thanks to Lou and Peppermint Mag!

Late 2009 I signed up to twitter ...but it was january this year when I had an "aha - now I get it" moment. With much of Queensland under water and worrying ourselves silly over people's safety I read about the wonderful 'Digella Bakes' (read this post)...and started following her on twitter. Having just sorted out Tumblr I found twitter remarkably similar! Reblog... retweet... ok... got that. Anyone else as slow with tech stuff? 

Quickly I graduated from staring at the twitter page wondering what the hell to being a participant. Anyway... Im loving that it puts me in touch with global and local news around seeds, eco-future concerns and endless other subjects... its easy to avoid that which doesn't appeal!

A bright spark that tweeted by is the delightful Lou Pardi, editor-at-large( Melbourne) at Peppermint Magazine. On her website home page it refers to her other work, including "the odd contract love-letter"! 

Autumn issue

Lou got me talking and came up with a wonderful half page story re my work - homage to the seed - with pics - titled "seeds of change" for the just out issue 9 of 'Peppermint Magazine' which cheered me up no end following my visit to the dentist this morning. Over coffee I poured through this excellent mag... delighting in its focus on vintage organic recycled fair trade sustainable fresh green fashion ... the look in sync with the times - the paper carbon neutral 100 % post consumer waste! Great reading all up - I now have so many sites to go visit... every one of them marries a strong eco-focus to their creative and business pursuits.

Breaking the pattern - from an early issue

Last night on ABC TV I-view whilst painting I watched a documentary series titled 'INSIDE THE GREAT MAGAZINES'. Episode 1 focused on the power of images to shape and define contemporary culture - really got me thinking how often it's been the magazines that have managed to embed new ideas into the popular imagination. 

I can certainly see that happening at Peppermint ... its readership might be younger women ... which Im not... but  I loved the fact it was brimming with content that championed post-consumer values... space for creativity and imagination ... positioning them as central in a well-lived life. That has perennial appeal ... and to all ages.

In 2009 Shelbyville wrote: 

Peppermint magazine

Its byline is FRESH . GREEN . FASHION (Australasia's first eco fashion mag)
It's quite new to newsagent shelves (Issue 3 just came out).
It's straight out of sunny Brisbane.
And it's a wonderful magazine that sits somewhere between Frankie (for content) and Dumbo Feather (for tactility), with a big nod to NZ mag, World Sweet World.

I also found this excellent article below at EcoHearth which was a great background story on the clever people behind this initiative!

Peppermint Magazine: Pushing Green in the Fashion Scene

Thursday, 06 May 2010  |  Victoria Cho | Blog Entry

After reading through an issue of the Australia-based Peppermint Magazine, I’m not sure such a beautifully designed, stylish and compassionate project exists elsewhere. There may be close calls, but it is difficult to immediately conjure up an organization as dedicated to revolutionizing the fashion industry by illuminating its carbon footprint and drawing attention to its human-rights abuses. Peppermint manages to produce flawless, stunning looks that would be coveted by any stylist, regardless of their eco-consciousness. First published in 2008, Peppermint was conceived when Kelley Sheenan and her husband were researching organic materials to incorporate into their small clothing line in Australia. Sheenan was shocked by what she found. “After food, clothing purchases have the second-highest environmental impact (in terms of land disturbance, energy and water use) in all our consumption activities,” she writes. “About 700,000 tons of clothing are sent annually to landfills in the UK alone. Hot washing creates up to 4kg [8.8 pounds – Ed.] of greenhouse gases each time, and a clothes dryer generates 3kg [6.6 pounds – Ed.]. The only question left about global warming is what to wear while fighting it!” Sheenan uncovered some environmental effects and human-rights violations particular to the cotton industry as well. For example, Worldwide, conventional cotton uses approximately 25% of the world’s insecticides and 10% of the world’s pesticides. The World Health Organization estimates up to 1 million cases of long-term illness from pesticide poisoning every year, resulting in 20,000 reported deaths…. In India, every 8 hours a cotton farmer commits suicide from spiraling pesticide debts and underpaid crop. Every year, over $2 billion of chemical pesticides will be poured into the ground and will wind up back in the food chain. A single t-shirt uses approximately 1.5 kg of toxic chemicals to create. According to Sheenan, Peppermint was created to provide the fashion world with an alternative. If we want to protest conventionally made clothing and industry practices, we can learn about bamboo, hemp or vintage materials in her magazine. We can also read about upcoming eco-designers, artists, photographers, and other related products and movements. To minimize her own carbon footprint, Sheenan prints Peppermint on 100% recycled paper in a process absent of water. She donates 35 cents of every issue sold to a nonprofit and holds competitions for artists who interweave environmentally friendly messages in their work, publishing the winner’s work in a later issue. Future plans, as Sheenan explained, include launching a social-awareness nonprofit  to be funded by magazine sales. A recession may discourage consumers from spending extra on fair-trade and organic materials versus those available at their local Target or Gap, but Sheehan encourages people to “search out the good from the good-for-now.” Because most clothing is produced at the expense of the environment and workers’ rights, we may voice our concern by choosing wisely and looking beyond seasonal trends. As the pages of Peppermint prove, nothing need be sacrificed to be fair trade and eco-friendly.

Found at indie.com.au

The theme for Peppermint's Issue Three's Art Eco Competition was "water: every drop counts". The winner, Melissa Meyoko, is an artist based in Berlin. She is obsessed with details, ephemera, memories, dreams and nature, and her artwork for Peppermint Magazine (pictured above left) is "based upon the importance of water in our life, because without this element all could be a big desert".

A runner up is Melbourne artist & designer Nicole Tattersall, whose photo of a heart-shaped rock pool is pictured above right

I'll return to post images - page 89 if you happen to get your fingers on the magazine! Here's an excerpt from Lou's text:

Sophie is preoccupied with weaving the worlds of art and sustainability together... seeing a regenerative motif in seeds...."seeds represent life being generated continually, across time and place... the cycles of things: coming into being and fading away...[it is] a very strong motif for all of life."

Like seeds, Sophie feels that all of us should focus more on what we have the potential to become and about how the earth can grow. Through her art she encourages us all to be ready for courageous reinivention of lifestyles in order to respond to the times - and we agree!

Thank you to both Lou and the forward thinking Peppermint crew...

every success to you... this initiative (and those like it around the planet)set the pace for us all !