drowned interview.

a few months back I was contacted to do an interview for the fun blog, Drowning Dogs, which features mail interviews with artists. we are sent the questions, can respond however we like and then mail them back the actual mail is what is published on the blog.

I was sent card stock with green marker questions an aesthetic that felt to in congruent with me that I ended up cutting it apart and remaking it into a collage of words, questions, and little drawings. Go check my interview out here

yearning for a studio day

 

No studio day today, I gave it up so I could be home the day after thanksgiving with my kiddo. Hopefully, I will get some work done in Friday while nap is happening but last week my studio day was just perfect these are some shot taken last week... gives you a view into all the happenings at the studio.

 

 

time spent.

 

very cool work my good friend from grad school brought to my attention-  a new series,
TIME SPENT THAT MIGHT OTHERWISE BE FORGOTTEN by photographer Diane Meyer. 

I think her website is in process as a lot of links do not work but a number of her projects look interesting.  But thankfully this wonderful cross stitch project is working see more here.

late night drawing....

Sometimes I do really love having my studio in my house-  like at 11pm a night when I get a random thought and can go in my studio for an hour and make a drawing.  I lazed out and did no get as much stitching as I would have liked yesterday but am excited about this drawing that I started late night.

I am excited to see how much I develop it. I am digging the fast unfinished look of things lately and kind of want my work to live there so we will see. I have a show in February and kind of have no idea what work will end up in it so I am just going with the flow and letting it go. In the end the show will be me curating from all this recent work and making sense of it somehow.


 Do you have late night rushes for your work?
(sorry the picture sucks but it was taken at midnight.)

mamahood

I saw this on facebook and shared but thought many of you would love it too. Being a mama is one of the best and hardest things you can ever do as a women. 

My son is at the wonderful stage of asking for big hugs, wanting to hold my hand and a sweet voice saying "I love you too."  But he is also at the stage of night fears, picky eating, screaming tantrums and blossoming independence. Mamahood  we are all heroes...

because someday we all have to let go. Thanks mom.

oh life.

come one take a class with me....

Be inspired by the current MFA exhibition ...

Embroidery Embellishments on Clothing

Inspired by the Hippie Chic fashion exhibition at the MFA, embroider directly onto clothing. We will offer some designs from that era for alteration, personalization and play. In the process, learn basic embroidery.

 

Sign up, embellish, ahve fin.

get your walls one.

my incredibly talented and wonderful friend now offers hand painted wallpaper. So if you own your house and want a place that you will simply love have her come and work some magic.  I cannot wait to own a place and have her transform it.

http://www.marciepaperwalls.com/

my zone.

my first studio day in a very long time in which I do not have some god awful "to-do" list. Yay!!!!
Of course I have a million neglected emails and a mess of a house/studio/brain but none of that matters I am just going to zone out with my music, my npr and my work.

I am really digging the 2 pieces I am in the middle of- they both have a slow, simple, repetition to them but are also turning out beautiful. I do need to get some clarity about what is next though---

I am having sort of a solo show in February and the large white on white plant piece will be part of it but I am figuring out what will be the rest. Work I have or something new. I am actually kinda wanting some photos in it. Black and white photos infact. Something I have not done in forever. But the piece is white on white so color would feel incongurent.  So that is what I will be thinking on while I am hopefully fingers crossed lost in my zone today.

drawing

a quick look at the work of Danica Phelps always reminds me that drawing is just enough. Enough to be perfect.

images are from various conceptual projects.  see more

ambition

love this quote from a fresh air interview with daniel radcliffe....

...most people in any kind of creative industry generally have an operating system with the extremes of self-doubt... or anxiety and-  ambition.

Oh I love me some fresh air in the studio.

ripped

 

rip not included in image.

nothing more sucky then working for hours and hours and hours on something and then it rip. Ergh. Luckily it ripped in a way that is salvageable and luckily I love torn and healed linens more then anything. (it did not rip due to dry rot at least)

This has only happened once before but it is the worst. I do feel this one is very salvageable, if only I could find my patches I would see how well it will work out or not.

Today my precious studio day did not feel so studio like- the am was full of a to do list getting accomplished. So things off my back but not exactly what I love to do on my studio day. But good news is that I have been feeling pretty motivated to work an hour or 2 in the evening so feel like that sort of makes up for it. Sort of. 

A studio vacation sounds awesome.  Oh yeah those are called residencies and folks with 3 year olds have a really hard time doing them. Someday my 3 year old will be older and I will wish he was 3 again so I will celebrate not having them and hopefully will celebrate having them when that time comes.

holy wow.

A recent show that I missed here in the Boston area featured the work of Elizabeth Alexander (maybe a local artist?) I saw the installation images and was simply like wow!

 

 

Her work is easy to understand and is it so successful in deconstructing and reconstructing ideas, mostly connected to the domestic sphere. Her meticulous and laborious process is astounding.

 

I have been loving cutting out things in my studio and this just makes me realize how far you can take that as a process. I love it.

It is fun (not to mention totally inspiring) to see her website and watch how her work has developed and grown and that it is all awesome.

a new experiment

called fast drawings. On a day where I had a lovely moments after another but got nothing I needed to get done done, or almost nothing. I did do this. Kinda diggin it.

stitch.

a quote recently discovered on a great Boston art blog.

“Life may be compared to a piece of embroidery of which, during the first half of our time, we get a sight of the right side, and during the second half, of the wrong. The wrong side is not as pretty…but it is more instructive; it shows the way in which the threads have been worked together.”

Arthur Schopenhauer

work by

image by Ana Teresa Barboza. Read a previous post on her work here.

 

theatrical nature.

the incredibly beautiful and poetic work of Noemie Goedal.

Read a bit about her and her work here.

  

 

See more here.

think you know needlework?

 It's a bit long but it is also so fun to see the team behind this and all the artist they feature.
Take a watch...

"how we situate ourselves within a mechanized society."

 

  

digging this work by Ariane Roesch.

stitch, stitch

another day in the studio, Feeling a little bit unfocused but truckin along.  This is a new drawing that I have been thinking about for awhile now and finally got started on it today. Just like stitching it is all about the repetition but in such a different way. I am excited to see how it goes and what the response is.

Otherwise making a little, but not as much as I'd like, progress on this little baby. or not so little. stitch, stitch.

totally not focused today. ergh.

so thinly

See more images and read about this wonderful piece by Elliot Collins. Thread and text and an ambiguous but poignant statement- art after my own heart!

from the press release:
The outlines of his carefully positioned nails say ‘The World Is Held Together So Thinly' - a comment perhaps on the fragility of corporeal existence and the striving for a comprehending mental view of the actions of other creatures (sentient or otherwise). Or a reference to our cities' vulnerability to earthquakes. Or even the fragility of social bonding. It's highly ambiguous.

Read more: http://eyecontactsite.com/2011/03/drawing-with-coloured-string-and-nails#ixzz2jgcdKxuJ

a view into my room...

a view into my studio yesterday afternoon. I got a couple hours of stitching in yesterday while lil'T was napping and it felt so nice.  The plant piece that I am working on is making me happy. It is going so, so, so slow but I am enjoying the repetition and simplicity of the approach I am taking. I have been able to be in "the zone" of stitching which in truth has not happened in awhile.

Therefore- though I am not really sure what I doing I know I must finally be moving in the right direction because I am enjoying and wanting to be in the studio.

Having the studio at home is a great and not great thing.  I love the actual space itself and it is really nice to just be able to "drop" in and do things whenever. But I do miss the community of folks SO much and a studio would help me find that. It also totally depresses me to walk by my studio everyday when I cannot get in there to work. This week my sewing machine was all set up from some work I started last week on my studio day and everyday I walked by seeing nothing change, it drove me nuts.

But the hand work was getting done, so I need to take what I can get I suppose and simply be grateful for the fact that I do get a TRUE studio day every week and if I play it right after my adjunct class is over often I will be able to have 2 days.  Though I may not get things done as much as I would like it is also an amazing luxury to have those days in the studio.

how are your studio days going?