I took my art off the walls of the cafe last weekend – a few of the pieces sold, which was exciting (though surprisingly difficult – I’ve found that I become way too attached to my work!), and the remaining prints will find a place somewhere in our house. But before I tuck anything away, I wanted to share a few of my favorites.  All of the pieces are a mix of collage and print-making, with a little hand drawing thrown in here and there.  The collage comes from photos I’ve taken – I like the idea of abstracting images of skies or grasses or sandy beaches to form shapes and create gradients of color (for example, the mountains in ‘ice land‘ were made up of a photo of a cloudy sky that I snipped up and rearranged).  The printmaking was all done with inked stencils run through the presses (with a few handy tricks used for the spotty skies or the thin white lines of relief).  The final days of pulling this together were a bit touch-and-go (with only 5 days till show-time, I had yet to feel like anything was finished), but somehow everything came together in the end to form a pretty sharp collection.  And…voila:
desert city:
boardwalk:
ice land:
glacial view:
minnesota cabin:
kenzo:
horizon line:
one way:
sky way:
I’ve taken a break from any art-making for the past month, devoting my spare time instead to Harry Potter and old episodes of Friday Night Lights, but in the past couple of days, I’ve started to feel the creative itch again.  I’m browsing Pratt’s latest course offerings, picking up my neglected sketchbook, starting to formulate some new ideas about printmaking and drawing and collage. I’m looking forward to spending some time in the studio just ‘playing’.  I want to pretend for awhile that I’m not actually a fine-lined perfectionist and instead focus on freedom and chance.  Could be good, could be completely terrible – either way, expect to see dried paint under my fingernails in the next few weeks (the mark of a quality day at the presses).