Indie Artist Spotlight: Stéphanie Kilgast of PetitPlat

February 26, 2013March 2, 2013 ~ jama ~ 47 Comments

HELLO! BONJOUR! HALLO!

You’re just in time to meet Stéphanie Kilgast, the supremely talented artisan who creates all the amazing miniature food sculptures at PetitPlat. 🙂

A couple of years ago, while browsing for food art on Etsy, I chanced upon PetitPlat and instantly fell for Stéphanie’s meticulously crafted, truly splendid banquet of French pastries, breads, cookies, fruits, cakes and candies. The realism and level of detail were so incredible I couldn’t believe my eyes. How did she do it? I immediately ordered Oreo cookie and submarine sandwich earrings which arrived on my doorstep lickety split, and have had so much fun wearing them ever since.

Stéphanie currently lives about 280 miles southwest of Paris. She was born in Frankfurt, Germany, speaks fluent French, English, and German, and has a Master’s degree in Architecture. While on summer break in 2007, a bored Stephanie looking for a new hobby discovered the world of miniatures and hasn’t looked back since.

She hand sculpts and assembles all the jewelry and 1:12 scale dollhouse miniatures she sells from scratch. Her work has been featured in international publications such as the New York Times, The Telegraph, BBC Brasil, Europa and American Miniaturist, and just last year she exhibited her work in Hong Kong. Crafters who work with polymer clay will be happy to know Stéphanie is currently working on a bilingual French/English tutorial book, hopefully to be released in May.

We thank Stéphanie for taking time from her busy schedule to tell us a little more about her love for food miniatures. Hers is a delightfully inspiring story of someone finding success by following her true passion, which is evident in every micro-mini baguette, St. Honoré, fruit tart, croissant and rainbow cake. She says colors and textures are her companions; “making you smiling and happy is the goal of my work.”

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Indie Artist Spotlight: Bossy’s Feltworks

February 5, 2013February 4, 2013 ~ jama ~ 46 Comments

bossysfeltworks_1 (2) — The Bossies: Kari Van Gelder, Mandy Troxel, and Amy Lum

Today I’m pleased and excited to welcome three very bossy artists to help launch my new Indie Artist Spotlight series!

Three is a good number, I think — three times the talent, beauty, spunk, ingenuity, and brilliance. Three times the luck, three times the inspiration for us all, and yes, three times the bossy craftiness. 🙂

Kari, Mandy, and Amy work together as a needle felting cooperative called Bossy’s Feltworks on Orcas Island, a 57-square mile creative Eden north of Seattle in Washington state.

bossysfeltworks_18 (2) — Valentine’s Pin Cushion featuring Suffolk lambs

If, like me, you love and appreciate the handmade and heartmade — you’ll enjoy hearing from this enterprising threesome who, back in 2006, took piles of fleece sheared from the sheep on Amy’s farm, gathered around the kitchen table with their five young daughters underfoot, and began fashioning colorful balls and adorable little white sheep.

bossysfeltworks_11 (2) — Basket of felted balls at the Orcas Island Farmer’s Market.

bossysfeltworks_3 (2) — Tools of the Trade: hands, wool, needles

In no time at all, they set off on regular flights of fancy, fueled by endless cups of tea and snacks (!), a shared love of children’s books, inspiration from a menagerie of pets and farm animals, and steadily built an enthusiastic customer base via Etsy and a local farmer’s market. Their felted critters are irresistible — not only well made, but infused with the good feelings of friendship, family, and the joy of maximizing what each is uniquely qualified to bring to the table. Thanks so much for visiting today, Bossy Ladies!

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peeking into carl warner’s a world of food

November 13, 2012September 14, 2017 ~ jama ~ 25 Comments

“Picture yourself in a boat on a river, with tangerine trees and marmalade skies . . . “

When I first heard these lyrics, little did I realize one day I’d actually be able to see and practically taste an alternate universe where everything is made of food. Thanks to London-based photographer Carl Warner, I can hula ‘neath pasta palm trees, tiptoe across cucumber bridges, climb cocoa-dusted mountains, skinny dip in a lemonade pool, and practice my backstroke in a sea of mushroom soup. Naturally I’d live in a nougat house and lick my lollipop trees every hour on the hour. Does this man know me or what?

*Yellow: Couscous, rice & grains desert, Emmental cheese pyramids, pasta palm trees, tortilla chip plants, tagliatelle & crispy pancake, mushroom and bean gondola.*

Open Mr. Warner’s new children’s book, A World of Food (Abrams, 2012), and just see if you don’t want to climb into every page and eat your way to oblivion. Featuring twelve wondrous, magical, incredibly edible color-themed foodscapes, this tasty tome will tempt and delight kids ages 1 to 100.

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alphabets abroad

November 15, 2011September 26, 2017 ~ jama ~ 11 Comments

#36 in an ongoing series of posts celebrating the alphabet.

Today I’m happy to share two fine examples of alphabetica discovered by blogger friends on recent trips abroad.

Mary Lee at A Year of Reading visited Ghent, Belgium, this past summer and encountered this alphabet set on the side of a building. Isn’t it lovely? So glad she snapped a pic. She says she thought of me when she saw it. Sigh. I hope she also thought of me when she ate Belgian chocolate (LOVE that stuff) and french fries (in a paper cone)! ☺

Melodye Shore at Joyful Noise, whose essay is included in the highly acclaimed anthology, Dear Bully (HarperTeen, 2011), traveled to Europe earlier this Fall and was very fortunate to see “La Grande Nomade” while touring the French Riviera. The Man of Letters, an amazingly cool sculpture by Spanish artist and sculptor Jaume Plensa, overlooks Port Vauban in Antibes.

Here’s a bit more about this remarkable installation, which consists of a stainless steel alphabet latticework:

“On the terrace, facing the sea at the corner of the ring wall, is this monumental sculpture eight metres high of a squatting figure. It used the formal vocabularly developed by the artist over the last few years, based on letters. With this vocabulary, Plensa is suggesting that, beyond its simple mission of communicating a meaning, spoken or written language can also be seen as a kind of envelope covering the matter and energy that constitute us. “Like bricks,” he says, “letters have a potential for construction. They enable us to construct thought.”

Visitors are invited to step inside, and travel within it. More from the artist:

I always imagined that our skin is permanently tattooed with text – our life, our experiences – tattooed, but with invisible ink. And then suddenly, somebody is able to decipher these tattoos; that person becoming a lover, a friend. That is probably why I work with sculptures like this, this human form composed solely of letters, like cells. It’s almost biological.

*Swoon* Apparently, there are other Plensa Men of Letters around — one in Des Moines, Iowa, and a grouping of them in Wakefield, England. I think every city should have one!

*drifts off in alphabet reverie*

Thanks so much, Mary Lee and Melodye!

♥ Don’t forget — if you have any notable alphabetical encounters, whether a piece of art, a song, video, abc book, fashion accessory, etc., please let me know so I can add it to my collection!

♥ More alphabetica here.

Certified authentic alphabetica. Made by hand with love and inspiration from foreign lands.