Arabella Introduction 2019-2021

“Morose Design 2019-2021” Dec 6, 2021 (cont. April 29^th 2022, October 30^th 2025)

The Deconstruction of Mandys Designs, Fall 2019 - Fall 2021, 18 years to 20

An 8” Square Spiral Rhodia Dot Book containing drawings and notes on projects of 2019-2021. Deconstructed and bound in April 2022.

ARISE ARABELLA

These drawings are from another life that seems far away from me now. Over five years, a thousand miles and even more tears, Arabella is gone and all that is left is this book. She is a version of me, younger of course though wiser as she sits atop her tower for the rest of time. She is precious because she is gone, she is desired because she is no more, she is merely a legend whose legacy lives through the artifacts she left.

Arabella was born as a neatly thought-out book for serious projects. The intention for Arabella was a book filled with wardrobe and material designs, yet inevitably it depicts a morphing thought-train rolling through the ages of 18 to 20 years old. Fantasy and whimsy overtook the pages often, and she became a stamping pad, journal, sketchbook, etc. Her youthfulness produced grand ideas. Unfinished projects and unrealized visions plague the emergence of Arabella. It’s hard to tell what is real and what is not in this world. It is a theater of the mind.

I would protect this collection of designs and drawings for the years it came into being, only finally getting to know what I had cherished once it was complete. With fragments missing, Arabella was bound in finality in March 2022. I located everything I wanted to go into it, created simple paper covers, and bound each page to the last. I had to redo the binding halfway through the first attempt, it is silk thread finished with Elmers’s glue. I inked the front cover design hastily, so now it is another product which I feel ashamed about in the end. Inevitably, frustration beats me out and I abandon my standards for care and attention. The construction is satisfactory, about the same quality as a lot of the projects detailed in the contents of the pages.

The conclusion of this little book marks a significant ending in my life. As of 2025, I understand Arabella as an era of my life, and the Morose Design Book of 2019-2021 exists as a reference to that myth. I still have faith, in fact, it has only grown.

RESURRECTION (CONTENTS AND OVERVIEW) as told through articles

As I fill out the info on my website about Arabella, I will update this table of contents / overview section.

Today is October 30, 2025 and I’m publishing an article written in 2022 based on the following work of Arabella from 2021.

40e May 24 2021 “Summer Stuff”

41 Aug 31, 2021, “The Jean Project”, Catalog of My Jeans, nothing more was completed?         

42 Undated “To Begin” general Wardrobe Sewing Project, kind of begun, some list of tools

43 Undated, notes, stamp pad

58-59 Wardrobe Design

56-57 Early December 2021 “Fix Yo Shit”, theory of wardrobe comes together