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.
From the considerable archive of photographs I have on Flickr.
The Culture Crawl will be having a juried preview show at The Cultch. It will coincide with the Crawl itself and entice people to visit some of the artists in their studios. This year they’ve asked the artists to show the process of their work rather than a finished piece. I’d been racking my brains for a way to do this and finally had an “Ah ha!” moment yesterday morning on what to do.
The top book is one of the test encyclopedias I experimented on to come up with ideas for the Forgotten Knowledge project. The scrap pages are ones cut from other books along the way. I save these because they can always be made use of. The stack of books and random objects are items I’ll be using in future books.
This was the best way I could come with to capture my process because I don’t do sketches or some other form of brainstorming. It all happens very spontaneously for me.
Often when I’m working on these altered books I catch myself thinking about how many odd things I end up doing and the hilarity of trying to explain these out loud. Take for example this altered book. I had to figure out how to attach a kangaroo to a spring and then attach them both to a chair. Imagine trying to explain that one to someone asking about what I’m working on. Nevermind that it’s not a real kangaroo, or a full-sized chair.
By the way, trying to sew a kangaroo on a spring to a tiny chair is about as aggravating a task as you can guess. But it’s no one’s fault but my own for coming up with ideas I have to find elaborate and painful solutions to execute in order to get what I want. The stitches were the best way I could come up with to keep the spring secured to the chair but also allow for enough movement that the kangaroo can bounce around.
This is another colourful and wildly patterned book, which I’m happy about. The little chair came from Nicole’s studio garage sale on the weekend, and I painted it red to stand out strongly against the busy background. The eight wooden tiles came from a bag of sudoku tiles Ariane gave me. I decided to treat the number 8 as if it were a shape and not a number.
The kangaroo is the fifth new altered book I have made in preparation of the Eastside Culture Crawl. Very soon I will get everything framed and ready for sale.
Materials used: book, tissue paper, sudoku pieces, wood chair, metal spring, red thread, wood toy kangaroo, glue, and gel medium.
Part of the enjoyment I am getting out of creating work based around these wood animals is learning more about their flesh and blood counterparts. I’ve always been interested in animals but how much do I really know about most of them? Honestly, not much. But with each animal I pull out of the bag I’m learning something new.
The goose is a great example of this. They’ve always seemed like a ridiculous bird to me, but reading more about them has changed my mind. They are incredibly loyal, fierce defenders of their young, and gifted navigators. (Boris would probably also add something about how delicious they are). I almost fell heavily into Mother Goose whimsy with the goose, but the extra knowledge kept me from it.
I decided I wanted to make an assemblage piece with this book and have the main composition with the goose inside a niche. I used more colourful elements in this one just to switch things up because so many of my previous altered books lack colour.
The crazy blue and white patterned paper covering most of the book is from the inside of envelopes. I’ve collected a pile of different envelopes with patterns on the inside and as I was looking through these I found a few with this pattern and wanted to use it. I realized these were from Royal Bank mailings, and since I’d just received something from them I ripped it open to find more of the pattern on the inside that I wanted to use. Thanks for your great timing bank people.
The thread is the last element I added to the piece and as always it was very awkward to work with. Some of the thread is strung back and forth between the clarinet pieces, while the swirly bits were positioned and tacked down with gel medium.
The goose is the fourth new altered book in the wood toy animals series I’ve been working on. It will also be available for sale at my studio during the Eastside Culture Crawl.
Materials used: book, red thread, paper flowers, dried poppy seed pods, wooden blocks, wood goose, envelope paper, clarinet keys, gel medium, and glue.
Artists frequently get approached to donate their work to charity silent auctions, which means instead of getting money for your valuable inventory, you get a tax receipt. These do not pay bills and I’m sure most artists have plenty to write off as it is.
The Vancouver Timeraiser has a different approach to working both with charities and with artists. Instead of asking the artists to give their work away for free they purchase the work (up to $800!) and use it as a draw to earn volunteer hours for non-profits. They also do a terrific job of promoting the work of the artists right along with the Timeraiser event itself.
I had a really great experience with Timeraiser. They were organized and kept me informed every step of the way – when they needed my work, when the cheque would be available, inclusion in the day of the event, etc. My favorite bit was receiving and signing the contract because it was done online with a digital signature, and I received a copy immediately. It was also written in “human” rather than lawyer speak.
It was fun attending the Timeraiser event and watching as the bidding on my piece made its way to the maximum bid. Almost all of the artwork went really fast. I’m not sure who ended up winning mine but I hope the person loves it as much as I do. The work (pictured above) was the very first altered book I created. I felt a little sad seeing it go.
More than four hundred people attended the Vancouver Timeraiser, and an amazing 6,830 volunteer hours were raised. It makes me feel good that my work contributed to the success of the evening, and I would definitely take part again next year.