve had the longest is The Penguin Book of Comics (bottom left). I have loved comics since I was a child, and I got this as a teenager. It was a great introduction to the history of comic strips, and introduced me to some classics.
Living with Folk Art (top right) is one of my most treasured books, and has been an endless inspiration to me. During the 1990s, it made me want to live in an adobe house in New Mexico, surrounded by kachina dolls, Day of the Dead figures, and religious icons. Or maybe in a classic townhouse full of African art and artefacts. Or a country cottage full of Indian textiles. I’m still dreaming…
The V&A book of Fifties Furnishing Fabric (top left) just makes me drool over the spare but beautiful designs of Lucienne Day et al. It’s been reissued more recently, with a different cover, but the cover of this copy is printed on matt paper, and is lovely to hold.
Matchbook Art (bottom right) was an unexpected treasure. I picked it up by chance in a cut-price bookshop in Monmouth, and then spent ages looking at the mini-masterpieces of commercial art.
These four books represent some of my most important visual passions – textiles and surface design, folk and ethnic art, and vintage graphic design and illustration, and all make me very happy.
