Hello and Happy New Year. As most of you know I’m the antithesis of what a blogger is…I write whenever I have a spare moment in between mummy duties and those relating to my passion. So on that note I just wanted to share my latest feature with you in Queensland Homes Magazine-Thanks to Natalie Bannister
I was thrilled to be approached by US Magazine The Natural World to feature steph & gaia’s Hades & Pomegranates cushions from The RADIANT enfant collection. I am proud that steph & gaia is wholly made in Sydney Australia using Natural fibres and that we have a sensitive approach to manufacture. Perhaps this is what attracted The Natural Child World to us!
Pssst..keep watching this space for the latest on my upcoming collection I wish I was a WARHOL..
natural child world cover – steph & gaia US feature
natural child world – steph & gaia US feature Hades & Pomegranates cushions
it began with a deadline and went something like this.
Luxury Home Design Magazine asked whether I would be interested in their doing a profile piece on steph & gaia! Hang on a moment while I think about this one..
Kate St James is the editor in chief of several publications and a powerhouse in the Design world. So her interest in steph & gaia did leave me breathless. The request was among other things images of ME – panic quickly set in.
My nimble, (trembling) fingers managed to call Andrew McCudden of Austen Miller Photography with some utterances crossing the air about a portrait, a magazine, graffiti backdrop and oh by the way I have half an hour to ready myself and deliver Matteo somewhere safe!
I don’t mind saying that Andrew is uncanny in formalising the details as I see them. These pics are from that hurried, blustering Wednesday afternoon in Graffiti alley St Peters.
Psstt…. The article will be in the February 2013 edition of Luxury Homes Design to coincide with the new look launch-I’m excited.
Thank you Kate, Karsha (Luxury Home Design) & Andrew (Austen Miller Photography).
I’ve been asked to exhibit with my partner Adam Laerkesen in the Sydney Fringe Festival in an exhibition about miniatures. I thought perhaps one of my soft sculpture skulls would work for the show. For Adam however, who is so used to working on much grander proportions, this is going to pose some challenges. Considering the scale, two things he will try to imbue in his work is a sense of intimacy and strength.
I find myself working with smaller scales these days partly dictated by my current exigencies..namely being a full time mum to Matteo. I love the challenges of designing in smaller scale, paring back and creating intimate narratives. Resting on my desk among many things is an aged Vermeer print, tiny in fact, depicting a woman in a domestic setting doing some needlepoint. As with many Vermeer’s the intimacy is palpable, the silence resonates through you immersing you into her story. I know I am only a voyeur but watching her fills me with a inner calm and a desire to create as I imagine the many moments that filled her lifetime.
STEPH & GAIA feature in the July issue 2012 of House & Garden Magazine
The Road To Memphis & Blue Blue Ikat as seen in House & Garden Magazine
The Road To Memphis & Blue Blue Ikat cushions from The RADIANT enfant collection STEPH & GAIA.
So much of what I create has it’s antecedents in what’s stored within often recalled imperfectly. Being fashionable or in trend is not what I think of when designing.
The RADIANT enfant is a well spring of ideas that span time and genres. But essentially it draws on my formative memories, my love of music, art, words, places and times that sometimes beg to be resurrected.
I hold these delicate paper memories of that searing November day when we arrived in Australia leaving behind a place that captured itself in black and white. A burning between my former world seemingly forgotten in time, and the neon world of Australia, began to manifest.
It’s funny the first things you remember about a new place, the neon Sanyo sign at Sydney’s Kingsford Smith Airport, my father’s Herculean frame, the ugly red brick flats, my aching for my grandparents and the TV set that played Elvis matinees.
And being so far from where I came, allowed my heart, mind and feet to run away to distant corners, imagining what you, you and you are doing.
When I think about The RADIANT enfant, I think of the vacuum of influences that lie embedded.
I hope you enjoy this collection and the stories behind the work.
STEPH & GAIA can also be purchased on the wonderful hard to find, & Down That Little Lane sites and soon on idh In a Designer Home.
The Collection has also featured in the Interiors Addict, the July 2012 issue of House & Garden Magazine and Studio Home.
Thanks for all your encouraging comments near and far..xx steph
One day my feet ran away from me- soft sculpture STEPH & GAIA
The Road To Memphis-leopard print cushion , My Blue Suede – velvet flocking cushion STEPH & GAIA
Elvis Matinee- faux bamboo cushion & assortment STEPH & GAIA cuhsions
My Blue Suede- velvet flocking cushion STEPH & GAIA
Hades & Pomegranates, Proserpine’s Garden – cushions STEPH & GAIA
Hades & Pomegranates – cushion detail STEPH & GAIA
One day my feet ran away from me – soft sculpture horse STEPH & GAIA
One day my feet ran away from me- hand embroidery detail – soft sculpture horse STEPH & GAIA
THE RADIANT enfant
COLLECTION STEPH & GAIA LAUNCHING SOON
I often talk about my sketch book, thought I’d give you a peek..
From Botticelli graphite, colour wash drawing- Stephanie Margaritidis
I feel as though I’ve been away on quiet mode, to the in-between times away from client briefs and deadlines.
It is in these times when my heart and mind wanders to moments of the here and now and to those belonging to a saturated past of yearning and nostalgia. It is this murky alchemy between past and present that form the basis of my inspiration.
Let me tell you a little of my upcoming collection THE RADIANT enfant.
I fell in love with music and Elvis when I was 4, with art and the Pre Raphaelites at 7, and with Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigator books at 9. Yes I do remember each segue with clarity.
I wore an Elvis wrist band at 4, the metal accordion kind that pinched and hurt my sunburned wrist. It had a silver cover that I flipped open and shut revealing a black and white image of Elvis, legs askew holding a guitar. This prize possession was a gift from my father returning from Germany with a small cardboard box of bracelets for all the local island kids with similar Elvis leanings. Elvis was also my soul objection for migrating to Australia, as in my mind Elvis was Greek and known only to Greeks.
I was 7 the first time I saw a print of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Proserpine 1874 and almost lost my breath.
I was also 7 when, in my friend Aurora’s bedroom, sat staring at a print of Auguste Renoir’s Two young girls at a Piano 1892, taped onto the face of an apple green wardrobe asking whether her sisters had painted it. I was set straight and into my unending love affair of art.
I was 9 when my school teacher Mr Sattoot gave me a weathered copy of Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators in The Mystery of the Moaning Cave 1968 by William Arden (Dennis Lynds), challenging me to read it knowing as he did that I’d be hooked. And I was.
The essay-Radiant Child 1981 by Rene Ricard discusses the graffiti art of artist Jean Michel Basquiate. The title had resonance for me as did the work of Basquiate who along with countless other artistic figures contributed to a vacuum of sounds, forms, colour and words to draw from.
THE RADIANT enfant is the endless child, saturated in colour, who inhales the present and past, takes in what is inspiration and spits it out as something other.
Keep watching this site for upcoming images and updates on THE RADIANT enfant collection STEPH & GAIA.
Xx steph
Manawa -ink sketch book drawing Stephanie Margaritids
manawa detail sketch book drawing Stephanie Margaritidis
My Father’s Greek Carnivale- ink drawing from sketch book- Stephanie Margaritidis
My Father’s Greek Carnivale- ink drawing from sketch book- Stephanie Margaritidis
My Baptism-Father Kourelis detail ink sketch book drawing- Stephanie Margaritidis
Beholding Wuthering Heights- interior design Stephanie Margaritidis
ANDREW’S PIC – Austen Miller Photography
This is what I know – things happen as they are meant to. This is my magic.
So I found myself day dreaming again, this time on the images for my first collection “farm” by steph & gaia and who would photograph it. For me thoughts like these are laden with intent and I trust that the solution is literally around the corner.
Matteo and I often go for walks to daddy’s studio on Fridays, we trawl through Reverse Garbage, The Bower (I collect some doilies while I’m there for my soft sculptures) and move on towards the park near Adam’s studio.
Children are great ice breakers and mine is a sucker for company. When Matteo approaches a little boy about the same age they begin relating in the most natural, innocent way, leaving his father Andrew and I space to connect. We quickly establish that we are both artists with similar leanings.
As I bundle my child in my arms ready for the walk home, Andrew offers to photograph my work. Being a portrait photographer he said, this would offer something new – “a labour of love”. Now this is usually the sort of thing I get up to but this young dad of three who I’d only just met was offering his time and eye. Andrew had quit his day job and begun his passion.
This genuinely struck me. It was agreed, a done deal as he went his way and I mine.
Many, photographic shoots since, I’ve no doubt that he must take the credit for making my designs look the way they do.
I’m inspired by those who live their passion in whatever capacity because surely this is something to wake up to.
Take a peek into our world.
Magic works every time!
of ocean and wood- STEPH & GAIA farm collection
“To walk in this world” steph & gaia collection
“Carnival Love Song” steph & gaia collection
“To dig the dust that lies here” detail Adam Laerkesen sculpture
interior design – Stephanie Margaritidis
“I love you to death” soft sculpture – steph & gaia collection
ADAM LAERKESEN Silence + Noise
ANITA TRAVERSO GALLERY MELBOURNE
There’s no secret how inspiring I find Adam’s work for reasons too many to list.
‘Silence and Noise‘ marks the second solo show for Adam at ATG Melbourne.
It also coincides with his ‘Dreamweavers’ National Touring Show currently in Victoria. Be sure to check out the interview with Adam on Art Nation 18th September on the ABC. He’ll also be guest speaking around the Nation with Dreamweavers, be sure to check the website for details.
Adam’s work is haunting and poetic, traces of memories from his childhood in the bush and ancestral haunts in the hunting lodges of Bornholm, Denmark still inform his work.
“Nature has always informed my work, its imagination offers endless possibilities. After having my son Matteo, I once again thought about how nature shaped my childhood imagination. Memory had a story to tell. I grew up in the suburbs of Surfers Paradise, in a long, curved street with houses that had no back fence but instead opened onto a rambling park. A child could not have asked for a better play ground, this unmanicured park was a place of abandon until our mother’s call for dinner.
A couple of years later (inexplicable to me at the time), my parents decided to move to a ten acre property in the middle of the bush that was a half hour journey from our old house. Our new house had a long winding dirt track that opened up to a clearing at the top of the hill and there our house sat surrounded by the bush.
As the weeks grew so too did my isolation, friends came to visit and we played in a cubby amongst the bamboo patch. I tried to get a sense of belonging in this place, this landscape, but I always felt those iron barks with their bleeding saps where watching me. I became familiar with surrounding bush, but I always knew that there was something unfamiliar present also. To this day when I reflect on my childhood in the bush it is still a mystery why this feeling of the other and unease was so strong. Was it the isolation? Was it the silence or the noise? Was it that we were surrounded or that whenever you stared out through the window the bush always stared back?
As I think of that experience, of immersion in the bush I have come to realize how it has shaped my sculptural practice. The familiar and the unfamiliar, mystery and the sense of other continue to pique my imagination. The bush seeps into my dreams where the collision and marriage of opposites take place and there, visions manifest as starting points in my work. This unexpected combination asks the viewer to experience and think in new and divergent ways allowing for the possibility of the unconscious to manifest in my work and give space for poetic possibilities and the unfurling of the mysterious.
Living in the bush all those years ago, instilled in me a desire to reveal forces of nature, “making the invisible visible”. The end result is often menacing and playful, dramatic and visceral, familiar and unpredictable.” Adam Laerkesen
On the run
On the run – detail
Novice
Novice – Detail
‘I’m angry, I’m wise and you, you’re under cloudy skies’ – Robert Forster: Clouds
Escarpment
Vogue Living NovDec 2011
i love you to death - soft sculpture skull
Why a skull my mother asked and who would want it? Coming from a Greek background the skull as a symbol is not an ornamental object of beauty, much less one to spend time hand embellishing.
I’ve lived with Adam for over eight years and watched his sculptural practice over time. Certain objects he played with have resonated, and I always knew that in my new collection “of memory + steel” I would take it further.
I thought about the Mexican Day of the dead and a Victorian lace heirloom merged beautifully into one to create my first skull. The result was an armature that is hand crafted then meticulously covered with vintage lace, hand embroidery and beading. The skull left my Sydney studio as an idea and arrived back home via Melbourne.
I like to surround myself with things I’ve created, thought about and made real it motivates me to dream some more.
You can see “I love you to death” skull at the beautiful Pure and General store in Potts Point, it really is one of the most unique concept stores I have had the pleasure of seeing.
“I love you to death” soft sculpture skull
“I love you to death” soft sculpture skull
“I love you to death” soft sculpture skull
“I love you to death” soft sculpture skull
“I love you to death” soft sculpture skull
“I love you to death” soft sculpture skull
steph & gaia 