Tape Art Convention Exhibition

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.

Berlin Street Art and Murals

I am ridiculously behind on writing about my visit to Berlin. There is so much to write about that I need to break it down into different subjects so it doesn’t become an extremently long blog post.

This one is of course about some of the street art I have seen around the streets of Berlin. I encounter more art on the streets in the East side neighbourhoods than where we are staying now in Wedding.

When we returned from Rotterdam a few weeks ago I discovered there is an app for the Berlin Mural Festival, which happened at the end of May shortly before we arrived. I was surprised to learn their festival was in its first year, but I guess plenty of murals have been produced without a driving force behind it.

The two crow stencils were located in the same area, and were a pleasant surprise to come across. We need crow street art in Vancouver. 😉

This is but a small taste of the many murals, stencils, paste-ups, and random bits of graffiti I’ve come across so far in my wanderings around the city.

Mobile Studio: Daily Drawings in Four Part 2

As of this past weekend, I am halfway through my series of daily drawings in sets of four. It’s exciting when the work accumulates into a small pile over time.


Set 4 – exploring layers scribbles inspired by graffiti on buildings around the streets of Berlin.


Set 5 – exploring a design inspired by the work of Ai Hashimoto


Set 6 – exploring pattern mixing


Set 7 – exploring arrows designs inspired by a window I saw somewhere in Berlin


Set 8 – exploring a design inspired by the duvet cover where we have been staying

I’m glad I have this small daily project to having something creative to do every day, but I REALLY miss working in my studio.

An Inspiring Five Days in Rotterdam

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.

Friday Night Adventures in Berlin

On our first Friday evening after arriving in Berlin, I suggested to Boris a trip across town to an see art opening. This was after an already long day of walking around exploring. We were both pretty tired and had sore feet, and yet off we went, never expecting it would be many hours later before coming home again.

The rain was lightly coming down as we made our way over to Moabit from where we were staying in Kreuzberg. By the time we arrived at our destination the rain was coming down much harder, and the shared umbrella wasn’t doing much to keep either of us dry. It eased off a bit while we were in the gallery, and so we decided to go see a few more things in the same area. As we walked to the next location it started raining harder and harder until we were driven to take cover, umbrella and all, under an inadequate awing at the side of a building.

While we stood there a young girl carrying a backpack and violin case wandered by getting soaked herself so we waved her over to stand beside us. Boris asked the girl what she was doing and she told him she’d lost her mom and sister. The three of us eventually had to go inside the building we were standing beside because the rain start coming down even more heavily. It turned out to be a small neighbourhood pub full of colourful locals already well into their cups at 8pm in the evening. We told the pub patrons about our little lost girl, who turned out to be named Mathilda, and they helped us get things sorted out. Unfortunately, she could not remember a phone number for her parents and she happened to live about forty-five minutes away.

The most responsible of the bar patrons went looking for her mom at the nearby music school where she’d been together with them before getting lost, and he also called the police. Boris and I hung around to keep her company, because what child wants to hang out in a creepy pub with drunk strangers. We maintained a defensive position between Mathilda and an overly enthused drunk dude who kept coming over to talk to her. When the police arrived about thirty minutes later they began to question Mathilda about herself and her family in an effort to figure out how to get her home and reunited with them. The alarming part about the situation is she was terrible at remembering import information, did not have a house key with her, and could not recall a phone number. Just as the police were making a plan to drive Mathilda all the way home, her mom finally arrived, much to everyone’s relief.

Boris and I went on our way again after this hour long sidetrack, made one more art-related stop and then travelled back home again on the U-Bahn. We arrived still damp and slightly dirty from our soaking, and with feet even more sore than when we’d left.

Mobile Studio: Daily Drawings in Four

While I am once again away from my regular studio for two months, this time for good reasons, I am working on another daily project.

Before leaving home I used a circle punch to make sixty circles with a diameter of 3.5 inches from red, grey, black, and white card stock with the idea I would use these as the basis for the intended daily project. I didn’t plan anything beyond using these materials and left things to chance.

On the first day of the project I decided to draw intricate leafy vines in white gel pen on black paper and carried through with this same motif over the following three days to create a set of four. And that is the idea I am going to stick with for the rest of the series – coming up with a design to explore four times using the different coloured paper and gel pens.

I like this idea because it allows me to explore an idea more thoroughly by doing variations of four. It also means I only have to come up with fifteen different ideas rather than sixty unique designs to fill all of the circles.

The series is working well so far. I am pleased with the first three sets of four. It’s amazing how quickly the work piles up with a daily project.

Process: Block Printing on Cut Paper

Earlier in May I was putting together a few pieces of small work for Meet the Makers, an event with Crafted Vancouver. I created four scribble pieces in white paper all with two layers each. After I finished cutting the work I decided I wanted them to have colour because I am tired of white work.

I made the crazy decision to block print each layer with a single colour using a piece of circle cut lino. I inked the lino and then placed the cut pieces on top, with a scrap pieces of paper over both so I could rub the brayer and transfer the ink without making a huge mess. Below is the lovely design imprinted temporarily onto the ink after printing.

Above and below are some photos taken of bits and pieces of the process as I was working through the prints. The scrap pieces of paper used to catch the ink were a wonderful result I’ve held onto with the idea of using it in some way.



The last two photos are details of one of the finished pieces once it was framed. I’d actually like to go back and layer more colour onto the cut scribbles, but it will have to wait until I’m back in the studio this August.

Sewing Class at Our Social Fabric

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!

CBC Art Minute

This week I was thrilled to finally see the results of a video shoot I did over a year ago for the CBC series Art Minute. Watch it below, and read the blog post here »

Thank you to the team from Anthem Jackson for filming me at work, and including me in the series.

Crafted Vancouver: Meet the Makers & Crafted Interiors

Crafted Vancouver is a month long celebration of fine craft featuring local and international artisans, which launched their inaugural event earlier in May. There are workshops, talks, tours, showcases, and a wide variety of events which you should check out on their website »

I am pleased to be participating in two Crafted Vancouver events, Crafted Interiors and Meet the Makers both happening over the May long weekend. I will have new pieces of work to showcase and share for both events.

Crafted Interiors
Dates: May 20th to 24th
Cost: $7 admission
Location: 115 Victory Ship Way, The Pipeshop at the Shipyards, North Vancouver

Meet the Makers
Dates: May 18th to May 20th (I will be in attendance on May 20th only)
Time: 9:30am to 12pm, 12:30pm to 3pm
Cost: Suggested donation $5
Location: Heritage Hall, 3102 Main Street