It has been a suuuuper long month for me. The problem is that I am not very patient. Dave and I are buying a house (hopefully we will be closing on Thursday), and as soon as we decided what house we wanted I was ready to move in--we were already packed up, and what's a girl to do without her art supplies?
Like I said...it's been a long month. All I've done is pack, clean, and dream about the wonderful place our first home will be. I didn't feel like I had anything to blog about, because I didn't feel like I was doing anything interesting. But alas! Now that I look back on the last month, there are some exciting things that I did (other than fall in love with a cute house)!
3 Comments
In the midst of the big ball of good-crazy happening to us right now (so much to tell and so very soon!), I wanted to throw a new little painting your way for some weekend art happiness. My college professor of acrylic painting encouraged us to "sketch" in watercolor, but as I was a sort of a slacker and self-proclaimed "college poor", I preferred to hit the canvass with as little plan as possible and just go for it. Recently I've been playing around with watercolors for the first time. Here is my favorite so far: This piece is a mix of watercolor, acrylic medium, acrylic, and ink. I also messed up and split the layers of watercolor paper somehow, so I ripped a bunch of it off and kept going. It was quite a happy mistake--the large purple-gray field in the center is the result, and I love how messy the edges turned out.
Wednesdays are 50%-off-all-clothing-day at The Salvation Army by our house, and since Dave and I choose to spend as little as possible so that we can be all artsy and musiciany, our entire wardrobes are from the thrift store. There is one big problem: Dave hates shopping but always needs new awesome t-shirts to replace old worn-out t-shirts (after all, it is his signature style). Without Dave to try on the shirts, I end up just buying anything that looks cool (or ironic) (or hilarious) (or nerdy) no matter the shirt size--hey, at fifty cents each, why not? Every time I go, this shopping adventure results in about four new shirts for Dave and two new shirts for Emily's Pile o' Craftin Cloth. Soon the pile became enormous. At the time my craftin' shirt collection reached its most-gargantuan state (Late October), Felicitous Coffee & Tea was preparing to sell loads of handmade gifts for Christmas time. I wanted to reuse the shirts in a way that was massively sellable for the holidays, but that was also easy to reproduce in quantity. I came up with making fabric-covered, single-signature sketch journals. They sold very well (and still do) at the coffee shop, and Dave and I gave out quite a few for Christmas ourselves. Our local Whole Foods is displaying a few of my art works in their cafe area as part of their EcoBration extravaganza (EcoVaganza?).
Ok, so the event was actually called "EcoExpressions," but "EcoBration" is a way cooler name, so that is how I have been referring to it all month. I originally posted this tutorial as an instructable. I was just making another one of these watches last night, so I figured I would post the DIY project here as well.
Happy Making! Last week I was asked by the Student Environmental Association (SEA) at USF to submit work for their upcoming RecycleFest and gallery show. The conversation (heavily, heavily paraphrased) went something like this: SEA: "Hey Emily, would you like to include some of your work in our upcoming Activart gallery show? It is about recycling, sustainability, and the environment. Most of the other pieces are made from recycled or reused objects." Me: "Definitely! How many pieces? When? Where?" SEA: "Basically as many as you want. We had a lot of people drop out. We need them to be at the CentreGallery by 1pm tomorrow." Me: "............I AM SO PREPARED FOR THIS MOMENT!" I've been experimenting with encaustic paints the past few days, and let me tell you, learning a new medium is frustrating. I find myself trying to use the paints in the same ways I use acrylics instead of embracing the material and allowing myself to discover its strengths and limitations. Encaustic paints are made of beeswax and pigment (oil paint). To use them, the paint must be melted and applied while hot. My initial attraction to this material is the ability to create a sense of depth through the layering of translucent and semi-transparent waxes; I also like that items can be embedded in the surface of the wax. Last year I began adding feathers, leaves, bones, insects, and other dead things into my paintings by suspending each object in clear epoxy, but it was difficult to visually integrate the shiny, smooth surface of the epoxy with my rather grungy paintings. I think the wax could be a better way to incorporate these kinds of elements. I read a book on encaustic techniques, but in the end I did what I normally do--I jumped in without really have any clue of what to do. So, no surprise, my first attempt was a huge failure. I ended up making a small painting that looked sort of like what I normally would do with acrylics, except way worse. It was a waxtastrophe. One incredible thing about these paints are that if you mess up, you can take the wax right off of your painting surface and melt the encaustic medium back down and use it again. I grabbed a knife, scraped all of the wax off of my failure painting and into a pancake griddle, melted it all back together, mixed in some oil paint for color, and started making monoprints. A lot of monoprints. Enjoy. Every summer in Boulder, CO, artists across the city would open their studios to the community and share their work space with anyone who was interested. My mom and dad would get a catalog and map of participating artists from the local library, and we would spend entire days watching painters create new works (and munching on the endless array of free pretzels and cookies).
Many artists created in their homes, but the most exciting stops were huge warehouses with studio space for rent. Here dozens of artists pinned paperworks to the walls or straddled a massive canvass across two easels, each person's space separated with standard gray pop-up tables spattered in color and brushes. I had never seen such a large workspace or such large paintings before, and I wanted to make some too. Like (seemingly) everyone else in America, I don't really care about Valentine's Day. I do enjoy being super cheesy and celebrating all kinds of loving relationships, so Husband Dave, Sister Alenni, and Me Emily did some new-fashioned love-locking for funsies!
As you have learned on every single page of my new website, I am Emily. And I am an artist and a designer. SURPRISE, I am also a BLOGGER now. woah. While I have done a lot of advertising and marketing for other people and businesses, I've just never done it for myself at all. I love to think up new creative ways for people to get their name out there. But my own name? My services? It feels weird to me. I may be the least put-myself-out-there human in America. I don't have a lot of ambition for professional success or building a career. I recently made some business cards for myself. They are my first real-official-serious-adult-professional business cards, but now I have a hurdle to face: I am incredibly awkward talking to people, and I am even more awkward trying to tell others about myself and why I could possibly help their business through design. Most of my clients find me because of word-of-mouth (I have happy customers who are AMAZING at talking about me, thank goodness), and I wanted a way to thank them for sharing my name while representing my skills and uniqueness with my possible new clients. |