Riveted Flower Cuff

Yesterday I made myself a cuff bracelet to add some "edge" to an outfit. I used some of my singed fabric flowers, but the bracelet still comes off as pretty tough! I've listed the bracelet on Etsy here.

Hybrid Maps

Ever since I started doing cut-out maps I've wondered whether I could combine that with drawn maps, so over the weekend I did some experiments. Here's a couple progress photos:

The dark part is the cutting board below the image. I originally intended to put the pieces on top of white paper, like my cut-out map cards, but that actually ends up being too subtle next to the black lines of the drawing. Luckily, there are a lot of different things I can explore!

Early Summer Garden

I've been at home a lot lately waiting for a wisdom tooth surgery to heal, which is mostly a pain except that it gives me more time to peer at my little porch garden. I'm trying a lot of new plants this year, and I hope they all work!

There was a big rainstorm last night, so when I went out this morning everything was green and wet -- perfect for taking morning photos!

Marigolds (I don't actually like them much, but they keep bugs off the tomatoes, and the deep red color is rather pretty):

The tiniest proto-stringbean! Can you even see it?

First tomato flower! This year I bought four different heirloom tomato seedlings. I think this one is a pink and yellow striped beefsteak tomato. Can't wait!

My friend China Blue gave me these strawberry plants from her garden when I visited last summer, and they actually wintered over and started blooming this spring! I think this one didn't get properly fertilized though, it's such a funny shape:

I also bought strawberry seedlings from the nursery since I wasn't sure if the others would flower properly this year:

Pretty pea flowers:

And a little pea! These guys are shelling peas, so I might just try to eat the pods before they get big (like snow peas). I also have the most adorable proto-sugar snap peas slowly growing on the other vines.

I bought some Thunbergia "African Sunset" seedlings at the nursery. When they aren't being mysteriously eaten (what snips off stems and leaves on a second-floor balcony garden? Rogue, sentient clippers?), the flowers are really beautiful. They start out a dark pink and fade to light yellow, like this one:

I bought a mini rose plant for $7.50 (at Brattle Florist in Harvard Square -- super good deal, guys!) and planted it in a larger pot, and immediately it shot out new branches and buds. This one's juuuust about to pop open:

For some reason everything's been bolting before it has a chance to grow leaves big enough to eat (spinach, radishes, bok choi). But I figure if I can't eat it, I might as well see what the flowers look like. Maybe they'll help attract bees up here, which can be an issue for pollination. Chinese mustard buds:

Mosaic Maps

I was thinking recently about the geometric, relatively inorganic process I use to build up the design in my papercut map cards, and tried applying it back to drawing. The first drawing I did and painted in was sold almost immediately after I finished it (I didn't even have time to scan it!):

I was also working on a larger 9x12 drawing of the same type at the time:

That one's still on hold; I took a break to finish a previous work in progress in the new mosaic style, which I think came out really well:

I also made another small map in plum, like the one in green (but more dense):

I think the first green one and the five boroughs one are the most successful at the moment. Someone recently suggested that I try making a diptych of a cut-out and a mosaic map in the same form, or influenced by each other, that could be a next step.

LIC Open Studios 2011

I was in New York this past weekend to see some friends at the LIC Arts Open, which this year was a week-long event. Unfortunately I didn't get to see all of them, but I did come across some fun new artists at the Juvenal Reis studios.

I was particularly taken with the detailed, almost obsessive pen drawings of Rena Teratani, who is apparently having an exhibition in Montreal in June. Unfortunately the website images and printed postcards don't really show the incredible detail in her pieces. Her work reminds me a little of Julie Mehretu's mark-making, and apparently reminds others of mine -- at open studios, a friend saw the map I have on the back of my phone and thought it might have been something Rena drew! The fact that she does detailed drawings on a large scale has convinced me that my drawings might actually look okay if I did them significantly larger than my usual 9"x12".

The other super memorable art we came across this weekend was hidden in the lower floor of a secluded gallery in Chelsea. Paul Shore & Nicole Root's photographs had made the Internet rounds a while ago, but the full collection was really amazing. They reproduce iconic works of contemporary sculpture in candy, and photograph them in mini gallery setups that make the candy to scale with the original work. I really appreciated the Dan Flavin light installation (one wax stix candy in the corner of a room) and the initially befuddling Claes Oldenburg (naturally, a real ice cream cone and slice of cake). Do check out the link above if you've ever taken contemporary art history.

Faceted Maps

The other day I was doodling map ideas in a coffeeshop, and started building this:

      

It's not maplike in the way my other drawings are, but it's got the same kind of linear fractal aesthetic. I definitely think of them as roads connected into neighborhoods, they're just arranged a little differently. I played around with color when I got home:

I'm not sure how much I like that, though. I think they need some kind of color, but maybe I'm just not good enough with colored pencils to get the effect I want with them. They might work out better with a light watercolor wash that changes over the course of the drawing. I do want to delineate "neighborhoods" with color, and that might be a good way to do it. I started building another drawing on watercolor paper, using archival pens:

I've put this project on hold to work on new "mosaic" style maps (more on those soon!), but it was a sort of promising side project. If anyone has any ideas about extending it, let me know in the comments!

Somerville Open Studios Recap

Open Studios was surprisingly hectic, but really amazing. I met a lot of people who were really interested in my work; two of my favorites were a young child who came to my table, politely asked to buy a print (after studiously perusing the designs available) and even signed up for my mailing list, and a guy who ran over on a friend's recommendation, took a glance at my table and the drawings I had on display and summed up his review by exclaiming "Holy shit."

Because I was behind the table the whole time, I didn't get a chance to look at many other artists' work, but I did take one opportunity to run around the space a little, and I even had some fans bring me business cards from other artists they thought I'd like. I was recommended to check out one of the tables in the Armory because the artist was working with cut-outs from roadmaps, and when I got a chance to see her work it turned out she already knew about my maps and had bought two pieces from me! It's getting to be a smaller and smaller world, and I love it.

I also met a lot of interesting artists by chatting with the people who came by my table. I had some new, stylized watercolor maps out, and got into a discussion with a photographer about how they resembled some work he'd done with images of cobblestones. 

 

He works with much brighter colors than I do, so his image is a lot more eye-catching. I should definitely think of using more color; even if it's not something I normally do, it does get peoples' attention. I had prints of "Growing Fields" (by far the most colorful map I've done) for the first time at Open Studios, and almost sold out of that one design. I'm thinking of doing the abstract maps (like the one above) in brighter colors, to make more graphic map representations.

Spring Green Earrings

I've been experimenting with new colors of fabric for my twiggy flower earrings. I'm really excited about these ones -- the combination of light green fabric and pearl beads makes me think of the first snowdrops of spring. I'll be rolling these out at SLAM at the Burren next weekend for their Easter-themed craft fair on April 23rd. Hope to see you there!

Somerville Museum "Artist's Choice" Exhibition

I am again participating in the Somerville Museum "Artist's Choice" exhibition this year, in conjunction with Somerville Open Studios. There is an opening tonight (Friday, April 15th) from 6-9pm, which should be a lot of fun. Each artist participating in Open Studios was invited to submit one work, so the show is always very varied. I am showing "Sunset Parks", which is pretty much my favorite map. I can't wait to see how the show looks!

Papercut Map Cards

After my cutout map experiments, I've been thinking about the idea of making one-of-a-kind handmade cards with map imagery. One way that's been successful so far is three-layered handcut map cards. The cards are each a piece of thin paper folded in four; blocks are carved out of the top layer, and houses are carved out of the second layer. When the card is closed, the writing layer provides the background. I suppose that if you were to write densely enough on the card, the writing would show through in the houses.

I'll be showing a few of these cards at SLAM the weekend after next, and if that goes well there should be more available at Somerville Open Studios! They are also currently available on Etsy, if you're not in the area.