30-Day Art Challenge: Catching Up

It's been a busy weekend and I've been forgetting to post stuff I'm working on. Some of it is boring, like the inventory list for my upcoming show at Sky River Mead. I've also been taking a photo a day, like this one, using Instagram and cooking and baking because that's how I roll.

But the biggest project, by far, remains the pieces for the 30-Day Art Challenge. I've been busy preparing the canvas boards with the shredded text backgrounds. I'm using pages from a truly awful and terribly damaged old book, old copies of The Wall Street Journal, an old telephone directory, and a couple of remaindered textbooks --including one Chinese accounting book-- for the backgrounds. I'm using a simple solution of Elmer's Glue and water to adhere the paper to the canvas boards and drying them partially with a blow-dryer before leaning them against the studio window to dry thoroughly.

Now that I have a few of these prepped, I'm ready to start adding layers of color and texture  using a variety of techniques including stencils, hand-carved stamps and rollers, dry-brush & sponging.

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30-Day Art Challenge -- Day 4

Another layer of color



And the last element, some text.


First one done & I'm ready to rock the rest of the designs.|

30-Day Art Challenge -- Day 3

Adding some layers to the piece now.



Still taking it slowly as I discover what I like or don't like in the process.
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30-Day Art Challenge -- Day 2

I want to get this post started before it gets too late.

First two steps on canvas #1 for the 30-Day Art Challenge. I've glued down scraps of text torn from an old and irredeemable book called "The Infinite Woman," a fitting beginning for this piece. The figure is one of my favorite stencils. Next, comes some more color & texture, but I may have to leave it here tonight because I'm just flat-out tired.

I suspect weekends will be more productive days on this project.
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30-Day Art Challenge -- Day 1

I picked up my canvas boards today for the 30-Day Art Challenge coincidentally just in time for Traci Bunkers' latest 30-day art throwdown.

I have to admit that the stack of them is a little daunting, particularly as I am also making some new pieces for my upcoming show at Sky River Mead later this month. Still, I think I'm up to the challenge, I have a great concept for the set of 30 pieces, and I think I'll be able to do a great job carrying it off as long as I stay focused and make sure to do at least a little work on the canvases every day.

This is as far as I got with the actual art-making tonight. Ironically, when I tried to make this post from my phone, the App kept throwing an error, so I'm up late anyway, downloading pics to my laptop so I can upload them to this post.

Long day & I'm too tired to stay up making art. More time and energy for art tomorrow.

Arthouse Co-Op Mystery Project

A month or so back, I accepted the challenge to do the "Mystery Project" based on the description on the Arthouse Co-Op site that read "Create a token of inspiration using the tools in your kit — it could be a drawing, a zine, a sculpture, or a collage — then install it in a public place for a stranger to discover."

I was a little excited when the small bubble envelope containing the ingredients for my "Mystery Project" arrived. Inside the envelope, I found a nice little thank-you card, a Prismacolor marker in a color called "Cinnamon Toast," and a small card with the phrase "If tomorrow came yesterday" on it.

Yeah. I was less than thrilled with a brown marker and a prompt so tortured and twisted that my head hurt every time I tried to think about what to do for this project. For weeks, I picked up the envelope, pulled out the contents and felt my heart sink as I struggled to work out what I was supposed to do with that marker and those words. I planned an elaborate voting box with tokens for people encountering the art to select what they would do if, as the prompt suggested "tomorrow came yesterday." I imagined a social experiment in which people weighed the burdens of knowledge of the future and tried to decide how they would spend a day with that knowledge. All the while, I kept thinking that in that circumstance, I would do what I always do: Be present and content in the here and now.

After a whole lot of agonizing over how to build the contraption and where to install it, I scrapped the idea altogether and decided to do as the original challenge said and create a token of inspiration, a small item to remind people how important it it to be present, in the moment, here and now.


That's when I grabbed a tiny wooden birdhouse, covered it in strips of old Wall Street Journals (how perfect is that?), distressed the corners with a liberal touch of "Cinnamon Toast," and slipped a special message inside for people encountering the art to discover.


I took the finished piece to work & installed it between two bulletin boards that feature marketing materials for the various MBA programs offered at the business school where I work. 


Here are a few photos of the installation and people viewing the piece:

Week as Art Featured on Create Mixed Media

When I saw that Tonia Davenport, Acquistions Editor at North Light Craft Books and Create Mixed Media, was looking for artists to feature in The Week aa Art, I almost did a backflip.

I love letters and numbers, especially numbers, and I'm always incorporating them into my work. I dropped her an email with a "sample" number and hoped she'd invite me to submit a week's worth of mixed media digits. She responded quickly, asking me to provide numbers for this week, February 5-11.

I decided to start by making "serendipity squares" for my backgrounds. Here's how I made them. Click on the images to view them at a larger size.

First, I drew a grid for the squares on a piece of Bristol board, then laid down a few diagonal lines of old book text torn into random shapes and distressed around the edges with some Color Box inks.

I tried to vary the sizes and shapes of the text scraps enough that they wouldn't look too uniform but would provide a nice structure for the squares.

Next, I tore up an fabulously pigment-stained paper towel I'd been saving since I used it for clean-up on another project a few weeks ago and laid in another set of diagonals.

Truth is, It nearly broke my hear to tear it up. That's why I took a picture of it before I let her rip.





Then I added scraps of bright yellow construction paper and let the background sheet dry.

Looks like a bit of a mess, no?

I'm always amazed how bad things can look just before they take that turn toward completion. In this case, I just hoped my squares would be colorful but not overpowering for the stars of the show: my numbers.

I cut the sheet into 9 3-inch squares and got out by favorite vintage oilboard stencils to make the numbers.

I love oilboard stencils. I have them in four sizes from 1" to 6". They came from the leftover stock of an old art supply store some friends bought in my hometown several years ago. I love the way they smell and the way they feel in my hand.  They are so much cooler than plastic stencils.


I stenciled each number first using white acrylic paint and allowed that layer to dry.

Then I offset the stencil over the first layer and stenciled the number in black acrylic paint to create a little more dimension.

I dragged the edges of the squares with a contrasting stamp pad to give them a finished look.

You can see the whole week of finished numbers at Create Mixed Media.

2011 Year in Review

So, a lot of folks are eager to kick 2011 to the curb, and some of them have good reason to feel that way, but this was a pretty good year for me.

It started off with a trip to Kauai with my wonderful husband, pictured here. We stayed in Princeville, had a marvelous time just being lazy and happy and warm. Good thing, too, because almost as soon as we arrived there he got a call from a recruiter asking if he could start a new job the following week. Yeah, that made it so much easier to relax and enjoy the pool. the ocean, the food and each other. It also made coming home just a little bit easier as well.

Just before we left on vacation (Christmas day of 2010), I learned that a photo of one of my art journals was going to be published in a major art magazine, Cloth Paper Scissors. After we got back, I got busy making art for my first-ever one-woman show at Cafe Luna on Vashon Island. I also hosted a travelling exhibit, Leaving Dakota, a collection of photographs by Kyle Cassidy, and started an exhibit of my own, Art on My Door, which now stands at 175 pieces of art, each displayed on my office door for a working day during the past year. You can see all of those pieces on Flickr.
The Cafe Luna show kept me busy throughout the spring and was successful enough to encourage me to try showing my work more. At the end of May, one of my pieces was shown in the Seattle Erotic Art Festival. In June, I participated in 30 Days of Creativity, a wild ride of art-making that had me trying new things and really having a great time in my studio. Around this time, I noticed that there was no art hanging at our local coffee shop, Cafe Ladro and asked if they were looking for artists to exhibit. As it turns out, they were, and they asked me to hang a show in September.
The Seattle summer was mostly "meh," so I had plenty of time to work on pieces for the September show. We did manage to have some fun and go camping with friends. I also walked in the Komen 5K with some of the best people I know, among them my dear friend Allena who was undergoing chemo at the time and is now, I am happy to say, cancer-free.
The last few months have been busy and blurry and mostly filled with all the ordinary stuff that makes life good. Highlights included a week in November when we saw Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer in concert together at the Moore Theatre on a Wednesday night and then went back to see the amazing and wonderful Jason Webley in the most magical and strange concert I have ever seen on 11/11/11.
We are warm and safe and generally happy. We have love and chocolate and art and music. That's usually more than enough.
I hope 2012 is every bit as good for me as 2011 has been. If you're one of the folks whom 2011 treated poorly, I hope the New Year will give you some special treats to make up for it.
Happy New Year.

Book Review: Personal Geographies

Personal Geographies: Explorations in Mixed-Media Mapmaking by Jill K. Berry

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Berry's approach to maps and mapmaking as both art and spiritual exploration devices is full of enthusiasm and the genuine excitement of discovery. The book is well-written, richly illustrated, and includes ideas and projects that are inspirational for artists and explorers at any level. I read this book on my Kindle Fire and found that format perfectly suited to this sort of book.

View all my reviews

Maid of Orleans

Maid of Orleans, a photo by LA Smith on Flickr.

I've decided to take on the 30 Days of Creativity Challenge this month. Here is tonight's effort, a 7"x7" mixed media collage.

Birthday Thoughts

This is an ancestor nicho I made a while back. It features my mother's high school graduation photo from 1939. She was born on 5/15/1922 and gave birth to me 38 years later on 5/15/1960.

That makes me 51 today, and my mom would have been 89. She passed away on December 17, 2003.

Every year on our birthday, the first thing either of us thought to do was wish the other a happy birthday.

"Happy birthday, Mom," I would say to her.

"Happy birthday, Baby," she would reply.

I miss you, Mom. Happy birthday.

Art on My Door

Art on My Door, a set on Flickr.

I haven't posted anything lately because life has been busy and crazy and little too stressful, but I did want to take a moment to say how amazed I am when I look at the whole set of Art on My Door on Flickr. It makes me ridiculously happy to know that I've made all these little piece of art and that sharing them with others makes them happy sometimes, too. Click the link to see all of them, and feel free to leave comments. I love getting feedback.

Art Journal Page: Trust Your Own Instinct

Art Journal Page: Trust Your Own Instinct,
originally uploaded by LA Smith.

I finally got around to starting work in the fabulous Coptic bound journal I made last year.

I decided to begin with a reminder to myself that in times of great uncertainty, it's always best to trust my instincts. I will not let myself be motivated by the fears or doubts or others or even by my own healthy skepticism.

Instead, I will trust myself to make the best choices by listening to my inner voices, the ones that have delivered me into this life of joy and wonder that I live today.

Technique Tuesday: Plastic Wrap Backgrounds

Nothing makes me happier than having a fellow artist or crafter ask me, "How did you do that?" I'm always more than happy to explain or illustrate the techniques I use to make my art. That said, I'm going to try to build a few step-by-step tutorials for some of my favorite techniques. I'm starting today with a fairly simple process for creating backgrounds using acrylic paints and plastic wrap.

What you'll need

Materials:

• background material (I used watercolor paper, but any dry surface that will take paint will work.)
• liquid acrylic paints in two contrasting colors
• water
• paintbrush
• plastic wrap (I used blue wrap here to get better contrast in my photos)

I started by applying a coat of Gesso to the watercolor paper to give it more tooth and let that dry completely. Then, using a wet brush, I covered the paper in the lighter color of contrasting paint (yellow). Allow that layer to dry completely. If you're impatient (as I am), you can use a blow dryer on low to speed the drying.
Once your background material is dry, use the same very wet brush to apply a layer of the darker shade of paint (red). It's important that you make the layer very wet because you're going to want to move some of that color around in the next step.

Working quickly, before the red starts to dry and turn your background solid orange, tear a sheet of plastic wrap about twice the size of your background and lay it on top of the wet paint. Now, use your fingers to push the plastic wrap around, forcing the darker paint to move into the folds and creases of the plastic.
Let the plastic wrap sit on top of the paint for a minute or so, then carefully peel it back. If you like the result you got, toss the plastic and let your background dry.

If you want to add more texture, simply drop the plastic wrap back onto the background material and push it around a little more. Feel free to bunch it up in places and flatten it out in others until you are happy with the patterns you see developing on the surface. You have about 5 minutes to move the paint around before the darker color starts to dry.

You can be as subtle or as bold as you like with this technique, making soft, swooping shapes or tight, angular spikes of color.

I use this technique often when I'm preparing papers to use in my visual journals. I hope you'll give it a try and let me know if this little tutorial was any help.