Meeting Beattie

Beatrice Lanser is the designer behind Sydney clothing label, Beattie. We met in her studio on Sydney’s northern beaches...

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Meeting Beattie

Beatrice Lanser is the designer behind Sydney clothing label, Beattie. We met in her studio on Sydney’s northern beaches. She bought a red pom pom and a felt tip pen to the interview. I asked her why and she said she wanted to have something she had made with her.

Looking at her gear, it’s safe to say, Beattie’s got a thing for the hand made - think pom pom necklaces, hand printed cotton jersey dresses with little stitch-stitch-stitches skipping around the neck and, potato prints.

I asked her why it is important to make stuff .

She said since graduating from UTS she’s worked in the design industry in London and Sydney using her skills – but not being creative (read - not making).

She said making isn’t pretty – it’s a messy business, after a day of cutting and sewing and printing she gets home from the studio covered in silk thread, dye all over her and there’s shrivelled potatoes lying at her door.

“Shrivelled potatoes ?”, I asked.

She left the table and returned with three of the said potatoes – they’re from her latest print series in which she used hand cut potatoes as the printing blocks. She showed me a sample of the resulting textile – it’s a flurry of beautifully detailed leaves falling through a silk and cotton t-shirt sky.

She went on to talk about natural fibres as if they were alive – “they breathe with our bodies”, she said.

When Beattie was young she used to fall in love with particular items of clothing and wear them non-stop. This experience has driven her to design gear that’s for living in – dresses with arm holes cut big enough to fit extra layers underneath. And clothes that fit loose enough to let the body move freely in a sweltering summer.

Browsing through a rack of stock, I stop at a cotton jersey dress with octopi dancing all over it.

“That’s Sydney made jersey”, she points out. 
“And the dancing octopi ?”, I ask.
“I just love their shape – all those legs !”, she laughs.

I asked her what she’s into as a designer.

She talks about summer holidays on the south coast - sailing, swimming and doing craft – cross stitching, decoupage and folk art. Beattie natters excitedly about Scandinavian textile prints, random vintage fabrics, Marimekko, Dries Van Noten and architecture.

With all this talk about octopi and freedom - I was confused about what architecture had to do with it. She said she’s interested in the experience of moving through a building - the opacity of the glass, the shifting colours, the textures, the feel of something like the terracotta cladding on Renzo Piano’s Aurora Place.

She said she wants to connect with people – that’s why she sells her gear at markets. She said she is small. (She’s humble). She wants to be in the market place, getting to know her customers, seeing them experience her gear.  She said it’s like buying cheese from the guy who made it – “who’s also the guy that looked after the cows” .

She had a stall at the Hope Street market earlier this year and has done the Sydney market circuit. But, has committed to being a regular at her local market at Manly Village School - 3rd Saturday of the month (she can be found on the astro turf under some lovely trees). Next month she’ll be at The Finders Keepers market at Carriageworks too. She’s also stocked at Fairbairn Man Woman on William Street, Paddington.

I asked her why she does what she does and with a smile and something which sounded like knowing she said, “because I need to – its freeing“.

By Sarah Jamieson

 
Blog. http://beattielanser.blogspot.com
 

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When in Brisbane you may just be lucky enough on your travels to stumble across a very special, talented lady by the name of Ashley Oostdyk. Recognisable by the huge bag of cameras she constantly hauls, she can often be found snapping away in the local New Farm and Fortitude Valley areas...

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When in Brisbane you may just be lucky enough on your travels to stumble across a very special, talented lady by the name of Ashley Oostdyk. Recognisable by the huge bag of cameras she constantly hauls, she can often be found snapping away in the local New Farm and Fortitude Valley areas. Updated regularly, Ash's flickr stream, One Blue Wren is a beautiful pictorial catalogue of everyday images that she finds along her travels.

A self confessed 'crazy camera lady' Ash's photo-y goodness comes from her love of vintage cameras. Her first camera was a Polaroid SX-70 Alpha 'it was impossibly beautiful, and so nice to use that I've been addicted to Polaroid and film ever since picking it up.' Her love of cameras continued to blossom and now 2 years on she owns a whopping 16 cameras in total! Ash prefers to capture her subjects using traditional film and utilises cameras such as the Holga, Lomo and very cool polaroid camera! 'I take photos with vintage cameras, and have a special love for polaroid. All my photos are little moments in time, captured with the special qualities of film.

Ash is now taking the beautiful work of One Blue Wren to the next level, turning these stunning shots into beautiful prints and postcards. She will be traveling to Sydney in December to launch her new range of products at The Finders Keepers Designer Markets.

By Alarna Zinn

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The Art and About program in Sydney brings together an array of art, music and performance to the city streets. Art and About has been running the whole of this October month and is finishing this Sunday at the Danks Street Annual Festival.

Dank Street and Young Street in Waterloo in Sydney is a design and art precinct...

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The Art and About program in Sydney brings together an array of art, music and performance to the city streets. Art and About has been running the whole of this October month and is finishing this Sunday at the Danks Street Annual Festival.

Dank Street and Young Street in Waterloo in Sydney is a design and art precinct. It is home to a variety of galleries, top showrooms and studios featuring art, and innovative design in furniture, interior design and decor. The perfect space for an arts festival!

The festival includes Artists Markets, Art Exhibitions and Design markets. The day will also feature live music and will also have specialty food and produce markets.

This year the PYD building are holding designer markets featuring quality, contemporary and unique homewares, gifts, furniture, fabrics, and lifestyle products. The Finders Keepers has also been invited to participate in these markets, although we will not be a seller, we will be down there promoting our upcoming Spring/Summer markets and scouting new talent! Have a chat to Brooke who will be at our stall on Sunday.

The Dank Street Festival will be running this Sunday 26th October 11am - 4pm.

For more details click here

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Tee-Party:  Custom Tees and Cups of Tea

By Sonya Gee

I stumbled across Alex Horn via a stairwell one day, a decorated stairwell that had become the subject of an indoor paste up.  I saw the boulders first, then coins stuck higher up the wall in easy jumping distance and when I reached the top of the stairs, a pixelated paper Donkey Kong grimacing at me, arms at the ready, a paper castle just beyond him...

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Tee-Party:  Custom Tees and Cups of Tea

By Sonya Gee

I stumbled across Alex Horn via a stairwell one day, a decorated stairwell that had become the subject of an indoor paste up.  I saw the boulders first, then coins stuck higher up the wall in easy jumping distance and when I reached the top of the stairs, a pixelated paper Donkey Kong grimacing at me, arms at the ready, a paper castle just beyond him.  It was simple, silly and fun, incrementally made and installed by Alex, much to the amusement of his housemates and their guests.

I met the boy soon after I'd experienced the stairwell and he turned out to be a constantly cheery type, all smiles and enthusiasm who always seemed to be building a new piece of furniture in his courtyard from timber scraps or making something obscenely healthy to eat.  But it was the stairwell that fascinated me most and I wanted to know what else he made aside from bathroom cabinets and pumpkin soup.

T-shirts, he said gesturing to the one he had on, initially for himself, then friends and eventually anyone who asked, all screenprinted, using stencils cut by hand.  Initially they were more disposable, 'I used to roll on acrylic paint and it washed off and I made shirts with stupid phrases like “Is the Hokey Pokey really what it's all about?”  But then I realised that no one wants to wear a one liner all the time.'

So he started making t-shirts with characters on them, there were ones that followed his obsession with Nintendo, featuring sprites of Donkey Kong or Mario ready to jump off shirts and later characters of his own creation, energetic singing guitars, one horned creatures and the like.  His t-shirts are fun, quirky and not at all generic.  A design student, he's instinctively fascinated by the process of image making and likes the challenge of creating images within the boundaries of stencilling.  With the stencil remaining unchanged, he builds his graphics by layering his prints with multiple and contrasting colours.  Suddenly the Donkey Kong character I remember playing on a green and black screen is popping out from a t-shirt, fluorescent yellow, magenta and red (he did make a maroon, blue and grey version for the slightly less adventurous). He attributes his original characters to a kind of divine intervention, saying they arrive as 'a flash of image in my mind.'  His first series of character t-shirts were designed for himself and his best friend, represented in cartoons as a tooth and a clam.  'They were silly, it was just about the tooth and the clam hanging out,' he laughs.

His shirts are still highly personalised with friends often coming round with images of street art  on their mobiles eager to know whether he can replicate it onto a t-shirt, preferably for their DJ gig that night. He's been known to cook dinner for such customers, who sit and eat whilst he makes their custom shirt in his kitchen that conveniently doubles as his studio space, complete with an sizeable  workspace he built when he moved in.  He cuts out the stencil during breaks in food preparation (or in front of the TV whilst watching copious amounts of Dexter and Entourage), printing and priming his screen somewhere between eating and washing up, clearly enjoying the entire creative process.  Always open to suggestions and playfully experimenting with new designs and colour schemes, his range of shirts has evolved slowly, possibly accidentally.

A weekend screenprinting course taken to distract him from his previous job as a telecommunications officer led to more and more t-shirt printing which he liked because it enabled him to be creative without being pretentious and retain his masculinity amongst his footy playing friends.  He adds simply, 'T-shirts are cool!!'  No surprises then that he named his brand Tee-Party.

Aside from making and selling his handprinted tees directly to friends and via word of mouth, he has started to sell and swap his shirts at Zine fairs, which share his DIY and lo-fi ethic.  His shirts, for ladies and gentlemen, girls and boys are $30 each, can be made to order...and asking for the dinner service I'm told, isn't entirely out of the question.

http://teepartyhaus.blogspot.com/
 

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