These were taken almost three years apart but they both capture a similar feeling. I decided to revisit this idea because I felt like taking a self portrait last week but wanted to hide my face and do something with an umbrella. I like the most recent one better because the shadow gives it more atmosphere.
One of the things they don’t tell you about being an artist is that it’s a lonely road. But only at times.
Just in case you needed another reason to visit during the Eastside Culture Crawl, how about the chance to win handmade things? I’m teaming up with four other women artists in the area to help promote each other’s studios.
Visit our five studios over the Crawl weekend to receive a stamp from each location and we will enter you into a draw to win fantastic swag. The prize includes an Astrosatchel bag from Janna Hurtzig, a framed drawing by Siobhan Humston, a photo session from WendyD, a DVD and drawing from Mira Malatestinic, and a metal print and postcard set from me.
I’m looking forward to welcoming people to my studio. There are only four more days to go…
With the Eastside Culture Crawl a week and a half away I’m in final preparations with the work I’ll be showing. These are my five most recent altered books created in the last few months. I’ve just finished framing them and will soon begin hanging these and other work on the walls of my home. The home studio becomes my own personal art gallery with a one woman show.
Heralding the Dawn of A New Day
Constellation Of The Great Bear
Gifts of the Goose
Kangaroo is the Life of the Party
This is my first time taking part as an artist on the Crawl, and I’m more than a little nervous about it. I have no idea what to expect or even if I’ll have anyone drop by beyond my circle of friends. If you like my work, please share it with others and encourage them to visit my location during the Culture Crawl.
You can view my artist page on the Culture Crawl website, and I also have an event invitation on Facebook.
And now, back to those preparations….
I am one of fifteen artists with work in the Culture Crawl preview show, Process & Intent. I created a site-specific wall sculpture at the Cultch using scrap pieces of pages cut from finished altered books.
For the Crawl, artists tidy their studios, sweep away the sawdust, scrape away the clay and present their work in a finished state, with usually just a few clues as to how the pieces unfolded. But the work you see is the result of untold hours of focused work and countless moments of problem solving: hitting a wall and persevering, and often of large financial investment. Of course, finished work is what we are striving for but for many artists, the process is where the “art” actually lies. Everyone else gets just part of the story in the form of the final piece.
For this show, as a preview presentation for this year’s 14th Annual Eastside Culture Crawl, curator Alex Henderson has decided to take the idea of the ‘preview’ in a more literal sense by showcasing the process behind some the works you will see in the studios. This is a rare opportunity to see the prototypes, the sketches books and the works in progress that reveal a little more of the story of art and artists in our community.
Process & Intent: The Making of Art
Featuring the work of 15 artists working in a range of media
The Cultch
1895 Venables Street, Vancouver. BC
Dates: November 10th to the 28th, 2010
Hours: Mon to Fri, 12-6pm. Saturday, 12-4pm, and always open 1 hour prior to scheduled performances.
Opening night is November 21st at 7pm.
For the past few weeks I’ve been working on a paper craft tree (pictured below) made with reclaimed cardboard and book pages. This work is one part of an interdisciplinary collaboration between myself, Kirsti Wakelin and Darren Carcary of Resolve Design. The project began back at the end of summer when I first had the crazy idea to make a paper tree and to bring together our three different disciplines.
I was using a call for exhibitors at the CreativeMix conference as an excuse to experiment and collaborate. It was a whirlwind project to work on after learning of our acceptance at the beginning of October. The tree and graphics came together for the first time last Thursday (November 4th) when we presented the work publicly at the CreativeMix conference exhibition.
![Sneak Preview of the Tree of [Un]common Knowledge](http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1155/5143623126_38126131a8.jpg)
A bit of background. This project was an opportunity for me to explore the creation of larger work than I’d previously done, as well as to partner with a designer working in a very different medium than myself. I was curious to explore bringing together motion graphics with a handmade paper tree and how these two different mediums could interact with one another.
The work is inspired by the idea of a tree of knowledge, and we chose to interpret this in a literal sense in both the tree form and the graphics.
From the Resolve Design artist statement: “Our project began as a simple creative art exercise, developed over 4 days, loosely based around trees in general. But research about the evening migration of crows to the Still Creek roost uncovered commonly known, but oft-forgotten Vancouver facts – historic and current. The project quickly focused on exploring Vancouver, with trees as the connecting element.”
The photos below were taken during the run of the display. The tree was positioned against a 12′ x 10′ white wall with hardcover books and paper flowers placed around the bottom of the trunk. The projector was located approximately 16′ in front and fully covered the display wall with the projection, both running the animation and lighting the tree. The movie was on a two minute loop and used beautiful illustrations created by Kirsti and interesting text about Vancouver that flowed through and around the paper tree.
![Tree of [Un]common Knowledge](http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1256/5156893762_e23fae93a1.jpg)
![Tree of [Un]common Knowledge-9](http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4035/5156288721_f16aab1420.jpg)
![Tree of [Un]common Knowledge-8](http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1055/5156288285_c982197da0.jpg)
![Tree of [Un]common Knowledge-2](http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4144/5156284907_9d43f8e0e8.jpg)
![Tree of [Un]common Knowledge-3](http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4016/5156894930_a544670b85.jpg)
At the exhibition I was absolutely thrilled to see people drawn in by the piece. Little kids were enthralled with the animation and the tree, and at least a few kept their parents waiting while they watched it over and over. We had great feedback from people who stopped by to talk with us, and it’s pretty clear we gave people the sense of wonder I was hoping for.
Darren, Kirsti, and myself definitely want to show this work again at some point, though we don’t have any specific plans at this time. If you would like a chance to see the paper tree, it will be on display at my place during the Eastside Culture Crawl, November 26th to 28th, along with other new work.
A photographer I’ve recently come across on Twitter got me thinking about diptychs again. I haven’t shot any in ages but I love shooting two separate images and creating an even more interesting composition from the combination. I shot these three while Boris and I were in Portland a few weekends ago.
A Scattering of Leaves
Leaves and Boris Feet
Lines
Please visit the OneSee daily photo project by Jessica Bell for more diptychs. She inspired me to start looking at the world with fresh eyes.
In November (which is NEXT WEEK!!!!!) I have a two person show at the Firehall Arts Centre with print maker Kelly Haydon. The show is simply called “Two Women” because it features two female artists both exploring imagery of women but in different mediums.
I am showing a selection of ten portraits from the Imaginary Girl series, and am excited to finally have more of this work in print. If you would like to attend the opening on Friday November 5th please RSVP on facebook. I would love to see you there, especially if you happen to be a subject of one of the portraits.
Two Women
–> Opening: November 5th, 6 to 8pm
Dates: November 4th to December 15th, 2010.
Firehall Arts Centre
280 East Cordova Street
Vancouver BC V6A 1L3
Viewing Hours: Wed – Sat, 1 to 5pm
Just the week before Siobhan blogged about Ai Weiwei’s massive installation of handmade porcelain sunflower seeds at the Tate Modern in London. I found myself wishing I could travel to London to see it in person, but I know that’s not going to happen. So I suppose coming across his show at the Museum of Contemporary Craft in Portland is the next best thing.
I was really thrilled to see this work in person even if it only represents a small portion of the over one hundred million seeds the artist has in the Tate Modern installation. Most of the work in the show focused on the body of work the artist has created using urns. Ai Weiwei takes historic clay pots and porcelain vases and dips them into industrial paint or alters them in other ways. Some of these are up to 7000 (!) years old.
The other show on at the Museum of Contemporary Craft was Collateral Matters, an exhibition of ephemera and printed materials from the museum’s archives. I really like how the curators chose to display the wide variety of materials. There were also two stations where visitors could practice their hand writing or make something from paper and contribute their own ephemera to the show.
There are more photos from the Museum Of Contemporary Craft available on flickr.
World Toy Camera Day happens once a year and it’s always a good excuse to take out my holga. This year it fell on the Canadian Thanksgiving weekend which Boris and I celebrated with friends and family on Bowen Island.
I love this spot which is just off the Kilarney Lake trail heading towards the meadow. There is a short bridge that crosses the river and it’s a wonderful spot on a sunny day to see the surrounding trees and sky above reflected in the stillness of the water.
This was the first time in a year I’ve taken photos with my holga. It felt really good to be shooting film again.
Pop-Up Now, the book arts show I am in at 23 Sandy Gallery in Portland, has been getting great exposure. Laura Russell, the gallery curator just emailed these three videos to the participating artists. All of these artists books are amazing and much more complex than the work I submit. It gives me something to aspire to.
A segment on AM Northwest (Click through to the blog post to view).
Laura Russell’s presentation on artist books at Ignite Portland.
There is also a segment from Oregon Art Beat worth watching for more views of the books.
I can’t wait to see the show in person this weekend.