New Holiday Cards

I just finished adding my new cards to Etsy! I have three new designs this season, in addition to the winter stars design from last year and the Christmas tree map from the year before. Click on the images below to see their Etsy listings!

If you're local (and want to save on shipping!), I also stock similar cards at these retailers:

13Forest Gallery (East Arlington) - all four designs, sold singly and in packs of 6
Blue Cloud Gallery (Ball Square, Somerville) - all four designs, sold singly and in packs of 6
Bestsellers Cafe (Medford Square) - Christmas tree and holiday flowers, sold singly
Abeille (Brookline Village) - Christmas tree cards, sold singly

Exhibition at Old Schwamb Mill

Along with the solo show at Bloc 11 in Somerville, I'll also be in a four-person abstract art exhibition in Arlington next month. The show is at the Old Schwamb Mill, which is a frame mill from 1864 that is still in operation. I'd never been there before, so I toured the space yesterday. It's an adorable low building, with the woodworking shop downstairs and a small art display space up the creaky wooden stairs on the second floor. The whole place smells like old wood and history. Several of the walls in the art space have been scrawled with chalk or marker -- at first I thought it was recent vandalism, but then I realized that the messages are historical recordings of events such as first snowfalls, written by the workers there over a century ago. We also got to see part of a tour of the still-working machinery on the first floor, which was developed to use water power from the area but has since been updated to electricity.

The gallery area is divided into small rooms, with a larger room or atrium as you come in and wall space between the individual rooms. The space was currently showing a mosaic show which was in the process of coming down while we were there. My work will be on the walls between the rooms, including this very picturesque window space which I am looking forward to filling with maps!

The opening reception will be Saturday, December 1 from 2:30-4:30pm (the day before my opening at Bloc 11); if it's a nice day, there should be lots of lovely light to illuminate the work. The exhibition will run through mid-March. I will also be running a mapmaking workshop on February 9th, and there will be a closing reception in March as well. I'll be sending out emails about those as they get closer; if you're not already on my mailing list, you can sign up on my site at www.emilygarfield.com.

"Somewhereville" Solo Exhibition at Bloc 11

I spent all evening on Wednesday working with the amazing art curator for Bloc 11 Cafe in Union, hanging what I just realized is my first real solo art show since college. It's a lot bigger than that one was, too -- there's 44 pieces of my art on their walls right now, and when we finish hanging the last few pieces there will be over 50! Here's some photos of the process:

The work in the show spans the three years I've been drawing maps -- we were joking that it's sort of a retrospective, though for a very new artist! I've also been hard at work in the last few weeks finishing several new pieces for the show. I'm especially excited about some new experiments on view in the vault area. I took scans of older map drawings and composited them together with line drawings made from photographs taken over the years to create digital collages that add narrative and texture to my work:

The exhibition runs through December 14, and there's an opening reception on Sunday, December 2 from 5-7pm. If you're in the area make sure to check it out! Here's some more photos of what you'll see:

New composites on display in the vault room:

 Matted small drawings hung in the hallway:

(we decided it was a performance piece, since they move

  when you walk down the hallway!)

Framed works in the main area:

South Boston Open Studios

Last weekend we spent a beautiful afternoon at the Distillery for South Boston Open Studios. It was my first visit to the space, and it appears to house artists working in an exceptionally wide variety of media. I was especially impressed with the number of artists who embraced drawing, since it's my medium of choice but tends to be less represented in the art world.

Lisa Scollan used chemical traces on industrial metal as her starting point for intricate, mostly abstract drawings. Her studio was amazing; it looked like she was just compelled to draw, all the time, on everything.

I first met Adam O'Day at the last Boston Arts Festival where we were both showing artwork. I've also seen his designs at Ward Maps and on friends' walls. I'm impressed by his facility with bright colors, and of course I love the cityscape theme.

Aimee Belanger had some great watercolor texture; I like the way this piece looks like a watercolor sampler, showcasing all the possibilities of the medium.

I actually profiled Chantal Hardy's work in an earlier post on SoWa artists after seeing it at an exhibition, but I didn't realize she was at the Distillery until I was face-to-face with her work. I don't often come across other artists who depict imaginary/invented places, and I like the way she mixes a representational style with abstract elements.

Pat Falco impressed us with his quirky poster series, including this clever one about missing cat posters. It's so rare to see humor at art events.

It was great to meet Courtney Moy in person after seeing her work at Toscanini's and following her blog for a bit. Her work is also refreshingly humorous; it mostly deals with food, and she pointed out to us a project on beer bottles, mentioning that she's working towards 99 of them (wall-mounted, of course).

I saw Sarah Gay's drawings at the exhibition "threefam" at City Hall recently, and I love the expression she puts into her houses. This "uprooted" house in particular reminds me of a lot of popular imagery that I've also put into some of my non-observational representational drawings.

Walter Crump was the last artist I saw, and he really impressed me with his range of media and styles. I was, of course, initially drawn by the maplike paintings, but soon got entranced by the texture in a few prints. Apparently they were soft ground or collograph prints using steel wool and even plant roots to get an organic texture behind his fields of color.

Pumpkin Fascinator

Last summer I found the most amazing/hideous bright orange plastic bridesmaid's dress (or, awful prom dress?) and it was immediately decided that I should wear it to be a pumpkin this Halloween. So I was excited about my costume for MONTHS, although somehow I neglected to plan out a suitable pumpkin-leaf headpiece to go with it until the weekend before. We were going to Providence for a conference and then a Halloween party, so I grabbed some felt, scissors, copper wire and a hairclip and started working on a pumpkin leaf/tendril fascinator on the train. I cut out pumpkin-shaped leaves from three colors of felt in graduated sizes and embroidered veins on them in contrasting colors. The embroidery not only added color and line to the leaves but also caused the felt to bunch up and become more leaf-textured. The leaves took me most of the conference, and I sewed them to the hairclip during the afterparty and added tendrils of copper wire.

Here's the finished product:

And here's a couple shots of it with the ridiculous dress at the party that night:

 I'm not planning to make anything that over-the-top to sell except by special request, but I do have fascinators with similar (though smaller) leaves in my Etsy shop.