The Portals Collection
Pattern Design • Creative Direction
The Portals Collection began the way most of my work does: on watercolor paper. For years my painting practice ran alongside MINNA as a private discipline: a place to think without a brief, to follow shape and color without an end goal. The paintings accumulated into a world of their own. Architecturally abstract shapes, illustrative florals, quilt-like structures, fields of color. Each painting a small portal: a threshold, a window, a place of passage.
From Paper to Surface
Translating a painting into a wallcovering or fabric is different from designing for a loom. With printing, the fidelity to the original is high: every irregularity in the brushwork, every watercolor bleed, every place where color pooled beyond its edge becomes part of the pattern.
Sustainability was important for this collection as well, selecting vendors that produced zero waste water and allowed printing to order. The wallpaper is printed on non-woven fibre paper chosen for its matte, textural surface, which is the closest thing to the watercolor paper the paintings are made on. Fabrics printed on 100% Irish Linen. The result still feels painted. The line between original artwork and finished surface is deliberately thin.
Photography & Campaign Launch
The photography, art direction, and styling for the collection were conceived as an extension of my own artistic practice and of years spent collecting objects and ephemera. Every flatlay was considered as part of the collection's visual language, intentionally mimicking the way interior designers work: pulling fabric and wallpaper swatches alongside ceramics, tile, flooring samples, and found materials to build a sense of a room. The objects in each image are drawn from my own collection, building worlds that bring the patterns to life rather than simply documenting them
Installations
Quilt installed at Scribner's Lodge
Painted Grid Charcoal / Design by Cathie Hong
Portals Moonlight / design by
Tower Earth Fabric
Tower Earth installed at Scribner's Lodge
Portals Terracotta
Tower Sand
Vision Flax