Help! Here Comes the List!

As I sat in a cafe yesterday like any respectable blogger- coffee, smartphone and a laptop- to start writing this weeks blog post - it hit me! I was an half and hour late collecting my hand felted coat from the Wilderness Exhibition.


Do I know what I am doing this year?
No, not really, but I have a lot of projects in the pipeline.  All still in the development stage...
The designer equivalent of jumping off a cliff and hoping that you had the rope on tight. Where would I find the resources to do them: time, money, collaborators... Proper muses and dragons to carry out the PR and marketing so each of these grows to something more...

When I start panicking I start making lists. It is my way of trying to make sense of things

January 

Showcase 15 Niki Collier goes Milan
The Irish Creative Expo grows every year in numbers, impact and appeal. Although I still think of it as mainly a gift wear dominant trade event with the unfortunate necessity to include the made in china 'Irish'' souvenirs. It was a good one to me this year- expanded stockists and an international stockist in Milan! Milan!!!! Wooo hooo!!! Right?

February- all those applications were in...

March 

Science Day Niki Collier teaches girls to adorn themselves smartly.
An interactive necklace that I designed as a learning tool for Computer Clubhouse was presented by the girls at the Science Day. The girls were a tough gig, but we made it happen. Tough is what we do. And I get to use the ultra cool neopixel rngs from Sparkfun

April 

Wilderness Exhibition Niki Collier goes Fashion Wild.
When Eddie Shanahan selected my coat for his and Agata Stoinska's project it was one of those things. It would take a blog on its own. He saw it, he wanted it, it was in. Simple. Loved being part of it.

May

Smart Textiles as part of PhizzFest. I am doing three pieces- exhibition within the exhibition- all smart textiles all custom made for this.
Shake & Shout Scarf, Home & Away Steam Punk Hats, Football Pitch Wall Hanging

And there is a Fashion Show at St Anne Church with Design House. This is something that I am really looking forward to as it is going to be my first event with Design House.

There is also the photo shoot for H.... Models, locations make up, hair.... And all this done with a message and consistent visual expression. The day is always easy, but everything that leads up to the day and after it isn't.

June

The Shepherds Son's Corner
This is a furniture collaboration with Interioro at Design Week, Plovdiv 19-28 June. This would be my second participation at Design Week and I am really looking forward to an action packed event. I always go back to children's furniture. It is a wonderful way to explore felt as a medium to create one off furniture pieces. There would be lights, a bed, a chair and a puff.

July

Dublin Maker Fair- This is my place to meet people and show them my smart textile pieces.

August

H exhibition in conjunction with Beta the photographer that develops my exhibition H with me. This exhibition is developed with Feltmakers Ireland. It is in the Visitor's Centre in Pheonix Park.

September

Showcase of the H collection in Design House. And sending hats to Milan. So excited. Still.

October

Have to make pieces.

November

Hoping to be in a Fair in a cool city in Ireland.

December 

RDS Craft and Design Fair. This is a very special event for me. I just loved it last year- the responce the feedback the leads every bit of it made me smile. I hope this year would be good to me !

Easter and other passions

Fever Pitch in Smart Textile

When you grew up in communism. like me, religious celebrations have been beaten into you in their pagan form. So when we celebrated Easter it was a lot about coming of spring and the craft of colouring eggs and Not at all about Christ.

Funny that today the discussion about how little Easter is about Christ and more about chocolate eggs seems a bit dramatic to me.... I have been there before. As a child...

The thing is  for me celebrations are very much about us- people. And they reflect the art of us being able to share common passions and rituals. Rituals that regardless of how mystic or simple they look to others make us human.

So this Easter I would share with you my new Smart Textile project. It starts with a ball, a football ball for that matter.

The project 

It is about fever pitch rituals and how they are embodied in our senses through the objects that we associate with the game.

It addresses football game as a community experience. Myself and a wonderful textile designer Paula Byrne would look into memorabilia from the Bohemians FC and create six pieces using smart textile technology. It is part of Phizzfest and they have awarded us a grant for our proposal. It aims to send a message about the all-encompassing rich sensory experience which is an essential ingredient in our human connection with our football club. The memorabilia is a way to reflect on design and political status quo, but also to show what we choose to materialise our feelings into- a scarf, a picture, a photo?  It would also look retrospectively into the scarves, the photos or the boots but addressing them as not just things in a box, but a treasure-trove of objects that are viewed by the fans and players as heirlooms. We use these objects to comment on historical characteristics associated with form, function and material choices.

It is going to run as an exhibition with an exhibition- the football club would curate an exhibition based on fans memorabilia- photos, jerseys, hats, footballs, boots. Paula and I have picked a few of these to develop a smart technology piece. There would be 6 pieces in total.

It seems a good thing to do in Year of Irish Design 2015.

Influences

 Nick Hornby's book is an influence  and it would come across in the story. I could see the football pitch through the eyes of a 11 year old and feel the hand of his dad in his hand. Because watching a game at the stadium is about sharing your passion with others. And in a way the pieces that myself and Paula are developing would allow an 11 old to ''see'' the past as well as the future of the club. It would be less obvious to see Marina Shkolnik's influence on the project, unless you are into felt or or you are mad about handmade scarves. But she would be my inspiration behind creating one of the pieces that I am creating; the Shaking and Shouting Scarf. Very rock and roll, right?

The Shaking and Shouting Scarf

It would use alternation of black and red superfine merino and silk fibres, the football club colours and it would replicate football balls in three sizes.

It would also use Arduino Flora, accelerometer, and speakers to cheer up with you every time when your team scores a goal. So even if you are not at the football pitch you could wrap your self up in the scarf and it would transport you into a dimension in which you would be one with the whole stadium.

You might wonder why I am not showing you the scarf, well, in its fifth iteration it still looks a bit dishevelled I have to admit. But you know it is just a stage. This is the good thing when this is not your first project- you know that each failure is there to be turned into your vision.

Here let the experimentation begin. All the fun is ahead.... 

This is my Easter- new collaborative project in smart textiles telling the story of 125 old Dublin football club. We have submitted the pieces to Dublin Maker 2015. Such a great month April.