observations

{this piece is for september's art in a box ! .}

O B S E R V A T I O N S

:: i'm still loving playing off of a reject letterpress print. the difference in texture between my hand the and the press still leaves me giddy. i don't think i'll ever tire of it.

:: everyone on a college campus walks w/ their phone in their hand either texting or reading email or more rarely talking on the phone. i'm surprised more people don't bump heads.

:: i forgot how excited i can get talking about line. i forgot how excited i get when students seem excited about how excited i am about line.

:: people are in a better mood when the sun is out like it should be in summer.

:: my exacto knife is one of my dearest friends right now.

:: i think i have given up entirely on procrastination. or at least almost given up on it. there simply isn't time.

:: i miss listening to music. more specifically:: we had the national on while cleaning this weekend and it made me realize how much i miss listening to entire records from beginning to end.

:: in class last week when i had finished touring the room i suddenly realized that might have been the most engaged with the most amount of people in the longest time. AKA part of my mind was not thinking about my own artwork or my daughter for the most amount of time in months.

:: going back to teaching as re-awakened the part of me that notices small details for other people, not just myself - and i like this. a lot.

:: i need to read some non-fiction again.



:: walking with the little has advantages like spotting cool things on the side of the road under signs labeled free. no idea what the above is, but we brought it home [and by we i mean the little on my shoulders and me carrying it]

:: launching big projects still gives me the butterflies. next tuesday. big project. launches.... me and a friend. we've been working on it almost a year. and tuesday we get to see if anyone cares. or is interested.

happy labor-less day and week to you and yours

bits :: funny hats and design projects

the little put this hat on. it's a hat for a doll. and she refuses to wear any hat that i put on her head. but this hat - she just pulled it on and then went about her business in her room [her business is pulling things out of drawers and onto the floor. then attempting to fit into the drawer. then telling me the contents of the drawer and then putting the objects back into the drawer]. it just looked so funny on her head. kind of ska/rude boy-ish don'tcha think?

can i just tell you that she is really really funny? and as she gets older it seems like her personality gets bigger and bigger. she calls red fruits apples. and she knows they aren't apples. she just calls them that to be funny. she points with a big grin on her face at a strawberry or raspberry or grape and says "ahhh-pulll". and waits for us to say nooooooo that's not an apple.

and then there's the purple factor. she knows when something is purple. but purple is also the color she names when she's trying to figure out another color - or just because i think she likes saying purple. the last few days she smiles at me when she wakes up -points at my hand- and says mama - purple??? and i say no... i'm not purple. so she says yeh-low? and i say no... mama isn't really yellow - it's hard to say what color people are... so i point to her and say are you purple? and then she just giggles.

oh and then she's always on poop patrol in the backyard. POOP!!!! touch touch [waving her hands furiously no no] - clean ! - oi ya yoi yoi yoi ! [i say this to her when i clean her diaper]

i'm loving this age. i'm loving that her language skills are exploding - there are new words and new combos of words fast and furious. i love that she can actually tell me what she's thinking now - not always explicitly, but much more than even 2 weeks ago. i love that i can tell her what we are going to do and say OK? and she'll nod her head and say "kay!"

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for some reason i've been working on more graphic design projects lately. and i'm really happy with how they are coming out... so here's a peek:



a business card for a life coach/drama teacher who needed a dual sided card - english and her native german. she also wanted to use a fiddle head - but then we talked about how it might be nice to have a mature leaf too -

and then there's this logo [still working on collateral and a website]



for a new gallery space in SF. i'm super excited because the idea for that burst around the O came to me while brushing my teeth. and the client went for it ! i love when that happens.

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i picked up my keys and parking permit and chatted with the office staff at school today. i kept seeing all these freshman with their parents wandering around - like deer in headlights. i was trying to remember what it felt like to go away to college. how liberating and exciting and overwhelming it all was. i am excited to teach painting again. it's been awhile since i taught that so it will feel very fresh. i wonder who will show up to class. what my students will be like.

and now i'm wondering what i should wear.....

have a great friday!

in the weeds

i think it was karen who wanted to see a picture of my vinyl cutting machine... above it is. it doesn't have a name... maybe it should. suggestions?

i'm using it for 2 purposes at the moment. i'm making an edition which i'll talk more about soon... and i'm making a series of doilies for the show i'm having in november at angels gate . the one all about deforrestation.



in one way this machine is saving me a ton of time/energy. it takes me so long to paint doilies on the wall and with decals i just get to stick them wherever i want. but there's been a learning curve with the machine.

trying to figure out the thickness that the doilies need to be so that they still look delicate but aren't a complete pain to weed has been a challenge. WEEDING - that's a whole thing too. weeding is the technical term for removing all the parts of the sticker so that the image is how you want it to be. it basically means sitting w/ an exacto knife and lifting all these areas off. in the end as far as for an installation - i'll save time in the space not having to paint all the doilies one by one. instead of having to be in the space for a week, i'm spending weeks prepping the stickers. it's a trade off. [the other good thing is that someone else can potentially do a doily installation for me now! woo hoo!]

it's also been a challenge figuring out how to set up the machine to cut at the right depth. too shallow and weeding is torture. too deep and it cuts through the design, not to mention the backing of the vinyl - which is no good.

i sit at night w/ my exacto on the floor [on a pillow] at the coffee table making doilies emerge. in a way it's a good metaphor for a lot of what is happening in my mind and in the studio. i've been thinking a lot lately about what i edit or remove and what i leave behind. in a sense it's basic composition, right? and everyone has their compositional tendencies. there's sort of a subtle difference for me in the trajectories of these actions. i can leave behind something that i'm not completely sure of - maybe in the end i'll remove it, but often if i let it sit it might make the cut. the process of editing for me, though, is much more cut throat. if i feel like something needs to be removed i often have this very strong impulse - like it MUST be gone now. fundamentally, though, i like this vinyl cutting process because it is about REMOVAL - what you take away ends up giving you an image. so often art making is about ADDITION - what you put down or add in order to make a final piece. it's nice to think about things from an opposite point of view.

when i sit there doing this mindless busy work my mind wanders. what do i "weed" out of my thoughts... which memories make the cut, which do i try to weed out, or allow to fade because they are hurtful or not as interesting? these days i feel like my brain is a jumble of plans, lists, obligations - i need someone to come in with the exacto knife and leave behind a pretty organized picture.

i am, though, really pleased at how i can make these look like they are hand generated. i did DRAW and scan them into the computer, but it's gratifying to see that the feeling translates. at least i think it does.



what else is going on in the studio?

i've been playing some more with the discards/leftovers of print runs. above is a piece for an upcoming auction that benefits the Rock Paper Scissors collective .

it's really freeing to "rescue" these. for whatever reason [not straight, off center, bad print, or simply an extra] they didn't make it into the edition, and i simply didn't have the heart to throw them away. i like just adding imagery on a whim. the kite... just because.... and little glowing clouds [thanks to interference paint, they do really have a sheen].



the countdown to the end of summer starts over here.... 2 weeks? yikes. shhhhh