Nova Clutch

How sweet it is

Here is my project for the Bring it to the table exhibition. I have had a lot of fun playing with sugar in all it's forms! See below for the outcome. Hope to see you on Sunday at the opening – spring, 126a Front Street, Brooklyn, New York, 11am-2pm.

Sugar is a food product that teeters somewhere between good and bad. Like salt, it is a product that is used by most of the world, regardless of development, infrastructure or GNP. However, its production has led to exploitation and clearing of forests to make way for planting more sugar cane in developing countries and its growth in popularity has led to the onslaught of obesity in both children and adults in developed countries. Conversely, sugar cane has also been developed as a feasible alternative energy source, making its very existence something we may depend upon more heavily in the future.

Considering the many faces that sugar takes, Natasha Chetiyawardana has explored sugar in its many forms for Spring gallery’s Bring it to the table project. Taking sugar in its original form, a pen was whittled from a piece of sugar cane, ready to chew on in that moment of thought and contemplation, hopefully there to provoke thought itself. Secondly, a sugar bowl was made from the by-product of sugar production, bagasse, the fibre that is left when the juice is extracted from the cane. The fibers were mixed with soy resin to create a new life for a waste product that is usually just burned. The third exploration was looking at sugar in its usually-consumed form, the sugar cube. As a nod to the ships that haul sugar across rivers and over oceans, a small boat made of sugar floats momentarily on the foam seas of a cappuccino and eventually sinks. A sugar man sits on the precipice that is the edge of a cup, dipping his feet into the drink to test the waters. A little poke from a sugar-hungry finger pushes him over the edge.

A book for Nicole

We made this book for Nicole the other day because it was her birthday again. Nicole likes to jot things down and has a million ideas at once, so we made her book that is split into three, so that her thoughts can grow concurrently or independently from one another. I can't wait to see it when it's full of scribbles and ideas.

Shell necklaces

You know, for the kids. I still can't bring myself to wear jewelry but when I saw these shells on the Beach in Nantucket how could I not make them into necklaces? I used gold thread from Bocage and bought some tiny gold clasps from the little jewelry making store that I can't remember the name of on Mott Street just off Houston. They took about five minutes to make and are perfect for all the little girls our friends seem to keep having.

Reading Light and Still Life

For those of you that don't know it's London Design Week this week, you know, in London. Unfortunately I'm not there, I'm on a little island in Massachusetts called Nantucket. The one from the limerick. Anyway, if I were in London I would be visiting our good friends Designersblock and our stand at Tent London. We were kindly invited by the nice people at Tent to exhibit some pieces that we have recently redeveloped and we took them up on the offer.

The second generation of Still Life (pictured above) is a series of blank canvasses that hang on a wall unadorned until someone walks by. When you walk past, lights spring up from behind the canvas and follow your movement, disappearing when you move away. When you're gone, they're blank again, but you wouldn't know it because you're not there.

The second is Reading Light. It's a functional, intuitive bedside light. You know when you're reading a book in bed and you get all sleepy and have to fumble around for a light switch when you've finished reading? Well, not here! You simply put the book down on the Reading Light's platform and the light slowly dims off. Picking up the book again turns the light back on. It's a simple and functional product that is entirely based on bedtime ritual and movement. Of course, if you don't read, it's not very helpful.

You can see both these pieces at Tent London from this Thursday September 20th to Sunday September 23rd at the Truman Brewery in East London.

To Do Post-its in DUMBO by Illegal Art

A common complaint by people I know that don't live in the city is the lack of a sense of community in big cities. The absence of saying hello to people in the street, no borrowing a cup of sugar from your neighbors, the lack of things for their children to do.

My experience of living and working in DUMBO, New York has been entirely different from this supposed view. People say hello on the street, everyone knows their neighbor and luckily for us, the neighborhood remains creative.

One of those artists that keeps the neighborhood creative is Nova Clutch's own Michael, who is also part of the public art collaborative Illegal Art. Illegal Art may be most famed for their book, Suggestion a tireless effort to collect random yet meaningful suggestions from New Yorkers, but their projects continue to grow and evolve.

To Do has culminated in a few installations, namely on the window of The Good People at The Apartment, at Clark University, at the weekend in the East Village at 1st Avenue and 6th Street and today, on Front Street in DUMBO< Brooklyn. Having just stumbled off a plane from Europe, I helped Illegal Art and a number of gratefully received volunteers put up 5376 pink and yellow post its on the window, which was kindly donated by Two Trees Management and the Walentas family.

As is there signature, Illegal Art always seeks to create interactive public art to inspire thought and encourage participation by anyone and everyone. To Do was created so that people could share their own "to do" lists, making something normally very trivial and private very public. As they often do, Illegal Art gives us a chink to look through at the microcosm of someone's personal thoughts, while also maintaining the macrocosm of the impact of the project as a whole.

Create your own Simpsons avatar

This is as good as it sounds! Go here to scare family and friends with their own yellow likeness (my brother shown above).

Chalkboard Picture Frame

I know this looks like a big black square, and that must be what Jen thought when she opened the gift we had brought for her lovely daughter, Parker. A rather macabre-looking present for a little girl?

Well, not in intent. What you see is a picture frame, completely painted with black chalkboard paint. That way everything she draws in it will be a masterpiece, framed and hung on the wall.

Customized Address Stamp

It's always a problem to get gifts for those who have everything (you know who you are). Sweetu doesn't quite have that problem as he is such a minimalist, but he is extremely discerning and rather picky. So on his birthday, instead of trying to guess at what Nom de Guerre piece to get him, we made him this stamp instead.

He happens to also be the Sweetest man alive, in name and in nature, so a double S to make a heart symbol was the perfect apotheosis. He can now stamp his sweetness on whatever he wants.

My Penguin Book Cover

When Laura told me what Penguin was doing in England (in England only, not fair) I was very excited. The next step in customizable everything is, of course, book covers. And I am, you may have noticed, a sucker for the customizable.

We thought Grimm's fairytale book was perfect for S & T's baby gift because they love fairytales and folklore, particularly from their respective countries. So a memorable fairy tale book seemed like the right fit for their baby, when she's a little older. I had to order it from Penguin UK as they don't sell it here, and M and I designed a screen print for it. The print has a whimsical, fairytale feel to it, but it's made up of icons that remind us of the couple – silos, plants, tools, espresso makers, cats and mushrooms (T.B. even gave them a little mushroom doll). We also gave them the screen, so that they can print the pattern on anything they want and the print become the baby's very own graphic.

Party favors the organic way

The stipulation for the baby shower this weekend (yes, another one, but we were the hosts this time) was all organic. So even though I am not really a party favor kind of person (the English readers among us are now asking what the hell party favors are – they're goodie bags) I thought it would be acceptable if we did it in the style of our guest of honor.

S is a grow-it-yourself gal. So I potted some of my myriad orange plants in glasses I got from Crate & Barrel to give to people when they left, and tagged them with the date and their reason for being. I have two large orange trees, whose oranges drop into the pots and spawn new orange trees. Hey – just like nature intended! Who would have thought that nature still works in New York City? Well, it does, and we have a lot of it. The photo above shows the little orange pip and the subsequent sprout. It works like magic to us city folks.

Well, my little baby orange trees went out into the world yesterday (to other apartments in the city), and hopefully they will proliferate as well in their new homes as they have done here. And they will be just a little older than the baby that's about to be born. Altogether now: awww!

Homemade baby book

After 4 years of living here, I still forget those fundamental differences between the English and the Americans. Like the fact that Americans don't actually want to know the answer when they ask how you are. And the fact that chopping up all the food on your plate and stabbing it with your fork is a regular eating practice. And throwing showers for all occasions, especially for women that are pregnant. This is not a ritual I am accustomed to, but like not answering when people ask me how I am (well, not all the time anyway), I'm getting used to it.

With all the babies springing up around us, we like to give the little blighters something to remember from when they were born. You know, like this, this or this. OK, maybe not the last one.

For M & B's baby, we knew it had to reflect their personalities. They're not going to be the average parents (they're going to be better, way better) so we wanted to give something to remember this with. So we made a memory book; I drew the illustrations and laid out the pages and M bound the book with his famous precision. I bought the paper from Kate's Paperie (who are moving inceidentally) and also the wood grain to make the cover. The paper was watercolor with rough edges dipped in black.

So for now, we'll be waiting for Baby _______'s arrival!

Silkscreened tshirt

When graphic design students graduate, a lot of them think they will make their living silk-screening tshirts. They'll start off selling them on the streets of SoHo, hand screening each one, and soon graduate to the boutiques of NoLita. Then some rich guy will spot them and they will make their fortune and never have to do a "New & Improved!" burst again.

Well M and I always try to push our students' hopes higher, and here I am, silk-screening onto tshirts. But I'm not selling them! I'm just making my loved one walk around in them, telling rich guys that I printed them.

Just like Grandma

The one thing I had as a child that I really loved (I had a fair few things, I was a brat) was a book my grandmother made. She made me a lot of things actually, mainly stuffed patchwork dogs, and I'm not quite sure how she did it. She had eighteen or more grandchildren, spread all over the world, and she found the time and energy to make something for all of us. The book she made me taught me how to count, learn the alphabet, tie a shoelace and tell the time. Quite an achievement for one handmade book.

So I wanted to make one for Stef's little boy. I hand sewed each page on the train, stabbing my fingers a few times when the train jerked and suffering the stares of people wondering what the hell I was doing. The results, I have to admit, are not as comprehensive as my Grandma's, and I wasn't baking a cake at the same time like she was no doubt doing, but hopefully they achieve the same results: complete literacy at the turn of a felt page. OK, that didn't happen, but boy, can that child count!

Click on for more photos

Star Wars sketch book

I love making books, and my friend's little boy is a joy to make them for.

Now I'm not a fan, but he loves Star Wars and turns any nearby stick into a lightsaber. So I decided to make him a book with drawings of Star Wars characters mixed with official photographs, with some fairies thrown in for good measure. The sketches were drawn by hand and then scanned in and the pages were printed on cotton to give it some texture (and make sure the pages didn't rip). I then bound the book by sewing the edges roughly with hot pink thread. The result is a delicate little book that's nigh on indestructible.

Click on for more photos.

Homemade Blood Orange Liqueur

Two months of patient waiting, stringent sourcing of the correct bottling products and hemming and hawing over what to put on the label, I finally bottled the Blood Orange Liqueur. The precious stuff has gone to three of my very good friends whose birthdays lay within days of one another.

Wincing slightly, I gave a bottle to Martin, a blood orange afficionado, and the person that gave me the recipe in the first place. I nervously suggested that it needed to be drunk with a slight chill, to quell the sweetness of the liqueur, which he poo pooed, flipping the stopper and pouring it into shot glasses. I see now why it was left for so long – the sweetness is not overpowering and the blood orange flavor really came through. We were left with a beautiful blushing liqueur that has good body to it due to the strength of the grappa. I bottled it in 17 oz glass flasks from The Container Store, sterlized first, and labeled them with handwriting and marked them with a vintage metal stamp.

A beginner's cookbook

A little while ago I wrote about a project I was toiling over with my friend Michele. That project has now come to a close and I thought I would post a few pictures of it.

We were working on a gift for our good friend, who has little time and somewhat little interest in cooking. But being a mother of two, and finding herself having to feed a family had thrown her into the kitchen a little more. Hey, at least the kitchen is Boffi, so her experience has been somewhat pleasant!

We found that every week when we cooked for her, we would be inundated with questions of how we made the things we ate, and asked what cookbooks to buy to get some inspiration. After a few suggestions, we realized that the best thing we could get her for her birthday would be to custom make her a cookbook that was completely tailored to what she knows and what she eats. She's a vegetarian and has quite specific tastes and limits to how much time she will spend making food. So we did just that and compiled both our own and known recipes that we thought she would enjoy. And perhaps make.

It really was a labor of love – it sounded like a great idea when we thought of it, but the process was definitely more laborious than we originally anticipated. The book ended up being 91 pages long and because of the time it took, there were only images at the beginning of each section. We divided up the book into Main Attractions, Accessories and Afters and we included a load of zucchini flower recipes in there (they are her favorite). The layouts were extremely simple so that they were easy to read, and we employed a rating system, using apples cores instead of stars, to show how easy the recipe was. No recipe went over 3 cores and most were at 1 core. We named the book "The Beginner's Guide to Whipping, Beating and Stuffing", both to appeal to her kinky side and also to remain a little ambiguous and not too intimidating. Well, for the kitchen, anyway.

We then wrapped the book in parchment paper and sewed it closed into a parcel and gave it to her with a cast iron skillet, my weapon of choice. Her card is also pictured – it's a private joke, but it featured a teabag as part of the card and on the front. We'll know in the next few weeks whether she'll use it. Thanks to Michele for a fun project!

fringe benefits

click on the image to read the text

chops

a chop is a block (usually marble) with your name carved on it, used in some asian countries for official business. a special red ink is used, and it's particularly thick and gooey. it's very satisfying stamping a chop, as the marble has such a weight to it and the sound it makes is very official.

we got two chops made this year; one for otis and one for the birth of a friend's baby, evander. the gifts were a little late as the store calls in a 70 year old chinese man from flushing to cut the marble by hand. and he obviously doesn't move that quickly.

here is the one we got carved for otis. we designed it so that it read his initials "OK" one way and when you turn it 90° it looks like a little character. The texture the ink makes on the paper is really beautiful.

cindy's birthday card

we're not making cindy's birthday present this year, and i'm not saying what we're getting her because she doesn't have it yet. but we sent her this card that michael whipped up yesterday. the picture isn't the best, but it says 'cindy' and 'bday' in overlapped stencil type that he sprayed on. we're hoping she'll like it.