Playing with Colourful Origami Paper

July 13, 20152 Comments

Last week in the studio I made time to finally try a few of the paper folding tutorials I’ve had booked marked for ages. The purpose is to expand my repertoire of paper manipulation techniques and increase my skills.

The project I’m sharing here is called Iris folding and I followed this tutorial on Creating Colourful Book Covers to do it. The design looks complex but it is actually simple. I used twenty-two pieces of origami paper, with twenty-one of them cut in half to create the layers.

The final photo here is of the back, and you can see what I mean about layers. The look of this pattern reminds me strongly of a quilt design, but I always feel textile and paper work is similar.

A Sign Of The Times by I Heart

July 10, 2015

These are photos of a solo show of stencil work by street artist, I Heart. It was up for two days in June before the City of Vancouver had it painted over.

I’m not sure why they were in such a hurry to erase it from the walls of the Granville Bridge underpass when plenty of previous graffiti had been left up there for years. Was it such a big deal that the artist hadn’t asked permission to do this? I’m sure only The City cared about that. This unexpected bit of street art elevated the space, and gave passerby something to think about, talk about, and interact with.

This was clearly a thoughtful exhibition of work but the City of Vancouver did not deal with it in a thoughtful way. Apparently we are better off with looking at drab grey walls than art.

I would love for Vancouver to have a thriving street art scene the way Toronto does. I think it’s an important part of the cultural landscape, and it’s a way to bring art to the public and make it accessible. I’m trying to figure out how to make this happen.

A Hot Summer on Bowen Island

July 7, 2015

I took last week off from work and my residency and spent a few days on Bowen Island with Boris and his family. It has been unrelentingly hot the last few weeks, and it was good to spent time walking in the forest, splashing in the ocean, napping in a cool place, and reading.

The view into Howe Sounds as the ferry departs from Horseshoe Bay.

A magnificent Banded Alder Borer beetle that caught a ride on Anne’s car.

Boris on the Secret Log which is surrounded by lush green water plants this time of year.

A hazy morning view across to the North Shore mountains from the Lagoon and other beautiful pictures can be found on this website here.

Making T-Shirt Yarn and a Braided Rug

July 6, 2015

A couple months ago at Sewing Bee my friends Val and Dori decided to experiment with making yarn from old t-shirts, and then knitting it into rugs. I was intrigued by this upcycling project, but had no interest in doing any knitting. I looked around for other ideas for using t-shirt yarn and found good tutorials around making a braided rug.

When Boris did a clothing purge just weeks after their experiment I put aside a giant stash of t-shirts and have slowly worked away at transforming them into yarn. I ended up with twenty-seven balls of yarn because Boris had a lot of shirts packed away in his drawers.

These are excellent step-by-step instructions on how to make continuous yarn from t-shirts.

This weekend I began swatching colours and practicing my braiding with some of the yarn. There are three different methods that I’ve found of attaching the braids together, from sewing, gluing, and tucking. I decided to go with the tucking method and watched the two videos over on this blog post to learn the method. The videos also include how to splice more yarn onto the ends of the pieces you are working with.

I’ve swatched a circle, an oval, and attempted something like a rectangle to figure out how to shape things. I’m going with the oval for the final shape and started working on added more length to it this afternoon. I have so much yarn I can make multiple rugs or a really massive one. I’m just going to see where it goes because it’s an experiment.

The Leeway Residency: Halfway Point

June 25, 2015

I haven’t been working on my pattern paper cut project much over the last three weeks because I’ve been focused on other things. But yesterday I finally made time to work on transforming the flat pieces into 3D, and how to connect them together. This is the part of the project I’ve been procrastinating madly, all the while working on it in my head.

I scored the paper and folded the three pieces into half boxes, and used painters tape because I didn’t have archival glue on hand. I’m still not sure if I will glue each box or assemble them with tabs. If they are glued it makes them more difficult to store and ship, while with tabs I can take them apart to make them flat.

I won’t go into details about how these are attached to one another, but they aren’t glued or taped. I love playing with materials and problem solving. The goal is to make this a modular installation of small pieces that fit together to make a larger whole. With this prototype I can see the idea is going to work.

Drawing Collaboratively at Vancouver Draw Down

June 22, 2015

My friend Christina Norberg co-hosted a Vancouver Draw Down event with me on Saturday at The Leeway. We had the terrific support of Lauren and Jacqueline, two of the technicians from Emily Carr Continuing Studies. They set up all the lovely grey drawing paper across the tables, and provided us with drawing tools of all sorts.

The largest collaborative drawing was about 14.5 feet long, with a few of the other tables set up for people to work on as well. There were about forty people who dropped in throughout the day, and many of them stayed with us for half an hour or more.

The idea was to work with mark making with a focus on simple shapes and lines. Christina and I made sure to work on the drawing all day long to make it into a cohesive piece. We also greeted and guided people into the space when they seemed hesitant.

I was drawing almost the entire four hours we ran the activity, which is probably the longest time I’ve spent drawing in one sitting. The finished collaborative work is pretty wonderful, and I’m hoping we can come up with a place to show and share it with more people.

My Æbleskiver Dreams Come True

June 17, 2015

My friend Chris and his wife Erin had us over for dinner a few months ago and made us a delicious meal of Æbleskiver. These are Danish (and also Dutch) pancake balls that can be filled with a variety of things from sweet to savory.

I liked them so much that I’ve been on the hunt for an Æbleskiver pan, which isn’t sold locally because it’s specialized, but I was determined to find secondhand. And I did, at the Salvation Army in Kitsilano. I think I stared at it open-mouthed for thirty seconds because I couldn’t believe I’d found one so quickly.

We tested it out for the first time over the weekend. Boris and I did the batter preparation and cooking as a team, because both are a multi-step process. We used this recipe and the results were excellent because of the whipped egg whites.

We did the entire batch with Cherry jam as the filling. Next time we’ll try other things like herbs, cheese, or fruit. Æbleskiver are traditionally served at Christmas, but I’m pretty sure these will make a regular appearance in our household from now on.

A Garden Of Our Own

June 15, 2015

About a month ago I was notified that a plot had become available in our local community garden, after two (maybe three) years of being on the waitlist. A day later Boris and I were clearing our newly acquired garden space of weeds and old plants, and making plans about what to grow.

A month later and we have a whole bunch of things growing away in there, including three kinds of tomatoes, red cabbage, basil, mint, thai basil, lemon balm, lavender, rosemary, nasturtiums, a sunflower, chives, and few other newly planted things I can’t remember.

It is so lovely to have this bit of garden to look after. We wander over daily to check on it, as things are growing like mad in this early summer heat and sun. I can hardly wait to eat everything that comes up.

The Leeway Residency: Update on Progress in Week Five

June 10, 2015

When I was working in The Leeway during my open studio on the weekend I completed my ninth paper cut pattern. I am pleased to have reached this point already, though I am trying to finish two to three of them a week these days.

I made the decision to incorporate a wider variety of patterns and distinguish them by category using colour. Going forward all of the Japanese patterns will be cut from black paper and the Islamic ones will remain white. This means I need to redo all of the Japanese designs I’ve already cut, but I’ve moved forward with cutting new ones from black paper, some of which are pictured here.

At the moment I’m still holding off on sorting out the three dimensional aspect of this installation, but I do have some interesting solutions in my head for how to do it.

Exhibition at Centre A Gallery: We Are Woven Through with Strangers and Strangeness

June 8, 2015

I visited Centre A gallery to see their latest show, We Are Woven Through with Strangers and Strangeness, featuring work by Richard Heikkilä-Sawan, Deborah Kisiel, Bianca Lee, Ceri Richards, and Risa Yokoi. This is a group show of installation work by emerging artists recently graduated from Emily Carr University and UBC.

I am very inspired by the work in this show, especially the three installations featured here (there are actually five).

Wall-mounted ceramic text piece by Deborah Kisiel.