de-signs /dee-zine-s/ noun1 a plot or intrigue, esp. underhand, deceitful, or treacherous: a rival at the space-station formulated a design to usurp my captaincy.2 a hostile or aggressive project or scheme having evil or selfish motives: she had designs upon her sister’s favourite pair of sequinned stockings. 3 intention; purpose; end. 4 adaptation of means to a preconceived end.
fra-gil-i-ty /fra-jil-i-tee/ adjective1 easily broken, shattered, or damaged; delicate; brittle; frail: a fragile ceramic container; a very fragile alliance.2 vulnerable, delicate (as in appearance): that burnt out aeroplane fuselage has a fragile sort of beauty. 3 lacking in substance or force; flimsy: a fragile excuse.*
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i deal in photographs and wearable fancies, theories and articles. mostly i’m an artist and aesthete, and often an aeasthetic theorist. i write on topics surrounding – and incorporating – beauty of all sorts, politics, femme-inism, queerness, disability and an obsessively aesthetic everyday existence. mostly, this is what my blog is about. i use my own photographs, and art from countless (and always cited) others.
i am a regular collumnist at DeVine, and betimes The Scavanger, the ABC‘s Ramp Up, flagging opinicus rampant and others. my photos can be found on flickr.
love letters, queries, requests, commissions and (exceptionally creative) hate mail can at this time be sent to nyx.mathews (at) gmail.com.
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…but if you’re looking, this is the extended version. n. (né nyx mathews) loves gardens, beauty, bones, fashion, victorian-era paleontology and medical technology, dolls, cooking, art, and aeroplanes. she writes, scribbles, stitches, photographs, styles, illustrates, publishes, and sculpts.
in other times she might’ve been a catherine earnshaw or actual brontë, holed up in a manor surrounded by inescapable moors, and confined by disability to a bedroom or library forever. now she is an often stationary traveller; cocooned in blankets, in an apartment nestled deep in suburban sprawl, she lives different lives through a laptop, gallivanting extensively, collecting art and strangers. Libraries and galleries unfold at at her fingertips, 24/7 access to the world she has the energy to move in only 2 or 3 days out of 7.
she is terrified of sharks but, as with many things that deeply disturb her, fascinated by very deep oceans and not unconvinced that in her more mobile moments she is destined to become some sort of deep-sea adventurer; that heart-in-the-mouth feeling is, after all, hard to come by on a daily basis. she is to this day uncertain as to whether the ongoing decision not to invest in an oxygen tank and some diving lessons is the wisest one, and is deeply desirous of a pilot’s license and some sort of vintage biplane. also an extra bookcase for her ever-expanding shoe collection.
* the title of this blog was born of years of fielding ridiculous assumptions, ranging from thoughts on my capacity to change a light-bulb or follow ikea instructions, to odd conjectures regarding my sexual proclivities and responses to various types of vermin. all this based solely on the relevance of words such as ‘delicate’ and ‘feminine’ to my physical appearance, and that infamous acronym: c.f.s.. once again western culture demonstrates that victorian ideas linking physical characteristics to mental capabilities are alive and well in relation to women, as in many other areas.
