Caterina Roma
“It comes back to this idea that when you create, if you do something that’s personal, it might have a finite purpose or energy. When you create work from something that’s bigger than yourself, then it keeps rippling like a wave.”
Saghar Setareh
“Piece by piece, I tried to let go of the ideas I didn’t care about and I tried to reach within. During one of these meditations, I heard my own voice telling me, ‘But it’s all already here inside you. You have already done this.’”
Kennet Williamsson
“The beauty of flowers is as powerful as the pleasure of touching another human’s body, another who has lived and experienced this world with all the pain that it contains. Pain is also the beauty of this world.”
Maja Larsson and Declan Clarke
“We’re trying to live life simply and with as little impact on the environment as possible by working less and spending less money. Instead, we prioritise spending more time at home with each other and our children.”
Lindsey Calla
“I found a red Aura in Mystras and in my beloved island of Hydra. It is an Aura that Dionysus would consider worthy. It is the colour of his Bacchic wine and his goat-killing epithet.”
Aurélie Alvarez
“When I sit down in front of the canvas and start painting, it is purely instinctive. I often start off with one idea and then I take off on my path. It is an intuitive journey, an often surprising, astonishing and wonderful adventure.”
Christine Ferrer
“In an ideal world, I’d like to work even harder and with fewer restraints, fewer filters, fewer fears, and perhaps free myself sometimes from aesthetic concerns.”
Dorothy Cross
“I have a friend who talks a lot about spirituality and art and how they are inseparable. I often liken the art world to bad visibility when you’re scuba diving, searching for treasure – you glide along and then sometimes something emerges. You have to keep hoping. I believe we have to do what we can during our short time on this planet to attempt illumination and hope for progress.”
Jules Milhau
“Ever since I first put my hands full of colour on the walls of my house, I’ve been on this path of painting. For me, it’s about accepting doubt and embracing the question marks. It means believing that you always have something to say.”
Helene Bret
Some paths take longer than others, and every day I forge the iron of my patience. But it’s sweet and joyful to observe today how these sometimes winding fragments of life are taking shape in a more global work.
Tara Badcock
Meet Australian artist Tara Badcock with an exclusive excerpt from her story inside Issue 9 of FAIRE
Tara Badcock is a visual and conceptual artist based in northern Tasmania who graduated from the University of Tasmania at Hobart with a postgraduate degree in fine art. After spending many years living in cities pursuing a creative career, Tara spent a three-year stint in Paris, which was a textile-fuelled, life-altering experience. Tara has spent the past 12 years raising children and endeavouring to maintain a creative career in textile art, as well as exploring sculpture and installation. Tara has recently returned to live on the family farm with her children as a single parent to be able to focus on building a more symbiotic and restorative existence of art, gardening and self-sufficiency skills
“I have a passion for collecting antique hats. I feel the most like ‘me’ when I’m wearing one of my Edwardian beauties skewered to my hair with a lethal-looking hat pin or two, complete with feathers and lace or a trailing chiffon scarf.”
Corinne Hopkins
Meet American violin-maker Corinne Hopkins with an exclusive excerpt from her story inside Issue 10 of FAIRE
A part-time job in a violin shop opened up the magical, arcane world of lutherie to American violin-maker Corinne Hopkins. She fell in love with the craft and its community and has taken on a lifelong apprenticeship where the variables and combinations of materials are endless.
“It’s a marathon, not a sprint. It’s so easy to get burned out. The work is addictive – it draws you in it has the potential to consume you.”
Ernesto Collado
Meet Catalan perfumer Ernesto Collado with an exclusive excerpt from his story inside Issue 9 of FAIRE
Ernesto Collado had a career as a theatre actor, director and contemporary artist until the disease phantosmia robbed him of his sense of smell in 2014. A self-taught botanist, he embarked on a quest to heal himself through daily walks in the countryside of his native Empordà in Northern Spain. Today he is an environmental activist, educator and accidental perfumer who pours his indefatigable creativity into creating 100% pure, natural scents inspired by the landscape as a way to help people reconnect with their environment and with nature through their sense of smell.
“I believe rules are made to be broken. I have always been anti-academic. When I was studying, I was always a pain in the ass, asking the wrong questions (if there is such a thing as bad questions). I believe that curiosity is so much more important than preparation and education. Curiosity keeps us young. It keeps us luminous and bright”
Philip Hughes
Meet British artist Philip Hughes with an exclusive excerpt from his story inside Issue 11 of FAIRE
British artist Philip Hughes is a self-taught painter whose work is an exploration of landscapes – their structure, geology and the traces left behind by man’s interventions from ancient cultures to the present. Philip has juggled making art with an extraordinary career in computing. He founded the British computer giant Logica in the 1960s before stepping away in 1990 to dedicate himself full time to art. For the last 50 years, he has shared his life between London and Provence and he invites Faire into his colourful atelier in the medieval village of Ménerbes.
Marta Cucchia of Laboratorio Giuditta Brozzetti
Meet Italian heritage weaver Marta Cucchia who is the guardian of Laboratorio Giuditta Brozzetti with this exclusive excerpt from her story inside Issue 11 of FAIRE
Laboratorio Giuditta Brozzetti is a beloved weaving workshop in Perugia, Italy where master weaver Marta Cucchia continues her great-grandmother Giuditta Brozzetti’s mission to preserve the ancient weaving tradition of Umbria. Like so many heritage crafts, this ancient traditional weaving risked extinction in the early 20th century in the face of industrialisation and globalisation. Fortunately, four generations of incredible women have fought to save this craft in a mighty show of innovation, passion, talent and entrepreneurship. Today, under the dedicated watch of Marta Cucchia, the Giuditta Brozzetti workshop remains one of the last hand-weaving ateliers on Jacquard looms in Italy.
Marthe Desmoulins & Franck Dorat
Meet French creative couple Marthe Desmoulins and Franck Dorat with an exclusive sneak peek into their story inside Issue 11 of FAIRE
Twenty years ago, Marthe Desmoulins and Franck Dorat left behind creative careers that spanned Paris, New York and Japan for a slower life in a small town in the heart of Provence.
Marthe has spent most of her professional life championing artists and creatives. She founded her legendary first boutique, Absinthe, in Paris in 1989 before going on to be an artistic director and buyer for the New York concept store Destination and then Bazar et Garde Manger in Japan.
Franck is a creative jack of all trades, having worked in cinema set design and 3D special effects. Inspired by the work of Alexander Calder, he creates sculptures in wire and ceramics from his atelier in Pernes-les-Fontaines. Today, they collaborate on and curate L’Atelier de Chauffe, a gallery filled with storied ceramics, art, curiosities and antique finds.
Wayne Pate & Rebecca Taylor
Meet French creative couple, artist Wayne Pate and designer Rebecca Taylo with an exclusive sneak peek into their story inside Issue 11 of FAIRE
In 2020, just before the world shut down, American artist Wayne Pate and his wife, fashion designer Rebecca Taylor, saw an opportunity to take a much-needed pause and change of perspective and moved to New Zealand to be closer to family. Together, they’ve found a way to slow down and savour life, raising their young family away from the bustle of a big city. Collaborators in life as well as creativity, Rebecca recently launched a small clothing label, A’COURT, as an antidote to the voracious traditional fashion model.
Marie Ducaté
Meet French artist Marie Ducate with an exclusive excerpt from her story inside Issue 9 of FAIRE
“Art is unequivocally the great passion of my life and I am dedicated to practising and championing it.”
Jacques Brejoux
“Many of us start in the paper world for all the wrong reasons. We get into it for aesthetic reasons because we are bourgeois intellectuals and we often have no sense of reality. Yet reality obliges us to go in a certain direction and practice allows us to refine our papermaking.”
Louisa Creed
Meet British artist Louisa Creed, a celebrated British rag-rug makers with an exclusive excerpt from her story inside Issue 9 of FAIRE
Louisa Creed is a celebrated British rag-rug makers, beloved for her sensitive handling of colour and a painterly appreciation of form. Her first book, My Rag Rug Life, will be published by Rylett Press in July 2023.
“Living alone as I do now, rag rugging is even more important to me, however limited I am. It is a kind of addiction – my fingers need to be working, and I need to be creating.”