Spiral Line Drawings

The drawing obsession continues (of course it does!) but now things have shifted to longer lines flowing around a circular area. The first two drawings I completed are spiraled lines around a central point working towards a finished circle on an 8.5″ x 11″ piece of paper.

Spiral line drawings
Spiral line drawings

I am kind of amazed I can do these because I’ve often struggled in the past to maneuver a pen smoothly across the page. I think my hand has been made steady and skilled by working with a knife the past few years.

Spiral line drawings
Spiral line drawings

These are two of the five drawings done in the last week. I’ll share more in another blog post. I’m enjoying the process of these because they are being done for their own sake, and I’m happy with the final results.

Patterns of Space at Mary E Black Gallery, NS

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Patterns of Space opens this week at Mary E. Black gallery in Nova Scotia. It’s an exhibition of my paper cut work alongside the crocheted lacework of Catherine Thompson.

The invite created by the staff of NSCCD looks pretty cool with the combination of our two very different types of work together.

Patterns of Space invitation

I won’t be at the exhibition in person but I’m hoping the gallery will share photos once the show is installed. Patterns of Space opens April 9th and continues until May 24th, 2015.

Patterns of Space
NSCCD – Mary E. Black Gallery
Halifax, Nova Scotia
April 9th to May 24th, 2015
Opening reception on April 9th at 6pm

Drawing As A Meditative Process

From the loose organic shaped line drawings I shared yesterday I went back to shaping the lines into circles. They feel like a succulent plant more than a flower. I’ve drawn four of these as of today, because I am obsessive when trying out an idea.

Drawings
Drawings

The top drawing with the close up photo beneath it was done with metallic gel pen. For the rest of the drawings I’ve been back to working with a white gel pen. I find the process of drawing these lines to be as meditative as paper cutting because it still has me working in repetition of the same lines and shapes.

Drawings
Drawings

Drawings

These feel like finished pieces, and they may soon end up in a show that has unexpectedly come my way. Despite that, I’m still trying to play as much as possible when I’m in the studio.

Exploring Lines

I’ve been drawing like crazy lately because I’m obsessed with line work. The inspiration for this is the new shower curtain I acquired a few weeks ago (which you can see here) Its swirly lines design was taking over my mind and needed to be expressed on paper.

Drawings

Drawings

These are the first two line drawings I did using metallic gel pen on black card stock. It’s very soothing to do this, so of course I’ve gone onto doing many more. With these (and a few others I will share in another post) I feel my drawing skills have improved.

A Return to Play in the Studio

This year I am determined to concentrate more on making the work I want to make and not just work towards fulfilling an obligation for a show. With this in mind last week when I was in the studio I decided to just play and see where it took me.

I started with a doodle using metallic gel pen on black paper, and made a few different clusters of patterns and lines around the same page. I wasn’t really satisfied with these so my next step was cutting the paper into circles and capturing the doodles I’d drawn so far within its own circle of black paper. I went on to fill each entire circle cut piece with its own distinct doodle, starting with the first three here.

Untitled

I kept working on this over the next few days, and now I think I have about fifteen of these circles. I really like them.

Untitled

Untitled

I don’t know where I am going with this but that’s just fine. For awhile now I’ve need to play, and there’s no reason to stop just yet.

Commission Work for Farmboy Fine Arts

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This is a recent piece of work I was commissioned to do for Farmboy Fine Arts. The piece is based upon classic Arabic architecture details, and I was provided with the design to use as my template. Cutting someone else’s design is not something I’d ever done before, but this was fascinating to work with because the line work is so structured.

Farmboy commission

Farmboy commission

Farmboy commission

The finished piece was framed a photographed by Farmboy Fine Arts.

Name Tag Doodles for Creative Mornings Vancouver

I’ve been a volunteer with Creative Mornings Vancouver for about two years, and some of my duties include running the Instagram account, and coming up with the icebreaker question related to the monthly theme. The global theme in March is Ink, and I decided to ask people to decorate their nametags instead of asking them to answer a question.

I doodled these fancy name tags for our volunteers to wear to Martin Jackson’s talk on March 6th, but also to use as samples to promote the idea.

Decorate your nametag...

Name tag

Decorate your nametag...

I made about fifteen, and it was so fun to doodle and play with the colourful markers. I wish we could do this every month, but maybe I just need an on-going doodle project.

Happy About HS Socks

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I’m about to show you my feet in this blog post, but it’s for a very good reason. I bought new socks yesterday, and while they are wonderful because of the bright colours and dazzling patterns (just what I like in a sock), I love them even more for the package design.

hs-socks2

The brand of sock is HS, a company based in Sweden making exciting high quality combed cotton socks. Their packaging is the same basic concept of all socks, with a tiny plastic hanger, an attachment keeping the toes together, and an attachment binding the paper label to the top of the sock.

Thread used to attach the label to the sock

Thread used to attach the label to the sock

Tiny sticker at the sock toe

Tiny sticker at the sock toe

When I was taking the socks apart yesterday I was thrilled to realize they use a small sticker instead of a metal clip or a tiny piece of plastic at the toe. The same goes for the label attachment. The piece of plastic used with other socks has been replaced with thread. I hate these tiny pieces of plastic so much when I buy socks and all the brands seem to have them except HS Socks.

The plastic sock hanger

The plastic sock hanger

The socks still have the tiny plastic hanger for retail display purposes, maybe because they haven’t figured out a way around this yet. This is important to me because I don’t want to contribute to more tiny bits of plastic ending up in the environment just for the sake of new socks.

hs-socks1

HS socks are a good product on many levels, and my feet are happy wearing them. I can tell these are going to be distracting because look how mesmerizing my feet are in them!

Work In Progress: Circling Back to Circles

Other than small things for the recent workshop and Creative Mornings, I haven’t made anything new in a couple of weeks. I decided to take a break while I wrapped up a few things for Purely Paper and the exhibition I’m having in Halifax next month. Now that everything is either in a show already or on its way to a gallery, I feel like I can start something new.

Whenever I take a break from making I feel this tension building up inside to get working on something. If I leave the feeling untended to for too long it makes me feel a bit crazy. I think only other artists and makers will understand that.

Work in progress paper cut

Work in progress paper cut

These are detail photos of the piece I started two days ago. I just want to cut paper and I don’t care right now about what I’m making or what will happen with it when I’m done. I’m tired of working towards shows, and am happy to just do some work, explore ideas, and play.

The Five Year Note

The other week I was switching things around in my studio and decided to change some of the items I’ve had on my bulletin board for years. It’s a mix of things like invitations for shows, postcards with images I like, and bits of ephemera, leaves, and feathers. Everything has been up so long and unchanged that I’ve ceased to really see them anymore.

Laser cut letters

Included in these items was a note I’d written in September 2010 during a professional development workshop for artists. We were asked to tell ourselves what we would like to have accomplished in five years. I hadn’t looked at this note in some time, and I was surprised to realize that the full five years had almost passed since writing it. It’s 2015, and the future is now!

I had mixed feelings about reading the note, but overall I felt good. I’ve achieved many of the things I’d hoped for, while others are no longer important. One thing that stuck out from the note was my expressed desire to be working as a full time artist by 2015 and no longer need to work at something else part time. The reason this stuck out more than anything else is because I read this just as I’m starting a new part time job (which I’ve very excited about, by the way…) and shifting gears a bit from art as my full time focus.

Making art is my passion but it’s difficult to make a living at showing and selling (especially in the small Vancouver market). I’ve also found I need more than just art-making to keep me happy and stimulated, hence all the volunteer events I’ve worked on over the past few years. Now I’m at the point where I need the organizing and events to bring in income, because doing things for “the love” doesn’t pay rent and fill bellies with food.

I’m in a period of reassessing and reevaluating many aspects of my life, including how I pursue my art career. I’m allowed to change my mind, and what’s important now may not be five years from now. Finding the note was a good way to check in on how far I’ve come, how things have changed, and also how much I’ve managed to accomplish. But there’s still much to do, and I’ll be writing a new note to my future self to help guide me.