These are a few of the awesome murals that were painted on boarded up shops along Commercial Drive, Gastown, Granville, and Robson Streets in April and early May. I’m so grateful to all the artists, the Vancouver Mural Festival, along with various neighbourhood business associations for this initiative. It brought life and positive energy to empty streets.
Towards the end of April my mental health started to collapse. I lost hope, and felt I had nothing to look forward to. I also felt intensely isolated because while I do lots of reaching out to people, very few reach out in return. I’ve struggled with depression in the past and could feel a bad one coming on if I didn’t find a way to cope with this.
I made myself go to the studio to work on this series of pattern paper cut pieces that I started during the Leeway Studio residency in 2015. It was the right thing to do, and just the lifeline I needed.
Up to now there are twenty-six pieces in it, and I’d been procrastinating figuring out how to transform them into a 3D installation for an upcoming show (next year). Giving myself time to work on this aspect of an existing piece of work allowed me to refocus and snapped me out of the bad mental state. It’s been so hard to concentrate or be creative the past few weeks so this project felt like a lifesaver.
Once all twenty-six existing pattern paper cuts were measured, cut, and folded into 3D boxes, then I decided the series needed at least ten more pieces for an even thirty-six. It was fulfilling and satisfying to build momentum and get the entire project into a more complete state.
I still have lots of work to do on this installation before it feels “complete”, and a major hurdle will be assembling and hanging the piece. I’ll figure out this less fun part another time.
To bring it back around to mental health, because that’s where this blog post started, I wrote about this on IG at the time because I hoped my experience would help others. It’s been a crazy struggle of a year, and we all need to do what we can to keep ourselves mentally healthy.
I wanted to work on a larger embroidery sampler and decided to go with a 10 inch diameter hoop this time. It’s about triple the size of previous projects, and I’ve been working on this off and on since the fall.
The sampler has become a mishmash of textures and colours, and I sometimes love it, and sometimes hate it. I set it aside while I worked on the embroidered gift for my mom, and work on it about once of twice a week.
I’m hoping to finish it once I reach the borders of the embroidery hoop, but I’m not in a rush to get there. It’s nice to have a side-project with no timeframe or deadline.
I began this small embroidery project around mid-March, just at the Covid 19 restrictions hit BC, and worked on it almost every day until completion. It was the one thing I was able to focus on during that time, and it helped carry me through the weirdness.
It was a gift for my mom’s birthday in early April, that I very last minute decided to make. I managed to finish in half a month, (which must be some kind of record), and get it into the mail a few days before her birthday. It ended up taking so long to make its way across the country to Ontario that I thought it was lost forever. Thankfully, it arrived and she loved it!
The piece is created with a six inch embroidery hoop, using black cotton/linen blend fabric as the canvas. The composition is made up of hand stitched French knots, bullion knots, picot stitch, seed stitch, and back stitch. I love highly textured embroidery, and making use of all of those colours!
My friend Nadine shared her version of this modular origami structure on Instagram and I decided to work on one of my own because I needed to work on something (ANYTHING!) The Covid times have been detrimental to everyone’s creativity and I thought this would be a good distraction. (It was).
The instructions for folding the individual units and final assembly can be found here on the Instagram account of Dáša Ševerová. Her version, and Nadine’s, is made with small sheets of paper. Mine is made with full sized 5″ x 5″ double-sided colour patterned origami paper, and includes forty-four folded units. It is ridiculously large. Their folded pieces are small and elegant.
The nice thing about this type of modular origami is there are so many variations of what you can do it, including paper choice, and the amount of folded units. Another variation is twisting it into a möbius strip. Go on and give it a try yourself!
I was inspired by my own paper sculpting workshop in January to begin experimenting with again with incorporating these techniques into my own work. I broke out the colourful paper and past small prototypes from the drawer where they were tucked, and started playing in the studio.
I came up with more shapes and played around with combining different shapes and forms, using lots of colour, and coming up with different compositions.
These are some examples of the sketches I pulled together throughout February and early March. I love them so much.
Edit: This workshop has been postponed until further notice.
Registration is now open for the latest intro to paper cutting workshop I’ll be teaching on April 18th at the studio. No previous experience is necessary and all of the materials are included with the cost of the class.
In this four hour hands-on workshop I will introduce students to the joys of creating intricate art through paper cutting. The goal is to help students develop knife skills, discuss tools and materials, as well as inspire ideas for how to integrate paper cut elements into their own work.
Creative Paper Cutting Techniques
Date: Saturday April 18th, 2020
Time: 11am to 3pm
Location: 1610 Clark Drive, Unit 201 (rear entrance)
Cost: $100 + eventbrite fee
Visit eventbrite for more details and to register »
Join us for another edition of Art & Craft Social. The event is FREE. All you need to do is bring a small creative project to work on, such as stitching, sketching, crocheting, collage, etc. (You can also come and just be social). The Social provides an opportunity to meet new people, get inspired, and learn something new through exposure to the creative work of each person’s project.
Please RSVP through eventbrite to attend as space is limited. You can also sign up for our mailing list to be the first to know about future events: http://eepurl.com/gu6s-P
Art & Craft Social
Date: Wednesday March 11th, 2020
Time: 6:00pm to 8:30pm
Cost: FREE
Location: 1610 Clark Drive, Unit 201, rear entrance off of Graveley St
Last month I spent a whole lot of time preparing for workshops and teaching. I’ve been reflecting on whether or not that was a good thing. I’ve never had the desire to be a teacher, but offering classes felt like one of the many things I should do as part of my professional art practise. I realized early on that I could share some of my hard earned knowledge in exchange for money. That’s really my whole driver for offering workshops.
I’m on the fence about whether or not I enjoy teaching workshops, and if the amount of work I need to put into them actually pays off. Due to poor planning of my schedule last month I ended up teaching three different classes over three consecutive weekends. That turned out to be a terrible idea. Because two of the classes were new offerings, I had to dedicate precious studio time to workshop preparations instead of making art. When the thing I’m doing to support my art gets in the way of it instead, I have to question why I am doing it.
I keep struggling with this whole workshop thing, and have been for years. I think because it’s something I feel I should do, rather than 100% something I want to do, or even love to do. I’m reflecting on this now as I consider the next few months and when or if I’ll schedule more workshops.
Lately in the studio I’ve been taking inspiration from a book on Optical Art that I came across at the library. There is a definite element of optical play in the patterns I create organically and I wanted to figure out how to explore this in more in depth, and with intention.
This is the first pattern piece I’ve created referencing optical art, and is based upon one of the designs in the book. I had to figure out how draw it, and translate it into a cut design so that it would hold together. This is hand-cut from black Canson Mi-Teintes paper, and the actual size is 15″ x 20″.
It’s a striking modern pattern, that feels almost too simple compared to some of the complex organic design I tend to create. I’m going to keep exploring this style and influence on art and see where it takes me.