Modern fabric book feature

During last year I had huge privilege to be one of 25 featured fabric artists in the Modern Fabric book, written by Abby Gilchrist and Amelia Poole. 

 The book is really an eye candy and holds great information and details about different artists in this field. I feel extremely happy and grateful to have several pages about my work too.

Without revealing too much, I can warmly recommend this book, it would make certainly a wonderful gift to all aspiring textile artists.

xx

Katarina

Podcast guest on "While she naps"

A few weeks ago, I had a great pleasure being Abby's guest, on her While she naps podcast.
If you might be interested to hear more about how I became fabric designer and more about my life in general, just tune in! You also, might be surprised with how many times I said "you know", and "actually", but I suppose it's ok when you are speaking foreign language.
Huge thanks to Abby Glassenberg for having me-I really enjoyed!!!
xx
Katarina

Fabric design process

During the last weekend, when I took over the AGF instagram account, I was talking a bit about my design process, so I thought to post a few pics about that, here too.

I start by hand drawing, sketching and painting, surrounding me with inspiration and depending on the theme, it can be "real life" or some historical pictures from books and/or internet.



Very often, I use my own photographs, processing them in Photoshop, developing new images, placing them in repeats.

But, mostly I scan my original art and I make patterns with them, always in Photoshop (I don't like to use vector images), as it's giving me the possibility to work in layers, with lots of textures, preserving the "organic look" of the shapes.

After obtaining the final image, and making the repeating tile (or block) out of it, I start developing the color palettes.

I often use some pictures of nature to create the appropriate palettes and mood boards.

Of course, I make about 3 times more prints in order to obtain a good 10 prints, indispensable for one collection.

This is pretty much how I work to develop my collections.
If you have any questions, I would love to hear in the comments ;)

xo, Katarina

Traditionally modern :)

It always inspire me so much to see some of the ethno-folk hand-crafted items.
And I am so happy to see that these traditional, ethnic, elements are so modern and trendy, especially these days. There are many fashion designers using folk, ethnic, tapestry items as inspiration for theirs creations.





These are some shoots I took today, passing by the Ethnographic Museum here in Belgrade.



There is also a fantastic exhibition : “Memory Update - Ornaments of Serbian Medieval Frescoes”  at The Museum of Applied Art featuring many gorgeous Serbian ornaments.

There is a beautiful video on Vimeo  about the making of the exhibition - created by my friend Piki that I strongly suggest you to watch.

Memory Update from Osvežavanje memorije on Vimeo.

Hope that this may be inspiring to you as well:)
I took many pics at the exhibition myself and will make a separate post about it.

Happy February,
Katarina

Some artsy inspiration

Recently I've started with my PhD studies and I must say that I can't be more excited about that. It's great to have new tasks, classes and assignments that make you study, explore and create more and better. And I am so inspired and feel very happy about that ;)
One of the new classes that I am attending is called " Influences of the Modern arts to the contemporary textiles" and I am always so smitten when I realize how the roots of some very Modern designs are much older that I thought....

So here are some of the art pieces from Robert Kushner, very famous Paul Klee and
Sonia Delaunay

Sonia Delaunay triangles from 1925...





{the photos are taken from the  books and internet}
What inspires you lately?

What a wonderful day! :)

What a fantastic, happy day it was today! Not only it's my son's birthday, but I have found out that I have passed the doctoral preliminary examination!! The prelims were on Tuesday and I was so nervous to hear the results. The competition level was very high and I had some problems explaining to the jury members why I want to do the PhD in painting and not in graphic design (after studying printing and graphic design) or textile design (as my thesis concept was much closer to the textile design field). But, well I suppose that I convinced them and I am so happy that I will be back to the Faculty from the next week. And I will totally take some classes from the field of textile design as well (yay for the possibility to combine different art fields) and looking forward to it!
It will be a great mix and match of painting, graphic and textile design!

And of course, we had so much fun with the kids and celebrating all the good news!!!
And I am so happy and proud and so blessed to call this adorable boy - son!
He is the most wonderful son mom can ever ask for.
Have  a wonderful weekend and kiss your kids,
Katarina :)

Mikser 2013

MIKSER is the biggest regional festival of creativity, it is the multidisciplinary event, that combines a fair design, talent area, interdisciplinary educational conference, art shows and summer music festival. It's always nice to enjoy at least some of the events;)





See some more inspirational posts about previous Mikser festivals:
2009
2010
Gradstor 2010
2011
2011



Since last year, they made quite a difference with relocating the festival from the industrial setting of Žitomlin production facility to one of the oldest neighborhoods in Belgrade – Savamala. This marked a change in the program structure, as the festival is now being scattered over a number of locations, instead of just one.
And looking at my previous entries regarding Mikser, I just realized that was enabled to attend it, as I was very busy doing something more important (and can't wait to share more of it soonish)






If you live in Belgrade and be sure to visit it(if you already haven't) till tomorrow,
Katarina

Inspiring flowers

I have been doing a lot of drawing, painting and sketching lately. With a tablet and with a hand, depending on a subject or eventual final use of it. I feel so inspired. And I feel a bit guilty of not sewing much lately. But I am just like that, some days you will find me mesmerized with the ideas for the textile and surface design, some days with creating some new cute dresses and wardrobe pieces, or creating new patterns for them and sometimes I just want to photograph things or to paint or to be crafty in other way. And there are days when I just want to enjoy my kids and doing my routine homework;)



In this time of the year, there are beautiful, colorful flowers everywhere around (naturally in the country side, and not in the city;) and so each weekend becomes a feast for the eyes. It's also so incredible how the nature change from a week to a week, and just when you plan to do some more of this and that (flower) you realize that it's gone. But, the new species are up....blooming.....and I'm driven by theirs beauty.















Have a wonderful weekend,
Katarina

Easter Holidays

This year the Easter (Orthodox) here in Serbia was much later that the Catholic one (that we also celebrate, from my DH's part) and was also very close to the 1st of May day, so we had a lot of festivities. Kids were on the Spring break and so we were pretty much spending our time at Fruska gora, enjoying the kids and nature, doing just the ordinary things . We prepared and dyed the eggs , we cooked the pizza for the first time in our wood stove and we were delighted with the results. We enjoyed the Easter performance prepared by our kids and simply enjoyed the beauty around us.




















We also did a lot of spring cleaning and I happen to find tons of my drawings and paintings, while attending the high school.








Happy May!
Katarina