DEATH BY DRONE

DEATH BY DRONE. A TERM YOU THOUGHT WAS AN ANALOGY FOR YOUR MOTHER’S INCESSANT NAGGING. BUT FEAR NOT, BECAUSE WE CAN INTRODUCE DEATH BY DRONE TO YOU AS A BODY OF ART WHICH ILLUSTRATES THE KIND OF WHIMSICAL NIGHTMARES THAT YOU MIGHT EXPECT TO BE CAUGHT INSIDE A CHILD’S DREAM CATCHER.

Like the BFG, Tiff and Deb, two Parsons Art school graduates from Brooklyn, New York, have bottled such dark but delightful fantasies to bring us a number of quirky prints, pretty party frocks and accessories, heavily inspired by their own illustrations. A foray into fashion was inevitable, with their artwork now adorning some seriously stylish clothing.

They launched their hand printed clothing line in Spring 09 which saw chic and feminine party dresses along with trendy T’s and other accessories take on ironically named designs such as ‘A Mouldy Brain begets a mouldy tea cup’ and ‘The Mischief of a Bubblegum Blower.

The pair have now launched their Fall 09 line, which doesn’t fail to disappoint. This time with themes called ‘Feast of the Butters’ where face-stuffing tea parties have are an influence along with ‘The Depths of Mastyivus’ and suitably named ‘Enormous Pile of Irrelevance’.

Tiff and Deb met in dorms at art school and while classes failed to stretch the minds in its conventional formats, it set them daydreaming and doodling their way to creating marvellous obscure and dark characters in their artworks which rapidly evolved into a strange and cool twisted world of escapism.

These characters, with names such as ‘Greedy Judy’ and ‘Sneakity and his Loot’ capture a beautiful child-like humour which has the power to amaze, confuse and intrigue all at once. Inspired, they say, by children’s books, illustrators and “people who do weird stuff with a thwarted sense of innocence, like Henry Dargar.” Together with their own lifestyles and things that circle their minds, things they love, hate, fear, fantasise and have a strange obsession about alluding to’ orifices, nature, anatomy, vomit, decay, food and desserts, metamorphosis, folklore and fables, old crooked trees and babies being trampled by unicorns’.

Their  illustrations seem to capture that bizarre inner state of mind we all possess that becomes a sort of bank for storing all our throw away thoughts, the ones that lurk  subconsciously and are often evaporated through our dreams, deja vus, drunkenness and general murkiness of the human mind in order to create more space.

The word drone in this case may well be better off left to your own interpretation as the duo describe it as being a collaboration off sounds and words such as ‘fuzz.’ But it is without doubt that such ideas have been heavily influenced by their tastes in music, phycadellic rock, and is intrinsically linked with what they do.

But their impressive creativity doesn’t stop there. The pair has also expressed that at some point they plan to write a children’s book for adults, which is surely just one of many unconventional marvels they are to pull out from their wondrous box of tricks.

Rather like a Tim Burton remake of Hansel and Gretel, their work is both magical and menacing all at once. Tiff and Deb could certainly never be branded as your average designers. But who wants to be normal anyway?

DEATHBYDRONE.COM

Words Alice Fredenham