Show shmoe

Okay so it's official, my work is going to be included in the Pleasant Street Gallery "Conception" show, it's addressing woman's issues. The image above is the flyer for it. The opening is this Tuesday 7-10pm.

The image below is approximately what I will be showing. It's going to be hung on hooks from the ceiling, i'm not exactly sure in what configuration.
I will get more photos once it's hung. I will also post my artist statement once i whip it up later this week.

Anyway, I need to get some weaving and tea time in before bed. I'll post pictures of that project later this week. Have a good one!

Leger Opening

Haha, it's offical, I'm cursed when it comes to showing my work. I did at least get to the qc and hang my work in the gallery. But it snowed.. oh it snowed and sleated and snowed and rained and thundered and sleated some more and froze. Everything is frozen. The power went out in about 50% of the town. So needless to say the only people who showed up were the artists and their significent others, including mine! He was really great. He took a ton of pictures of the set up and was really supportive. Ah I like that guy so much. Anyway, my parents and my sister showed up. In fact my sister bought a painting which is really great. So I bought a small piece from one of the other artists. It's a little vintage suitcase with a painted picture on the front. Unfortunately, the liner in it is crappy and smells really bad, so I'm going to reline it with some swanky vintage fabric. I will post a picture when it's swankdified.

Here are the pictures that Jason took while I was setting up:

The guy in this photo is the gallery owner, he's Charles or Chuck.



Generic set up photos:


A lot of these are of me standing there thinking "is this level?" And here it is all set up:

Overall it went really well and because of the crudy weather and the power outage we are having a re-opening on March 10th, 6-9pm. I will get there around 8:30 though because I have to work. Anyway, my battery is about to go so I will end this post here. Have a great night!

Another one!

Okay so this is a quick post, but I just got some great news! I'm going to be in another group show coming up on the 6th! The show will be held at the Pleasant Street Gallery and Studios in DeKalb. The opening is March 6th, from 7-10pm. I decided to add a section of "upcoming exhibitions" in the side bar because I'm hoping that this is the begin of many more shows to come! I'm also going to shoot for the Women's center March Women's History month exhibit, I will know if I'm in by Sunday. So that might get added to the list too! 3 shows in 2 weeks, crazy, but really great!

I will post the official announcement for the Leger Gallery once it is emailed around. This week has been nuts, but I will be sipping wine and eating cheese and crackers before I know it.

I'll show you the results of this picture next week.

Have a good one, hopefully I will see some of you this weekend!

In the Studio

Finally those pictures I have been promising you!

Here's my current studio:

Here's the color study collages that I've been working on this semester:
I'm guessing that most of you out there won't be able to go to the show at the leger gallery, so here is an extra special preview of the paintings I'll be showing:
Since they are technically "for class" I'm going to have a full crit tomorrow before I send them on their way. I figure that I will make final adjustments tomorrow night. I'll show final pictures after the show.

Here's a close up of the panels that I've been working on for the other part of the endangered species project.

And with that, I'm off, I need to finish reading some art history books and work on my artist statements. I'm not sure how much I will be able to post this week so if it is, well, not at all, then so be it, but hopefully I will be able to.

Have a good week!

Friday!

Ah, it is nice that it's Friday. I think I will have some tea after I finish this post.

A new pattern is up on Craft Leftovers. It's the Tin Pin Canny and and and there are 2 Craft Leftover Kits for the Pencil Clutch now in the Etsy shop.
I'm going into the studio tomorrow night so I will get some pictures of my works in progress.

And speaking of my works in progress it looks like the show at the Leger gallery in davenport is finally going to work out! Saturday, Feb 24th, I'm going to be showing some current paintings there. I'm not sure what time the opening is, but I will let you all know when I find out. Most likely somewhere around 7-9ish. There will be wine and food and some fancy fine art. It should be a good time. It's a group show, so only 10 feet of wall space, so only 3 paintings, but that's enough for me. It's a series of 3 so it works out well. It should be hanging for about 2 weeks, maybe more... maybe less. The gallery director wasn't too specific.

I'm going to print up some business cards on my print gocco on sunday afternoon to hand out at the show. Cards would be good to just have around anyway, nothing too descriptive, just name, email, title, nothing fancy. Oh i do love run on sentences with comma splices!

I'm also going to need to come up with an artist statement... hmm... that will be tough, it's really hard to talk about work that I have just made. And by just made I mean I'm going to go into the studio tomorrow and finish the last two paintings for the series so they will be dry by Saturday. I don't want to hang wet canvases! I think I'm going to do the under painting in acrylic and use some Japanese drier too. You know... a week notice is tough to throw stuff together for a show. I think I can manage and if not I will just show some of the collages I've been working on.

Anyway, I'm going to go get that tea and snuggle up with a nice art history book.... only 300 pages to go by Monday! Have a good night!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Hehe, okay so i know i'm a little late on this, but no big deal right. I was actually caught up all of yesterday staffing the Ars Nova "make your own valentine's day card, $1" table. We had a ton of stuff set out and although we didn't make any money, we did break even and cheered up a whole lot of people.

This is the valentine that I made for Jason:

Well, I'm brilliant I just ruined my cup of coffee with some soured half and half, that will teach me that I should just go with the soy milk... I actually drank about half a cup to before realizing "something doesn't taste right" and now I think some good ol' nasty stomach attitude is setting in... it's saying something like "you are giving me dairy and it's spoiled?! You JERK!" My stomach and I have a real love hate relationship, especially when I forget to check if something is spoiled.

As far as the store updates that I promised, well I was hit with the Ars Nova thing at the last minute and I was planning on working on that stuff on Wednesday during the day... so I'm not going to say when the next update will be simply because I'm not sure.

Oh I also was hit with a "you should have a critique with the visiting artist" so that was yesterday morning too. It went really well. It makes me feel pretty fabulous to have nationally known, living in new york, and making money off of his work artist tell me that my stuff kicks ass and that of course I'm going to be successful with my art work and that my ideas are great and it's okay that I work on 3 ideas at once because they support each other and if I didn't do all three I most likely won't finish any of them... which is true... If I just had one thing to work on, I would get bored with it and just not finish it. He gave me a lot of good tips on looking at the spacial relationships that my work has with the place I am installing it and stuff like that. I keep forgetting to take my camera to the studio, but I will try to this week so you can see what this "work" is that I'm talking about.

What I really need to work on is finding a gallery that will sponcer me for my fall show. I really need to work on having more shows. If I could even just have two major shows a year cushioned by group and salon shows the rest of the time I would feel pretty good about things.

There will be a Craft Leftover pattern up tomorrow night so be watching for that around 6pmish.

Have a good week!

Socked Foot 1

Well I did it, the first sock is offically finished... now about that pesky second sock. I did cast on and do about and inch so that is a good sign. I really enjoy this one sock on my foot and would like to be able to wear them so hopefully that will be enough prompting to get over my second sock syndrom.
Oh there will be a new Craft Leftover pattern up later today. Hopefully by 5.

I don't think there will be any new items up in the store this weekend because I'm going out of town again. I'm hoping to finish those needle wraps I've been working on and a few other secret things by next Wednesday.

I better push off to work, have a good day!

birds of a feather flock together

...or something like that. Point is, I made another little bird! I thought the boys needed a lady friend. She does have a little catnip in her belly and will go play with Molly later next week. I changed my mind about selling them as cat toys.... the idea of it kind of cracks me up now. Before I was a little horrified to have the little birdies in a cat's vicious claws. I guess after making two I got over it and realized that although they have their own personalities, they won't come back to haunt me if they split a seam.



Here is some shots of just her:


Okay so something pretty fricking cool happened yesterday! My other blog Craft Leftovers was mentioned on the Craftzine blog! I've had something like 500 hits in the last day! That's more than I usually get in a whole month. I know it's not going to last more than a couple of days, but for the time being it makes me feel pretty neat. The same post, the reusable tea bag along with the needle wrap, was also mentioned on the CraftyPod blog too! Thanks sister D! What the heck am I going to make this week that will make people want to come back.... too much pressure! I guess, just what I was planning on making, no reason to change it really. I just hope you all like it!

Oh yeah, another neat thing that I've been doing, related to school, is a woven tapestry based on an ancient culture. I chose the Anatolians for as my research topic and developed this pattern for my kilim tapestry. We had to do something based on their weaving tradition.
There won't be any grid lines in the finished product, they are just there to help me know what I'm supposed to be weaving. It's going to be about 4" x 6." I am going to use naturally dyed wool for the weft to better reflect on the culture's traditions. I have some walnuts left over from the sock yarn, so I figured I would use that. I'll show you pictures when it's finished.

Another school related: I've been cranking out about 12 little color studies every week since the first week of school and now have 50! It's not nearly enough.... I've decided that there needs to be enough to cover all the walls of a gallery and I think it will be my senior show... or a show this fall, which ever comes first. I'll take a picture when I go into the studio tonight. I'm also making a lot of progress on the endangered species project and have made some headway with the printing technique I'm using. I almost have the results that I want. I'll take pictures of that too. I'm shooting for a show for those works at the end of the summer... maybe at the botanical center in Chicago. Maybe I could donate them and they could auction them off to help with their conservation program... hmm... that might be good to look into.

Well, I need to get some rest before I head to work, I feel so fricking sick right now. Have a good day!

Edward- A little bird of plush goodness

Okay so I made a buddy for my little birdy that I made last night. His name is Edward and he likes to read, sleep in houseplants, and hang out with his friends. He would like to be your friend too and he is awaiting adventurous travels over in my etsy shop.


Oh in other news, I came across Library Thing and fell in love. Like the huge nerd that I am, I promptly started adding my library to it. You can check it out here.

That is all for today, I need to go get to doing school stuff.

Have a good week!

Double Post!

Okay so first a little update. I decided, at the prompting of Keri's enthusiasm, to offer the re-usable tea bags for sale in my etsy shop. They are sold in pairs for $1.95 + $.75 s&h. You can check them out here. Right now there are just tea cup sized ones, but I will make some tea pot sized ones soon. Those will be just a little bit more expensive, but not too much more.

And then there is this little guy:

Isn't he goofy looking! It was my first try at making a stuffed toy. I really like this little bird even if he is all wonky, maybe because he is all wonky. Here is another shot of him.


And here is his belly!


I used felted sweater scraps from making the needle holder (which has totally ran into some hang ups by the way, I will post about that later) and actually, some of the scraps of a shirt from another needle holder I was working on. The button eyes also came from a shirt that I made into that first needle holder.... jeeze a whole lot of scraps from the needle holder adventure. You will see them eventually, promise.

I think I'm going to keep him for myself, but I will make him some friends that will hopefully travel to distant places. I'm thinking that I like them too much to feed them to kitties, so they will just be straight up plushy birds. Unfortunately they will be kind of pricey until I learn how to make them on the sewing machine, because right now hand sewing is the only way that I can see them being made. Too many funky turns and curves on such a small surface. He's only about 5 or so inches long.

Anyway, I was just really excited about the little bird and about the Pinch of Tea tea bags.... goodnight!

Well the new pattern is up over at Craft Leftovers. It's a little reusable tea bag. You should go check it out.


Also, the sock yarn is dry, isn't it beautiful! I still need to over dyed the variegated yarn, but that will happen this Sunday and I will post pictures again when that is dry. I can't wait to see how it turns out, hopefully well.



Well, I'm off to try to make some little stuffed birds! Have a good weekend!

I've been dyeing to tell you!

Okay, so I realize that is a really bad pun, but I just couldn't resist. I've been dyeing yarn, a whole lot in fact. I'm trying out variegated sock yarn this time. I had two pots going at the same time. One was a walnut dye bath that I bloomed with tin (the lighter brown) and the other was a walnut dye bath saddened with iron (the darker brown). I'm going to over dye with tomato vines and hopefully get some bright greens in the areas that are still cream. I'm so excited.




When I got home from work today I found a little package at my door and look what it was!

Another etsy shop owner (Ex Libris Cuteness) and I decided to do a swap and this is what she sent me! The little drawings are actually felt pins that are printed on with a print gocco. The little cat reading on the card is actually a set of library cards to keep track of my personal library books! I love these. I have another set, but not nearly as cute as these. I can't wait to use them... but which books.

Anyway, that is all for today. Lots of stuff to do... like go to the library actually.