The Juggler, Take 2

Here's the digital version:

I've  tried to compliment the colors and textures I used in my previous Acrobat and Fire Eater pieces. I've gotten a nice response to this series, and plan to use it in self-promotion as well as creating a set of notecards that I could sell on Etsy. I may even add a 4th image to complete the set...Stay tuned!

The Juggler

I was recently invite to contribute a piece of art for PS 39's upcoming 2nd Annual Spring Carnival. PS 39 is a small, public elementary school in Park Slope Brooklyn facing substantial budget cuts, which will result in the loss of their arts & music and physical educational programs. All money raised at the event—and from the silent auction of all art donated—will go towards sustaining these programs.  

Not only was this another great opportunity to contribute to a really good cause—but also super fun, as it was a totally open call to interpretation of a "circus" or "carnival" theme. (Any of you following me know this is one of my favorite subjects! :)  The only guidelines were to create the art on a provided piece of 16" x 16"- 1/4" plywood. I've always wanted to experiment with wood surfaces, and tried to experiment also a bit with mediums; I mixed acrylic washes and pen & ink and gold leaf accents, and worked in a fairly quick manner.  

I'm going to translate the drawing as a digital personal piece as well, to become a companion to the Acrobat and Fire Eater that I've recently added to my portfolio.

Art Love Japan

The recent disasters in Japan have touched all of us; As humans we can only feel an overwhelming feeling of sympathy and heartbreak for all the people who have lost loved ones, homes, livelihoods...everything they had and knew. Yet, as a single being on the other side of the world there's also a sense of helplessness about what we can really do to make a difference. But, I think every little bit counts, and I've been inspired by some friends who have responded by using their talents to create art for sale and offering up the proceeds to relief efforts.

Manjari Sharma—a dear friend and amazing photographer—just created a gorgeous limited edition print entitiled "Hope" that was sold through Wall Space Gallery and benefited 2 charities aiding the Japanese in need.  Tara Jacoby—a friend and super talented emerging illustrator—created a really beautiful piece that she's selling prints of and donating all proceeds to the Red Cross. So, when I saw the call for entries for Art Love Japan, I was super excited to have my own chance to create something for the cause.

Art Love Japan is a charity art show/event at In Rivers Gallery in Brooklyn, New York. Anyone can participate by sending in a small 5"x8" work of art inspired by the theme of love, hope and happiness. All original works will be sold for $20 and buyers will have the choice of 3 charities to donate the proceeds to. 

The exhibit opens Friday April 8 and will only show for 3 days at In Rivers Art Gallery in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Full details about the project and exhibit can be found on the website or facebook page.

Every April, my street becomes a beautiful promenade of pink petals and the air becomes filled with a sweet, delicious smell as the Japanese cherry trees lining the perimeter of the Brooklyn Botanical Garden begin to blossom. I love this time and these trees, and so I felt inspired to use such a beautiful cultural symbol to convey my sense of love and hope for Japan in my piece. As I was researching, I learned exactly what the cherry blossoms symbolize to the Japanese people: The fragility and ephemeral nature of life. That fragility has been exemplified in Japan more than ever over this last month—so it seemed the perfect subject matter to base an image off of. Here's the piece I created and am donating to the exhibit:

I really enjoyed creating this. There wasn't much time from the call for submissions to deadline for this project, so I tried to keep it simple and experimented a bit with style and medium. I found a cool paper laying around my studio—almost like an oak tag stock—and used ink and water color & liquid acrylic washes to just add minimal color. It was a fun, fresh way for me to work a bit differently from both my heavily textured paintings and my flat, digital art.

I'll be at the exhibit next Friday—if you are in the NYC area come check it out, buy some affordable art—and support a great cause!

Photomobile

I just sent off my submission for the Photomobile—it's Art House Co-op's current project, where participants choose a theme, receive a disposable camera, interpret their theme in the 27-exposures on the camera, and send in the outcome. Similar to the Sketchbook Project, the Co-op will curate a traveling exhibit out of all photos they receive and take the show across the country—but this time, they'll be traveling in an airstream trailer that the library of images is housed in!

This project just sounded way too cool to pass up, and the timing was just perfect—I signed up and received my camera right before my trip to New Orleans for Mardi Gras—and one of the themes is "Neighborhood Characters"—what could be more fitting!

I had a lot of fun capturing colorful images of interesting people down there to tell my story and submit to the project. Here's a few of my favorite shots:

I especially love the last shot; I love the white and black—even in the background awnings and windows—and the quietness of the street behind the couple. Almost feels like a small town in France or something...which is actually a quality that many places in the French Quarter have.

I have to admit, there was an interesting challenge to this project that hadn't really occurred to me until I got the pictures developed. We've become completely accustomed to digital photography—you can instantly zoom, crop, and view your shots unlike on these disposable 35mm point-and-shoots. We've also become used to looking at photos on screen, rather than getting the dingy drug-store developed prints of the past. So I felt much less in control with these, which I think is a big part of the point of this project. But, as fun it was to be surprised by what came out on my camera, there were a lot of shots that just didn't feel dynamic enough to include in my submission. But, I've still submitted most of the pics and will have to wait and see what they choose to include in the exhibit!

There's still time to sign up if you're interested—anyone can participate. Registration is open until March 31st, and you don't need to postmark your entry until June 15. The touring exhibit will kick off in Brooklyn in Fall 2011—you can find out all the details on Art-House Co-ops website.

March Madness

March has been such an exciting, wonderful month!  Right after wrapping up a super cool job for Cleveland Magazine (which I be posting samples of as soon as I get the final layouts) I took off for two back-to-back super fun adventures: my very first Mardi Gras in New Orleans, then my very first time to the SXSW music festival in Austin, TX!

Anyone that knows my work (or me personally) knows how much I love music....and food. Both these towns and events are completely about music and food and celebration—so I felt right at home and extremely inspired!

This was my 4th visit to New Orleans, but my first for Mardi Gras. A huge fan of costumes, parading, and all-around shenanigans,  Mardi Gras has been on the very top of my bucket list for awhile. I also have fallen quite deeply in love with the city of New Orleans from my annual visits over the past 3 years—I love absolutely everything about it. From the incredible food to the colorful culture; from the warm, fun people to the pretty sights and funky sounds; I truly cannot get my fill of that wonderful, amazing city!!

And Mardi Gras is one of the oldest, all-encompassing cultural celebrations the city holds annually. I'd been told by locals that it's truly a representation of what the culture is all about, and something that I just have to experience at least once in my life—especially if I really love the city. This year was just the year! After having gotten familiar with the city the past few years, I felt prepared to have a true (i.e. NON-frat boy) experience of this amazing celebration.

My best friend—New Orleans travel companion extraordinaire and costume-parading cohort, Kristin Smith—and I created some of the best costumes we've conjured up to date. Playing off the traditions of the Mardi Gras spirit, we designed something bright, beautiful and feathery, and made quite a splash! We were definitely a big hit and fit right in with the locals on Mardi Gras Day!! The amount of fun had in three days of dancing, parading, laughing, eating (and of course bead-catching!) is really hard to sum up or capture in pictures....but here's an attempt.  It really was one of the most fun, colorful, exciting things I've had the chance to experience!

Exactly one week after returning from New Orleans (meaning just one week of much needed recovery!) I was off to Austin for the SXSW music festival. My first time to Austin, I fell in love! It's such a cool city--It actually, in ways, reminded me of the spirit of New Orleans and Nashville—it's another city with music everywhere, every hour of the day, and some of the nicest local people I could imagine! I also really love the sort of "weird" eccentric, retro feel that the whole city has—there's was all this super cool signage all over the place. And I has some of the most interesting and most delicious food there—"artisan" hot dogs at Franks, the best BBQ I've ever had at Stubbs and Iron Works, Guiness ice cream at Amy's, fried avocados, breakfast burritos, bacon bloody marys and of course the Triple Lindy: Makers Mark, pickle juice, and beer shots (yes, each one chasing the previous! Yum!!)

One of my highlights was a double dose of Dancing Man 504 in both New Orleans and Austin! Dancing Man—or Darryl Young—is this amazing guy...a staple of New Orleans who's devoted himself to 2nd line dancing and sharing it with others—especially children. He's founded a program, Heal 2 Toe, where he teaches second line dance and culture to kids. He's all around an amazing guy with a ton of talent and personality, and I was able to meet and hang out with him for a bit in NOLA, then able to jump in his 2nd line parade down 6th St in Austin! If you are in NYC, he'll be doing A Jazz Funeral for Coney Island on April 3rd—I absolutely recommend checking it out!

And as far as the music festival—it was just awesome. Music everywhere!! Almost overwhelming to navigate, so we just kind of winged it, popping in cool little places for free shows as we walked around rather than buying a badge or rsvp'ing to get into the bigger shows. But I loved it that way. Got to see and hear a ton, found a few new bands that I super love—like the Orbans—and really just got to soak in the city as a whole. I can't wait to go back again sometime!




Just had to share these little tidbits....feeling really creatively inspired from weeks of celebrating life with great music, food, art and people! Ready to translate that into some good new work ...then on to the next adventure! :)

Spring snow showers?!

One of the most disheartening things I can think of is waking up to sleet and snow in March, after a weekend of warm weather fooling me into thinking spring had finally arrived! Unfortunately, that's exactly how the first official days of spring have begun this year in NYC!

What else can you do but make the best of it by using it as an excuse to make a wintery piece of art! I've had this little gal inked and hanging around my studio for quite awhile, so felt inspired to finally give her a little color.

I have lots of exciting things to post soon....just wrapped up a super cool editorial illustration project, have recently had some crazy fun travels, and have my new website in the works and close to launching. So stay posted...this busyness has made for pretty sporadic blogging lately, but I'll be sharing lots soon!

Sketchbook Project on tour!

This past weekend was the kick-off for the Art House Co-op's Sketchbook Project traveling exhibit with an opening reception at The Brooklyn art Library. I had a chance to stop by, but unfortunately it was close to the end of the night, and by that time they were trying to wrap things up and not allowing anymore check-outs. So, I didn't actually get to browse through any of the books, but it was a cool space with over 10,000 sketchbooks lining the shelves—I can't wait to get back there to peruse the stacks and take a look at how everyone interpreted their themes!

The exhibit will be at the Brooklyn Art Library in Williamsburg until February 27 when it'll pack up to hit the road on it's national tour. I'll coincidentally be in Austin, TX in March when it hits there—so hoping to check it out on the road too! The full schedule/tour dates are on the Art house Co-op's website.

Checking out the Sketchbook Project at Brooklyn Art Library

Opening reception, Saturday February 19

With Kristin Smith-my dear friend and also a participating artist in the Sketchbook Project

I also had a very cool opportunity to share a little piece about my experience with the project on Starving Talent—a resource site and online community for artists, by artists. It's a brand new website featuring all kinds of cool and inspiring articles and resources for creatives in all fields—illustration, design, photography, music, film. Sarah McGinnis—the organizer for the Tilsbury Publishing  project I participated in last May—now works on Starving Talent and and invited me to contribute. I hope to submit more to the site in the future. It's a really cool place for artists—check it out if you have a chance, and be sure to read more about the Sketchbook Project opening there! Thanks Sarah!

Yay 2011!

Happy New Year to all!
I'm a little late catching up with my blogging—2011 has already been off to a very fast-paced, busy start!

I'm full of inspiration and exciting new ideas for this year including some plans to begin to sell some products and prints featuring my art, as well as branch out to some new markets with both my design and illustration work. But—first project in the works: relaunching my website with a brand-new look! Keep an eye out for that soon.

In the meantime, I've been working with some new publishing clients on some book cover projects. I can't share those for awhile, but it's been great to start the year with some new relationships.

I also finished up my sketchbook for the Arthouse Co-op's The Sketchbook Project. The touring national exhibit begins next month at The Brooklyn Art Library in Williamsburg, with a reception on February 19th. From there, the sketchbook collection will exhibit in 9 different US cities through July of this year, including stops in Chicago, Austin, San Francisco, Washington, D.C. and more! Over 28,000 artist participated in this project so definitely keep an eye out for the exhibit in a city near you! (Schedule is on the Arthouse Co-op website)

Here are a few of my last pages from "Great hopes and Massive Failures" (a.k.a. a visual diary of my years as a single woman in New York City's sometimes vicious, sometimes hilarious, dating scene!)  I had a blast with this project, and even found myself inspired to keep some other ongoing theme-based sketchbooks...which I'll share some of soon!

Another sketch...

Just have to share one more from the sketchbook project...this one is one of my faves so far

New painting

I'm getting the BEST Christmas gift this year--my boyfriend is taking me on an amazing trip—first to Colorado, then to Hawaii to ring in the new year! Either I've been REALLY good, or he's just the best boyfriend ever. (I'm pretty sure it's the latter!)
Anyway--really hard to match a gift like that--especially because his birthday is also on Christmas day! So, I decided to make him a painting. I was a little unsure if it would make a good gift for hanging in his bachelor pad since my style is so feminine...but I used the inspiration of our upcoming hawaiian adventure and created this image.

....and, he loved it!! :)

More Sketchbook Project

Just sharing more of my progress with the Sketchbook Project.

My theme is "Great Hopes and Massive Failures" and this title is, for me, an opportunity to tell some of the funny (well, mostly funny!) stories from my past life in the NYC singles/dating world.
I'm really enjoying just getting to experiment a bit with composition & design—and lots of hand-lettering—to tell the stories and represent these characters from my life in interesting ways.

The Fire Eater

 

Just finished a little personal piece, inspired by the sketch I made for this year's Halloween costume: A sideshow/circus fire-eater! 

 AND-it just so happens to fit this week's Illustration Friday theme: BURNING

After having such a blast creating the vintage sideshow-style costumes for Coney Island's Mermaid Parade this past summer, friends and I were inspired to revisit the sideshow theme for Halloween. I decided to make a fire-eater costume....of course with a gory spin on things--I had "real" flaming torches and a disgusting burn on my face!

Before diving into the costume-making, I sketched out my ideas as usual....and couldn't resist revisiting those—now that my Halloween fun is over—to make a nice little illustration. I also realized this makes a nice companion piece to the "Acrobat" image I made for Illustration Friday a few months ago. Looking at these together, I'm also feeling inspired to expand this into more of a series—and potentially apply to notecards, journals, etc. (for sale in my future etsy shop!). I really love this whole vintage-circus theme and feel like I could come up with endless characters.

Here's a glimpse at how my costume looked  :)

Illustration Friday-Spooky

Just re-posting an image I made for a gallery show awhile back, inspired by the Mexican holiday, Día de los Muertos...or Day of the Dead. I felt that it fits this week's Illustration Friday theme: Spooky.

This image can be purchase as a print through Charmingwall Gallery: http://www.charmingwall.com/
 

Sketchbook

Just sharing a few of my pages from the Sketchbook Project....

Illustration Friday--Acrobat

I haven't participated in Illustration Friday for awhile, but I couldn't pass up this week's topic: Acrobat.

Halloween is right around the corner, so of course I've been conjuring up my costume visions for awhile now. Friends and I are making circus-themed costumes, so I've spent the last few weeks referencing endless images for inspiration, and acrobat visuals have definitely been living in my brain....

But even more relative is the flying trapeze class I took a few weeks ago! That's right-I actually got to be an acrobat—flying through the air, just like in the circus! :)  It really was an incredibly exciting, exhilarating experience! (I highly recommend trying it!)

So--how could I possibly pass up an opportunity to create this little acrobat image? I love making art that so directly reflects my life!

New piece

Today was one of the first Saturdays in a very long time that I haven't been bogged down with a looming deadline for a project or some kind of social obligation; It was also a beautiful, breezy day with a twinge of fall in the air--so was a perfect day to spend some time on personal work!

I revisited a sketch I did awhile back, that has since been pinned above my desk staring me in the face, practically begging for me to pay it some attention again. So I went to work on it--and made a little finished piece of it. This is one in a series of drawings I'd like to use to refine some digital techniques, and expand my body of work geared toward middle-grade/tween product and/or book & editorial markets. I've gotten positive response to recent illustration work in this vein--and this is also the market I've become most familiar with over the 6+ years I've spent designing young adult book covers. I had a ton of fun working on this--and really want to continue to refine this work process and style.

Great Hopes and Massive Failures

A few weeks ago, I posted about The Sketchbook Project—a nationwide art project and traveling exhibit that I am participating in, organized by Art House Gallery. I've been having a blast starting to fill up pages in my sketchbook, and will periodically post some of my progress with it as I continue over the next few months (The deadline to submit the finished book is January 15th).

Each participant was to choose one of the provided themes to base the sketchbook on. (Though these are just to be used as a starting point and completely open to interpretation.) I chose the theme “Great Hopes and Massive Failures”.

Like many single women, especially in New York City, I've racked up countless stories of bad dates over the years. And, I would guess I'm not the first of these women to hear friends repeatedly say (after living vicariously through my tales of single-dom) that all these stories would make for a great book. I don’t, however, consider myself much of a writer—so instead decided to use this opportunity to create a visual diary of some of these stories. After all, what greater hope is there than the exciting possibilities of what might come from meeting someone new? And how much more massive failure can you feel when those hopes are smashed...like, by the realization that the guy who just showed up for your first date with a half-drunken 12-pack of beer is a total loser!?

Of course, this diary isn’t meant at all to be a venue for some man-bashing rant. It’s simply meant to be complete fun for me, and just to make light of some of the ridiculous dating experiences I've had in the past. Taking a personal approach to interpreting this theme allows perfect ground for me to freely experiment with visual ways to tell a story. I really want to push myself conceptually, using metaphors and composition to create a narrative in new ways. Also—the nature of this kind of story-telling allows alot of opportunity to incorporate hand-lettering which I am always interested in exploring more of too. And the sketchbook format creates a chance to experiment with medium without the need for executing finished, polished pieces.

I'm sharing here my title/first page—I had alot of fun with this, looking to old circus-y/sideshow poster type for inspiration and weaving in hints of gold leaf accents. I'll share alot more as I continue sketching!

The Sketchbook Project

I'm really excited about participating in The Sketchbook Project--a nation-wide art project organized by Art House Gallery. Each participant receives a Moleskine sketchbook to fill as they wish, inspired by a provided theme. The sketchbook is to be sent back to Art House, who will exhibit the sketchbooks across the country. The tour includes Brooklyn, Austin, San Francisco, Portland (ME), Atlanta, and Chicago. Eventually, the books end up in the permanent collection of The Brooklyn Art Library, where they will be barcoded and available for the public to view.

I chose the theme "Great hopes and massive failures" which has already inspired me with lots of visual ideas to explore. I can't wait to get my book and get started!

Anyone is invited to participate--if you are interested, you should check it out on their site.

Ode to the Miser Brothers

Just having a little fun playing around with two of my all-time favorite Christmas characters! Happy holidays everyone!