The cherry trees have begun their magical work of blanketing the city in pink and white blossoms. It’s my favourite time of year, and I end up photographing flowers on a daily basis because they are incredibly beautiful.
As with last year, there are trees coming into bloom earlier in the season than in years past, like the magnolia and Flowering Quince above. It has me wondering if this is the new normal, and what are the long term implications.
Looking through old blog posts, I was happy to realize it hasn’t yet been a year since I first started working on my second installation piece cut from tyvek. I set it aside in May shortly after I started my artist residency at The Leeway Studio, and have worked on it very little since then.
But I’m back at it with the goal of trying to finish it in the spring, maybe even the end of March. The piece is hand cut from a roll of tyvek that is roughly seven feet long and eighteen inches wide. The design is composed of a series of circles intricately cut with my favourite freehand pattern of crescent shapes (I really should come up with a name for it…)
I was surprised to realize at the end of last week that I’ve cut close to three feet of the piece already. I felt like I’d barely made much progress on it, but I’m close to halfway.
This is the second of three installation pieces from tyvek I eventually plan to create. You can view the first one here.
Sarah Clement just launched a new series on her blog called, Studio Visits, which will feature photos and interviews with Vancouver artists. I am featured in the first post in the series, along with beautiful photos of my work Sarah took when she visited my studio in November.
It’s an honour and a thrill to be included in this project. I can’t wait to see more from the Studio Visit series.
Read the blog post here »
I make the succulents from strips of paper about 1.5 inches wide by 20 inches long, and what is left behind is a very interesting off-cut. I’ve been saving some of these as I go and there’s now a small pile of them at the side of my desk. I may do nothing with them, or I may turn them into an interesting collage at some point. I don’t often do anything with these leftover pieces, but I like to give them careful consideration before they end up in the recycling bin.
This is the new cluster of succulents I worked on last week. I made sixteen of them in various shades of reds and greens. I’m going to keep making more until I have enough to fill a few shadowbox frames.
I mistakenly thought I’d shared a photo of this on Instagram or my blog ages ago, but at some point (I can’t remember how long) I customized my red iPhone case with adhesive vinyl. I made up the composition of triangles as I went along.
Pictured here is the new version as I redid some of the work over the weekend because pieces have been peeling off over time. It was a simple project but so satisfying to do. The colours make me happy on these dreary days.
It’s been a long stretch of depressing days of non-stop rain for the last two weeks, coupled with a few nights in a row of terrible sleeps. I felt like I was barely functioning by the end of last week. But Friday afternoon the sun came out and the day transformed into a sunny summer’s day, one where I wished I was wearing sandals and short sleeves.
I came across these crocuses in the neighbourhood and was surprised to find a bee collecting pollen. All the early spring flowers are out including snowdrops, hellebore, and even cherry blossoms in a few places. I guess we all needed a break from the rain before it returned again the next day.
I’ve had this arrangement of tiny paper succulents sitting in my studio for about a week and a half waiting for me to make a decision about what to do next. I was feeling tentative and uncertain about how to attach them, and even if I should bother. Is this something I want to explore further or is it a distraction from doing other work? Is this “real” art? What is my real artwork, and do I really want to go off on yet another side tangent changing the type of work I do yet again?
It’s a lot of questions for a cluster of tiny succulents to bring up, but that’s what happens sometimes. I’m feeling uncertain about a lot of things around my artwork, and it’s not just about succulents.
Anyway…I adore the cute little things. They are all under 1.5″ high, anywhere from 1.5″ to 2″ across, and made from Canson Mi-teintes 98lb paper. The cluster is glued directly to acid-free white mat board, and framed in a 9″ x 9″ white shadowbox frame.
Looking at them makes me happy in the same way I feel about seeing real succulent plants. Maybe this is the most important part, and why I am going to make more.
I went on a day trip to Seattle last week with a group of friends to go gallery hopping. We managed to fit a lot in during the short amount of time we were in the city. I did not take as many photos as I wish I had, so there is a lot of terrific inspiring art I can’t share. The ones I did photograph showcase a very random selection of things.
Franz Erhard Walther: The Body Draws at Henry Art Gallery
Trimpin at Winston Wachter Fine Art
Gala Bent at G. Gibson Gallery
There’s A Story Here by Sean Johnson at Greg Kucera Gallery
Complex by Evan Blackwell at Foster White Gallery
Don Fritz at Gallery IMA
It was a terrific trip with a fun group of friends. I was happy to visit a few new-to-me galleries, that I will definitely revisit the next time I am in Seattle.
I love making braided rugs so much that I decided to teach a workshop on the subject. In this two part class I will be showing participants how to make yarn from t-shirts, and then how to bring it all together is rug form.
The class is presented by Studio 126 in Chinatown on Saturday March 19th, 10am to 3pm. Visit their website for further details and to register.
Braided Rug Workshop
Date: Saturday March 19th, 2016
Time: 10am to 3pm
Cost: $125.00
Location: Studio 126, 126 East Pender Street
At an artist networking event I attended on the weekend I was reminded of a piece of work by Germaine Koh I encountered years ago called, Knitwork. It’s an on-going project she’s been doing since 1992 where she unravels used garments and then re-knits the yarn into one long continuous object.
I’m attracted to this idea of working on a project that grows over time. I’ve been thinking about my flowerbursts as something I want to keep working on and adding to over the long-term, and see where it could end up in two years, or even ten. To date there are about 180 of them, in three different colours. What if there were 500 of them?!
In some ways the flowerburst installation is like working on a quilt, or making a blanket from crocheted granny squares, because it’s also made up of small pieces that combine to become something larger. I like finding these similarities to textiles in my work, though the major difference is the installation doesn’t ever need to be finished and it doesn’t have a functional purpose.
I should look around for other artist projects that are long term in this way. It’s not something I’d seriously considered previously with my own work because I so often work towards a deadline or end goal.