Paper Cutting: "PopDisaster" WIP

I wasn't going to post anything about this one because the pictures I took were so crappy, but I took some of the yellow out of them from the overhead lights and I guess they will do for a work in progress post.

I like doing paper cuttings in one day if I can because the longer they sit around the more likely I am to tear them or warp the delicate parts with my carelessness. I'm actually a little embarrassed about how long I let this one sit, and sure enough, when I picked it up to work on it last night there were splashes of white paint on the working side. Considering my easel is set up about 4 feet from the place where I store unfinished pictures, I must have worked really hard to get paint across the room. Upon closer inspection, there is also paint on my closet doors. I suck at not making messes. It could have been worse I guess, the paint could have been on the other side and messed up the piece entirely... oh well.

So, here are two side by side shots of the parts that I have finished so far.

I don't know what I'm going to fill the background with yet. I was thinking of doing newsprint with crazy headlines or something. Really, I just want any excuse to make it more complicated so I can feel like I've actually accomplished something. I don't know if this constant desire to make things more difficult for myself is a good or a bad thing. I know less is more sometimes... but I can't seem to think that way.

I've already been planning the next piece, which knowing me I'll start before I finish this one. I think I'll do a hyper-realistic dragonfly over river water or something. I think all of the little cells on the wings would look pretty awesome cut out in dark paper. It's times like this that I wish I had a computer at home so I could look up reference materials on something other than my phone. Ooo! Or all of those National Geographic's that my Mom had been storing out in the shed! If only I had enough space to keep all the reference materials I've had my hands on over the years.

Paper Cutting: "Happy"

Last night I switched gears for a moment and didn't work on my painting. I'm not avoiding it... or course not! How could you even suggest such a thing! Okay, there might be a little of that going on... but at least I'm still working on something!

I decided to do another paper cutting. I've been into paper craft for a while now. Some of the first stuff I did was based on layering different colors of paper on top of each other to create an almost cartoon-like image. The only problem with that was that the more complex the image was, the harder it was to layer all the paper on top of each other. You ended up with a picture that was in this really bazaar relief that didn't make any sense. I switched gears and started focusing more on traditional German papercutting called Scherenschnitte. I don't do it in the traditional way at all, but I like that single colored silhouette look. The German and the Chinese forms of papercutting are done with scissors. Teeny Tiny Scissors.

They look like this ^

I don't like the little scissor approach. I never really understood how you were supposed to make little cuts inside of things without bending the paper all to shit. I guess you use much thinner paper then I do, but I like the images to be able to stand on their own and I'm a bit on the klutzy side so thick paper it is! An X-acto knife seems to do just fine for me.

So, last night I was feeling pretty down in the dumps so I decided to do a card that was the exact opposite of how I felt. Happy! It's part of that whole, "acting as if" concept. I'm miserable, but if I act happy then maybe I'll actually start feeling happy. Oh, if only all things were that easy. I'd just start "acting" like a molecular biologist and suddenly I'd be one! Amazing!

Here we go:

It's not one of the more detailed ones that I've done. The insides of the letters were a pain in the butt because they are only 1/4 of an inch wide. I don't really know what's up with the dogwood's. I drew the letters out first and then just sort of stared at it for 20 minutes. I thought I would do some kind of super complex background that would blend into the interior of the letters so that you had to pick the word out of the image like it was one of those puzzle pictures that you have to cross your eyes and develop a headache before you can see the image... but my eyes were already crossed, and I most certainly already had a headache so simple dogwood flowers and leaves won out in the end.

I used regular card stock that I got on the cheap at Micheal's a few weeks ago. It works pretty well for things like this, cards and items that are designed to be handled, but I didn't like the experience of cutting it at all. I felt like I was going to slice right through my poor self-healing mat. I think for the more complicated projects I'm going to go back to the Mi-Teints. It's more expensive, but the texture and thickness of the paper is a whole lot more suitable for small curves and flourishes.

I have another one that has been sitting in the studio for a while, it might get some attention tonight. It's decidedly nontraditional. Right now it's a fancy handgun and some brass knuckles cut out on dark blue Mi-Teints. I was thinking of filling the background with more pop culture references and having the whole piece be about the combination of traditional, delicate art with the garish violent images of our culture. Really it's just an excuse to use every art students favorite word: Juxtapose.

Art On Film

In one of my previous posts I had mentioned wanted to watch more art films. (At least I'm pretty sure I said something about that...) Last night's selection was Exit Through The Gift Shop, a film by Banksy. I honestly didn't know that much about the premise of the movie before I pushed play, but anything relating to street art or Banksy more specifically is enough for me to want to see it. I've been interested in street art since I was in middle or high school. I remember spending a lot of time in my C++ class pouring through http://www.artcrimes.com/ and dreaming of being my own bad ass anonymous renegade with a backpack full of spray cans. I started off trying to emulate "wildstyle" text based images on scraps of paper, carefully drawing brick and mortar behind the images. I envied boys with chisel tipped paint pens who could scrawl out their tags in almost illegible script filled with flourishes and more corners and angles then any letters were ever meant to contain. I never saw how anyone thought that the true artists were doing something wrong or unwanted. I always thought that where the artists chose to display their work was a compliment to the space, they were making it better, more interresting, and most of the time truly beautiful.

Dirty Ol South Crew: Richmond Virginia - I used to draw those robots on everything...

Living in Virginia doesn't really give one all that many opportunities to glimpse great street art "in situ", but there are some really great artists out there in the area who are a little less prolific. Living in Richmond, you can see some really great pieces like the one above by the Dirty Ol South Crew. I think there would be a whole lot more of it around if VCU didn't have signs all over everything stating that graffiti was a crime punishable by expulsion from the art program and criminal charges. We all wanted to make our city more beautiful, but college is expensive... and jail isn't a barrel of monkeys either.

Street art as a movement has grown and expanded all over the world with artists exploring new mediums and taking to new heights, literally sometimes, to show their audience what they are made of. I personally have had a lot of fun seeing what the female artist have brought to the table over the past few years. Miss Van started off scrawling on walls with the best of them and has made the switch over to canvas, making her work more conventionally accessible. I don't think this is selling out really. Other female artists have taken to the streets with different mediums all together, like the yarn bombers of Sweden and the US. Most recently I saw an awesome video of NY artist Olek covering the NY stock exchange bull with a lovely variegated pink crochet coating. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zT0HhNvDFRQ

It lasted only one day, but that's the heavy price of working in a public space. The art becomes just as much about the process and the reaction as it is about about work it's self. I think that most of the more talented street artists out there have moved on the the mainstream art world because the landscape of contemporary art has changed enough to accept them, and possibly because the people demanded it.

Exit Through The Gift Shop touches on this shift in the movement. It provides a first hand look at the beginnings of truly great street art through the eyes of the artists who lived and worked during that time. It lifts the veil of a world that operates mainly under the cover of darkness and shows the very ordinary people who do extraordinary things. Now I don't want to confuse you all when talking about this film, it's a film by Banksy... but it's not really about Banksy. It's about a Frenchman named Thierry Guetta. Thierry was that weird kid in high school who was always trying to hang out with you and your cool friends, he never really fit in, but you didn't have the heart to tell him to leave because he brought you all snack food during lunch and owned all the newest video game platforms.

Plainly, Thierry started out as just "Cousin Thierry", cousin of street artist Space Invader. He always had a video camera strapped to his arm for no reason in particular, always filming, never really knowing why. When he stumbled into the world of graffiti almost accidentally, it became his life's obsession. He was unable to stop his endless pursuit of capturing all that the art world had to offer on film. The thing was, Thierry wasn't a film maker. He was just a guy with a camera. After Thierry fails to produce an actual film at the end of his years of taping everything around him, Banksy takes the tapes, sends Thierry back to the US with the supposed directive to "do some art, have a show or whatever you want." He takes this very, very seriously. His pseudonym "Mr. Brainwash" debuts in grand fashion, producing hundreds of works of art and selling more than a million dollars worth of it at a highly publicized show entitled Life is Beautiful. Here's the big thing though, Mr. Brainwash's art... is bad. Like freshman art school kind of bad. What does this say about the correlation between hype and value in the art world? What does it say about art?

The question has been raised, was all of this an elaborate hoax conceived by Banksy and Shepard Fairey?

I don't think I really care if it was all fake. Really, it doesn't change very much about the movie. The film still manages to cover really great ground in describing the changing landscape of art and showing you where street art and great contemporary art merge. Seeing a young Shepard Fairey in a kinkos printing all of his famous Obey posters was priceless. It gives you a window into the humble beginnings that all artist rise from. Really, that's what Mr. Brainwash does, even if he is a made up entity. He challenges the concept that you have to work hard for what you get. He is a product either way, something that was designed for mass consumption. He made sure that his work would be appreciated in some way by making it just like all of the other iconic artworks. Its like sticking Warhol, Banksy, Fairey, and many other great masters of their craft in a blender and expecting the resulting soup to taste good. Thierry's work leaves a foul taste in my mouth, but I'm thankful for the experience all the same. It shines a light on all that is wrong and right with the art community.

Painting WIP 1 - "This is Where You Live"

And the journey begins...

For the past few months there has been a partially painted canvas sitting on an easel, staring at me. I can feel it every time I walk into that room. It is the physical representation of procrastination. When shit really hit the fan in my life I spent a great deal of time cleaning and organizing the studio so that I would be comfortable spending time in there, and now that it's clean I need to pour all of the negative energy I'm holding inside of me into this canvas. It's pretty big, I think it can absorb most of what I throw at it.

I have been trying to keep up with the contemporary art world more over the past year and have found a huge source of inspiration in Mark Ryden. I'm always shocked when I say his name to someone and they don't know who I'm talking about, because to me he like the Michelangelo of low-brow art. He uses this amazing attention to detail, but his forms aren't overly fussy. They are as smooth as silk and stare at you from the canvas with knowing eyes. Ryden crosses the boundaries between realism and fantasy by creating a world that you think must be real, but as beautiful as these figures are, I don't know that you'd want to live with them in your world. There is a certain playful yet sinister quality to the creatures, little girls who want to play with you but aren't sure that they want to play nice.

I just love his colors and textures. I am most certainly not at his level yet, but I am trying to spend more time looking at other artists and picking out the things that I like in their work and using it to make my images come to life. Right now my biggest problem is paint brushes. I don't like to use large brushes very often, and a lot of the smaller brushes I have are too long and the oil paint won't transfer from the brush to the canvas as well as I would like, or they are so short that they don't hold enough paint and I feel like I'm trying to paint a mural with a needle. There has to be some sort of middle ground here with out me spending $30 a brush. Painting is an expensive hobby I tell you... lets hope someday someone wants to pay me lots of money for my work so I don't have to have a fit over whether or not I can afford new "Tuscan Yellow" paint for a project. If anyone out there is an oil painter who paints detail work and has a favorite brush, please let me know what you're using.

Okay, so with all of that being said, let me introduce the painting that has been staring at me over the past few months. The painting is called This is Where You Live. It is one of the first paintings I've done in the proper background to foreground order so all I have really to show is a bunch of trees that have been razed to the ground.

I know it looks a little weird right now because there is a huge grey area in the middle of the piece, but if you look at the outline, it's going to be a girl sitting down when I'm finished with it. I don't want to say too much about it now because I want to keep updating as I get more finished. I'm excited and nervous at the same time about painting the foreground on this one. I spent several days on these tree stumps and although I'm not as happy with them as I would like to be, the thought of painting over them because I messed up the girl is horrifying. Really, I just need to stop being so critical of myself before the damn thing is even finished yet. I'll try to get a better picture on the next post. One that's not taken in the middle of the night with terrible lighting. (Although that does make a lovely excuse as to why the picture may not be up to snuff)

So here's to tonight. Planning and painting this girl. I wonder who she'll be.

New Year, Renewed Dedication

It's been a year almost to the day that I last posted anything. When I started this blog I felt enthusiastic about the prospect of getting my art out there in a forum that wasn't Deviant Art, and I still think that this is a worth while pursuit.

A lot has changed in the past 12 months, more than I probably would have liked, but you learn to roll with the punches. My husband and I separated, and more recently have decided to spend more and more time apart. This is really difficult emotionally but I have a renewed interest in making art the first and foremost passion in my life, other then my wonderful 3 year old daughter of course. In the coming months I hope to be using this blog to post more information on my art and various projects. I hope that posting works in progress will compel me to finish them in a more timely manor. I hope that I will be able to direct people to this site to get a taste for what my work is like and to better understand my stylistic influences.

I still wish to write about artists that I respect and love. I have come to terms with the fact that there is very little true originality out there any more. For the longest time I battled with the concept of copying versus being inspired by. I felt guilty when my work looked in any way shape or form like one of my favorite artists. This is not a failure. I can create works with passion and using concepts that vary wildly from my artistic peers yet fit in a certain genre. I wish to learn from these artists who have been before me and take in their mistakes and accomplishments and apply them to my projects.

The goal is to announce a gallery opening by the end of this year.

Here is to hoping.

Embracing the Storm: Jeff Soto

As I rolled out of bed this morning, I couldn’t help but think that this was going to be another day where I would spend most of my day trying to think of ways not to make the most out of the time that I have. That’s pretty much how most of my days start. Needless to say, I don’t consider myself much of a morning person. I think I need to take up serious coffee drinking. Come to think of it, I think this is a pattern problem of mine. I can’t do anything half-assed so I end up not doing anything at all. Well, it’s easier to avoid looking at nothing than it is to avoid looking at a product that is subpar.

So, to make this day turn around in the right direction I’m going to start off by talking about someone who is a bit of an inspiration. The Great Jeff Soto!

I was first introduced to Jeff’s work a few years ago and have followed his career with great gusto ever since. There are a couple of things that make his work really stand out in my mind. First, I really like the quality of his ever changing style. I feel something familiar in that, possibly because I see my own inability to really stick to a style or theme. I don’t really even know if that’s a trait that I aspire to have. Of course it’s nice to have your work instantly recognizable, like Shepard Fairey…

Jeff Soto’s medium of choice is acrylic. Backgrounds are created by splashes of thinned paint on a neutral background often reminiscent of watercolors. Most of the foreground is placed in a central location on the plane, with many elements radiating out of a dark mass tied together with a tangle of fuzzy hair, telephone pole lines, and rainbow ribbons. It is easy to see how this style evolved from more traditional graffiti art because even though the background adds something to the mood of the piece, it could be taken away and replaced with just about any surface. While the backgrounds employ the natural flowing nature of paint and its interaction with the ground, the foregrounds seem to float above; opaque paint overlaying the transparent and covering it like a sticker.

I love the alien-urban landscape that Jeff creates. His half dust-bunny half homicidal robot creatures seem hardly menacing when placed in an environment that includes nautical stars and flowing rainbows, still is work is commonly placed in with other dark artists. I guess part of me is bias because I’ve seen how dark “dark-art” can be and Soto only flirts with the tip of that iceberg. I wonder often times when looking at Jeff’s work if the items are being pulled out of some sort of Pandora’s box of delights or forced together at their bases by some strange gravitational pull.

On a more personal note, Jeff is just a normal guy. He’s married and has two daughters that are just as cute as can be. I hold out hope for myself that one day I’ll be dragging my kid around to art shows and conferences that I was actually invited to. So a big thanks to Jeff Soto for sharing his storm cloud of genius with us all. Everyone watch out, because the flood waters are rising.

Well do you?

...Sometimes in life we are all just waiting for a moment to start in...

There is a room in my home and in that room there is a bag of books; books of the handwritten variety. Its nice to have them waiting there and sometimes I imagine to myself that they have a smaller, younger version of myself playing out the memories I had found important enough to record. This happens in a Harry Potter moving picture sort of way, of course. I love the textures of their covers, I love the innocence of the very old ones. You know, the ones with the names of past loves scrawled on the back cover (newest at the bottom, all others carefully crossed out when they had reached their expiration dates.) I used to think a boy would come and read them all, discover that I was a brilliant linguist and poet and fall head over heels in infatuation with the voice I only hear in my head. .

So here I am, 23, post-childbirth, filled with ideas and in need of infinite pages to fill with them. If you're reading this... and I don't think you are, maybe we can learn together? It could be fun!