Brain Scoops from Princess Snapperhead: Creative Artistic Design

Have I told my children are creatively brilliant? Completely biased imperfect mum of course ;-) Last weekend the high school (Cairns State High) our children attend held the annual C.A.D. (Creative Artistic Design) night. At the beginning of each school year the four categories for that particular years C.A.D. are announced and any student in the school may enter one or more categories. It is a fantastic ‘art as fashion’ performance night and students typically spend months and months developing their concepts and developing them into wearable pieces. It has become somewhat of a tradition in our house to be involved in C.A.D. each year. They present their concept designs to me and I help them to work out how the hell we are going to make what they've designed. The living areas of the house become over-run with drawings, costumes, material, paper etc for veritable months as the sewing machine goes into overdrive and the hot glue gun burns out. Typically R gets fed up with the whole process at about the time when he can't find a spare spot to sit down for dinner or in fact do anything else.

Category 'Venus' the goddesses: , Proserpina, Ceres, Hera,Venus & Diana flanked by their two light-bearing hand-maidens (Savannah d'Scarlett left, Khaila-maree La Spina right)

First daughter, Venus, and second daughter, India, started it in 2009 and fortuitously the categories that year all started with the letter V and included the category ‘Venus’ so that choice was a bit of a no-brainer for Venus. Her designs were based on the goddess Venus and her various sister goddesses and set to Carmina Burana (click link to listen)

Selena Griffiths, Sarah Hansen, Venus d'Scarlett, Hannah Trout and India d'Scarlett

Hannah Trout (front) & India d'Scarlett

India chose the category Voodoo inspired by and set to the theme music from ‘Pans Labyrinth’a most brilliant Spanish movie you simply must watch if you haven't already seen it - your life simply isn't complete without it in my opinion for what it's worth ;-) - listen to the music below:

Young son Torsten was one of the models wearing a helmet painted with a brain on it and both he and another model, Jess Lazarus, wore ‘skin suits’ covered with veins and arteries.

Young son Torsten modelling in the brain helmet

Jess Lazarus models the eyes from 'Pan's Labyrinth'

Ashley Piggot as the Voodoo doll

The following year in 2010 India entered ‘Fairytale’ with her rendition on rogue fairytale heroines.

Megan Cottier as Goldilocks

Isabella Horler as Rapunzel

Savannah d'Scarlett as the Little Mermaid

Hayley Bull as the Snow Queen

In 2011 India entered two categories. The first was History and India created four outfits in folded paper from maps and plain paper.

Jess Lazarus giving birth to the world

Imogen Bell exploring the world in her map dress as one of the first ship explorers

Rachel Chhina as freedom and liberty in the new world

Madeleine Arnott early bi-plane explorer

The second category India entered was Hybrid, using the metamorphosis scene from the art house movie 'Mahler' to launch the catwalk costumes, a hybrid mix of roses on skeletal dresses. Each dress had a vertebral column attached to its back and one also had ribs on one side of the front. The gauze skirts and tops were covered in hundreds of handmade and dyed paper roses. The catwalk was staged to the music of Coco Rosies 'Werewolf' -(click on the link below to hear the exquisite music)

Metamorphosis scene from the 'Mahler' movie

Savannah d'Scarlett modelling blue roses

Chloe Brown modelling orange roses

Bella Cole modelling red roses

Maryanne Duncan modelling the pink rose and rib dress

Vertebrae down the back of all the costumes

India d'Scarlett (red skirt, middle) receiving the Category award for Hybrid

This year was third daughter Savannah's turn to carry on the family tradition, entering two categories, ‘Oceanic’ and ‘Déjà vu’ and received the Art Teachers Encouragement Award and a gorgeous watch from a local jeweller.

Savannah d'Scarlett

For Oceanic she created four outfits – an octopus dress, a jellyfish dress with blue lights around the edge of it, a sea anemone dress and a coral on a rock dress. This was set to the music of The Foals 'Big,big love' (click on link below to listen to this)

Savannah in coral on rock dress

Back

Zoe McKinley in jellyfish dress

Poppy Thallon in sea anemone dress (120 tentacles hand sewn on!)

Khaila-maree La Spina in octopus dress

Sensational minimalism!

Maryanne modelling the Déjà vu costume

For Déjà vu she created four identical costumes based on an ephemeral version of the existentialist movies

‘The Matrix’and ‘Sucker Punch’. The green computer matrix writing on the girls legs along with the reappearance of the black cat on each costume inspires the ‘Wait, haven’t we see this costume before?’ question over and over again. The white rabbit appears in both the headpieces and as a tattoo on the left shoulder as per the film inviting the audience to follow the costume down the rabbit hole of déjà vu. This was appropriately set to the music ‘White Rabbit’ from the movie ‘Sucker Punch’(click on link below to listen to this music). The finishing touch to the costumes was created by giving the models an eerily surreal quality by using white contact lenses.