Terrific Design

There has been a shift in contemporary design, something hazy like a summer rainbow and hard to label. It is not kitsch, something that has always taken a side swipe at beauty, because it does not have popular connotations. Rather, it appears to be a high and virtuous manifestation of creativity applied to objects of everyday use. It feeds off a variety of different abilities - woodwork, sculpture, carving, assemblage, collage, recycling, transformation, embroidery, knitting - and crosses a variety of trends, from Surrealism to Dadaism, from Zoomorphism to Anthropomorphism. It uses the most disparate of materials, with a focus on recovery. Functionality becomes optional; the objective is wonder, and perhaps disgust: that healthy jolt that strikes the stomach before it strikes the mind.