To say that Bethan Laura Wood looks in her element when I visit her Hackney studio on a late-March Friday morning would be a total understatement. It is the first time I meet the Shropshire-born artist and designer in person, having been a fan of her kaleidoscopic creations — an explosive, evocative blend of whimsy and functional design — for a while. Yet, be it because of her impeccably color-matched and instantly recognizable, exuberant outfit or due to my familiarity with her eye-catching practice, watching her step outside of her workshop's glass door to check I am in the right place (it was Friday. I got lost. But that's another story) feels more like reuniting with an old friend than meeting a complete stranger.
When Wood lets me in, it is impossible to abstract her from the dense composition of furniture prototypes, ranging from creaturesque, fluffy snakes and pop tufted rugs to trippy wooden panels and mesmerizing speckled sofas, ottomans, and coffee tables, and the equally striking collection of objects, glassware, and ephemera that consistute her world. Dressed in a white, crisp linen maxi dress styled with two different scarves — a pattern, turquoise one, worn around the neck, and a wide-striped, yellow and orange wool shawl, wrapped around her sholders — matching bangles, huge gold pendant earrings, red stick-on pois for cheeks, and a wide, textural beret on her head, she is the missing piece in the imaginative puzzle that is her work.
