Nina Braun

My first blogpost about Berlin and the things I saw there, is about Nina Braun. She was a speaker at the Pictoplasma Festival. I wasn't familiar with her work but during her lecture she introduced me to her wonderful work.

After art college she started her own skateboard clothing company called SUMO. After she left SUMO and discontinued the company she stayed true to the use of wool and fabrics, sewing and knitting in her art work.

For instance the sneakers (Sneak like a panther) where the result of living above a rude neighbour who complained about noise all the time. She decided to knit slippers for her friends to wear when they came over to visit. These slippers later resulted into a project of knitted iconic sneakers called 'sneak like a panther'. This project propelled her work into a fine art context.

Her textile pictures and objects are often handknitted which give them an almost child-like and naive look but on the other hand it looks abstract. I was extremely inspired by her work and almost wanted to start knitting immediately!
The video below is called Business today, which concerns the credit crunch. Unfortunately the video is in a low resolution.

Back from Berlin

You may or may not have noticed but I have been in Berlin for 4 days. A sudden, unexpected and definately inspiring trip! For two days we went to the Pictoplasma Festival where we saw a lot of great character design by great illustrators, artists and designers. And we saw a lot of animations which were funny, beautiful, cute, endearing, scary, weird, amazing and sometimes psychedelic.

Here are some random pictures I took on our trip. I'll be posting more this week about my trip.