Zizzi Hitchin!

"Food should be fun!" Thomas Keller

So I've just finished my fourth project working with Zizzi Ristorante! During my time working with the team, I have come to learn what a fun company this franchise is! Looking at elements of their practice such as their artistic Fresh Talent collective and the musical Zizzi sessions, it is quite clear that this is a highly innovative company of the times.

This is what I wanted to illustrate in my work here at Hitchin.

Hitchin has a thriving market which dates as far back as the 14th century. I illustrated elements of food that have been sold at the market over the years, highlighting the fun and frivolous in each item.

My illustrations have been printed on vinyl and applied to the windows of the restaurant. In addition, my funtastic food has been printed on bunting which hangs outside the premises, mimicing the bustling town market!

...will have some photographs here soon!!

Zizzi Leeds The Light Photographs!!!

I went to Leeds last week to visit the fantastic new Zizzi Restaurant in The Light Center. It is epic!!!! I am delighted to have been apart of such a fantastic project. I urge anyone near Leeds to go check it out and tell everyone about the fantastic work Zizzi is doing with the fresh talent collective.

 You can check out some more of the Fresh Talent work for Zizzi at http://kitchen.zizzi.co.uk/

Leela & Bee

Recently I was asked to create an illustration for the Zizzi Kenilworth. I invited one of my best friends Anna O Neil (Bee) to team up with me for this venture. I have been friends with Bee for a long time. Initially, we got to know each other during our portfolio course at the Central Technical Institute in our hometown of Waterford. After our year in the CTI we moved to Wales to study at the West Wales School of the Arts. That was where the fun began!!!! We lived together with two of our other best buddies for three years and it was probably the greatest time I've had so far!  
I began by studying fashion design at WWSOTA and struggled with the rigidity of the subject for two years. I was lost in a mass of unaccounted seem allowances and miscalculated patterns....I just wanted to illustrate and be creatively freeeeeeee. Bee kept telling me to move to textiles, actually from week one in first year she told me I should be there but I had pledged allegiance with the fashion department an was uneasy about moving.

Eventually at the end of the second year she finally convinced me and so I made the move to Textiles. It was the best decision I've ever made and I will be forever grateful to Bee to giving me the kick to do so!

This reaffirms our similarities and I have always thought that if we could team up and collaborate it could amount to something fantastic! Thankfully, Zizzi thought so too and so allowed us to work together for their Kenilworth revamp.

It was one of the most enjoyable ventures I've worked on so far...I'm hoping team Leela & Bee will get some more opportunities for creative mash ups!!!

you can see some of Anna's work here... http://www.flickr.com/photos/annaoneill/

Work for Zizzi Canterbury

Illustrations of John Cogan created by the fresh talent collective

Zizzi Canterbury has resently reopened its doors! John Cogan was the former owner of the buliding and his memory is strongly reassured in the new restaurant. There are twelve individual portraits of him gracing the walls, created by twelve of the illustrators from the creative collective.
You can read more about Zizzi Canterbury here...    http://www.zizzi.co.uk/restaurants/canterbury#

Zizzi Leeds The Light

I am very pleased to share my new work for Zizzi with you!! I am just one of their new recruits to the Fresh Talent Collective. I am so proud to be apart of such a talented bunch which includes amazing illustrators such as Lizzie Mary Cullen (www.lizziemarycullen.com) who came to meet us at New Designers One Year On last year to give us a pep talk! If you haven't encountered her work yet do check out her website, she is quite the amazing lady.



Off the peg guy hangin' out at the bar

So here's a little bit to explain my concepts behind my illustrations for the restaurant...

“I would spread the cloths under your feet:


But I, being poor, have only my dreams

I have spread my dreams under your feet

Thread softly because you tread on my dreams.”

William Butler Yeats

"The Cloths of Heaven," poem by W.B Yeats

So often in life, a creative steps out from the crowd and offers something new and exiting to the masses. When the industrial revolution unfolded, textiles manufacturing was at the forefront of the uprising in Leeds. It was then that broadcloth was dreamt, produced, sold and worn.


my illustration of dressmaker working on HANDMADE broadcloth dress

 A beautifully quintessential English prototype, the material was woven into the industrialised society, creating jobs, fuelling the development of crafts and offering an elegant material to suit the fashionable fillies of that time.

I can envision the hustle and bustle of the Corn Exchange and the city markets during this time, when the town’s cloth market was described as “a prodigy of its kind, unequalled in the world.”

But as we understand so well today, regardless of the innovation and hard graft that goes into a product, it can and will be produced cheaper by foreign our counterparts. And this is exactly what happened with broadcloth manufacturing in Leeds. No longer able to compete, the highly skilled work force were made redundant to create off the peg, mass produced fashion apparel instead, in a bid to somehow keep up with their competition.

This is the element I have chosen to illustrate in the restaurant. It happens too much in today’s society that skills which an area prides themselves upon, become diluted and often forgotten by our quick turn around society. Many people in Leeds may not even realise this heritage that created their wonderful city, and that is an awful shame. I am illustrating this in a quirky matter to draw attention to the subject, and to make people think twice about supporting what’s locally their own and helping it to succeed and thrive.






Leeds City Market


Leeds City Market is one piece of history which has survived the years of change and continues to flourish today. It is the largest undercover market in the county and houses around 800 traders. I felt it was very important to illustrate this fantastic Edwardian building and so it is featured prominently in my work for the restaurant.

For now you will have to make do with my drawings, I'm travelling over to Leeds next week to take some snaps of the completed work in all its threaded glory!!! I should have mentioned it was all stitched on leather panels, some of which have been mounted to chairs so it's going to be a very new way of presenting my illustrations. Can't wait to see it all!!! Hopefully some of you might get the chance to see it too if your in Leeds!

You can read more about Leeds The Light and about Zizzi's fantastic Fresh Talent collective here...

http://www.zizzi.co.uk/restaurants/leeds-2 

a day of unproductive productiveness!!!

                                                  Tim Walker shoot for Vogue May 2006

So I sat down with a big mug of tea last night to trawl through my endless back issues of Vogue, Tank and Lula. I haven't done it in ages, and even though I've read through them all hundreds of times, I continue to be excited by the dreamy location shoots and brave garments that have been fashioned by some of the worlds best creatives.

Sasha Pivovarova in Chanel, January 2007

Although I have gone down the textiles route of stitching, ink is where my journey into illustration began. I spent the first two years of college studying fashion design. I never got around the precision of pattern cutting and found it quite soul destroying because I could not master it... illustration class however was where I 'blossomed.' I spent many an hour sketching class mates prancing up and down on top of tables wearing as many different textured items of clothing as possible and absolutely loved every second of it!!! The messiness and unsure nature of illustration speaks to me more than a perfectly tailored garment ever could.

messy work space!

I must say I really enjoyed my day of doodling..although that was not was I was supposed to do at all. I am (or rather should be) constructing my market research surveys and questionnaires in line with the business model I am setting up this year. My business advisor and best friend Orla Caffrey has given me a massive book on creating and conducting such things, but being the crafty person I am am finding it quite impossible to make friends with this book!! Orla, if you're reading this I'm sorry and promise to get going on it tomorrow!!!!

Tim Walker shoot for Vogue, December 2004

come to the dark side....

So I joined twitter today because I've heard it's like really important to have as a designer? I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing AND I have no friends...well actually I have one friend but he seemed to come on board pretty quick after I joined so I assume it's like a rent a friend thing twitter to do so you don't become disillusioned and leave.
Anyway, if you have a twitter account and would like to befriend me...or share your pearls of technomological wisdom please come and find me!!! http://twitter.com/ LisaThreadables


oh yes, and the illustration above is one that I drew for my final major project in uni. It was based around the poetry of Emily Dickinson, hence the morbid expression! 

New Designers 2009

The class of 2009 at New Designers, London. 2009

So I'm back and have finaly recovered from a hectic 2 weeks in London (including New Designers). The show went really well. The graduate work was unbelievable- everyone was so different and equally amazing, it was both ispiring and terrifying!!! The were lots of people around also and it was great to hear such good feedback from the public, students and people workinf in the industry. I sold some work and have had some offers for other exhibitons. I was also selected, amoungst 26 other graduates from New Designers, to show our work at the Kintting and Stitch show in October which will be on in London and Dublin, very excited about that.

We had a really big stand this year which was great Because we got to hang so much of our original work...

and here's my work on display...

The show is up and atom!!

So the college show is now running into its second week. The work on display is AMAZING and, although I am very bias, I do believe it's one of the best years yet. The opening night was last Friday where everyone's tough year of work was awarded with a celebration of live music and cheap wine, lots of fun was had by all!! Here's some photos of my installation, the pictures don't really do it justice as it was impossible to photograph it in the round due to the enclosed nature of the space (7 boards each one 7ft x 4ft creating an enclosed hexagonal installation.) Anyways it will give you an idea, talk soon, lis x

...and to end, here is a family photo of my three best buds and me (the ginger!)