Donna Wilson makes these highly decorative illustrations that she applies to bags, fashion garments, fabrics and wallpapers. Her work focuses on nature, pattern, line, shape and design. I think it's this thread of 'trend' and 'cuteness' that makes her designs transfer so easily to any kind of homeware product.
Consumers purchase products from her website that are decorated with her funky lines and animal characters because they want them to decorate their homes with.
Modern-day art-enthusiasts don't buy as many prints or original paintings, but instead purchase the illustrations they like printed onto cushions or blankets to decorate their homes.
Her work feels like it would be at home on Paperchase products or Ohh Deer, very modern and fitting the trend of applied illustration. Bold colours, cute animals that everyone wants on their stationery.
She's big on print and pattern!
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Wilson's puppets move into the realm of puppets through felt and textile fabrics. Her charming and friendly characters are knitted and sewn into 3D models that can be moved and performed with.
This is a really unusual and unconventional material for puppets, something I've never seen before. Ljubljana puppet theatre have maintained Wilson's aesthetic, her visual signature and brought it to life for the stage.
This performance of 'Goose the Bear' uses a very illustrative approach to set, character and costume.
Echoing Wilson's handmade, hand-drawn lines with thread and material.
Something about this performance that really intrigues me is that the puppeteers aren't dressed in black to blend into the background, they are wearing patterns! Typically, the performers wear something really plain to disappear and not divert attention away from the focal puppets. Ljubljana have chosen not to do this and involve the actors as PART OF THE SET.
Since the set is so heavily patterned and covered in Wilson's illustrations, perhaps the most logical thing to do to make the actors blend in would be to dress them in similar patterns. Wearing plain black would not make the actors blend into this scene, so dressing in the same marks that adorn the fabrics is the way that the Ljubljana puppet company have solved it.
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The puppet company Ljubljana is based in Slovenia, a different culture to where Donna Wilson's original illustrations originate (Aberdeenshire). The class of culture might disrupt the communication and bring that make comprehension difficult. BUT PUPPETS ARE UNIVERSAL and can translate through different languages.
I wonder if the performance involves speech? If it does, then there will be a different language presenting her puppets. But if not, then the puppets visually do all of the speaking and don't need verbal dialogue to define them, which makes them completely universal and relies on the interpretation of the audience.
The animals might have different connotations in Slovenia than they do in Aberdeenshire.
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