Work in Progress Installation of Small Pyramids

I had a small pile of screen prints, created at the end of my residency at The Leeway Studio, which needed to be transformed into more pyramids. And now they are, which brings the number of my tiny pyramid army up to around one hundred and fifty.

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I will be showing these in October at Emily Carr in the library window (might need a window replacement service from a local Fort Collins replacement windows company after the stampede to come see them. I need to come up with how I’m going to do it, and what other work to include.

Work in Progress: Multi-media Paper Cut Collaboration

These are process photos of paper cut work I created this week in collaboration with Ben Z Cooper. At the end of August he asked me to collaborate on a multi-media piece for IDS West, and of course I said yes. My part was to intricately cut these two layers of paper to overlay a digital screen.

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Each piece is approximately 11.75″ wide by 19.75″ long to fit over said screen.

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The bottom photo is the two layers together over the dark screen. I sent this to Ben when I was finished so he could see how thing turned out. I was originally going to cut three or four layers, but I decided the two of them had enough going on all by themselves.

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I don’t know exactly what Ben will do for his part of this piece, but I know it’s going to be AMAZING! Check out his website to see more of his work as an Imaginographer.

Tiny Intricate Pattern

I know this looks like a drawing or even a digitally created design, but it is hand cut paper. The design is cut from white paper and is backed with black. I shared work in progress of this Islamic pattern design back in August, and I finished it a short time later.

paper cut pattern

In my post-artist residency time I am now figuring out which projects I will resume working on (like this one), and which I will set aside.

Delicate Work by Kay Sekimachi

Boris and I were in Seattle for an extended Labour Day long weekend to visit friends. For once I did not do very much gallery hopping while we were there, but we did make the trek to the Bellevue Arts Museum to see their three shows.

I very badly wanted to see the work of Kay Sekimachi, specifically her series of delicate bowls made from leaf skeletons. She also had a bowl made from wasp nest paper. All of it is an incredible use of natural materials, which I found very inspiring.

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The work is only a very small part of In The Realm of Nature, an exhibition of Kay Sekimachi’s work along with that of her husband, Bob Stocksdale.

Making Work with Chiyogami Paper from The Paper Place

I was invited to participate in an upcoming show with the Paper Place in Toronto to celebrate their tenth anniversary. They are supplying the same type of Chiyogami paper to ten artists to create work in any way they choose.

I don’t typically use patterned paper in my work so I was a little worried about coming up with ideas. I decided to create a piece combining 3D sculptural pieces with 2D paper cut elements. Of course I ended up making more pyramids with the chiyogami paper.

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The finished piece is 12″ x 12″ inside a cradle panel. The pyramids are about 2″ high and there are twenty-four of them altogether. It’s an experimental piece for me, but I like it.

This will be on display in Toronto this October. I’ll share more about the show when I have additional details.

Sketchbook Thoughts: Collecting Unwanted Materials

I’ve been taking the bus more often this summer because of my trips across town to The Leeway studio. I use paper tickets, and at one point realized there were a whole lot of them in my bag. So I decided to consciously collect them and see how many I would end up with.

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The pile of tickets pictured here is from a fairly short amount of time, which makes me wonder how many I would now have if I’d done this from the start of summer.

I don’t yet have any specific plans for these but I’m going to continue collecting the tickets and see what they eventually become.

The Leeway Studio Residency: A Final Series of Prints

Last week was my final few days of working from The Leeway Studio at Emily Carr, and I spent the time making one last series of prints. I reused some of the stencils I created for a previous batch of prints to make these ones.

Crazy colourful screen prints

Crazy colourful screen prints

I chose the colours from the left over inks and made up the composition as I went along. I love the crazy colours and busy layered patterns of this series. It may be my favourite so far.

Crazy colourful screen prints into sculpture

Crazy colourful screen prints into sculpture

I started cutting up the prints and making more of the pyramids. When these are done I’ll have about one hundred and thirty of them, which will make for an interesting installation.

My Completed Colourful Braided Rug From T-shirt Yarn

This is the second braided rug I’ve worked on and completed this summer. The first one is in greys and black, and you can see it here. Working with colour made it more challenging to come up with a colour scheme and make it look good. I had many more colours of t-shirt yarn available to me but I decided to stick with blues, oranges and reds.

For the grey rug I managed to only use materials made from Boris’ collection of startup/tech conference shirts, but for this one I used a few shirts sources from Value Village because I wanted specific colours. If you’re going to buy second-hand shirts to make yarn, I highly recommend mens extra large shirts to maximize material.

Completed Braided Rug

Completed braided rug - detail

I made this over a three week period, which included making four or five additional balls of yarn. It was a great project to work on in the evenings while binging on Netflix.

The tutorials I used to learn how to make t-shirt yarn and the braided rug can be found in this previous blog post.

The Leeway Studio Residency: A Million Screen Printed Pyramids

I’m in my final two weeks of the Artist Residency at The Leeway Studio, and I’m working on finishing a large group of tiny paper sculptures. Two weeks ago I shared some of the process of making the screen prints for these, and now here is the paper transformed into three dimensions.

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Screen printed paper sculptures

There will be sixty of them by the time I am done, to go with the thirty-ish I made from the previous batch of prints.

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Here are the two batches together. I’m hoping to make one more series of screen prints before the end of my residency, and also transform them into one more batch of sculptures.

Work In Progress: Intricate Islamic Pattern Design

My work on the paper cut patterns has almost ground to a halt as I work on a whole bunch of other things. The braided rug has taken over my brain and that’s what I’ve been spending more time on lately.

The paper cut pieces pictured here has been in progress for a few weeks. It is so tiny and intricate that it is not enjoyable to work on, but it’s my own fault for not making the template a big larger to begin with.

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Work in progress - pattern paper cut

It’s a beautiful design though, and eventually I will see it through to the end.