Late June Garden

The strawberries have been few and far between, but still delicious:

 Arugula flowers (they bolted way too quickly, but I thought the flowers were sort of pretty):

Tomatillo flowers:

 A strange weed has been cropping up everywhere this year -- I don't know where the seeds came in from, but the flowers are kind of pretty so I've left a few of the plants:

Baby green tomatoes:

And this mystery plant, which has fragrant leaves -- some kind of herb? But how did it get here?

My harvest for yesterday's salad: several kinds of lettuce, akashiso, basil and chives!

Wish You Were Here at A.I.R. Gallery

I currently have a small map in a group exhibition at A.I.R. Gallery in Brooklyn, NY. The exhibition title "Wish You Were Here" refers to the postcard format that all the works are in, but I feel like it works especially well with the type of work I do! Here's the piece I sent in:

I haven't been able to see the show, and probably won't get to New York before it comes down on July 15th, but a friend took some photos of the exhibit for me:

Upcoming Shows

Add these dates to your calendar if you'll be in the area!

THIS Thursday, June 21st, 6-8pm: Opening reception for “Wish You Were Here” exhibition at A.I.R Gallery in Brooklyn, New York. The exhibition will be on view through July 15th.

Through the month of July: I will have an installation in the Inside-Out Gallery, the display windows of the CVS in Davis Square, on the theme of “Migration”.

Saturday, July 21st, 11-6pm: ArtBeat in Davis Square. I will have a table with an interactive, crowd-sourced map project and also plan to have art, cards and prints for sale.

Saturday, August 25th, 11-6pm: Picnic Music + Arts Festival in Portland, ME. The festival will take place at Congress and Franklin streets, in Lincoln Park, and will be on rain or shine. I will be sharing a booth with the wonderful and talented Courtney of Closer to the Ocean. 

Shadowbox Project

I've been working on cut-out map shadowboxes recently, but so far haven't come up with anything I'm extremely satisfied with. While I keep working, here's what I've made so far. I designed a two-level shadowbox with cut-outs in both layers, but when I put them together the result was too busy:

Because both layers were individually designed, I figured I should separate them and make individual shadowboxes, like the one I already have. Unfortunately the shadows don't really work that well -- maybe the work is too far from the background, or the light is just wrong?

Mosaic Map Teapot

For Mobilia Gallery's June teapot exhibit, I thought I'd try something a little more colorful, and applied my mosaic map techniques to a 3D paper sculpture. It reminds me a little of a turtle's shell with the geometric pattern and the colors. I had wanted to try a watery map teapot but couldn't think of a good solution to the issue of uniformity over the parts of the shape, so I think this was a good compromise. Maybe I'll figure that out for the next show!

Tiny Painting Sketches

I spent some time the other day just doodling with paint, trying to come up with new ways to approach the kind of aesthetic I like. These were all done on tiny cards, about 2"x3". 

Rainy Garden

The first flowers are starting to come out in my garden, so I went out this morning to take some pictures, even though everything is covered in the rain we've been having on and off these days. Most of these are unexpected; the forget-me-not came out of nowhere, and the pinks seem to have seeded themselves, since the original plant is far away. After two successive gardens on the same porch, there are a lot of surprises in the pots!

Cambridge Open Studios

Yesterday we took advantage of the beautiful weather and biked all around Cambridge for the north/west portion of their Open Studios. We saw a variety of media, with a surprising lean towards watercolor and collage -- I guess we just avoided most of the traditional painting, in favor of more unusual works. Some of my favorites were:

- Chihiro Makio at Almost Perfect Glass Studio, who I knew from Mobilia Gallery. I hadn't seen her multicolored folded metal pieces, and I love them -- they're really delicate, and floral without being flowery. Some of her designs remind me of how I assembled my crocheted flower necklace.

- Hannah Goodwin, who does delicate, scratched drawings on rice paper with bamboo pens. I'm impressed with the control she was able to achieve; I wouldn't be able to stand it! Her drawings mostly evoked images of nests, but the titles hinted that they were inspired by more conceptual ideas.

- Janet Hobbs, who makes watercolor paintings in a variety of styles. I was particularly drawn to a few that looked like scrolls, with a balance of organic wet-on-wet blooms and thin, controlled twiggy sketches. I also liked the contrast of her "Industrial Chroma" series, which is a little more graphic.

BOS-LAX Scenery

It's always surprising to look out the window of a plane and see elements of the kind of geometry I put into my map drawings, even in a landscape I've never visited or even seen before. There was a lot of variety between the coasts, and I never got tired of looking out the window.

Ceramic Vase with Houses

One of my favorite things about Somerville Open Studios last weekend was connecting with artists whose work I really respect, and also meeting new ones! I just met Arielle from Small Spaces Ceramics and I'm already a huge fan. She makes beautiful, mysterious bowls that incorporate mini houses (!) and "bubbles" of clay that look like large-scale granulation, an effect I've always been drawn to in metalsmithing. We arranged a trade, and I gave her a hairclip and a drawing in exchange for the most wonderful vase. The vase has three openings, which is perfect for my floral needs -- I usually display flowers from my porch garden, but only in the middle of the summer would I ever have enough flowers to fill a traditional vase. The flowers end up being part of the miniature scene in the vase, which is something I just love. The two houses on the vase's rim seem to have grown from the granulation around them. Unfortunately photos can't capture the most compelling part of the vase, which is that it was so touchable that I couldn't put it down once I chose it!

I also just love how it allows me to display simple weeds in a way that shows them off. Look how cute these shepherd's purse flowers are: