Every year CIDA commissions unique pieces of work from the talented ‘Ones to Watch’ to become awards for the next winners.
This year the first award is being made by the very talented Domenica Landin. Domenica was spotted by CIDA at the Decorex Future Heritage exhibition in 2018. Her vibrant metal sculptures captured the fluid quality of fine silk and brought colour to life in a unique and inspiring way.
Read about this fresh new ‘One to Watch’ and commissioned maker of the latest Colour in Design Award.
We met Domenica at the Future Heritage show at Decorex in 2018 where she was exhibiting her fluid metal sculptures in jewel colours. A recent graduate of the Royal College we thought she was definitely one to watch and commissioned her to make the first of two Colour in Design Awards for 2019.
When you were asked to make a Colour in Design Award, what were your first thoughts? I was of course very happy and honoured to have been selected as the maker of an award. Colour in Design Award has such a noble cause and is such a great platform for designers and makers. At first, the brief I was given seemed very open and abstract as I was asked to capture the joy of colour and its possibilities. This made me struggle for a few days, but I knew that I wanted to move out of my comfort zone and work differently. This helped me make decisions that defined my own interpretation of the award. What creative approach did you take? I took this project as an opportunity to learn new skills and explore new materials. At first, I excluded all the materials and processes I feel comfortable working with (or which I know they will give me a visual effect I already know the outcome of) and decided then to explore colour within materials I don't normally use. I ended up using acrylic, which was unpredictable as I couldn't completely control the colour tones that I wanted to achieve. I had to leave room to improvisation and embrace mistakes. In a more practical aspect, I learned how to make moulds, how to work with the wood lathe and sand acrylic.
What did you want to capture in the award? I wanted to capture what colour means to me, a constant state of flux that reveals visual changes that are continuously affecting our objects and surroundings.
Could we have a pic of making process here
How did you choose the colours for the award? I had to choose colours that could visually interpret my concept, that of colours playing and interacting with light and movement. Because of the material and scale of the piece, the two colours I chose, red and blue, seemed to work well when the acrylic was layered and combined as it manifested visible colour shades in between.
Could we have a pic of Zena holding the award here?
Have you any advice for the winner Zena Balode? Zena Balode's work is so beautiful! I can only wish her further success in her practice. Perhaps, I could tell her an advice a tutor once told me that was very helpful to me: to think of colour as a skill that should be trained. Hopefully, this can mean something to you as it was to me.
Contact: domenicalandinb@gmail.com
Instagram @nikari_o
