Featured Artist Interview: Pattern Nostrum

Two Tuscan artists make up Pattern Nostrum, a pattern project that does the same to the eyes as the Magic Eye books. The duo is made up of Chiara Lanzillotta, a graduate in Costume Design Fashion Culture and Style from the University of Florence, and Stefano Roiz, an art director and photographer with a degree in Graphic Design and Communication from the Venice International School of Graphic Design. Their patterns morph and move off the page in detailed repeats. Their project is a reflection of their relationship, and for their interest in prints that extend towards every application: industrial design, architecture, fashion design, surface design, editorial design, and textile design.

PB: What inspired you to create a textile design collection?

PN: Pattern Nostrum is an artistic research project that borders between painting and design. Chiara is a painter, a costume and stage designer, and she works in theater. I am an art director and photographer and I work in the advertising field. We brought our creative forces together by creating a visual design project applicable in various fields. We wanted to create something truly ours, something standing as a symbol of our personal relationship and that is why we called it “Pattern Nostrum”. Nostrum is the Latin word for “our”. We want our artistic production to come alive, to extend beyond the painting’s surface, we want to infect reality with our artwork.

PB: Where does Pattern Nostrum’s aesthetic inspiration come from?

PN: Pattern Nostrum’s aesthetic inspiration stems from Chiara’s painting style. The creative process begins by applying stencil templates to the pictorial matrix. The distortion of the groundwork generates explosions of colors and psychedelic symphonies in-between painting and design. Pattern Nostrum is a heterogeneous universe filled with images arising from our oneiric life, which multiplies endlessly by using digital media.

PB: What artistic process goes into creating the patterns?

PN: We have created a digital image processing technique applicable to paintings and based on a model of generative design, which brings the real and the virtual together and allows the pictorial matrix to find its way out of the painting and extend forever. Every painting by Chiara is photographed, digitized and decomposed and recomposed through a mathematical and geometrical process that gives a collection of harmonic patterns. They are all obtained from the same pictorial matrix, divided into three main formats according to the graphic density they produce and giving also some indication of their use.

PB: How does your professional partnership work? What inspires you?

PN: We complement each other in every way. Chiara has a much more artistic and academic approach, while I have a more contemporary vision of design. What we have always been inspired by is the possibility of creating a world of images reflecting our personal and private aesthetic vision, which we translate into a recognizable whole by exploiting the great opportunities offered by the latest production technology, the Internet and the emerging markets.

PB: How does this project relate to your career as a fashion designer?

PN: The two activities interact and influence each other, I have always been pursuing both careers concurrently and I believe that they will soon be merging into one.

PB: What artists and designers do you draw inspiration from?

PN: Milton Glaser, William Morris, Keith Haring, Yoichiro Kawaguchi, Yayoi Kusama, Busby Berkeley, Wes Wilson, Victor, Lee Conklin, Pablo Amaringo, and Barbara Mendes, whom I would like to quote as fully expressing our vision of the project, “to me minimal art is a joke, because life isn’t minimal, today it’s maximal!”

PB: Which is your favorite collection? What would you like to do with it?

PN: It is hard to say which collection we like best. We put a lot of hard work into creating every single artwork/collection and we see each one as our “baby”, it’s like being asked to choose between your own children. What we really want to do is to work with professionals in various fields, to “pattern” every single element of reality and make it ours, or rather, Nostrum.

PB: Are you planning to create more pattern collections? What are your plans for the future?

PN: Absolutely, yes, we are carrying on our research work on painting and design and constantly exploring  new graphic ways and solutions without giving up our current pattern construction process. We have only just started on the project, but we are receiving very positive feedback and new business opportunities are appearing on the horizon, but we would rather not talk about them at this stage.

For more of their complete collections, check out their website at www.patternnostrum.com.