Thursday, November 12, 2009

Art Opening

I'm going to an art opening on Saturday, I'm excited because it is someone I knew from high school back in the Midwest, and he coincidentally lives in Portland now just like me.
Here's the venue: Disjecta
and here's his art: David Stein

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Life

Sometimes when life throws you curve balls, rather than thinking life is crumbling, think of it as inspiration. Sometimes having a broken heart just means its time to grow and change... and its not that bad. I'm learning to control my thoughts, take the negative thinking patterns and think instead of the exact moment of NOW!! Hope you can do it too friend!

Monday, July 20, 2009

Alaska!!!!!!!!!






These are some photo's of beautiful big Alaska on a trip I took recently.

Monday, May 4, 2009

New Ideas

I know I am blogging excessively today, but I am going to be leaving to go to Davis, CA to sell silk-screened t-shirts this coming weekend. I have been working on a new line of clothes. I have been sewing and silk-screening pockets and patches. They will be for sale up at the Gorge for the Dead shows May 15. I wanted to put up my latest development. As you may or may not know, I have been using 100 year old paper for my series of prints with hand painting. Although I love them for originality sake, and won't be discontinuing the idea, I wanted to also have an edition that was archival. They are going to be a lot more money, in the $50-$80 range. The old book pages will still be $25-$30. So I made photo-lithography's of original book pages onto acid free, cream paper, silkscreened them, and will be painting on them. I came across some fluorescent enamel paints at the thrift store and can't wait to use them! So check these out, the cream paper makes them seem like a real book page, but they aren't. And I reproduced it by soaking the paper and running it through a press. I can't wait!!!



Needle Art Magazine

I came across this needle art magazine from 1983, for 50 cents! It has some really amazing embroidery in it, and it is interesting to see the influence of post modernism from the 70's still present. For example someone embroidered a sampler of an ariel view of an island, looks kind of like a map. It was obviously influenced by land art I posted the cover, and a page with some really interesting bead work and design sampler.


Last Thursday ArtWalk on ALBERTA!!!











Last Thursday was a great time! Thanks to everyone who stopped by and checked out my work! Any many more thanks to those of you that bought something! Come back next month for some new work. I have been hard at work, heavy with ideas and so little time! Summer is almost upon us, and the festival season is beginning... I will be pulling more prints this month. I am concentrating on getting as many prints in a series printed using photo lithography and silkscreen. I am working at going back into them with a brush before they appear in my trunks for sale.

It is my dream to get a "Duchampian" suitcase to fit all my art. I am selling originals for really cheap, as a way to make art that everyone can afford. The dilemma is for me as the maker to get what they are worth, without spending too much time on any one piece to make it worth too much. But how do you do this without sacrificing quality? That is my job. To make truly unique prints that are beautiful, creative, and original, reproduced by hand through a press. During times of Recession, art should be cheaper, enabling everyone to look at original artworks for creative and intellectual stimulation. And hopefully when the Recession is over there will be many works of art acquired inexpensively that will be worth quite a bit more.

Monday, April 27, 2009

New Work

I have been steadily printing my drawings that were new in January. I have almost sold out of my original silk-screened octopus design on music paper! Thank you to all my customers!! So I am now starting a new series of silk screens on dictionary pages. The designs are the octopus, deer, and bear. I will continue to hand paint around them, because it adds such a lovely touch. Check out my items for sale in my etsy store to buy one of these!



Thursday, April 23, 2009

Hand Embroidery

Anyone interested in embroidery that was done by hand?
Jessie Newberry was an amazing artist from the turn of the last century. She was educated at the Glasgow school of art in Scotland. At that time, there was almost nowhere in the world where women were taken serious as artists. Scotland was an exception. Here she excelled in making amazing designs by hand.



Embroidery has often times been associated as a womens craft. However men embroider as well. Check out the work of Orly Cogan. He has been really successful as an artist, embroidering pieces that are really interesting as you can tell. His contemporary, thoughtful designs have influenced a roster of young emerging artists.




What about embroidery artists no one has heard of? If you have been to Eugene Oregon, perhaps to a show at the MacDonald Theater or the Wow Hall, perhaps you have seen Cameron Greer. He embroiders constantly, and sells his works for pennies an hour, as you will hear if you were to meet him. Cameron is a character, no formal art training but dedicated. He is a true folk artist, and if you look closely at his stitches, perhaps the best embroiderer you will meet. You can buy his work online, although he stays away from computers. His friends market his stuff, because as he says it, "I touch a computer, the lights go off."



Monday, April 13, 2009

Book Page Art

I recently came across this blog:
Dark Roasted Blend that features altered book art. Aren't these amazing?





Friday, March 13, 2009

Installation













This is a bunch of pictures, of my suspended photographs, with my new lithography prints behind them. The wall in the background wasn't ideal, but it wasn't installed in a gallery! We had our final critic this week in school, I have been busy...

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Featured Artist

This artist, Samonberry, has beautiful, original designs that he silk-screens himself, and sells on his Etsy Store, and other festivals around the west coast. You can check out his store and buy these fabulous t-shirts here: Samonberry's Etsy Store or you may run into him selling his wares in your city...you might even catch a glimpse of his much loved bus Amethyst streaking by!



Check out these shirts!





Monday, March 2, 2009

New Drawings





Ok, so I am going to post my progress. These here are my drawings I have been working on. These were done by hand, but I digitally arranged my compositions. I have been doing photolitho prints of them, and plan on doing a series of silkscreens of them, before I begin another series of drawings.

Saturday, February 28, 2009

Winter World

As many in this world knows,
winter is cold. It is grey, and the light
in the NorthWest is bluish white.
I was in Hawaii a couple of weeks ago,
where it is much warmer, and the light is orange
and red.

Getting through winter can be interesting.
It calls for more visits to thrift shops,
and nights spent around my desk creating new things
the world hasn't seen yet.

I found a Time Life magazine yesterday
at the bins. It was from 1969, and it it had the
faces of about 100 boys that had died that week
in the Vietnam War. It was strange to see faces
that had died 40 some years ago. Forever 20,24,25,
you get the point. It may be depressing, morbid, I don't know.
I thought it was interesting. I felt like...
all those boys had to have come back to live life again.
It can't just end that abruptely.

Enough of that.
Time is just wierd you know?

I am working on a new series of works.
Mostly using Photo Lithography. I am using
my original drawings of myself and various animals,
and then hand painting on the print.
I may take these drawings and do some screen printing
on paper for my etsy shop when I have some extra time.
I am really excited about my new ideas, and getting them actualized.
I want to have a cohesive body of work that represents
where I am at today as an artist, in hopes of going to grad school one day.
Earlier this week, I was feeling really wintery and sick, and starting to think of giving up on school, and wondering if it was worth all this extra time and money. But that was yesterday, and I came away realizing I am so close to something,
and I may never get it, but one can't give up. My drawings that I am making are the best things I have done in my life. My visions are exciting to me.
Check back every so often to see progress on my new series of work.
I am giving myself a year, starting from last week, to really give a series of work my all. To explore a theme to the end. I have to do it!