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!