COLOR STUDY – BRING SPRING

ART MEETS FUNCTION – THE PATTERNS OF PHILOMELA

Im excited to share with you the work of one of my favorite people. My aunt, Bonnie Saland, who after practicing for many years as a Jungian Analyst and raising 2 incredible adults, has turned her hands and eyes toward making art.

Bonnie’s created an impressive body of work consisting of painting, drawing, print making, and collage, that on it’s own is rich in color, texture, not to mention thought provoking. From this work, has come a really interesting line of house ware, textiles, and patterns, all derived from the shapes and images culled from her artwork, and then repeated in beautiful ways by friend and collaborator Margi Denton.

I shot Bonnie’s line of products last week at her home.

Her company is called PHILOMELA, please take a peak at a this little sample of Bonnie’s rich and inspiring collection, soon to be in stores and out in the world.

Wishing you a fantastic week!!

Diana

Bonnie Saland Fine art and Founder

Bonnie Saland is a practicing psychoanalyst and artist based in Los Angeles and The Sea Ranch, California. The interior and external journey provide subject and frame for her creative practice. Traversing an extensive archive of imagery from the personal and collective unconscious, she meanders through geographic, literary and spiritual references to provide an iconographic language with layers of meaning. A freely associated yet complexly organized body of work incorporates traditional patterning, abstraction, and the poetic use of color in an ongoing non-linear reconfiguration of journal, print, digitalized and textile format. Saland holds an M.F.A. (September 2012) from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design program at the Provincetown Work Center and is represented in Los Angeles by MB Abram Galleries.

THE DESERT PIECES

As this year comes to an end, I want to share a personal project I have been working on for the past six months. As I think about it, it begun so many years ago when I was a kid, here in Los Angeles, and spent many Sundays in my Grandfather’s cactus green house.

It’s funny how things these pieces of your childhood, ones that you forget about, actually color your choices, desires and sensibilities as an adult in such a big way.

My memories of these times with my Grandfather, Sam, were of me walking through his vast collections of succulents and cacti, and the most magical spot was his orchid green house. I was allowed to work with him on occasion, potting up plants and tinkering around in his garden. I don’t our conversations, just these afternoons with magical, crazy looking plants.

The desert pieces are an exploration of my lifetime here in Southern California, through the colors in the sunrise, sunset, the flora that one finds here. These are collages I have made from imagery shot all here in California.

All the images were generated in Photoshop, by me, over several hours of shooting, then cutting and pasting the pieces together in a very intuitive, organic way. None of the images were premeditated, and all of them feel very different to me.

Several of the images contain pieces of fashion shoots I’ve done for clients over the years, but mostly, the imagery, or “pieces” have come from desert gardens near my home in Pasadena, and other places in Southern and Northern California.