10 favourite things
Soul Safari creative strategist Vanessa Holden on her art-related passions.
1. MIRANDA SKOCZEK I have an Insta love affair with Miranda and the way her opulent, vibrant colour and gestural sensuality invoke home and joyful, spirited living [Skoczek’s artwork Gathering and Assembling is pictured]. 2. KEN DONE POSTER This was created on-site at the inaugural 2016 Soul Safari event in Sydney. A total original from a total icon. 3. SKARFE Located in Sydney’s Potts Point, this is part-art gallery, part-dream destination. I love their work with artists on limited editions, such as this Wallpaper scarf artwork by New York-based Jess Johnson. 4. ARTISTS’ STUDIOS I visit artists’ studios and spaces more than galleries. Next on my list is a trip to the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum [in Santa Fe, New Mexico]. 5. CAFÉ SABARSKY This classicist dream, tucked into the Neue Galerie in New York, is exquisitely outfitted with period pieces. A slice of sachertorte is inspiration enough to visit. 6. MEXICO CITY Its bracing modernity and bold, beautifully brutal traditional arts and culture make it, for me, the world’s most exciting art destination. I go to Frida Kahlo’s studio every time I visit, to see her watercolour palette set just as she left it. 7. POP ART It was one of my first loves. I’m a fan of the graphic, colour-infused work of artist, nun and civil rights, anti-war activist Sister Corita Kent [ her 1963 artwork Manifest as Language is pictured]. 8. KENYA PETERSEN This 16-year-old Sydney sculptor’s simple, sophisticated forms [such as Wire Sculpture: Navy, pictured] belie her age. 9. OUTSIDER ART I am a big fan of outsider art; work by self-taught artists. Leonard Knight’s epic Salvation Mountain, an exuberant adobe-covered monument to love and spirituality in the heat of the Colorado Desert, is incredibly moving. 10. ART BOOKS My current obsession is The Decisive Moment by humanist photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson [ published by Steidl]. Groundbreaking on its release in 1952, it still inspires photographers. VL Visit soulsafari.com.