Zara Wood, also known as Woody, is an artist and illustrator living in Brighton. Previously based in London and Melbourne, Zara originally studied Fine Art and began illustrating in 2001. Deemed as a prolific and versatile artist, Zara works in a variety of mediums and scales, from miniature drawings to large free-standing cardboard sculptures. Whether drawing with a digital pen or making intricate boxed dioramas there is a beautiful hand crafted honesty to her work.
Her Star Gaze collection became the most successful artist range Topshop has ever launched
Commissioned by editorial, publishing and fashion clients in Europe and Australia, Zara also designs her own range of limited edition design-led products stocked in gallery and museum shops including the V&A and the Barbican in London, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney.
In December 2008 she collaborated with Topshop to create their most successful artist range ever launched. Most recently, Little Treasures, her collection of original art framed within vintage jewellery gained a hugely positive response with the first range selling out within days.
A regular exhibitor in both group and solo shows, Zara’s character-focused work intimately engages with the viewer and has been described by Elle Magazine’s Francesca Gavin (November 2009), as so refreshingly sincere.
What's your favourite project you've worked on?
I’ve enjoyed fashion projects with Stussy in Australia and working with Topshop on limited edition t-shirt ranges. Most recently I’ve loved making tiny originals to go in vintage lockets and brooches for my Little Treasures range. The response from the public has been lovely, if not somewhat overwhelming. When people order through my web shop they have the option of leaving a little message. You’d expect that people would write something about the delivery or dates, but I’ve received some really beautiful notes from people about the pieces. It’s very motivating and heart warming to get such lovely feedback.
What are you up to right now?
Well, trying to catch up on endless paper work as ever. I’m also just about to do a big mail out to all my web customers and clients. I designed a mini card with a new year's resolution on it. Then I’ll be working on some new Little Treasures and cards for Valentines Day.
What label printer do you have, and how is it helping?
I’ve got the Dymo Labelwriter 400 Turbo. I use it for all my web orders and mail outs. What’s fab about it, is it prints instantly. No funny warm up noises or trying to load label sheets. It really saves me a lot of time and the labels look very professional. A fellow illustrator I did a show with, has been using a Dymo for a few years now. We used it to do all the title/price labels for a large group show for the Brighton Fringe Festival. Because it’s compact and portable, we could take it down with a laptop to the venue and print what we needed. Simple and quick…