desert infused art + design inspiration
The West is calling…
Our Studio Manager and former West Coaster, Laura, headed out to visit old friends in the high desert of Arizona where she dispatched lots of gorgeous plant pics and desert inspo home to our currently soggy city.
Inspired by Laura’s trip, my own future New Mexico travel plans, and several recent + upcoming desert located projects, we’ve pulled a bunch of Ink + Indigo art concepts we think would work beautifully out in the sun-soaked West.
First I was thinking of the “Atmospheres” series from our licensing line. Something about the curving aqua forms reminds me of turquoise jewelry, the metallic gold overlays recall starry skies, and the gold leaf circular forms echo moon forms. This is one of our larger series with 14 images that can be cropped, recolored, and scaled for any number of projects. I love seeing them as a large, impactful trio as shown below:
As a true materials girl I am always drawn to using non-traditional substrates in my work. I am thinking worn leather and rough rope used in sophisticated, striking ways could bring in rich textures and tones without going full kitcshy Western theme. The woven leather piece was SUCH a challenge but I love how it turned out! My finger tips were toast after that one! The large scale wall textile Fringe in rusts, ochre, slates, and greens feels like it could totally be adapted to a desert property-maybe go even warmer and add in more metallic gold? Would be striking in a lobby or prefunction space.
In addition to the “Atmospheres” Series above I think the “Cali Sunset” series would be gorgeous and graphic on paper or canvas. The expansive “Overtone” Series would be fab as a bold grouping or as single large color fields humming with color and depth. These are beautiful on wood panel, canvas, or as giclee on paper.
Our inlaid paperclay series really lend themselves perfectly to bring in elements of any specific location and we loved this recent large commission for a desert property where we got to use cacti, succulents, and prickly scrub plants in the clay and finish in a truly desert inspired palette ranging from teals and pinks to earthy golds and browns.
An idea we’ve been playing around with but haven’t had the chance to do on large scale is this rope imprint clay series. I imprinted clay with various ropes and when the clay was dried I torched to bring out the rope patterns in the clay. So what you’re seeing is imprinted IN the clay although in pics its very hard to tell its not 3D on top of the clay. So cool and I think this would be really cool in a larger format and additional colors.
So much of what we do here is incorporating a sense of place into custom commissioned art work. We’d love to see what places are inspiring you and projects you have upcoming that we can collaborate on. Reach out anytime to emily@inkandindigo.com with any inquiries!