Author: Rachael Ashe

The start of something new

I read somewhere that the periods in which inspiration and productivity run dry in the life of every creative person is as all part of the cycle of creativity. They are a necessary, though often frustrating and painful, part of how artists produce work and should be used as a “rest period’ in which to gather strength/thoughts/inspiration/whatever it is one needs to move forward into the next phase of work. It is much like the cycle of the seasons, with growth in some periods of the year eventually leading to dormancy and rest in others. It’s just not humanly possible to always be productive, and the creative muse likes her time off too.

It was with these thoughts in mind that I gave myself time off over the summer. It’s never my most productive time because there are so many distractions and I want to make the most of the gorgeous summer weather while it’s here. I decided I would ponder what I wanted to work on after the end of the 52 Weeks series of self portraits and begin something new in September.

Taking shelter

The above shot is the first in the new series and is inspired by the self portraits I took for 52 Weeks. I wanted to take some of the themes, ideas, and techniques I came up with in that series and apply them to portraits of other people. I’ve decided to concentrate on women as my subjects because I think my style is better suited to the feminine. My goal is to shoot one portrait about every week or two, which means planning ahead and being organized.

I’m excited about working on this and can’t wait to bring more of my ideas to photographic life.

Variations of film in a holga camera

Mannequins

When Boris and I were in Victoria earlier this year I came across the motherload of medium format expired slide film in a small camera store in Bastion Square. At first I was hesitant to buy it all because most of the film was 220 and I wasn’t sure I could shoot this in my holga. For those not familiar with film formats, medium format film come in 120 rolls which allows for 12 exposures or 220 rolls which allow for 24 exposures (this varies with the type of camera). The larger roll also doesn’t work with every medium format camera, at least that’s what I’d been led to believe. I went ahead and bought the lot deciding to take my chances because of the cheap price of four year expired film.

Mannequins

The shots I’ve included in this blog post were the first taken on the roll of 220 with a holga. As you can see, I had a lightleak and it went through the entire roll. With 220 film the whole camera has to be taped up, including the window at the back of the holga, because the film doesn’t have a paper backing the way 120 does. I’ll add more tape for next time. The trickiest part of shooting 220 is keeping track of the number of exposures because you can no longer see the numbers at the back, as well as being careful to count the number of clicks between frames.

For more detailed instructions on shooting 220 film go read “How to Use 220 film in a Holga.”

Mannequins

Making Cheese is as easy as…pie…?

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A few months ago I read the wonderful book Animal Vegetable Miracle written by Barbara Kingsolver. It’s an entertaining and inspiring recounting of the year she and her family spent growing their own food. The book includes meal plans and recipes at the end of each chapter that are based on what is available by season. Some of these, like the asparagus and morel bread pudding, sound mouth-wateringly good.

Cheese making-4

About three quarters of the way through the book there is a chapter where Barbara describes making her own cheese. And not only does she make her own mozzarella but she does it in just thirty minutes! Boris and I were really excited about this (Cheese in half an hour!! WE CAN MAKE OUR OWN CHEESE!!!!!) and I started to track down the ingredients. This ended up being the most complicated part because though the cheese is made with only three ingredients – milk, citric acid and rennet – I had no idea where to look for two of those three. In the end it was Anne who found everything for us and we owe her a cheese of her own in thanks.

For future cheese makers based in Vancouver here’s where to get ’em: citric acid can be found at most pharmacies and rennet is sold at Bosa Foods. After that it was easy-peasy and we ended up with delicious cheese, fresh and hot. The mozzarella was tasty and went beautifully with the heirloom tomatoes we’ve been picking up at the Farmers Market throughout the summer.

Cheese making-2

The 30-minute mozzarella recipe is available as a PDF download from the Animal Vegetable Miracle companion site. Boris and I have made the mozzarella twice now, the first time with friends and the second as a tag team effort. Two key things we discovered: resist the impulse to keep stirring the milk because it’ll separate into curds and whey faster when still, and add a bit more citric acid when the milk reaches the highest temperature mentioned in the recipe.

Cheese making

We’re still both AMAZED that cheese making can be this easy and this fast. And thanks to the recipes included within the box of rennet tablets there are more cheese experiments we’re hoping to try in the near future.

Cheese making-3

Ten Good Things from the Weekend

Oranges

1. Time to myself at last!
2. Down time at last!
3. Quality time with my cute boy at last!
4. Asking for an adventure on Sunday and getting an excellent breakfast at the Twisted Fork (found by chance) followed by fun times at the PNE.
5. The return of my freshly repaired Contax film camera in just four days.
6. Shooting the first roll of 220 film in my holga. Fingers crossed everything turns out great.
7. Awesome summer weather.
8. Getting started on two large scale long-term projects that have nothing to do with art per se and everything to do with getting digitally organized and backed up.
9. Dropping into Xoxolat on Burrard for the first time ever and leaving with some of the most delicious chocolate I’ve recently tasted.
10. Feeling relaxed and recharged. FTW.

52 Weeks Blurb Book

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I feel as if the summer of 2009 has been a very satisfying one as far as finally accomplishing some of the things I’ve been meaning to do for years… The collage post cards were one of those things I’d been thinking about forever, and publishing a Blurb book was another. Finally both are a reality, and it feels pretty damn good.

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52 weeks blurb book

Because I plan to have a show of the 52 Weeks self portrait series I decided I would produce a self published book using Blurb as part of the process. It felt like the first step in narrowing down the selection from the 52 images (which is too much for a show), and also figuring out whether it could actually work as a show at all. I really struggled with that last part because I experimented quite a lot with different styles and techniques over the course of the series and felt it wasn’t very coherent as a show. Showing the work to a new group of people helped me see it more clearly and convinced me I wasn’t crazy about showing the 52 Weeks photos in a gallery.

The blurb book features only a small selection of the 52 Weeks photos. I chose what I felt are the best and most creative work, while trying to keep in mind how these will work together/compliment one another both in book form and hanging on walls. The 12″ x 12″ copy I ordered this week will work nicely as a one-off portfolio of this body of work that I hope to shop around while looking for a space to show. If you have any suggestions for places that could work in the Vancouver area, please let me know.

The 52 Weeks book can be purchased online through blurb.com. The size is 7″ x 7″ and comes in softcover or hardcover with dust jacket. Click the blurb badge below to see a sneak preview or purchase it on blurb.

A Year of Self Por…
By Rachael Ashe

Other Blurb books I thought were cool:
Masque de Gaz | Geoffrey Nicholson
The Devil’s in the Details | Laura McCabe
BenoitP | Benoit Paille

Postcards. Get your red hot postcards.

Postcard set

One of the many bits of terrific information I learned in my “Artist Survival Skills” course with Chris Tyrell was about creating a vertical inventory of my work. This means creating a variety of work with different price points that allow me to cater to more than one audience. The idea behind this is to make the most of what I do by taking work that is time consuming to produce and therefore expense for people to buy and reproducing it in a way that is more affordable. A great example given of this was reproducing artwork as greeting cards.

Postcards!!!!!!

I am a bit of a stationery junkie and write snail mail letters regularly so it was a no-brainer for me to turn my artwork into postcards. I selected five of the collages created in my moleskin sketchbooks, scanned them, tweaked and cleaned them up in photoshop, and created a postcard backside image to compliment the front. My friend Kirsti helped me put together the final print files and then off everything went to the printers. I used Minuteman Press in Vancouver, and I’m pretty happy with the quality reproduction of my work. (They also produced my new business cards and the labels I’m using to package up the postcards.)

The postcards are available for purchase through my Etsy shop as a set of five. Get ’em while they’re hot.

Artist: Morgan Brig

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While in Seattle last weekend for a conference I came across the extraordinary work of artist, Morgan Brig. My friends and I were wandering back to our hotel along Second Avenue when her work caught our attention in the window of Patricia Rovzar Gallery. We were immediately drawn in to take a closer look.

brig09_12

Her wall sculptures are like collage in three dimensions, made with copper and enamel instead of paper and mixed media. They are magical, colourful pieces that incorporate texture, symbols, icons, and bits of text with the theme of “personal circus” running throughout. The titles of each piece, such as “She Said, I Too, Am of Wonder” or “Her Inner Child Was a Show to Behold” are as striking as the pieces themselves and compliment them beautifully. Brig’s work reminds me a lot of the crazy and colourful collage work of Teesha Moore sprung to life in 3-D.

brig09_6

brig09_7

My friends and I were blown away by her work and left wishing we had the money to buy one of her pieces to take home. Though if it were possible for me to purchase one I’m not sure I’d be able to decide which I liked best because they are all so amazing. The online photos of the work don’t quite do justice to how striking they are in person. This was easily the best art show I’ve seen in a very long time.

(Photos used with permission of Patricia Rovzar Gallery)

Shared items, the old fashioned way.

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Balloons!

My mom has always been one of those people who clips things out of the newspaper to either keep (like recipes) or share with my sister and me. It’s a habit we find both endearing and irritating because sometimes there are a LOT of clippings awaiting our inspection, and we aren’t necessarily interested in the same things she is. Despite the fact that I now live on the other side of the country my mom still saves and sends large collections of newspaper clippings whenever a package or letter is headed my way.

When I showed the latest bunch to Boris he said they are her, “Google Reader shared items.” I thought this was a pretty accurate (and funny) way to describe them and it also gave me the idea to further share the articles she’d sent me. For your reading pleasure, here are links to a few of the clippings from my mom:

Hershey the Mystery Duck
Warm Fuzzy Tale of a Good Swimaritan
How to Make Room on your cellphone

(It was too tedious to locate online all of the articles she sent, and the Toronto Star archives is apparently very limited.)

Lawstravaganza: Selling my art on the lawn

Weekly moleskin collage - Birds & music

Hey remember waaaay back at the beginning of July when I wrote about getting a career boost and my vow to work on the business of art? Well I’ve been keeping this vow and despite the summer distractions and unbearable heat of the last week I’ve actually managed to cross a few things off my art to do list. (The non-art to do list is another matter…)

One of these crossed off items was for me to create a series of postcards based on collages from my moleskin sketchbooks. I’ve been wanting to create postcards of some sort for YEARS, and now I have. I saw the final proof from the printer today and they should be done by the end of the week. Just in time for my art sale.

Weekly moleskine collage

Coming this Sunday August 9th I’ll be selling my mixed media collages, metal prints, and postcard sets on the streets of Vancouver. Our friends Ross and Kay are hosting the Lawnstravaganza on the front lawn of their building and I decided to join in the fun and take advantage of a free venue conveniently located near my house. It’s my “think outside the venue” or perhaps “DIY venue” way of getting my stuff out there. Come on by the stoop if you just happen to be in the South Granville neighbourhood. I hear there will be monkeys for sale, and hotdogs too.

Lawstravaganza
1325 West 10th Avenue
noon to 5pm
(Facebook event info)

A myriad of subtle ways

Huckleberries

My horoscope from Free Will Astrology is pretty kick ass this week:

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): If you really knew how much you were loved, you would never cry again. A sublime relaxation would flood your nervous system, freeing you to see the beautiful secrets that your chronic fear has hidden from you. If you knew how much the world longs for your genius to bloom in its full glory, the peace that filled you would ensure you could not fail. You’d face every trial with eager equanimity. You would always know exactly what to do because your intuition would tell you in a myriad of subtle ways. And get this: A glimpse of this glory will soon be available to you.

My weekend also falls under a similar category of awesomeness as the above words, and so I give you Five Good Things from the weekend:
1. Swimming in the ocean every day. It was just enough to get me over some of the discomfort I feel when in the ocean. (What lurks below me in the water?!?)
2. So much delicious food to eat, from Dungeness crab, to fresh cherries and apricots, to fresh from the oven cakes. Yum.
3. Daily naps to catch up on all the sleep I lost to the previous weeks heat.
4. Watching Vancouver recede as we sped away at dusk on the Granville Island water taxi to Bowen Island, and the moon and the city lights danced upon the waves.
5. Getting away from the city and spending time with good friends.