New electronics and fun art stuff

Hey so I got some mega cool xmas gifts. A new digital SLR and a nifty scanner. Now I can make new things and takes images of them!! Today I've been playing with my new toys, here's some older work that I've scanned.

Also later this week I'll be going on a mini break to San Fransisco and I plan on taking a on of pics with my new camera, so watch out for new material!

I also plan on scanning a bunch of my negatives (as soon as I find them) an uploading some more of my photo work to this blog.

"Venice" Mezzotint using aquatint process. Done in my semester abroad in Florence

Pencil sketch done at the Musee d'Orsay

Model sketch. Red conte crayon

Scene from the Canterbury Tales. Pen on paper

Scene from the Canterbury Tales. Pen on paper

Finishing up the Labors Series for BWAC

I have off work tomorrow, and I’ve promised myself to work on a couple of things. As some may know, my dad and I are in the process of building an art studio space in the basement (where the darkroom used to be) so I can finally have a place to work. It’s almost done, I still need to transfer a lot of stuff from my room and give the new space a quick clean but I’m going to try to accomplish this in the morning.

There is another reason I’m anxious to start working again. I’ve joined BWAC (finally) and am going to be featured in their show in May. I’ve decided I’d like to display my Hercules series, which as of yet is still incomplete. So I have to get my arse in gear to finish off the series. I have an idea or two for the remaining 2 paintings. I’d also like to make a Nemian Lion II because I am no longer in possession of the first one. So that brings up the total to 3 paintings I have to finish before the second week of May. I think I can do it; I tend to work better under a deadline anyway.

I also plan on making a book for a special lady I know who gave me an awesome gift the other day. I think it’s going to be classic cinema themed basic sketchbook/notebook. The cool idea I had was that it would have random interwoven images of such classy folks as Lauren Bacall, Bela Lugosi and Gregory Peck. I’m not exactly sure how I’ll go about making this, but I’ll figure it out. Is it too much to put in a few Cinema quotes as well? Is that lame and dorky?

So looks like I’ll be a busy lady. My family’s also plans on taking a vacation in Barcelona for two weeks in the middle/end of May. I’m super psyched about that. I’m second guessing purchasing a scanner and might opt for giving my self a camera for my birthday. I can’t do much with a new scanner in Barcelona and all my film cameras are either busted or too archaic to use for tourist-ing. So hopefully I’ll have lots of new work to show everyone in the next month or so, painting, photo and book stuff!

Here are some random images, figure drawings and sketches from MICA years past and of course my Lauren Bacall woodblock print from LaG.

On the threshold and old Florence art

I feel like I'm on the threshold of something good. which is good - because I feel like I've been kind of in stasis for the past couple of months. I think December will bring good things, I've been stressing a lot lately about a great many things but this past week went from really, really low to a medium high in a relative short amount of time. Sometimes I think that things must happen for a reason, so I have a good feeling now about the future. I feel like now would be the time for a fresh start, I feel optimistic for a change, still not totally there yet in what I want to accomplish but at I'm on the right track.

I've been feeling the art itch again, but it's hard because I really have nowhere to work. I miss my studio in the Bank building sooo much! I made a handmade sketchbook for a present for one of my friends, so I think I'll make a few more if I can find a place that sells book-board and find a recipe for wheat paste. books don't really take all that much space to make, it's the painting and mixed media stuff that feels like a daunting task at the moment. And I would like to be sketching or drawing but I feel so uninspired at home to start on something. Ugh.

So for lack of any new work to post I'll post some of my stuff from my semester abroad in Florence. This was the Spring semester of 2008.

The first image is a painting I did in Piazza della Signoria of Cellini's Perseus in the Loggia dei Lanzi. I sat there for a couple of hours in the cold and dark with my paints, being harassed by Italian men but I think it was pretty worth it.

The second painting was done from the view up at Piazzale Michelangelo on the other side of the Arno. This was done in a few hours as well from about 1pm to about sunset at maybe 7. This was a whole other experience since Piazzale Michelangelo was pretty crowded on that lovely afternoon with tons of performers and tourists. I remember there was this awful music from this Native American troupe, it was like listening to Yani ALL DAY. That coupled with the Japanese tourists the would want pictures with me was pretty frustrating and hard to concentrate. Any way, this painting is unique in that I first primed the canvas with gold spray paint and then went on top of that with oils.

This mask was handmade by me, using what I believe to be the traditional Italian mask-making process. There was a lovely mask store that I always would pass and one day I stopped in and started talking to the owner. He invited me to come to one of the workshops that he taught but unfortunately a lot of were after I would have had to leave, so he invited me to come anytime I wanted and he would show me one on one how the process was done. It's kind of a paper mache process with molds and glue. It was a lot of fun and a total cultural Italian moment for me. In return I gave him one of my etching I did depicting the opera Madame Butterfly and he gave me one of his prints. I painted the masks in oil and gold and black spray paint, not the traditional water based paints because I wanted a full range of color.

While I was in Florence, I took printmaking. I had not had the chance to take it at MICA and I had taken some classes in high school and again at the Art Students League, but I can't get enough of it, so I found myself in a position to take it abroad. In this piece I was trying to depict my love for both New York and Florence. They are such different cities but I wanted to show how much both inspire me artistically.

This etching was kind of an experiment. I was trying out the photo transfer process on a spare plate and I liked the graphic and textural quality of the overlapping images. I played around with layering, removing and adding parts of images, using cheese cloth to texture the resin and dripping the resin to get different effects. I then went on top of the finished print and used a reddish, greenish ink and watercolor.

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving, cheers!