Thirty Days of Handmade

November 5, 2018

I’ve been sharing a photo series of personal handmade objects collected over the years as a project on Instagram for the month of November. The focus will mostly be items I’ve bought myself rather than things I’ve been gifted, and includes handmade functional items as well as artwork. It’s been interesting to look around the apartment and select things to share.

I kicked things off with the fox head ceramic broach by Erin Paisley that I wear on my winter coat. I get compliments on it all the time from random strangers. I’m always surprised when people spot it as I walk past on the street.

The scratchboard owl above is by Andrea Hooge, the collection of fabric bookmarks below is by Japanese Fabric Creations SHINO, and the pen and ink kokeshi doll is by Sally Hutcheon (who doesn’t appear to have a website).

I decided to do this series because I was feeling blah about using instagram, but I also wanted to highlight handmade gifts as we make our way into the Christmas season. Maybe it will lead to sales for some of the people I will feature. Follow me on Instagram to see more of the series.

Paper Weight: Works in Paper by Elsa Mora

October 17, 2018

Elsa Mora is a multi-disciplinary Cuban-America artist and illustrator. I count her amongst my list of favourite artists for her ability to work in every type of material, and for her brilliant and unique craftswomanship with paper. I was thrilled to learn of her show in Eugene Oregon at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art that opened in late August, and knew it was my best opportunity to see her work in person.

Boris and I made a long weekend road trip out of the visit and used Portland as our base rather than Eugene. The Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art is located on the beautiful University of Oregon Campus and is a gorgeous old brick building (I forgot to take a photo).

The work in the Paper Weight exhibition explores different themes around the human mind, including mental health issues, and is broken into six sections representing cognitive categories: consciousness, perception, thinking, judgement, language, and memory. Every piece is highly detailed and is made from paper. I was so excited and inspired to see these up close and in person.

Some of my favourite pieces were contained within two glass cases in the centre of the room. One Hundred and One Notions is a collection of small paper sculptures each representing a mental disorder with the overall theme of perception. I think these objects really showcase Elsa Mora’s skill with manipulating paper.

The museum published an excellent hard cover catalogue to accompany the show, and it includes photos of all the work and an interview with the artist herself. It’s a terrific addition to my collection of paper art books.

The photos below were taken in the gorgeous inner courtyard at Jordan Schnitzer Museum, which had mid-afternoon sun pouring in at the time.

The trip took an epic amount of travel to get there and back, but I think it was worth it. I came away from the show feeling inspired, and driven to push my own paper work in new ways. Paper Weight continues until January 20, 2019.

Mobile Studio: Daily Drawings in Four, Part Four

August 31, 2018

A compilation of two months of daily drawings on circles, created in sets of four. It’s so gratifying to see all sixty of them together.

Previous posts about Daily Drawings in Four – Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

A post shared by Rachael Ashe – Paper Artist (@rachael_ashe) on Aug 1, 2018 at 7:07am PDT

This is my third daily project this year, and perhaps my favourite of the bunch.

Inspiring Art in Berlin

August 15, 2018

It’s funny how I can be away from home for two months, which at the time felt like a long time, and then return home and feel like I never left at all. I don’t mean this in a bad way. It’s just that time passes differently when not following a schedule and don’t have specific obligations each day. It’s as if the two months expanded into three, and then time contracted now that I am back to regular life.

I had hoped to write more while we were in Berlin, but I wasn’t feeling enthusiastic about sitting down with my iPad to write a blog post. I saw lots of art while I was there, and shared a small portion of it on Instagram. The images included here are of some of my favourite shows and works of art. You’ll probably notice a bit of a theme.

Aiko Tezuka

Nelvin Aladag

Nelvin Aladag

Nelvin Aladag

Hello Collective

Hello Collective

Work at the Textile Art Fair

Work at the Textile Art Fair

Axel Lieber

Axel Lieber

Xiyadie

Xiyadie

Belinda Fox

Belinda Fox

Mariana Castillo Deball

Mariana Castillo Deball

Volker März

Volker März

Volker März

Many of the shows at small galleries I discovered through the Art Rabbit app. Thanks to my friend Vanessa for telling me about it.

A Studio Visit in Dannenberg

July 31, 2018

Towards the beginning of July, Boris and I visited my friend Nadine at her home near a small town called Dannenberg. She and I met in Vancouver last year when she came by for a studio visit. Nadine is a book designer and works remotely for a Vancouver-based publishing company. She comes to town about once a year to meet with them in person, which is how the meeting came about. I promised to visit her the next time I was in Germany, so of course I reached out when we decided to travel to Berlin.

Nadine is a master book binder as well as a designer, and she also has an obsession with paper folding. We spent some time in her workshop talking about materials (mostly paper) and looking through her many beautiful samples of books and paper folding pieces.

We spent a lovely few days with Nadine and her family. We went for walks, made meals together, had ice cream, visited the neighbour’s puppies, swam in a lake, went to a concert, and slept in a cozy caravan on their property. Boris and I had an enjoyable few days there. I hope Nadine and I can meet again soon.

Tape Art Convention Exhibition

July 17, 2018

Boris came across a flyer for a tape art convention in Berlin, which led me their wonderful exhibition, and attending a workshop on the weekend.

Tape Art is an artform where the artist uses tape or adhesive vinyl as a drawing/painting tool. From what I could observe from looking at the work on display, any type of tape will do. The most common seems to be gaffer, masking, and packing tape but in a wider variety of colours and widths than anything I’ve seen in Canada.

Ed von Schleck by Klebebande

Tangara Lavarta by Lamia

Tape sculpture by Tapeigami

Neurowand 2 by Felix Rodewalt

The image above is of one of my favourite pieces from the show, but I missed recording the artist’s name. They used a digital cutter to create the patterns from adhesive vinyl and then installed them in two layers over the windows. It looks amazing backlit by the window light.

Japanese Man by Tape That

Collision by Atau Hamos

The two images directly above are great examples of artists using tape in a painterly way to create their work.

City Bird by Klebebande

Benjamin Murphy

The pieces by Benjamin Murphy are extremely delicate and intricate cuttings made from tape and mounted onto glass. Now I’m curious about creating my own cut designs from similar materials.

Sculpture by Tapeigami

The workshop I took after a tour of the exhibition was light on teaching techniques but did everyone a chance to use gaffer tape to create pieces of our own. I’ll share mine in another blog post. My new exposure to tape art is going to be a great excuse to buy more tape.

An Inspiring Five Days in Rotterdam

June 28, 2018

Boris and I have been away from home for a whole month as of today. We’ve mostly been spending our days in Berlin, but we did a five day trip to Rotterdam the other week. I really enjoyed our time there and was relieved by the cooler weather while in The Netherlands.

The side trip to Rotterdam was motivated by my wish to see the Paper Biennale at Museum Rijswijk, which is a small city outside of The Hague, a short trip away from Rotterdam. It is so much cheaper to travel between European countries than it is the major cities within Canada, so off we went.

I really loved Rotterdam. It has terrific art galleries with amazing art, great shopping, eye-catching street art, striking architecture, an excellent transit system, and a huge array of bird life. I saw Egyptian geese, heron, jackdaw, coot, rose-ringed parakeet, magpie, and others I don’t know the name of.

Markthal

Markthal – detail of roof mural

Casas Cubicus

I did not go to many galleries but enjoyed visits to Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, and the Kunsthal had an incredible exhibition of hyper-real figurative sculpture. Everywhere we went there was unique architectural wonders to gawp at, but two of my favourites were the Markthal and Casas Cubicas. I also spent a lot of time tracking down pieces of street art, and made use of an app put together by Rewriters, a local arts organization platform.

We did our day trip to The Hague and Rijswijk by getting on a train at the same Metro station we’d been using to get around and took it all the way to the next city. That blew our minds. It was nice to see the suburbs and countryside between to the two places along the way.

Museum Rijswijk was our first stop of the day and we arrived right when it opened and had the place mostly to ourselves. I was SUPER excited to get to see this show in person. It was almost surreal to find myself there. The exhibition features work by eighteen artists, most of them based in Europe, and was an interesting survey of 2D pieces, 3D sculpture, and installations all made from paper. There was some really incredible work on display, and in such an interesting setting. I loved it, and felt so happy and inspired by the show. One important thing I realized is that my work is on par with the work on display, and my aim is to participate in the next Paper Biennale.

Andy Singleton

Ai Hashimoto

Annita Smit

Linda Leeuwestein

Jocelyn Chateauvert

After the show we took a tram back to The Hague because everything other than the Museum in Rijswijk was closed. We went browsing through an antiques market in a square, then enjoyed lunch in an Italian restaurant called Fratelli Den Haag.

The one other place I was hoping to visit while we were in the area, Escher in Het Paleis, happened to be located in the same square as the market and restaurant. It is a former palace of the Dutch royalty hosting the permanent collection of works by M.C. Escher. This was an eye-opening experience because it made me realize I knew next to nothing about Escher. His work is referenced extensively in pop culture so it seems familiar, but looking through his large body of work demonstrated many things I wasn’t aware of. He was highly skilled both as a draftsman and as a printmaker, and it was an excellent reminder of how brilliant he was at creating optical illusions and patterns. My inspiration-o-meter went up to 100% after this museum visit, which was completely unexpected.

Escher in Het Paleis

MC Escher

Carved linoleum block by MC Escher

I am grateful to Boris for choosing to take us to Rotterdam because it was a special trip full of amazing things. I would definitely go back there again some day.

Sewing Class at Our Social Fabric

May 31, 2018

At the end of April I took a four week introductory sewing class at Our Social Fabric to brush up on my machine sewing skills. I bought a new machine shortly after Christmas to replace the crappy one I’d been using from Ikea, and finally got to use it at this class. (It went unused and directly into storage for the first few months because of the flood). Unsurprisingly, the Elna is a thousand times better to sew with and made it so much easier to work on a project.

The class was only four weeks long, and we spent the final two sessions working on the big project of making a tote bag. I went with the simplier version, which felt complicated enough in my inexperienced hands. The photo above features all the pieces of the bag in their final stages before I sewed everything together.

The main fabric of the tote bag was purchased at Our Social Fabric, while the material I used for the straps and pocket were made from fabric I’d purchased years ago from Dressew and never used. They are so fun together, and I love the mix of patterns.

I learned a lot from the class and feel more confident about tackling other projects on my own. The most important thing I came to realize is the best way to familiarize myself with the new machine is to practice with scraps of fabric. So simple!

Mend Piece at Rennie Gallery

April 11, 2018

I took Boris on a visit to Rennie Gallery last Sunday to participate in Yoko Ono’s interactive exhibition in residence, Mend Piece. The main level gallery is set up with a long table and chairs, and the surface is covered in white cups and saucers broken into pieces. Participants are given little instruction, just welcomed to sit and mend these pieces of broken pottery using minimal materials, such as tape, glue, and string.

From the Rennie Museum press release:

First conceptualized in 1966, the work immerses the visitor in a dream-like state. Viewers enter into an all-white space and are welcomed to take a seat at the table to reassemble fragments of ceramic coffee cups and saucers using the provided twine, tape, and glue. Akin to the Japanese philosophy of Wabi-sabi, an embracing of the flawed or imperfect, Mend Piece encourages the participant to transform broken fragments into an object that prevails its own violent rupture. The mended pieces are then displayed on shelves installed around the room. The contemplative act of mending is intended to promote reparation starting within one’s self and community, and bridge the gap created by violence, hatred, and war. In the words of Yoko Ono herself, “Mend with wisdom, mend with love. It will mend the earth at the same time.”

The previous two photos above are of the “mending” I worked on in the half hour of time we were allotted to do the activity. I stopped myself from overthinking things and immediately chose a few pieces of pottery to work with, then focused on wrapping white string around them.

I’ve included photos here of mended pieces that caught my eye on the shelves that were assembled by previous participants. I love the butterfly made with string and broken saucers, and the bowl filled with loops of twine.

2017: Year End Review in Twelve Photos

December 28, 2017

It’s a year end review of some of the things I made over the course of this year, mostly stitching projects and paper cutting pieces. I felt like I did not do much stitching this year, but I worked on at least three different projects including a skirt not pictured here.

This year has been a struggle for me on many levels, and I feel like I lost momentum in my art career. I hope to turn things around in 2018 and figure out how to thrive again.

January