Leafy Seadragons

I love a challenge, and I love commissions. This time I got both! As you may have noticed, I’m a bit of a colour obsessive, and most of my work is iridescent with rainbow hues. This time, I was approached by Resortium Concepts to create to a pair of sizeable Leafy Sea Dragons for their client in Adelaide.

This adventure was a first for all of us. The brief required earth tones designed to tie in with a spectacular gold, black and green themed interior. Intuitively I felt that aluminium would be the way to go. Having never worked with earth tones before, and the fact that the team from Resortium Concepts hadn’t seen what happened when I got carried away behind an angle grinder on a sheet of aluminium, none of us knew quite what to expect. I created a little A4 sized mockup to see how it would look, and Linda and George from Resortium Concepts were keen to proceed.

Each of these pieces are 900×1200, so they were fairly labour intensive, and extremely cumbersome to manoeuvre. I worked out a way to achieve what was required in my usual fashion and produced what you see.

Not surprisingly, as with anything new, there were a few hiccups along the way. High humidity and incessant rain over a couple of months, meant that the moisture in the air caused clouding when I initially completed the pieces. Dissatisfied with the clouding, I stripped them back and repolished and painted my enormous friends. To my great delight, I did discover some exotic textures that I might play with another time. Every cloud comes with a shiny lining…

I was sad to see them go – they felt like they were almost family!

“We briefed Ilia, to produce two aluminium creations for a large penthouse project in Adelaide. We, as designers, were very impressed with Ilia’s efficiency, work ethics and of course, her talent. Her art is beautiful, detailed and energetic!!!! Our client, also thought Ilia’s pieces were stunning… commissioning a third piece, after receiving the original two. It, was even more stunning!!!!!! We are excited to continue working with Ilia on future projects.“

The Resortium Team