Ten Cut Paper Cubes

Remember those cut paper cubes I made for Voice From Another Room at Hot Art Wet City last year? I’ve always been meaning to return to them and make more. I had six at the time, but one sold, so I decided to make five more for an installation of an even ten.

Untitled

Here are three of them freshly cut and waiting to be scored, folded, and glued together.

Ten cut paper cubes

Ten cut paper cubes

I love the ten of them together, and the wonderful shadows they cast. Now I need to figure out exactly how I want to arrange and have them displayed for my upcoming show in Halifax. More details to follow on this. I’m just waiting final confirmation on the show title.

First Saturday Open Studios – February 7th

What are you up to this Saturday? You should get out and wander East Van neighbourhoods visiting me and other artists in their studios for First Saturday Open Studios!

FS for FB

It’s been a couple years since I last participated in First Saturday, an open studio day that happens every month with a varying list of excellent artists. This time I will be a guest in the studio of Reilly Lievers, a fabulous photographer, musician, and film maker. You can find us working away at 25 Gore Avenue, between noon to 5pm.

Come say hello, and see Reilly and me in action as we work on our stuff before your very eyes.

First Saturday Open Studios
Date: Saturday February 7th, 2015
Time: 12pm to 5:00pm
Where: The Loft Vancouver – 25 Gore Avenue
List of participating artists: FirstSaturday.ca

Vancouver Outside The Box: Toronto Design Offsite Festival

If you happen to be in Toronto this week go visit Vancouver Outside the Box at 1082 Queen Street West. This is a window installation featuring work by a collection of work by Vancouver artists (including me), and is curated by Dear Human.


Here’s a photo Dear Human shared on instagram yesterday. It’ll be our only chance to see it because none of us will be in Toronto ourselves.

The display is part of the Toronto Design Offside Festival and continues until Sunday January 25th. You can view my work in the display in more detail by taking a look at the blog posts I wrote about the work in December. Read them here and here.

Shaping Hearts in Gel Pen

I did this quick gel pen drawing as a diversion from the large paper cut installation I’ve been working on since last week. I need a change of focus and had been dying to do a bit of drawing. While I don’t love Valentine’s Day, I do love creating artwork with hearts. Yes, I know it’s cheesy.

Gel pen Valentine heart

Gel pen Valentine heart - detail

Gel pen Valentine heart - detail

Gel pen Valentine heart

The drawing is listed for sale in my Etsy shop. It would make a lovely gift for your favourite valentine every day of the year.

Hand Drawn Cards

Leading up to Christmas I decided to go on a little bender of card making. I’ve had a pack of blank white cards for years just sitting in my supplies waiting to be made into something lovely. I went at a few of them with metallic gel pens and made the abstract series of cards pictured here.

Hand drawn cards

Hand drawn cards

Hand drawn cards

I gave most of them away to friends for Christmas, but these are like small sketches of larger pieces I would like to do when I get a moment.

Work In Progress Cut Paper Scroll

This is one of those ideas I’ve had on my mind for a few years and only now have I found the opportunity to work on. I want to make large paper cut work but I’ve held back because of the logistics of how to do it when the project is larger than both my work surface and my studio. The paper I work on when I cut is in constant motion and rotation, and when the paper is large I’m not sure how to do this without damage.

With this project I decided to use the roll of tyvek left over from an installation I made a few years ago. I’d started cutting a design into the roll early last year and never went back to it because I didn’t have a good plan. But this time I decided to cut the width of the tyvek in half but keep the length, and also roughly plan out the design.

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Untitled

I’ve divided the tyvek into five sections and sketched out rough guidelines on each one. I’m using triangles rather than my favourite crescent shape because it lends itself better to working large. This is the progress I made on the project so far, which is about three of the seven feet.

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Untitled

I had Boris take a photo of me holding up the roll to demonstrate the size of this work. I’m enjoying working on this thing because I like the challenge. Progress is going much faster than I’d thought it would, which is terrific because I have many other things to work on once this is complete.

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12 Self Portraits in 2014

This is a lot of photos of me in one blog post but I wanted to put the twelve images together in one place to acknowledge the completion of the series. It was one of the creative things I accomplished in 2014 that I am not particularly proud of because most of these are not good work. I love three of these, and the rest are meh because they were done out of obligation to meeting the goal.

high res version
January – A Chaos of Paper Scraps

February - Arranging constellations
February – Arranging Constellations

March: Blending In Or Standing Out
March – Blending in or Standing Out

Things on my mind
April – Things on my Mind

Nature's Embrace
May – Nature’s Embrace

Cutting Away (version 2)
June – Cutting Away

Feeling Silly
July – Feeling Silly

In Bloom
August – In Bloom

September self portrait
September – Living in Colour

Finger Mask
October – Finger Mask

Hibernation
November – Hibernation

Red Portrait
December – Red Portrait

I miss photography and being good at it. The end of this project has me considering whether or not to have a new photo-based project to work on this year just to feed the image making part of my brain.

Scenes From Bowen Island, Christmas 2014

The weather was sunny, beautiful and cold during the week we were on Bowen Island for Christmas. I walked in the forest every day, and took many photos.

Christmas on Bowen Island

Christmas on Bowen Island

Christmas on Bowen Island

Christmas on Bowen Island

Christmas on Bowen Island

Christmas on Bowen Island

Christmas on Bowen Island

Walking the city streets every day seems pretty dull compared to walking in the forest on Bowen.

One Self Portrait a Month: Red Portrait

I had big plans for my December self portrait of an elaborate set involving paper wings and creative photoshop manipulations. But when it came time to shoot something I chose to keep it simple and just get her done.

Red Portrait

I decided this final portrait needed to be red, which is my favourite colour, and I put on my best red hat, a giant red and black winter scarf, and found red fabric for the background.

I’m so glad to be done with this series. Working on it felt tedious. I’ve come to realize I don’t enjoy shooting self portraits the way I did in the past, and I’m okay with that.