GL Wood Photographer | Art Director www.glwoodstudios.com

www.visionaryartproject.com Creative Director: Mia Morgan & Georgina Billington Photographer: Lindsay Adler Styling: Mia Morgan Makeup/Body Paint: Georgina Billington Hair: Alfred Lester, Livio Angileri, Brenna Drury Model: Aurianna Joy

An artist's exploration of youth + beauty Beauty and fashion can feel like a fleeting thing, escaping from the grasp of your fingers as you try to catch on. Artist Fiona Maclean has been exploring this feeling, offering her interpretation of youth and sexuality in her vibrant paintings. A life long artist, Maclean was originally from New Zealand and is now based in Australia. Maclean describes her art as an attempt to capture something intangible, using the canvas and paint to immortalize the image and keep it young forever. Influenced by music, the persona of the subject, or even her own sentiments, her art is dynamic and focuses the viewer on an emotional experience. Looking back, moving forward Growing up, she loved creating art and had a great fondness for books and images, using drawing as a doorway to a dimension of imagination and otherworldliness. This element of fantasy is still alive in her art today, but now accompanies her technical accomplishments gained from her studies at art school. Maclean pursued an artistic career early, painting large-scale paintings of famous people in her parents' living room as a teenager. She transitioned from living room portraiture to honing her skills as a fashion illustrator, contacting magazines and working for free, getting featured in local fashion magazines. Maclean received recognition from several international fashion illustration publications including Great Big Book of Fashion Illustration and Cutting Edge Fashion Illustration. She decided to concentrate more on painting and fine art and started attending the Parsons School of Art (The New School) in New York City in 2005. Though her studies were interrupted by a family tragedy and her art career put on hold for a couple years, she completed two Artist Residencies in Painting and Illustration at the New York's School of Visual Arts in 2010, thus allowing her to take a new direction in her career. In the last few years, Maclean has been catching the attention of the art community with her paintings, helping her gain more recognition as an artist. Currently, she is combining her artistic explorations with her travels, producing such work as her Barcelona-inspired La Chica de El Born series. Next, Maclean plans to pursue some new ideas for projects, reintroduce fashion illustration and experimenting more with large-scale paintings and illustrations. She hopes to combine her artwork with collaborations with the fashion houses and music industry that provide so much inspiration to her.

  Hidden away in a subtle corner of South Florida lives an artist who wears his heart on his sleeve. So, it is only fitting that he is known for his creative artwork featuring hearts. Meet Salvatore Principe: an artist extraordinaire who is a creator, sculptor and painter, as well as an entrepreneur, wine label designer, fashion designer, home décor designer—and much more.   Abstract, modern designs of the ever-lasting symbol of love are dotted around Salvatore’s studio in every colour, shade and hue. How many hearts can one man paint? The answer is infinite when each one is created with sentiment and spirit, each stemming from the inner depths of the artist’s personal journey of heart-rending as well as heart breaking experiences. Salvatore’s Signature Heart Collection began as a tribute to his mother, whom he lost to cancer. “She had such a big heart, and was my biggest support system. I wanted her to live on through my art, through my heart,” he described. His dream to “paint the world with love” began with hearts painted freehand on canvas in natural, muted tones. Soon, he started experimenting with colours and shades, and backgrounds and textures, giving each heart its own distinct style and impression. Though each heart Salvatore paints is different—some with a thin outline and bold colours, others that are more curvaceous and abstract, washed down with watery, pastel hues, and still others with heart-warming, simple sentiments, such as ‘Live Through Love’—they are all imbued with the same notion: that we all have a heart, and each is shown in unique ways. Salvatore’s Heart Collection was an instant success, attracting buyers across the world, including celebrities and art collectors. At auctions, his original pieces have accumulated into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. More than just a beautiful piece of art, these “heartworks” touched many people on a deeper level. This inspires Salvatore to spread his ideals of love and positive energy in everything he does. Salvatore’s first favourite artist was Robert Rauschenburg, the American painter known for working with non-traditional materials who helped promote the pop art movement. Other artists whose influences trickled into Salvatore’s work include Jasper Johns, de Kooning, and Franz Klein. Even before he began his trademark Heart Collection, these artists helped shape Salvatore’s inclination to create abstracts and three-dimensional art. “I get overwhelmed if I’m in a corner with few materials. I need to have a whole play land of them: papers, metals, wood, wire, rope, small objects, anything. I built a sculpture table where there is a constant flow of random objects I’ve collected to use in my art,” explained Salvatore on his ‘anything goes’ attitude with artistic materials. Without any formal training, Salvatore’s art career began untraditionally in the dark recesses of iconic Studio 54 in New York City, when he was only 19. Working around the rich and famous, he mingled with some of the most creative icons of our time, artists including Mick Jagger, Calvin Klein, Valentino Garavani, and Andy Warhol. Salvatore described those days as a “party in an adult candy store.” Being around famous people who had no limitations made him realise that art is also limitless. Everything he saw in the club was art in some form: pliable and interesting, all with a potential to be transformed into something creative and expressive. Soon, his visionary traits and ambition led him to a position of a light technician at the club, allowing him to tap into his creative energies with the aid of illumination. “Lighting up the dance floor in spectacular ways fills up the soul,” he said. Watching people dance and move with the music and light every night inspired him to create illuminated light sculptures on the dance floor by experimenting with filter gels and projectors. “Lighting is everything,” he explained, “You can illuminate anything with light and bring it to life. Lighting equals life.” This luminary inspiration has stayed with him today in his studio loft, an artist’s haven of painted canvases, sculptures, and eclectic furniture, all magically lit up to create a groovy lounge vibe, like somewhere you would find in the trendy New York or Paris, but very discreet and by invitation only. Each month, Salvatore hosts a social gathering in his loft for friends and clients to come view his latest work while enjoying wine and canapés. He loves engaging with people, interacting with them in a relaxed atmosphere, and often paints or creates art during his socializing. Through these events, Salvatore combines his latest venture, wine, with his art in the most appealing way. “Wine is an art form,” he remarked, “it activates imagination, spurs conversation, and brings people together.” Always the entrepreneur, he explained that he decided to try printing out some of his artwork on labels and attaching them to wine bottles just to see people’s reactions. It worked. Prestige Wine Group wanted his art and name attached to their wine imported from California, Italy, New Zealand, and Argentina. They created a special edition wine collection sold in various supermarkets across the United States that display Salvatore’s Heart Collection on the labels, making the bottles themselves works of art. It has been an impressive artistic evolution for someone who initially struggled to make a start in New York City. Nightclub life eventually took its toll on Salvatore, and he longed for a change to something more fulfilling. He wanted to contribute positively to the world, and to do this, he felt he had to reinvent himself. “I had this overwhelming need to create,” he described, “to escape this party life that was bringing me down.” One sleepless night, Salvatore decided it was the time to make a change. “I lay in a very still place and asked for help and guidance. Whatever it is I choose, I want to love it. I want to be an artist,” he recounted. In that moment, Salvatore felt some anxiety because he didn’t know what kind of artist he wanted to be. He remembered, “A voice inside told me to relax; it will come. Everything in front of your eyes that you can see is material you can create with, there is no limitation. I opened an imaginary box in my mind, using anything I could see to create. That was thirty years ago, since then I have been creating nonstop.” Salvatore took to the city streets in New York for inspiration and raw materials, collecting items from the trash and transforming them into artistic sculptures. Using paints and glosses, he turned cardboard into abstract metallic-like sculptures that reflected the grit of the city fused with its cosmopolitan beauty. This creative recycling led him on the path to artistic success. New York’s streets and buses became his mobile gallery. He took large and bulky sculptures on the bus with him that caused people to take notice and interest. “I’d have a six foot sculpture next to me on the bus and people would talk to me. I’d talk back to them as if I was delivering it somewhere. I would look for office buildings and various places where I thought I could display my art,” he related. This clever form of subtle self-promotion led him to Bergdorf Goodman, Manhattan’s most prominent department store, to present a proposal to dress their windows. He won a three week contract, which propelled his career to other department stores and led to exhibits with shops such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Tiffany Jewellers. “You have to make your own trail if your art can’t be in a great gallery to sell. You need to know how to sell it. Learning a little bit about business enabled me to be more enterprising,” he observed. Salvatore’s self-made trail led to his aunt’s in South Florida, a place to reflect after his mother’s death in the early nineties. “I saw there was an opportunity to do what I do in more space,” Salvadore recalled, “It was easier and cheaper there. The recession was at its height in New York, I had just lost my mom, what was I going to do?” Trading the harsh winters of New York for Florida sunshine, Salvatore fulfilled his lifelong dream and opened his own gallery, the Heart of Delray, in the trendy beach town south of West Palm Beach. Not only an art gallery, the Heart of Delray was also his studio and later, a local hangout for the creative and artsy crowd that lived there. “I created a gallery that brought people together. I would lure people in with music, food and wine, giving them an experience of the artist first hand,” Salvatore described. Unlike the quiet, stuffy galleries in big cities, his was an open, welcoming venue for people to browse, drink wine, socialize, and, most uniquely, meet the artist himself and watch him at work. The Heart of Delray contributed to the launch of the creative arts district in Delray with its progressive approach. After nine years, Salvatore moved his gallery to the Pineapple District, where his Signature Hearts Collection became a symbol of the town. He continued there for three years before moving closer to Boca Raton. Today, his studio is far more understated. Off the beaten path with no large signage out front, it would be difficult to surmise that the artist’s studio existed in the industrial area of town, nestled between Boca Raton and Delray. However, Salvatore prefers it that way. As an established artist with a revered, celebrity clientele, his work is sold by reputation and word of mouth. His art is exhibited in window displays of renowned department stores across Florida, such as Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue and Bloomingdales. Further, Salvatore has merged fashion with art to create his own clothing line, Heartfelt. Using models as his canvas, it is creative venture in which his art is printed directly onto clothing, resulting in chic, wearable and fashionable pieces. A collaboration with Katherine Kin of Marc Jacobs, the Heartfelt clothing line is a colourful mix of eighties funk and retro pieces such as strapless dresses, crop tops and miniskirts. Salvatore’s next step is uncertain, but flooded with potential collaborations and endless visionary ideas. He has his eyes on textile designs next. He mused, “I see a furniture line, more fashion, candles, perfume, stationary, bedding, home —the options are endless to combine with my art.” As an artist who is never static and an opportunist who has a constant desire to keep reinventing himself, Salvatore’s not likely to stay still for long. But wherever his path leads next, hearts are sure to follow.

In the intimate spaces of the Fashion Space Gallery, a short walk away from Oxford Circus in central London, the exhibition ‘Jean Paul Gaultier: Be My Guest’ is on display. This exhibit is the first presentation to ever feature the French couturier’s graphic design work. Considerably smaller in scale than ‘The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the sidewalk to the catwalk’ being shown a few miles east at the much larger Barbican Art Gallery, this compact exhibition features approximately sixty examples of printed invitations to runway shows and parties, as well as advertising images conceived by Gaultier himself. It is a rare opportunity to have a glimpse into the creative mind of one of the most famous and prolific fashion designers in history. Items on display include a crudely designed invitation to the presentation of his first women’s ready-to-wear collection for Spring/Summer 1977, graphics produced in the late eighties influenced by Russian Constructivism and Dadaism, photographs used in the advertising campaign for his women’s and men’s collections for Spring/Summer 1989, and promotional imagery for his iconic ‘Tribute to Frida Kahlo’ collection for Spring/Summer 1998.

The outdoor temporary arts festival is a relatively new trend in the presentation of art across Canada, but it’s not a new concept. Since 1986, The Works International Visual Arts Society has produced The Works Art & Design Festival in Edmonton, Alberta, offering over 250 exhibits, performances, and special events to the public, and attracting artists and patrons from around the world. At the start of every summer, The Works boosts the energy and imagination of downtown Edmonton by showcasing cutting-edge design, fashion, media, art and interactive installations alongside traditional visual arts such as glass, painting, drawing and photography. Artwork can be found in hotel lobbies, commercial spaces, office towers and public buildings, as well as larger than life installations outdoors on Sir Winston Churchill Square. The Works also partners with local galleries and interdisciplinary arts presenters to bring focus to the city’s year round art scene at a time when over 300,000 patrons from all walks of life are excited about art and design.  Here are the top 5 reasons that you should visit The Works this summer: It’s all there: the artwork ranges from traditional to interactive and immersive. The Works offers culturally diverse programming including contemporary indigenous artists in The Works Canadian Aboriginal Artist program. The Works’ main festival site has a multidisciplinary Street Stage, with ten hours of programming every day and an all ages licenced patio to sit and enjoy a variety of performances in between exhibits. Site #1 also features a market of Canadian made arts and crafts, culinary offerings from local restaurants and food trucks, and opportunities to create artworks for new and experienced artists of all ages. You will learn something: The Works integrates Education into everything it does, from the trained exhibit attendants and tour guides offering insights, to the artwork on display, to the opportunities to try your hand at a new arts technique. Each Spring, students and emerging artists from across Canada compete to participate in the Works to Work Program, one of the Enbridge art internships offered at The Works. In Works to Work, students learn the practical and theoretical aspects of arts presentation and administration, and then return the following summer to learn more and participate in teaching new recruits. This is the team that works alongside the presenting artists to bring the festival to life every June. It fits with your life and vacation plans: The Works is thirteen full days of free outdoor presentations and entertainment. All of the exhibits are on display for at least this length of time, with many holdover exhibits extended through the summer! With a bit of planning, you’ll have plenty of opportunities to see them all. It’s great for creatives: whether you are a professional designer, an emerging artist starting a studio practice, or a hobbyist looking for a new project, you can take advantage of meet the artist opportunities, volunteer with artists on site, see something new, and meet with other creative visitors to inspire your own work. The Works is the perfect opportunity to get out of the studio and collaborate with the public as a presenter, test out an idea, or make connections with people in your own and neighbouring disciplines. Did we mention it’s totally free?  The Works runs a pay what you can donation program to support education programs and the continued accessible presentation of art and design in public. You’ll find opportunities to donate at exhibits with interpretive attendants, as well as on the main festival site, and no one is turned away from the public stage presentations, indoor or outdoor performances, exhibits, and even scheduled tours. With that, there’s almost no reason not to go, so plan ahead and add Edmonton and The Works to your summer festival schedule.

 Twenty-four year old Hayley Wright has a unique goal: to bring back the frequently ignored and forgotten art of fashion illustration. Trained in fine arts at the University of British Columbia and holding a diploma in Fashion Marketing and Merchandising from Vancouver’s Visual College of Art and Design, she’s doing a stunning job. A clear vision is apparent from her artwork; her signature use of ink and watercolours tie her range of work together. Hayley’s fashion illustration strikes a charming balance between capturing detail and concept, and expressing fluid movement and emotion. The subjects of Hayley’s artwork seem like they would be the charismatic cool girls working the room; with cheeky pouting faces and impeccable outfits, they ooze confidence from the paper. As she builds a stunning portfolio, selling prints and other interpretations of her art online on Society6 and independently as Paper & Ink Art, Hayley is becoming increasingly more popular. A simultaneous, albeit small, renaissance of fashion illustration spurred on by independent, art-friendly magazines and rising popularity of illustrators like Danielle Meder is helping to make fashion illustration a household word again. Artwork with personality, like Hayley’s, offers a beautiful alternative to static photography—sacrificing some accuracy captures the emotional essence of their subject. And isn’t art, and fashion, about feeling?  

When I’m in the middle of a project I feel like I’m totally inside my dreams, but when a project ends I can never help but feel like I still have a long way to go. How did you start? I started working when I was 16 years old in a store where I made fashion accessories. I worked there for two years and then took a contemporary jewelry course at an art school. Fashion Designer Ana Salazar invited me to create fashion accessories while I was still studying. Because I began my career working with Ana, my creative process has always been very connected to the parameters of fashion. What was your original mission with your work? To be able to live of my creativity and to share my visions with others. Do you ever create things that no one sees? Sometimes I develop work that does not get presented but it is part of my creative process. I call these works “Work in Progress” because that’s literally what it is. They’re four very distinct elements inside a machine that continue to give me ideas for other projects and exploration. How do you like to work? I have to admit that my creative universe works best in chaos; I don’t like to have every thing very organized because it affects the creative flow. I like to look around and see what’s available. I need to experiment with materials. Is experimentation crucial for you? Without a doubt. I’ve tried many different techniques and inspirations, from baroque to tribal, inserting them in different creative processes to see how it would work. I like to turn an ordinary material into something exquisite. At first glance a press-stud seems to only serve the function for which it was created, there’s nothing beautiful about it, but by applying them to a piece, I’m creating a beautiful and luxurious dimension, caused by the texture and achieved by the use of repetition of the same element. I now feel the need to get a little more experimental, even with materials. I don’t have as much time as I’d like to explore them. How do you choose the materials you’re going to work? In the beginning I would have an idea and then look for the appropriate materials to execute it. There came a time when I realized I could do the reverse as there are materials that give me ideas and bring relevant concepts. Now, the creative process happens both ways. It’s an enormous challenge to pick up an object and try to imagine how else it could work. It brings me great joy, when the original object becomes unrecognizable. During the creative process, do you make the distinction between your fashion pieces and art pieces? I know that many people look at my work and wonder if it’s wearable as some pieces can go from a fashion collection and can then be displayed in a gallery. The work process is the same but it makes sense to separate these two aspects of creation. Do you always keep in mind the commercial and marketable aspect of a piece? I don’t allow myself to be dictated by that. When I create a piece that’s not as commercial, I try to refine it in order to make it more wearable, which doesn’t make it any easier or less creative. It doesn’t lose its worth, but I know my customer and know what works. In my case I can’t oversimplify, otherwise it doesn’t capture the attention of those who like my work. You’ve always collaborated with other artists from different fields. Do you enjoy the creative exchange? I really enjoy it. I’m always touched when I conceive a piece that is then transported to the universe of a photographer. Its exciting and working this way can learn a lot. All my life I’ve worked in open studios shared with other artists and I find it far more constructive than working in isolation. Does the fact that every six months you have to present a new collection keep the creative juices flowing? Absolutely. And many ideas not fully explored in one collection can be put to use in another, it’s an ongoing process. There are techniques I discovered 2 years ago that are still to be applied, and I will return to them, the process is never just six months. Your 20 year career was celebrated with a retrospective exhibition in 2010. How did it feel looking back at your work? It was complex when it came to collecting all the pieces. Much has happened in 20 years and it was good to look back... The pieces enabled me to visualize who I once was; it’s interesting to see the evolution of my work. At the end, the pieces had to interact with each other and I must admit it was an interesting dialogue. What are hardships you experienced being an artist? The biggest difficulty is to work without financial support. Particularly at the beginning of a career You really do have to learn from your mistakes. In school, you learn to draw, work with materials, and develop a project, but no one teaches you how to sustain a creativity-based business. It’s very hard to focus on your work when you have to do all the equally crucial things like contacting clients and collectors, promote your work, etc. All without which success is rather impossible. What is you ultimate mission? To show people my creative world within. Are you closer to realizing your dream? When I’m in the middle of a project I feel like I’m totally inside my dreams, but when a project ends I can never help but feel like I still have a long way to go.

The Construction of the Self through Clothing The exhibition “Aware: Art Fashion Identity”, currently on at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, sets out to depict how artists and designers examine clothing as a mechanism to construct and communicate individual and collective identities. Despite some lukewarm reviews in a number of newspapers, mostly owing to somewhat set expectations of what themes fashion exhibitions should focus on, this is an outstanding and thought-provoking collection of pieces by talented artists and designers that addresses the conceptual roles that fashion can have. The exhibition contains work by 30 emerging as well as established international contemporary practitioners including Hussein Chalayan, Andreas Gursky, Susie MacMurray, Alexander McQueen, Yoko Ono, Grayson Perry, Cindy Sherman, Yinka Shonibare and Yohji Yamamoto. Occupying the main galleries of the Royal Academy’s Burlington Gardens building, “Aware” is divided into four clearly demarcated sections. The circular and fluid layout of the galleries allows the visitor the possibility of revisiting the art works at different paces and developing personal interpretations of the rich layers of meaning that they produce regarding the role of fashion in the construction of identity. The first section, “Storytelling”, acknowledges the role of clothing in the representation of the self, within a formative background of personal history and moulded by shared cultural experiences. Visitors are welcomed to the exhibition by Grayson Perry’s “Artist’s Robe’”(2004), an elaborate patchwork coat of luxurious fabrics and a comment on the role and the status of artists in today’s world. This section also hosts works by artists Lucy Orta and Cindy Sherman and introduces the narrative of the exhibition by questioning the role of the body and the garment as material embodiments of identity and emotions. In this context, Susie MacMurray’s “Widow (2009), an elegant dress structure of black nappa leather covered in sharp dressmaker pins, translates the internal pain of love loss into an aggressive external presentation of the garment as object that inflicts pain to the wearer while repelling human contact. The second section “Building” addresses the concept that clothing can be both a form of protection and a way to carry one’s own shelter, referencing the nomadic, portable nature of modern life. On display is “Shelter Me 1” (2005) by Mella Jaarsma, well-known for work establishing parallels between garments and architecture. Jaarsma’s piece depicts shelter not as a house but as the minimal construction needed for individual protection according to the proportions of the human body. Similarly, Azra Akšamija’s “Nomadic Mosque” (2005) portrays a garment as wearable religious architecture, challenging commonly held notions of the physical public and collective spaces of worship.