i art a day.

I’ll finally be doing my first Craft Shows this Spring! The first is April 26th (only a month away) and the second is May 24th!

In the mean time I will probably be shutting down the i art a day. etsy shop for a while to start stocking up for these shows! I can hardly wait!!!

Living in Philadelphia is great for many reasons – one of which is the short bus ride up to New York. On Friday after work I headed up to the wonder city for a mini-reunion with a long lost middle school friend, and a little sight seeing. Saturday morning I woke up and headed out about 9am. On the way to Central Park I stopped at one of those oh-so-new-york bagel shops for a morning bite and was so thrilled that they didn’t skimp on the cream cheese. I love New York! While munching on my bagel and strolling through Central Park, puppy watching and daydreaming, the boyfriend arrived and met up. From there we went to the Guggenheim (my first time!) and then on to meet up with my friend at the Natural History Museum. I am devastatingly in awe of this museum.

The first stop was the planetarium. Super cool. Next time I go back (and there WILL be a next time) I’m going in to watch whatever their feature is. Then we hit up the dinosaurs on the 4th floor. After staring in wonder at these mammoth ancient creatures it was almost time to head out, with a stop in the African Mammals room on the way out. This was the icing on an already deliciously sweet visit. As I walked in gawking at the gigantic elephants marching through the center of the room – I felt like I had been here before, looking at all of the full-scale animal dioramas before. I’ve never stood in this room before, but the images weren’t new.

Polar Bear 1976

Gemsbok 1980

Hyena-Jackal-Vulture 1976

Of course, Hiroshi Sugimoto made a series of photographs (Dioramas) in this museum over several years, which I’ve stared at many times. It’s hard to express just how extensively his work has influenced me. Looking at his work I can feel the style of the stories I want to tell with images. Not only were the displays themselves intriguing and occasionally unsettling, but the chance to see these subjects first-hand was equally inspiring. After getting home and thumbing through my book of Sugimoto plates (for the 100th time) the pleasure of the experience only grew.

Next time I’ll have to remember to take a tripod.

“When I first arrived in New York in 1974, I visited many of the city’s tourists sites, one of which was the American Museum of Natural History. I made a curious discovery while looking at the exhibition of animal dioramas: the stuffed animals positioned before painted backdrops looked utterly fake, yet by taking a quick peek with one eye closed, all perspective vanished, and suddenly they looked very real. I had found a way to see the world as a camera does. However fake the subject, once photographed, it’s as good as real.” – Hiroshi Sugimoto

Illustration by hugohugo @devientART

Last night on my way home from work I remembered that I needed a new tube of white oil paint for a piece I’m working on at the moment, and stopped into my local art store to pick up a big tube. All of the store brand paints were on sale, and I picked up my big tube of Titanium White for about $12 (instead of the $24 it is regularly). I started browsing through some of the smaller colors and thinking about what I’d need to fill in my collection. Then I found a 37mL tube of Cobalt Blue (pure – not hue) for $15 – and realized that it was normally about $30, for the store label. WOW. Granted, it’s been a little while since I’ve invested in new paints – I try and get every last drop out of the tube before replenishing – but in the current state of the economy the thought of spending $30 on a 37mL tube of paint seems pretty steep.

After doing a quick search under “Recession Art”, I was pointed towards the 2008 Biennial at the Whitney in New York. This exhibit ran from March till June in 2008 – before those fateful days in late fall and winter when we all watched the economy crumble beneath us and a borderline-depression recession really kicked in. Wondering what this exhibit had to do with anything, I dug a little farther into the reviews and images of the installations. The video for the Biennial can be watched here, with an overview of many of the artists.

In the New York Times reviewof the show, Holland Cotter speculates, “A biennial for a recession-bound time? That’s one impression it gives. With more than 80 artists, this is the smallest edition of the show in a while, and it feels that way, sparsely populated, even as it fills three floors and more of the museum…” But it’s not just the smaller number of artists featured, it’s also the work itself. “Assemblage and collage are popular. Collaboration is common. So are down-market materials — plastic, plywood, plexiglass — and all kinds of found and recycled ingredients, otherwise known as trash,” Cotter continues, sending my mind overboard wondering what the connections truly are between art and times of heavy economic crisis.

“Starving artists” have always seemed to make it through the best of times and worst of times with a strong dedication to their work. We’re in a recession? Who cares? I’ve been eating ramen noodles every night for the past 10 years so I could afford to build/paint/draw/create. Perhaps, like the rich, the poorer artist communities are hardly effected by times of economic difficulty. But what about that other large chunk of the art community – the ones (like myself) who work full time, multiple jobs, or juggle freelancing to fund their art? When these artists take a financial hit in times like these, chances are their art (as well as other parts of their life) will suffer. Sure, they may find themselves with more time on their hands to create their masterpieces upon getting laid off, but when the art supplies dwindle what will they create next?

This is the idea that intrigues me. Not only am I interested in the toll these times will have on my artwork, but also on the creative community as a whole. What kind of beauty will emerge and in what form? Will artworks take a more simplistic and concentrated turn? Will they become commentary or statement? What materials will be used and why? Is there a new prevailing style that will emerge? Will lines between cultures and beliefs be blurred and substituted with a planetary distress call?

On the one hand, certain artistic endeavors may seem out of reach financially for artists. On the other hand, the possibility for newer ideas and creations is very strong.

First a quick update: The Vernal (Spring) Equinox is on Friday! YAY SPRING! Anyway, in order to celebrate and do a little shop spring cleaning the equinox cards have been put on SALE for a whopping 40% OFF! Can you think of anyone who’d love a little spring time hello?

Now back to your regularly scheduled programming. Times may be slow, but the creativity in Philadelphia is still overflowing. A personal inspiration is Leah Mackin of leahmackin.com. Her small notebooks, creative patterns and adorable cards are lovely – and really excite the font geek in me. Check out her etsy shop here.

If only I lived in a larger place with more wall space! I’ve been eyeing up the Polaroid prints by Fiona over at Walking To Jerico recently. I love the black and white vintage look of the images mixed with simple clean and powerful color. When I have an in-home office one day I can totally see these on my inspiration boards.

Also, there’s a couple of new items in the madebyhank shop and the something’s hiding in here shop, some of our major local inspirations!

I’m a little late today on posting up the weekend happenings, but while I may be more organized, I’m not nearly organized enough to have started writing posts ahead of time yet. Anyhoo. Like I mentioned on Friday, I spent the weekend in Virginia helping the parents get the guest bedroom guest-ready. This included removing the things we had been storing in it, fixing a wall, priming & painting the ceiling & walls, and then reorganizing. Needless to say, when I got home to Philly on Sunday night I slept like a log. Here’s some of the photo documentation:

First up is the wall from hell. Technically it’s the flue from the fireplace two floors below, about a foot and a half squared in the center of the wall. When I was in high school and wanted to turn this room into a craft/office space (yes – I’m a spoiled only child brat, but not really) I thought it would be cool to make this column-like wall into a 3D cork board. After vaguely describing it to the (world’s most considerate) parents they graciously agreed to let me go nuts, and thus began my mission to adhere rolled cork to a wall. I tried spray adhesive, nails, and finally heavy duty double sided tape. All eventually failed and image 1 is what was left for the next 7 years. I also had a jungle-theme happening in the room, and decided to paint the walls two tropical green colors. Totally appropriate for a jungle themed craft room, totally inappropriate for a comforting guest bedroom. So step 2 was to sand off the double sided tape adhesive and try to peel as much of the remainder off as possible (without damaging the gyp. board too much). After that came step 3: the spackling, which was most of the wall, followed by sanding the whole wall again, creating a dust cloud that rivaled the ash from Vesuvius. From there we were able to prime & paint the rest of the room as usual, and it turned out looking and feeling really great!

I can’t wait to see what it all looks like put together with bed linens, photos hung & final touches! I’ll make sure to post it up when everything’s finalized! Now it’s time to get my apartment back in order, haha.

This week - although a quiet one – has been full of some serious thought given to this blog, the shop, the website, ideas and goals. At the moment, the most this entire thing can be is a side project, a part-time gig. Sure, I’m one of the thousands of people out there that has an idea and dreams of opening my own business one day, and getting up every morning with the enthusiasm to create something amazing. Well, I’ve got the enthusiasm down, but time and resources are just as important I’m finding out. Here’s what’s cooking:

In the shop:
1. Posted 4 new items! 3 bookmarks and one hardcover notebook. While the quantity of products is getting larger, the timing is not. All 3 bookmarks were posted Monday, and the notebook today. I’m told spacing it out a little is a good way to go, for a wider range of exposure on the site over time. Even if it’s been a little while since I’ve posted something new, I’ll have to exercise some patience with updating.

2. I purchased a spot in the Paper Goods Showcase today to generate some more traffic across my page and see just how effective it is. At this point, I’ve gotten a couple more hits than I had before, but no more hearts or sales than I started the day with it seems. I’m also thinking about purchasing a Books & Zines Showcase spot sometime next week to run a similar test and perhaps point shoppers towards some of my other categories of creations.

3. Some serious organizing has been going down. Excel has gotten a workout making Supply cost sheets that factor in price, taxes, and shipping of all of the materials I buy. I’ve also set up similar sheets that track the cost of materials + fees & shipping prices to make sure I’m selling my items for enough in the shop to break even.

4. Planning for the next set of creations has begun. This includes feasible projects, materials, time frames, and quantities. OY!

At the blog:
1. A first draft of an Editorial Calendar has been made. Basically, a plan of what I’m going to write about, and when I’m going to write it. The idea is that it’ll help minimize that blogger’s block that I get from time to time and hopefully post more often about things that are actually relevant and interesting (to me anyway)!

2. The continuous search and brainstorm about an all-inclusive and beautiful site is underway. Today I spent an extraordinary amount of time seeing just exactly what squarespace.com had to offer. More on that later.

So, with all of that in mind, I’m picking up and heading down to Virginia for the weekend to paint some walls and tackle a couple of little projects at the parents’ house. Have a great weekend everyone!!!

Yay! New Fonts to love!

Bon matin tout le monde! C’est un jour gris ici a Philadelphia, mais ce soir est une autre classe de screenprinting – et je suis tres heureux!

It’s nice to know that I haven’t completely lost all six years of that somewhat painful language training. I’m in the process of teaching myself Spanish, which isn’t terribly complicated, but I wish there was a larger audience to practice on. At the moment I’ve got a boyfriend who took Spanish in high school and can’t roll his r’s – and the occasional person I come across that would probably be insulted if I tried to speak to them in Spanish because of how poor my grasp is. So what to do? I guess I’ll just HAVE to go to Spain. ha.

Anyway, as I said above Part II of my screenprinting class is tonight – which I’m obviously giddy about (although I’m sure part of that giddiness is the caffiene from this morning’s coffee). More on that tomorrow (more photos!).

I’ve also registered for a spot in the Paper Goods Showcase on Etsy for Friday! I’m not really sure how much traffic it will generate – if at all, but I figured Friday was a good time since, well – no one really wants to be paying attention to work on Fridays anyhow.

Also – on my walk home from last Wednesday’s class, I passed the site for the new Barnes Foundation on the parkway. Demolition is well underway – and soon – construction!

What else? AH YES! New bookmarks will be posted to the Etsy shop this afternoon! My inspiration came from fabrics that I just couldn’t let go of, the realization that embriodery isn’t as hard as it looks, miss Kyla Bea’s bookmark creations, and the fact that I use old unattractive scraps of paper as bookmarks. I’m one of those people that’s usually reading 3 or 4 books at a time, so I should probably stock up on a few. Anyway check the iartaday shop out after 2pm est and you’ll see what i’m on about!

Sure, it’s 4:10 on Friday afternoon. If you haven’t gone home for the weekend yet there’s a chance you’ll see this here blog, but I’m betting this baby isn’t getting read until Monday. Anyway.

Is anyone else even slightly…I don’t know the word…unappetized…by the use of Hiroshi Sugimoto‘s gorgeous photo on the cover of the new U2 album?

 It makes me really sad for some reason. Perhaps it’s because I’m not a fan of U2 and I think they’re the ultimate “sell-out” band – or more specifially, Bono writes terrible lyrics. I’m sure the actual band is still capable of writing music, but I just can’t see past the atrocity of the lyrics. It’s not even that they’re getting too old to pull off the tough guy rocker image (hello Rolling Stones?) – I still listen to Madonna albums for crying out loud. Yay older people making music. I think it’s just that I have the utmost awe, respect and affection for Sugimoto’s images – and watching pop culture package and toss his very meaningful and beautiful work into the “U2 brand” without any regard for the meaning of such an elegant and breathtaking image – well, it’s just wrong. It’d be great for people to recognize his image on the level of say – Ansel Adams – but I’m not sure this is the correct venue for it.

Anyway, it’s supposed to be warm & sunny this weekend! Looking forward to hiking in the park, movie watching, maybe a little art-ing at Studio 27.28, and trying to remember setting my clock forward Sunday morning for daylight savings! Have a good one!

Last night I felt something that I haven’t felt in a long while. Remember being a kid in 4th grade art class, covered from head to toe in glue/paint/clay/paper/marker and the teacher says, “Okay guys – it’s time to clean up!” – and all of the sudden you rush to make just one more finger painting/ash tray/paper snowflake because you’re loving it all so much you just don’t want to pack it up? Well it was just exactly like that. Last night was the first class of the long awaited  silkscreen printing class that I’m finally taking! I’ve dabbled with it in the past – and come up with some decent results – but thought it was time to really learn about what I’m doing and how to do it properly. We started with a little demo and then got messy with stencil prints, and of course I took a couple of photos.

{note: this next part outlines some of the process we went over last night, mostly so I can remember how to do it in the future.}

Silkscreen Stenciling:
1. First we sketched out a simple design on Freezer Paper (seeing as to how I’ve never used freezer paper before, it’s paper that’s plastic coated on one side – who knew!?), but something like contact paper/shelf liner can also be used. Then used an X-acto to cut out the design.

2. Next we taped the designs to the bottom of the screens (plastic side facing screen – paper side facing table) taping along the top on the paper, and just a little tab on the bottom to hold it on; the stencil sticks to the screen after running the first print. Also a scrap piece of freezer paper is taped (plastic side up) to the top of the screen to cover the unused screen from ink and serve as an ink collection area.

3. From there we chose colors (I chose a bold red) and mixed to perfection with transparent base, which is supposed to help with consistency, volume, and of course make the ink slightly more transparent.

Next, screwed the frame into frame hinges on the table like these:

{note: the screen needs to be lifted ever so slightly off of the table and act like a trampoline – only making contact with the paper where the squeegee is pushing on it. this will help to avoid a “halo” like effect and help to keep the bottom side of the screen ink-free. the little lip of the hinge clamp that the top of the screen rests on accomplishes this.}

4. Place paper under screen, pour ink onto plastic above design, position squeegee, and pull a print!

I probably made about 10 or 15 prints – and most of them were incomplete in some way or another, but one came out well enough to be proud of:

All in all this particular procees seems pretty straight forward. There’s still quite a bit to learn, and I can hardly wait till next Wednesday’s class! The classes are 2.5 hours long, and at 9pm I was dying to make just one more print.