I know it’s all about the hot cross buns this weekend, but these Semla Easter buns look damn yummy. Semlor are a Swedish-Finnish almond and cream-filled bun traditionally made to mark the Lenten period. If you like cardamom, you’re in luck. Once baked, the cardamom infused buns are stuffed with an almond paste and topped with a dollop of whipped cream and a dusting of icing sugar. I’d take one of these over all the chocolate eggs in the land.
“The bright colours, the exaggerated shapes and the over-sized pieces mock the circus that is our day-to-day,” writes Xanthe Somers in her artist’s bio. There’s an outlandish over-the-topness to her ceramic sculpture that steals the limelight from most else in my Instagram feed. I love how she re-imagines the conventional vase –– some are almost as tall as she is –– and how her lighting is both functional and wildly eccentric. “My use of color, pattern, shape, size and form are all indicative of a search for something slightly different,” she says, “something that asks you to question prevailing ideas about need, function, beauty and aesthetics.”
Artist, Sarah Boyts Yoder has developed a visual vocabulary of shapes and motifs that are the basis of her wildly colourful and expressive paintings. To watch her at work in her Charlottesville studio, mixing paints with well-worn brushes and fingertips and sweeping across her canvases as though she’s a five-year-old at play is such an energizing sight. She describes her work as “thoughtlessly careful, casually precious and carelessly precise,” all of which can only be achieved when one’s grip on the brush isn’t too tight. “I love the idea of letting go of control and in doing so, making room for the unexpected—for surprise.”
It was 1988, and I wore an emerald green satin puff ball skirt and black patent shoes with clip on grosgrain bows. My hair was crimped, as was everybody else’s. I was eleven, and this was my first disco party, in the sitting room of Dominque Westaway’s west London home. Her parents had created a makeshift dance floor complete with strobe lights and a shiny disco ball and the DJ (no doubt, her Dad) played one dance hit after another as we all spun out on sugar and Belinda Carlisle. In between songs, we ate sausage rolls and sipped fizzy drinks like they were cocktails. There were no boys for us to slow dance with, so the DJ kept the tunes light and bouncy with our idol du jour, Kylie Minogue dominating the dance floor. Dominique’s party was the first and last of its kind. This was the moment, just before things got awkward, where we could sing into our juice boxes, dance like no one was watching, and feel free and footloose. After that, boys did enter the mix –– we were at an all-girls school, so it was often an older brother and his mates –– and the dynamic shifted. We traded in our puff balls for tube skirts, straightened our hair and bought wonderbras. Cue Nothing Compares To You and that swallow-me-whole feeling when the boy asked you to dance. It’s all so wonderful and heart-wrenching to look back on. Even more wonderful and heart wrenching is watching your girl preparing for her own first ‘disco’ party next month. Okay, less disco and more Doja Cat, but you know what I mean. Coincidentally, Iole tried on a simple black t-shirt and a silk shift in emerald green at Zara the other day that reminded me of that outfit. What goes around comes around, in fashion, and in life.
I’ve never owned a trench coat, and chances are, I never will. I’m not an insouciant dresser, and I think one has to be to pull of the trench. Enter, Catherine Deneuve. The trench coat earned its name on the battlefields of World War I. Decades later, girls at elite English private schools started nabbing their older brother’s trenches and wearing them out. Today, there’s nary a celebrity who hasn’t attempted to rock the trench, some more successfully than others. Yes, Kate Moss, we’re looking at you. Right here, is the chicest way to wear one, with your no-fuss Asics, and your favourite pair of jeans. The more creases the better. It’s a rain coat, after all.
Quilting –– much like pottery, papier-mâché and printmaking –– is both a humble craft and a fine art. While Kathleen Probst‘s bold colours and minimal patterns grace gallery walls, Brigitte Singh‘s intricate paisleys live in baby cots. Both are skillfully made, and designed with huge imagination, and neither is more than a humble quilt, nor less than a work of art. There are no quilts more beautiful, and more original than the ones created by the residents of Gee’s Bend in Alabama’s Black Belt. Last year, Gee’s Bend artist, Sally Mae Pettway Mixon‘s multi-hued quilt landed on the wall of London’s Royal Academy’s annual Summer Exhibition. “No needlework, flowers, cut paper, shell-work or any such baubles shall be admitted,” read the original requirements of the show back in the 1770s. How far we’ve come, and how long it took.
Natalie Novak‘s tapestries take inspiration from ancient weaving techniques, and reflect the artist’s interest in mythology, symbolism and the super natural world. Her early work reminds me of the Navajo blankets and rugs my brought home from a trip to Santa Fe in the 90’s. This one here with its many bold reds and avocado green is such a beauty. This series looks like bleeding rainbows, and I love all the rich details in her tarot inspired tapestries. It’s cool to see a contemporary spin –– neon and metallic yarns –– on this ancient art form.
It’s Lydia Hardwick‘s bold and graphic patterns that pulled me in. Her designs remind me of ones we might see on African mud cloth. Hardwick works with stoneware and terracotta and uses stained slips and stained clay to create her surface decoration. Her pieces pay homage to traditional ceramics, while feeling utterly contemporary. This “grogged pot” is my favourite –– the ultimate vessel for flaming orange tulips.
Our son was born on a balmy spring morning, and when we left the hospital the next day, it was snowing. The weather was a perfect manifestation of our obstetrician’s parenting advice earlier that week, to “expect the unexpected.” I never expected him to weigh nine pounds at birth. I never expected him to stab a chopstick through his left cheek, have a penchant for pirates, or spend 15-hours a week on pommels and parallel bars. I never expected him to sit in a stadium of Maple Leaf fans, wearing a Winnipeg Jets jersey, a city he has no connection to, but supports with the ardent devotion of a native. I never expected the emotional outpouring (his and mine) when he feels an injustice, or that he would tear through chicken legs like a street puppy. I never expected him to be so difficult, and so easy. I never expected eleven to come so fast, and to take so long. Beyond knowing that he had ten toes, and that I loved him, I didn’t expect anything at all.
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