Hello! The past few months have had some big changes. I’ve moved into a new and bigger studio space in the Brooklyn Navy Yard.  I now have a lot more room to spread out and I’m sharing with a painter named Jackie Meier. She does fantastic large scale abstract graphical paintings and she’s having a show at Nancy Margolis Gallery that opens on March 28th. I definitely recommend checking it out.

Additionally, we’ve adopted a new member into our family! Meet Lola, the Wirehaired Pointing Griffon. She’s about four months old (three months in this picture) and is so much fun and so much work! She’s growing so fast and has tripled in size since we got her two months ago. I’m a little obsessed and have been going kinda instagram crazy documenting her growth.

I have been working… Last month I showed at capsule, a trade show in NYC. If you have a store or know any stores that would be a good fit for carrying my bags, please email me. I’m still taking wholesale orders and will be starting production soon on my AW2013 collection.

I cannot tell you how long I’ve been meaning to write about my dear, beautiful friends at Eko-Lab. We’ve been working out of the same studio space for about a year and a half and the more I get to know them, the more I appreciate their work. Melissa Kirgan and Xing-Zhen Chung-Hilyard are a rare breed. They are artists whose medium happens to be what is typically one of the most careless and wasteful industries- fashion.

These ladies don’t follow trends and they don’t mass produce. They do what comes from their hearts and create beautiful, unique works of wearable art.

They often collaborate with artist, Jennifer Wen Ma, who will sometimes come in and hand paint a limited number of garments.

For pieces with a larger production run, they might hand silk screen Jennifer’s art onto yards of fabric. All of this happens right in our studio and it is so beautiful to see in action.

Eko-lab have recently been focusing more on accessories. They make one-of-a-kind jewelry pieces, often using recycled materials such as slices of glass from bottles and other found objects.

They have also recently started working with laser cutting felted wool to make beautiful stoles which were sold at an exhibition Jennifer recently had in Beijing.

These ladies are truly inspirational and I am so lucky to know them. Check out their shop and facebook page.

;a

Last night I stopped by a friends book launch at West Elm on the Upper West Side. The book, called Bringing Nature Home, is a collaboration between the super talented floral designer, Nicolette Owen and photographer, Ngoc Minh Ngo. West Elm was beautifully decorated with Nicolette’s arrangements and Martha Stewart even stopped by. Nicolette is the most talented floral designer I know and I am so excited for this beautiful book. I was even lucky enough to have her do the flowers for my wedding.

Robert Clarke, a long time friend of my husband’s from London, paints dogs… and they are fantastic. Robert has a very casual attitude about his paintings, talking about how quickly he makes these dog portraits, with some of them taking just minutes. When he first told me about his paintings, before seeing them, I almost thought he was joking. Once I saw them, I understood. What I understood was Robert’s incredible ability to capture not just the gesture and life in the animal, but he really seems to get its personality. That is true talent in my book and the less time it takes him to make a portrait, the more brilliant it is.

I once heard a quote about talent and ability in relation to compensation – I cannot remember who said it, but it always stuck with me… It said something to the affect that you cannot put a price or an hourly wage on a craft because its value is in the culmination of all the previous years of honing and perfecting that craft. Robert has been a painter for a long time.

Mr. Clarke will be exhibiting his dogs at Rebecca Hossack Gallery, 262 Mott Street in Nolita (NYC) and the opening is this Wednesday, November 16, from 6-8pm. It is DOG FRIENDLY, so please bring your pup! RSVP on Facebook.

See Robert Clarke’s work.

Wow. I just discovered Theresa Honeywell’s work through the Textile Arts Center blog. I think I need to learn to knit.

We dropped by Bushwick today to check out Beta Spaces, an alternative art festival where you can visit studios and see a wide range of local art installations. I think these bedazzled shoes on a telephone line may have been my favorite.

Chris Jordan is one of the most important artists of the century. He’s a photographer who sometimes manipulates images to depict the poignant reality of what we, as humans are doing to the planet. Plastic Bottles, 2007. “Depicts two million plastic beverage bottles, the number used in the US every five minutes.”

Seeing his work for the first time made me uncomfortably aware of how careless “normal” behavior is. I made a conscious decision to try to avoid single use plastic bottles, plastic bags, packaging etc. If you can’t avoid the packaging, please recycle it. Check your local recycling guidelines to find out which things are recyclable. (a lot of things we think are recyclable are not)

See also: The Story of Stuff : Bottled Water

Marfa is a place where any stress you might have immediately melts away. The air is so warm and dry in this incredible little town is in the middle of the western Texas desert. At night, the sky is filled with stars. Donald Judd basically “put Marfa on the map” when he moved there to build his Chinati Foundation (with backing from the Dia Foundation). There you can see Donald Judd’s 100 aluminum boxes, John Chamberlain’s steel sculptures from old cars, as well as other artists from that period.

We stayed in a beautifully renovated vintage trailer at this fantastic campground called El Cosmico.

PS – on the way there, we passed the “Prada Marfa” art installation. Fantastic!